Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1

by Thomas Henry Huxley

We will begin the new love of woman and man, no longer that of boy and girl, conscious that we have aims and purposes as well as affections, and that if love is sweet life is dreadfully stern and earnest.

[As time went on and no permanency offered—although a good deal of writing fell in his way—the strain told heavily upon him. In the autumn he was quite out of sorts, body and mind, more at war with himself than he ever was in his life before. All this, he writes, had darkened his thoughts, had made him once more imagine a hopeless discrepancy between the two of them in their ways of thinking and objects in life. It was not till November 1853 that this depression was banished by the trust and confidence of her last letter.] "I wish to Heaven," [he writes,] "it had reached me six months ago. It would have saved me a world of pain and error." [But with this, the worst period of mental suffering was over, and every haunting doubt was finally exorcised. His career was made possible by the steady faith which neither separation nor any misgiving nor its own troubles could shake. And from this point all things began to brighten. His health had been restored by a trip to the Pyrenees with his brother George in September. He had got work that enabled him to regard the Admiralty and its menaces with complete equanimity; a "Manual of Comparative Anatomy," for Churchhill the publisher, regular work on the "Westminster," and another book in prospect,] "so that if I quit the Service to-morrow, these will give me more than my pay has been." [(This regular work was the article on Contemporary Science, which in October 1854 he got Tyndall to share with him. For, he writes,] "To give some account of the books in one's own department is no particular trouble, and comes with me under the head of being paid for what I MUST, in any case, do—but I neither will, nor can, go on writing about books in other departments, of which I am not competent to form a judgment even if I had the time to give to them.") [And on December 7 he writes how he has been restored and revived by reading over her last two letters, and confesses,] "I have been unjust to the depth and strength of your devotion, but will never do so again." [Then he tells all he had gone through before leaving England in September for his holiday—how he had resolved to abandon all his special pursuits and take up Chemistry, for practical purposes, when first one publisher and then another asked him to write for them, and hopes were held out to him of being appointed to deliver the Fullerian lectures at the Royal Institution for the next three years; while, most important of all, Edward Forbes was likely before long, to leave his post at the Museum of Practical Geology, and he had already been spoken to by the authorities about filling it. This was worth some 200 pounds sterling a year, while he calculated to make about 250 pounds sterling by his pen alone.] "Therefore it would be absurd to go hunting for chemical birds in the bush when I have such in the hand."

CHAPTER 1.7.

1851-1853.

[Several letters dating from 1851 to 1853 help to fill up the outlines of Huxley's life during those three years of struggle. There is a description of the British Association meeting at Ipswich in 1851] ("Forbes advises me to go down to the meeting of the British Association this year and make myself notorious somehow or other. Thank Heaven I have impudence enough to lecture the savans of Europe if necessary. Can you imagine me holding forth?" [June 6, 1851.]), with the traditional touch of gaiety to enliven the gravity of its proceedings, and the unconventional jollity of the Red Lion Club (a dining-club of members of the Association), whose palmy days were those under the inspiration of the genial and gifted Forbes. This was the meeting at which Huxley first began his alliance with Tyndall, with whom he travelled down from town, although he does not mention his name in this letter. With Hooker he had already made acquaintance; and from this time forwards the three were closely bound together by personal regard as well as by similarity of aims and interests.

Then follow his sketch of the English scientific world as he found it in 1851, given in his letter to W. Macleay; several letters to his sister; the description of his first lecture at the Royal Institution, which, though successful on the whole, was very different in manner and delivery from the clear and even flow of his later style, with the voice not loud but distinct, the utterance never hurried beyond the point of immediate comprehension, but carrying the attention of the audience with it, eager to the end. Two letters of warning and remonstrance against the habits of lecturing in a colloquial tone, suitable to a knot of students gathered round his table, but not to a large audience—of running his words, especially technical terms, together—of pouring out new and unfamiliar matter at breakneck speed, were addressed to him—one by a "working man" of his Monday evening audience at Jermyn Street in 1855, the other, undated, by Mr. Jodrell, a frequenter of the Royal Institution, and afterwards founder of the Jodrell Lectureships at University College, London, and other benefactions to science, and these he kept by him as a perpetual reminder, labelled "Good Advice." How much can be done by the frank acceptance of criticism and by careful practice is shown by the difference between the feelings of the later audiences who flocked to his lectures, and those of the members of an Institute in St. John's Wood, who, as he often used to tell, after hearing him in his early days, petitioned "not to have that young man again.">[

July 12, 1851.

The interval between my letters has been a little longer than usual, as I have been very busy attending the meeting of the British Association at Ipswich. The last time I attended one was at Southampton five years ago, when I went merely as a spectator, and looked at the people who read papers as if they were somebodies. (See Chapter 2, ad fin.) This time I have been behind the scenes myself and have played out my little part on the boards. I know all about the scenery and decorations, and no longer think the manager a wizard.

Any one who conceives that I went down from any especial interest in the progress of science makes a great mistake. My journey was altogether a matter of policy, partly for the purpose of doing a little necessary trumpeting, and partly to get the assistance of the Association in influencing the Government.

On the journey down, my opposite in the railway carriage turned out to be Sir James Ross, the Antarctic discoverer. We had some very pleasant talk together. I knew all about him, as Dayman (one of the lieutenants of the "Rattlesnake") had sailed under his command; oddly enough we afterwards went to lodge at the same house, but as we were attending our respective sections all day we did not see much of one another.