Ayez pitie de moi.
T.H. Huxley.
Jermyn Street, July 2, 1863.
My Dear Darwin,
I am horribly loth to say that I cannot do anything you want done; and partly for that reason and partly because we have been very busy here with some new arrangements during the last day or two, I did not at once reply to your note.
I am afraid, however, I cannot undertake any sort of new work. In spite of working like a horse (or if you prefer it, like an ass), I find myself scandalously in arrear, and I shall get into terrible hot water if I do not clear off some things that have been hanging about me for months and years.
If you will send me up the specimens, however, I will ask Flower (whom I see constantly) to examine them for you. The examination will be no great trouble, and I am ashamed to make a fuss about it, but I have sworn a big oath to take no fresh work, great or small, until certain things are done.
I wake up in the morning with somebody saying in my ear, "A is not done, and B is not done, and C is not done, and D is not done," etc., and a feeling like a fellow whose duns are all in the street waiting for him. By the way, you ask me what I am doing now, so I will just enumerate some of the A, B, and C's aforesaid.
A. Editing lectures on Vertebrate skull and bringing them out in the
"Medical Times."
B. Editing and re-writing lectures on Elementary Physiology, just delivered here and reported as I went along. ([Delivered on Friday evenings from April to June at Jermyn Street, and reported in the "Medical Times." They formed the basis of his well-known little book on "Elementary Physiology," published 1866. He writes on April 22:—] "Macmillan has just been with me, and I am let in for a school book on physiology based on these lectures of mine. Money arrangements not quite fixed yet, but he is a good fellow, and will not do me unnecessarily.")