Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 4

We left Arolla about ten days ago, and after staying a day at St.

Maurice in consequence of my wife's indisposition, came on here where your letter just received has followed me. I am happy to say I am quite set up again, and as I can manage my 1500 or 2000 feet as well as ever, I may be pretty clear that my pleurisy has not left my lung sticking anywhere.

I will take your inquiries seriatim. (1) The faith of your small boyhood is justified. Eels do wander overland, especially in the wet stormy nights they prefer for migration. But so far as I know this is the habit only of good-sized, downwardly-moving eels. I am not aware that the minute fry take to the land on their journey upwards.

(2) Male eels are now well known. I have gone over the evidence myself and examined many. But the reproductive organs of both s.e.xes remain undeveloped in fresh water--just the contrary of salmon, in which they remain undeveloped in salt water.

(3) So far as I know, no eel with fully-developed reproductive organs has yet been seen. Their matrimonial operations go on in the sea where they spend their honeymoon, and we only know the result in the shape of the myriads of thread-like eel-lets, which migrate up in the well-known "eel-fare."

(4) On general principles of eel-life I think it is possible that the Inspector's theory MAY be correct. But your story about the roach is a poser. They certainly do not take to walking abroad. It reminds me of the story of the Irish milk-woman who was confronted with a stickleback found in the milk. "Sure, then, it must have been bad for the poor cow when that came through her teat."

Surely the Inspector cannot have overlooked such a crucial fact as the presence of other fish in the reservoirs?

We shall be here another week, and then move slowly back to London. I am loth to leave this place, which is very beautiful with splendid air and charming walks in all directions--two or three thousand feet up if you like.

Hotel Righi Vaudois, Glion, Switzerland, September 16, 1887.

My dear Donnelly,

We left Arolla for this place ten days ago, but my wife fell ill, and we had to stay a day at St. Maurice. She has been more or less out of sorts ever since until to-day. However, I hope now she is all right again.

This is a very charming place at the east end of the Lake of Geneva--1500 feet above the lake--and you can walk 3000 feet higher up if you like.

What they call a "funicular railway" hauls you up a gradient of 1 in 1 3/4 from the station on the sh.o.r.e in ten minutes. At first the sensation on looking down is queer, but you soon think nothing of it.

The air is very fine, the weather lovely, the feeding unexceptionable, and the only drawback consists in the "javelins," as old Francis Head used to call them--stinks of such wonderful crusted flavour that they must have been many years in bottle. But this is a speciality of all furrin parts that I have ever visited.

I am very well and extremely lazy so far as my head goes--legs I am willing to use to any extent up hill or down dale. They wanted me to go and speechify at Keighley in the middle of October, but I could not get permission from the authorities. Moreover, I really mean to keep quiet and abstain even from good words (few or many) next session. My wife joins with me in love to Mrs. Donnelly and yourself.

She thought she had written, but doubts whether in the mult.i.tude of her letters she did not forget.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[From Glion also he writes to Sir M. Foster:--]

I have been doing some very good work on the Gentians in the interests of the business of being idle.

[The same subject recurs in the next letter:--]

Hotel Righi Vaudois, Glion, Switzerland, September 21, 1887.

My dear Hooker,

I saw in the "Times" yesterday the announcement of Mr. Symond's death.

I suppose the deliverance from so painful a malady as heart-disease is hardly to be lamented in one sense; but these increasing gaps in one's intimate circle are very saddening, and we feel for Lady Hooker and you. My wife has been greatly depressed in hearing of Mrs. Carpenter's fatal disorder. One cannot go away for a few weeks without finding some one gone on one's return.

I got no good at the Maderaner Thal, so we migrated to our old quarters at Arolla, and there I picked up in no time, and in a fortnight could walk as well as ever. So if there are any adhesions they are pretty well stretched by this time.

I have been at the Gentians again, and worked out the development of the flower in G. purpurea and G. campestris. The results are very pretty. They both start from a thalamifloral condition, then become corollifloral, G. purpurea at first resembling G. lutea and G.

campestris, an Ophelia, and then specialise to the Ptychantha and Stephanantha forms respectively.

