Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 51

Best thanks for your letter and route. I am giving you a frightful quant.i.ty of trouble; but as the old woman (Irish) said to my wife, when she gave her a pair of my old trousers for her husband, "I hope it may be made up to ye in a better world."

She is clear, and I am clear, that there is no reason on my part for not holding on if the Society really wishes I should. But, of course, I must make it easy for the Council to get rid of a faineant President, if they prefer that course.

I wrote to Evans an unofficial letter two days ago, and have had a very kind, straightforward letter from him. He is quite against my resignation. I shall see him this afternoon here. I had to go to my office (Fishery).

Clark's course of physic is lightening my abdominal troubles, but I am preposterously weak with a kind of shabby broken-down indifference to everything.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[The "Indian summer" to which he looked forward was not to be reached without pa.s.sing through a season of more than equinoctial storms and tempests. His career had reached its highest point only to be threatened with a speedy close. He himself did not exceed more than two or three years' longer lease of life, and went by easy stages to Venice, where he spent eight days.] "No place," [he writes,] "could be better fitted for a poor devil as sick in body and mind as I was when I got there."]

Venice itself [he writes to Dr. Foster] just suited me. I chartered a capital gondolier, and spent most of my time exploring the Lagoons.

Especially I paid a daily visit to the Lido, and filled my lungs with the sea air, and rejoiced in the absence of stinks. For Venice is like her population (at least the male part of it), handsome but odorous.

Did you notice how handsome the young men are and how little beauty there is among the women?

I stayed eight days in Venice and then returned by easy stages first to Padua, where I wanted to see Giotto's work, then to Verona, and then here (Lugano). Verona delighted me more than anything I have seen, and we will spend two other days there as we go back.

As for myself, I really have no positive complaint now. I eat well and I sleep well, and I should begin to think I was malingering, if it were not for a sort of weariness and deadness that hangs about me, accompanied by a curious nervous irritability.

I expect that this is the upshot of the terrible anxiety I have had about my daughter M--.

I would give a great deal to be able to escape facing the wedding, for my nervous system is in the condition of that of a frog under opium.

But my R. must not go off without the paternal benediction.

[For the first three weeks he was alone, his wife staying to make preparations for the third daughter's wedding on November 6th, for which occasion he was to return, afterwards taking her abroad with him. Unfortunately, just as he started, news was brought him at the railway station that his second daughter, whose brilliant gifts and happy marriage seemed to promise everything for her future, had been stricken by the beginnings of an insidious and, as he too truly feared, hopeless disease. Nothing could have more r.e.t.a.r.ded his own recovery. It was a bitter grief, referred to only in his most intimate letters, and, indeed, for a time kept secret even from the other members of the family. Nothing was to throw a shade over the brightness of the approaching wedding.

But on his way home, he writes of that journey:--]

I had to bear my incubus, not knowing what might come next, until I reached Luzern, when I telegraphed for intelligence, and had my mind set at ease as to the measures which were being adopted.

I am a tough subject, and have learned to bear a good deal without crying out; but those four-and-twenty hours between London and Luzern have taught me that I have yet a good deal to learn in the way of "grinning and bearing."

[And although he writes,] "I would give a good deal not to face a lot of people next week,"..."I have the feelings of a wounded wild beast and hate the sight of all but my best friends," [he hid away his feelings, and made this the occasion for a very witty speech, of which, alas! I remember nothing but a delightfully mixed polyglot exordium in French, German, and Italian, the result, he declared, of his recent excursion to foreign parts, which had obliterated the recollection of his native speech.

During his second absence he appointed his youngest daughter secretary to look after necessary correspondence, about which he forwarded instructions from time to time.

The chief matters of interest in the letters of this period are accounts of health and travel, sometimes serious, more often jesting, for the letters were generally written in the bright intervals between his dark days: business of the Royal Society, and the publication of the new edition of the "Lessons in Elementary Physiology," upon which he and Dr. Foster had been at work during the autumn. But the four months abroad were not productive of very great good; the weather was unpropitious for an invalid--] "as usual, a quite unusual season"

[--while his mind was oppressed by the reports of his daughter's illness. Under these circ.u.mstances recovery was slow and travel comfortless; all the Englishman's love of home breaks out in his letter of April 8, when he set foot again on English soil.]

Hotel de Londres, Verona, November 18, 1884.

