Two letters to Tyndall, which refer to the division of labour in the science reviews for the "Westminster," indicate very clearly the high pressure at which Huxley had already begun to work:—]
Tenby, South Wales, October 22, 1854.
My dear Tyndall,
I was rejoiced to find you entertaining my proposition at all. No one believes how hard you work more than I, but I was not going to be such a bad diplomatist as to put that at the head of my letter, and if I had thought that what I want you to do involved any great accession thereto, I think I could not have mustered up the face to ask you. But really and truly, so long as it is confined to our own department it is no great affair. You make me laugh at the long face you pull about the duties, based on my phrase. The fact is, you notice what you like, and what you do not you leave undone, unless you get an editorial request to say something about a particular book. The whole affair is entirely in your own hands—at least it is in mine—as I went upon my principle of having a row at starting…
Now here is an equitable proposition. Look at my work. I have a couple of monographs, odds and ends of papers for journals, a manual and some three courses of lectures to provide for this winter. "My necessities are as great as thine," as Sir Philip Sidney didn't say, so be a brick, split the difference, and say you will be ready for the April number. I will write and announce the fact to Chapman.
What idiots we all are to toil and slave at this pace. I almost repent me of tempting you—after all—so I promise to hold on if you really think you will be overdoing it.
With you I envy Francis his gastric energies. I feel I have done for myself in that line, and am in for a life-long dyspeps. I have not, now, nervous energy enough for stomach and brain both, and if I work the latter, not even the fresh breezes of this place will keep the former in order. That is a discovery I have made here, and though highly instructive, it is not so pleasant as some other physiological results that have turned up.
Chapman, who died of cholera, was a distant relative of my man. The poor fellow vanished in the middle of an unfinished article, which has appeared in the last "Westminster," as his forlorn vale! to the world. After all, that is the way to die, better a thousand times than drivelling off into eternity betwixt awake and asleep in a fatuous old age.
Believe me, ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.