That being so, it seems to me that I must, willy-nilly, give up South Kensington. For—and here is the point you had in your mind when you lamented your possible impatience about something I might say—I swear by all the gods that are not mine, nothing shall induce me to apply to the Treasury for anything but the pound of flesh to which I am entitled.
Nothing ever disgusted me more than being the subject of a battle with the Treasury over the Home Office appointment—which I should have thrown up if I could have done so with decency to Harcourt.
It's just as well for me I couldn't, but it left a nasty taste.
I don't want to leave the School, and should be very glad to remain as Dean, for many reasons. But what I don't see is how I am to do that and make my escape from the thousand and one entanglements—which seem to me to come upon me quite irrespectively of any office I hold—or how I am to go on living in London as a (financially) decayed philosopher.
I really see nothing for it but to take my pension and go and spend the winter of 1885-86 in Italy. I hear one can be a regular swell there on 1000 pounds a year.
Six months' absence is oblivion, and I shall take to a new line of work, and one which will greatly meet your approval.
As to X— I am not a-going to—not being given to hopeless enterprises. That rough customer at Dublin is the only man who occurs to me. I can't think of his name, but that is part of my general unfitness.
…I suppose I shall chaff somebody on my death-bed. But I am out of heart to think of the end of the lunches in the sacred corner.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.