Did I not tell you it was a fine field, and could the land o' cakes give me any scope like this?
April 9, 1855.
My dear Dyster,
I didn't by any means mean to be so sphinx-like in my letter, though you have turned out an Oedipus of the first water. True it is that I mean to "range myself," "live cleanly and leave off sack," within the next few months—that is to say, if nothing happens to the good ship which is at present bearing my fiancee homewards.
So far as a restless mortal—more or less aweary of most things—like myself can be made happy by any other human being, I believe your good wishes are safe of realisation; at any rate, it will be my fault if they are not, and I beg you never to imagine that I could confound the piety of friendship with the "efflorescent" variety.
I hope to marry in July, and make my way down to Tenby shortly afterwards, and I am ready to lay you a wager that your vaticinations touching the amount of work that WON'T be done don't come true.
So much for wives—now for WORMS—(I could not for the life of me help the alliteration). I, as right reverend father in worms and Bishop of Annelidae, do not think I ought to interfere with my most promising son, when a channel opens itself for the publication of his labours. So do what you will apropos of J—. If he does not do the worms any better than he did the zoophytes, he won't interfere with my plans.
I shall be glad to see Mrs. Buckland's Echinoderm. I think it must be a novelty by what you say. She is a very jolly person, but I have an unutterable fear of scientific women.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.