A note which came from Mrs. Rolleston to my wife the other day, kindly answering some inquiries of ours about the Oxford Middle Class Examination, gave us but a poor account of your health.
This kind of thing won't do, you know. Here is — ill, and I doing all I can to persuade him to go away and take care of himself, and now comes ill news of you.
Is it dyspeps again? If so follow in my steps. I mean to go about the country, with somebody who can lecture, as the "horrid example"—cured. Nothing but gross and disgusting intemperance, Sir, was the cause of all my evil. And now that I have been a teetotaller for nine months, and have cut down my food supply to about half of what I used to eat, the enemy is beaten.
I have carried my own permissive bill, and no canteen (except for my friends who still sit in darkness) is allowed on the premises. And as this is the third letter I have written before breakfast (a thing I never could achieve in the days when I wallowed in the stye of Epicurus), you perceive that I am as vigorous as ever I was in my life.
Let me have news of you, and believe me,
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Athenaeum Club, November 3, 1873.
My dear Darwin,
You will have heard (in fact I think I mentioned the matter when I paid you my pleasant visit the other day) that — is ill and obliged to go away for six months to a warm climate. It is a great grief to me, as he is a man for whom I have great esteem and affection, apart from his high scientific merits, and his symptoms are such as cause very grave anxiety. I shall be happily disappointed if that accursed consumption has not got hold of him.