It is of great importance to look to this point in London—to be unshackled by anything that may prevent you taking the highest places, and it was only my fear on this head that made me advise you to hesitate about the London Institution. More consideration leads me to say, take that, if it will bring you up to London at once, so that you may hammer your reputation while it is hot.
However, consider all these things well, and don't be hasty. I will keep eyes and ears open and inform you accordingly. Write to me if there is anything you want done, supposing always there is nobody who will do it better—which is improbable.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[But this year of victory was not to pass away without one last blow from fate. On November 18, Edward Forbes, the man in whom Huxley had found a true friend and helper, inspired by the same ideals of truth and sincerity as himself, died suddenly at Edinburgh. The strong but delicate ties that united them were based not merely upon intellectual affinity, but upon the deeper moral kinship of two strong characters, where each subordinated interest to ideal, and treated others by the measure of his own self-respect. As early as March 1851 he had written:—]
I wish you knew my friend Professor Forbes. He is the best creature you can imagine, and helps me in all manner of ways. A man of very great knowledge, he is wholly free from pedantry and jealousy, the two besetting sins of literary and scientific men. Up to his eyes in work, he never grudges his time if it is to help a friend. He is one of the few men I have ever met to whom I can feel obliged, without losing a particle of independence or self-respect.
[The following from a letter to Hooker, announcing Forbes'death, is a striking testimony to his worth:—]
I think I have never felt so crushed by anything before. It is one of those losses which cannot be replaced either to the private friend or to science. To me especially it is a bitter loss. Without the aid and sympathy he has always given me from first to last, I should never have had the courage to persevere in the course I have followed. And it was one of my greatest hopes that we should work in harmony for long years at the aims so dear to us both.
But it is otherwise, and we who remain have nothing left but to bear the inevitable as we best may.
[And again a few days later:—]