T.H. Huxley.
[The next letter is in reply to Tyndall, who had written as follows from Switzerland on July 15:—
I confess to you that I am far more anxious about your condition than about my own; for I fear that after your London labour the labour of this lecture will press heavily upon you. I wish to Heaven it could be transferred to other shoulders.
I wish I could get rid of the uncomfortable idea that I have drawn upon you at a time when your friend and brother ought to be anxious to spare you every labour…
PS.—Have just seen the Swiss "Times"; am intensely disgusted to find that while I was brooding over the calamities possibly consequent on your lending me a hand, that you have been at the Derby Statue, and are to make an oration apropos of the Priestley Statue in Birmingham on the 1st August!!!]
4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., July 22, 1874.
My dear Tyndall,
I hope you have been taking more care of your instep than you did of your leg in old times. Don't try mortifying the flesh again.
I was uncommonly amused at your disgustful wind-up after writing me such a compassionate letter. I am as jolly as a sandboy so long as I live on a minimum and drink no alcohol, and as vigorous as ever I was in my life. But a late dinner wakes up my demoniac colon and gives me a fit of blue devils with physical precision.
Don't believe that I am at all the places in which the newspapers put me. For example, I was not at the Lord Mayor's dinner last night. As for Lord Derby's statue, I wanted to get a lesson in the art of statue unveiling. I help to pay Dizzie's salary, so I don't see why I should not get a wrinkle from that artful dodger.