I have had no time to write to you again till now, but I write to say how perfectly you express my own feeling about our poor friend. One of the first things I thought of was that medal business, and I never rejoiced in anything more than that I had not been deterred by any moral cowardice from acting as I did.
As it is I reckon that letter (which I will show you some day) among my most precious possessions.
[Huxley's last tribute to his dead friend was the organising a memorial fund, part of which went to getting a bust of him made, part to establishing an Edward Forbes medal, to be competed for by the students of his old school in Jermyn Street.
As Huxley had been Forbes' successor at Jermyn Street, so now he seemed to many marked out to succeed him at Edinburgh. In November he writes to Hooker:—]
People have been at me about the Edinburgh chair. If I could contrive to stop here, between you and I, I would prefer it to half a dozen Edinburgh chairs, but there is a mortal difference between 200 and 1000 pounds sterling a year. I have written to say that if the Professors can make up their minds they wish me to stand, I will—if not, I will not. For my own part, I believe my chances would be very small, and I think there is every probability of their dividing the chair, in which case I certainly would not go. However, I hate thinking about the thing.
[And also to his sister:—]
November 26, 1854.
My dearest Lizzie,
I feel I have been silent very long—a great deal too long—but you would understand if you knew how much I have to do; why, with every disposition to do otherwise, I now write hardly any but business letters. Even Nettie comes off badly I am afraid. When a man embarks as I have done, with nothing but his brains to back him, on the great sea of life in London, with the determination to MAKE the influence and the position and the money which he hasn't got, you may depend upon it that the fierce wants and interests of his present and immediate circle leave him little time to think of anything else, whatever old loves and old memories may be smouldering as warmly as ever below the surface. So, sister mine, you must not imagine because I do not write that therefore I do not think of you or care to know about you, but only that I am eaten up with the zeal of my own house, and doing with all my heart the thing that the moment calls for.
The last year has been eventful for me. There is always a Cape Horn in one's life that one either weathers or wrecks one's self on. Thank God I think I may say I have weathered mine—not without a good deal of damage to spars and rigging though, for it blew deuced hard on the other side.