Dearest Babs,

1. Why, indeed, do they ask for more? Wait till they send a letter of explanation, and then say that I am out of the country and not expected back for several years.

2. I wholly decline to send in any name to Athenaeum. But don't mention it.

3. Society of Arts be bothered, also --.

4. Write to Science and Art Club to engage three of the prettiest girls as partners for evening. They will look very nice as wallflowers.

5. Penny dinners? declined with thanks.

6. Ask the meeting of Herts N.H. Society to come here after next Thursday, when we shall be in Bologna.

Business first, my sweet girl secretary with the curly front; and now for private affairs, though as your mother is covering reams with them, I can only mention a few of the more important which she will forget.

The first is that she has a habit of hiding my s.h.i.+rts so that I am unable to find them when we go away, and the chambermaid comes rus.h.i.+ng after us with the garment shamefully displayed.

The second is that she will cover all the room with her things, and I am obliged to establish a military frontier on the table.

The third is that she insists on my buying an Italian cloak. So you will see your venerable pater equipped in this wise. [Sketch of a cloaked figure like a brigand of melodrama.] except in these two particulars, she behaves fairly well to me.

In point of climate, so far, Italy has turned out a fraud. We dare not face Venice, and Mr. Fenili will weep over my defection; but that is better than that we should cough over his satisfaction.

I am quite pleased to hear of the theological turn of the family. It must be a drop of blood from one of your eight great-grandfathers, for none of your ancestors that I have known would have developed in this way.

...Best love to Nettie and Harry. Tell the former that cabbages do not cost 5 s.h.i.+llings apiece, and the latter that 11 P.M. is the cloture.

Ever your affectionate Pater.

Hotel Brittanique, Naples, November 30, 1884.

My dear Foster,

Which being St. Andrew's Day, I think the expatriated P. ought to give you some account of himself.

We had a prosperous journey to Locarno, but there plumped into bitter cold weather, and got chilled to the bone as the only guests in the big hotel, though they did their best to make us comfortable. I made a shot at bronchitis, but happily failed, and got all right again.

Pallanza was as bad. At Milan temperature at noon 39 degrees F., freezing at night. Verona much the same. Under these circ.u.mstances, we concluded to give up Venice and made for Bologna. There found it rather colder. Next Ravenna, where it snowed. However, we made ourselves comfortable in the queer hotel, and rejoiced in the mosaics of that sepulchral marsh.

At Bologna I had a.s.surances that the Sicilian quarantine was going to be taken off at once, and as the reports of the railway travelling and hotels in Calabria were not encouraging, I determined to make for Naples, or rather, by way of extra caution, for Castellamare. All the way to Ancona the Apennines were covered with snow, and much of the plain also. Twenty miles north of Ancona, however, the weather changed to warm summer, and we rejoiced accordingly. At Foggia I found that the one decent hotel that used to exist was non-extant, so we went on to Naples.

Arriving at 10.30 very tired, got humbugged by a lying Neapolitan, who palmed himself off as the commissaire of the Hotel Bristol, and took us into an omnibus belonging to another hotel, that of the Bristol being, as he said, "broke." After a drive of three miles or so got to the Bristol and found it shut up! After a series of adventures and a good deal of strong language on my part, knocked up the people here, who took us in, though the hotel was in reality shut up like most of those in Naples. [Owing to the cholera and consequent dearth of travellers.]

As usual the weather is "unusual"--hot in the sun, cold round the corner and at night. Moreover, I found by yesterday's paper that the beastly Sicilians won't give up their ten days' quarantine. So all chance of getting to Catania or Palermo is gone. I am not sure whether we shall stay here for some time or go to Rome, but at any rate we shall be here a week.

Dohrn is away getting subsidies in Germany for his new s.h.i.+p. We inspected the Aquarium this morning. Eisig and Mayer are in charge.

Madame is a good deal altered in the course of the twelve years that have elapsed since I saw her, but says she is much better than she was.

As for myself, I got very much better when in North Italy in spite of the piercing cold. But the fatigue of the journey from Ancona here, and the worry at the end of it, did me no good, and I have been seedy for a day or two. However, I am picking up.

I see one has to be very careful here. We had a lovely drive yesterday out Pausilippo, but the wife got chilled and was shaky this morning.

However, we got very good news of our daughter this evening, and that has set us both up.

My blessing for to-morrow will reach you after date. Let us hear how everything went off.