I inclose cheque for my contributions due and to come. [For the x Club.] If I go to Davy's Locker before October, the latter may go for consolation champagne!
Ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.
[He writes from the Maloja on August 16 to Sir M. Foster, who had been sitting on the Vaccination Commission:—]
I wonder how you are prospering, whether you have vaccination or anti-vaccination on the brain; or whether the gods have prospered you so far as to send you on a holiday. We have been here since the beginning of July. Monte Generoso proved lovely—but electrical. We had on the average three thunderstorms every two days. Bellagio was as hot as the tropics, and we stayed only a day, and came on here—where, whatever else may happen, it is never too hot. The weather has been good and I have profited immensely, and at present I do not know whether I have a heart or not. But I have to look very sharp after my liver. H. Thompson, who has been here with his son Herbert (clever fellow, by the way), treats the notion that I ever had a dilated heart with scorn! Oh these doctors! they are worse than theologians.
[And again on August 31:—]
I walked eighteen miles three or four days ago, and I think nothing of one or two thousand feet up! I hope this state of things will last at the sea-level.
I am always glad to hear of and from you, but I have not been idle long enough to forget what being busy means, so don't let your conscience worry you about answering my letters.
…X. is, I am afraid, more or less of an ass. The opposition he and his friends have been making to the Technical Bill is quite unintelligible to me. Y. may be, and I rather think is, a knave, but he is no fool; and if I mistake not he is minded to kick the ultra-radical stool down now that he has mounted by it. Make friends of that Mammon of unrighteousness and swamp the sentimentalists.
…I despise your insinuations. All my friends here have been theological—Bishop, Chief Rabbi, and Catholic Professor. None of your Maybrick discussors.