In G. campestris there is another very curious thing. The anthers are at first introrse, but just before the bud opens they a.s.sume this position [sketch] and then turn right over and become extrorse. In G.

purpurea this does not happen, but the anthers are made to open outwards by their union on the inner side of the slits of dehiscence.

There are several other curious bits of morphology have turned up, but I reserve them for our meeting.

Beyond pottering away at my Gentians and doing a little with that extraordinary Cynanchum I have been splendidly idle. After three weeks of the ascetic life of Arolla, we came here to acclimatise ourselves to lower levels and to fatten up. I go straight through the table d'hote at each meal, and know not indigestion.

My wife has fared not so well, but she is all right again now. We go home by easy stages, and expect to be in Marlborough Place on Tuesday.

With all our best wishes to Lady Hooker and yourself.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[The second visit to Arolla did as much good as the first. Though unable to stay more than a week or two in London itself, he was greatly invigorated. His renewed strength enabled him to carry out vigorously such work as he had put his hand to, and still more, to endure one of the greatest sorrows of his whole life which was to befall him this autumn in the death of his daughter Marian.

The controversy which fell to his share immediately upon his return, has already been mentioned. This was all part of the war for science which he took as his necessary portion in life; but he would not plunge into any other forms of controversy, however interesting. So he writes to his son, who had conveyed him a message from the editor of a political review:--]

4 Marlborough Place, October 19, 1887.

No political article from me! I have had to blow off my indignation incidentally now and then lest worse might befall me, but as to serious political controversy, I have other fish to fry. Such influence as I possess may be most usefully employed in promoting various educational movements now afoot, and I do not want to bar myself from working with men of all political parties.

So excuse me in the prettiest language at your command to Mr. A.

[Nevertheless politics very soon drew him into a new conflict, in defence, be it said, of science against the possible contamination of political influences. Professor (now Sir) G.G. Stokes, his successor in the chair of the Royal Society, accepted an invitation from the University of Cambridge to stand for election as their member of Parliament, and was duly elected. This was a step to which many Fellows of the Royal Society, and Huxley in especial, objected very strongly.

Properly to fulfil the duties of both offices at once was, in his opinion, impossible. It might seem for the moment an advantage that the accredited head of the scientific world should represent its interests officially in Parliament; but the precedent was full of danger. Science being essentially of no party, it was especially needful for such a representative of science to keep free from all possible entanglements; to avoid committing science, as it were, officially to the policy of a party, or, as its inevitable consequence, introducing political considerations into the choice of a future President.

During his own tenure of the Presidency Huxley had carefully abstained from any official connection with societies are public movements on which the feeling of the Royal Society was divided, lest as a body it might seem committed by the person and name of its President. He thought it a mistake that his successor should even be President of the Victoria Inst.i.tute.

Thus there is a good deal in his correspondence bearing on this matter.

He writes on November 6 to Sir J. Hooker:--]

I am extremely exercised in my mind about Stokes' going into Parliament (as a strong party man, moreover) while still P.R.S. I do not know what you may think about it, but to my mind it is utterly wrong--and degrading to the Society--by introducing politics into its affairs.

[And on the same day to Sir M. Foster:--]

I think it is extremely improper for the President of the Royal Society to accept a position as a party politician. As a Unionist I should vote for him if I had a vote for Cambridge University, but for all that I think it is most lamentable that the President of the Society should be dragged into party mud.

When I was President I refused to take the Presidency of the Sunday League, because of the division of opinion on the subject. Now we are being connected with the Victoria Inst.i.tute, and sucked into the slough of politics.

[These considerations weighed heavily with several both of the older and the younger members of the Society; but the majority were indifferent to the dangers of the precedent. The Council could not discuss the matter; they waited in vain for an official announcement of his election from the President, while he, as it turned out, expected them to broach the subject.

Various proposals were discussed; but it seemed best that, as a preliminary to further action, an editorial article written by Huxley should be inserted in "Nature," indicating what was felt by a section of the Society, and suggesting that resignation of one of the two offices was the right solution of the difficulty.

Finally, it seemed that perhaps, after all, a] "masterly inactivity"

[was the best line of action. Without risk of an authoritative decision of the Society] "the wrong way," [out of personal regard for the President, the question would be solved for him by actual experience of work in the House of Commons, where he would doubtless discover that he must] "renounce either science, or politics, or existence."