My dear Leonard,
Best thanks for your good wishes [For his birthday, May 4.]. Notwithstanding the disease of A.D., which always proves mortal sooner or later, I am in excellent case…
I knew both Lord F. Cavendish and his wife and Mr. Burke. I have never been able to get poor Lady Frederick out of my head since the news arrived.
The public mind has been more stirred than by anything since the Indian Mutiny. But if the Government keep their heads cool, great good may come out of the evil, horrible as it is. The Fenians have reckoned on creating an irreparable breach between England and Ireland. It should be our business to disappoint them first and extirpate them afterwards. But the newspaper writers make me sick, especially the "Times".
Ever your affectionate father,
T.H. Huxley.
[It is interesting, also, to see how he appeared about this time to one of a younger generation, acute, indeed, and discriminating, but predisposed by circumstances and upbringing to regard him at first with curiosity rather than sympathy. For this account I am indebted to one who has the habit, so laudable in good hands, of keeping a journal of events and conversations. I have every confidence in the substantial accuracy of so well trained a reporter.
EXTRACT FROM JOURNAL.
November 25, 1882.
In the evening we dined at the —'s, chiefly a family party with the addition of Professor Huxley and his wife and ourselves. Much lively conversation, after dinner, begun among the ladies, but continued after the gentlemen appeared, on the subjects of Truth, Education, and Women's Rights, or, more strictly speaking, women's capabilities. Our hostess (Lady —) was, if possible, more vehement and paradoxical than her wont, and vigorously maintained that TRUTH was no virtue in itself, but must be inculcated for expediency's sake. The opposite view found a champion in Professor Huxley, who described himself as] "almost a fanatic for the sanctity of truth." [Lady — urged that truth was often a very selfish virtue, and that a man of noble and unselfish character might lie for the sake of a friend, to which some one replied that after a course of this unselfish lying the noble character was pretty sure to deteriorate, while the Professor laughingly suggested that the owner had a good chance of finding himself landed ultimately in Botany Bay.