But I am not going to overwork myself again. Pray make my kindest remembrances to Mrs. Arnold, and believe me, always yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Leaving Assouan on March 3, and Cairo on the 18th, he returned by way of Messina to Naples, taking a day at Catania to look at Etna. At Naples he found his friend Dohrn was absent, and his place as host was filled by his father. Vesuvius was ascended, Pozzuoli and Pompeii visited, and two days spent in Rome.]
Hotel de Grande Bretagne, Naples, March 31, 1872.
My dear Tyndall,
Your very welcome letter did not reach me until the 18th of March, when I returned to Cairo from my expedition to Assouan. Like Johnny Gilpin, I "little thought when I set out, of running such a rig"; but while at Cairo I fell in with Ossory of the Athenaeum, and a very pleasant fellow, Charles Ellis, who had taken a dahabieh, and were about to start up the Nile. They invited me to take possession of a vacant third cabin, and I accepted their hospitality, with the intention of going as far as Thebes and returning on my own hook. But when we got to Thebes I found there was no getting away again without much more exposure and fatigue than I felt justified in facing just then, and as my friends showed no disposition to be rid of me, I stuck to the boat, and only left them on the return voyage at Rodu, which is the terminus of the railway, about 150 miles from Cairo.
We had an unusually quick journey, as I was little more than a month away from Cairo, and as my companions made themselves very agreeable, it was very pleasant. I was not particularly well at first, but by degrees the utter rest of this "always afternoon" sort of life did its work, and I am as well and vigorous now as ever I was in my life.
I should have been home within a fortnight of the time I had originally fixed. This would have been ample time to have enabled me to fulfil all the engagements I had made before starting; and Donnelly had given me to understand that "My Lords" would not trouble their heads about my stretching my official leave. Nevertheless I was very glad to find the official extension (which was the effect of my wife's and your and Bence Jones's friendly conspiracy) awaiting me at Cairo. A rapid journey home via Brindisi might have rattled my brains back into the colloid state in which they were when I left England. Looking back through the past six months I begin to see that I have had a narrow escape from a bad breakdown, and I am full of good resolutions.
As the first-fruit of these you see that I have given up the School Board, and I mean to keep clear of all that semi-political work hereafter. I see that Sandon (whom I met at Alexandria) and Miller have followed my example, and that Lord Lawrence is likely to go. What a skedaddle!
It seems very hard to escape, however. Since my arrival here, on taking up the "Times" I saw a paragraph about the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews. After enumerating a lot of candidates for that honour, the paragraph concluded, "But we understand that at present Professor Huxley has the best chance." It is really too bad if any one has been making use of my name without my permission. But I don't know what to do about it. I had half a mind to write to Tulloch to tell him that I can't and won't take any such office, but I should look rather foolish if he replied that it was a mere newspaper report, and that nobody intended to put me up.