Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume III Part 18

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[The letter in question is as follows:--]

April 30, 1889.

Dear Lord Hartington,

I am a.s.sured by those who know more about the political world than I do, that if Lord Salisbury would hold his hand and let his party do as they like about the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill which is to come on next week, it would pa.s.s. Considering the irritation against the bishops and a certain portion of the lay peers among a number of people who have the means of making themselves heard and felt, which is kept up and aggravated, as time goes on, by the action of the Upper House in repeatedly snubbing the Lower, about this question, I should have thought it (from a Conservative point of view) good policy to heal the sore.

The talk of Cla.s.s versus Ma.s.s is generally mere clap-trap; but, in this case, there is really no doubt that a fraction of the Cla.s.ses stands in the way of the fulfilment of a very reasonable demand on the part of the Ma.s.ses.

A clear-headed man like Lord Salisbury would surely see this if it were properly pressed on his attention.

I do not presume to say whether it is practicable or convenient for the Leader of the Liberal Unionist party to take any steps in this direction; and I should hardly have ventured to ask you to take this suggestion into consideration if the interest I have always taken in the D.W.S. Bill had not recently been quickened by the marriage of one of my daughters as a Deceased Wife's Sister.

I am, etc.

[Meantime the effect of Eastbourne, which Sir John Donnelly had induced him to try, was indeed wonderful. He found in it the place he had so long been looking for. References to his health read very differently from those of previous years. He walked up Beachy Head regularly without suffering from any heart symptoms. And though Beachy Head was not the same thing as the Alps, it made a very efficient subst.i.tute for a while, and it was not till April that the need of change began to make itself felt. And so he made up his mind to listen no more to the eager friends who wished him to pitch his tent near them at either end of Surrey, but to settle down at Eastbourne, and, by preference, to build a house of the size and on the spot that suited himself, rather than to take any existing house lower down in the town. He must have been a trifle irritated by unsolicited advice when he wrote the following:--]

It is very odd that people won't give one credit for common sense. We have tried one winter here, and if we tried another we should be just as much dependent upon the experience of longer residents as ever we were. However, as I told X. I was going to settle matters to-morrow, there won't be any opportunity for discussing that topic when he comes.

If we had taken W.'s house, somebody would have immediately told us that we had chosen the dampest site in winter and the stuffiest in summer, and where, moreover, the sewage has to be pumped up into the main drain.

[He finally decided upon a site on the high ground near Beachy Head, a little way back from the sea front, at the corner of the Staveley and Buxton Roads, with a guarantee from the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re's agent that no house should be built at the contiguous end of the adjoining plot of land in the Buxton Road, a plot which he himself afterwards bought. The princ.i.p.al rooms were planned for the back of the house, looking south-west over open gardens to the long line of downs which culminate in Beachy Head, but with due provision against southerly gales and excess of suns.h.i.+ne.

On May 29 the builder's contract was accepted, and for the rest of the year the progress of the house, which was designed by his son-in-law, F.W. Waller, afforded a constant interest.

Meantime, with the improvement in his general health, the old appet.i.te for work returned with increased and unwonted zest. For the first time in his life he declares that he enjoyed the process of writing. As he wrote somewhat later to his newly married daughter from Eastbourne, where he had gone again very weary the day after her wedding: "Luckily the bishops and clergy won't let me alone, so I have been able to keep myself pretty well amused in replying." The work which came to him so easily and pleasurably was the defence of his att.i.tude of agnosticism against the onslaught made upon it at the previous Church Congress by Dr. Wace, the Princ.i.p.al of King's College, London, and followed up by articles in the "Nineteenth Century" from the pen of Mr. Frederic Harrison and Mr. Laing, the effect of which upon him he describes to Mr. Knowles on December 30, 1888:--]

I have been stirred up to the boiling pitch by Wace, Laing, and Harrison in re Agnosticism, and I really can't keep the lid down any longer. Are you minded to admit a goring article into the February "Nineteenth"?

[As for his health, he adds:--]

I have amended wonderfully in the course of the last six weeks, and my doctor tells me I am going to be completely patched up--seams caulked and made seaworthy, so the old hulk may make another cruise.

We shall see. At any rate I have been able and willing to write lately, and that is more than I can say for myself for the first three-quarters of the year.

...I was so pleased to see you were in trouble about your house. Good for you to have a taste of it for yourself.

[To this controversy he contributed four articles; three directly in defence of Agnosticism, the fourth on the value of the underlying question of testimony to the miraculous.

The first article, "Agnosticism," appeared in the February number of the "Nineteenth Century". No sooner was this finished than he began a fresh piece of work, "which," he writes, "is all about miracles, and will be rather amusing." This, on the "Value of Testimony to the Miraculous," appeared in the following number of the "Nineteenth Century". It did not form part of the controversy on hand, though it bore indirectly upon the first principles of agnosticism. The question at issue, he urges, is not the possibility of miracles, but the evidence to their occurrence, and if from preconceptions or ignorance the evidence be worthless the historical reality of the facts attested vanishes. The cardinal point, then, "is completely, as the author of Robert Elsmere says, the value of testimony."

[The March number also contained replies from Dr. Wace and Bishop Magee on the main question, and an article by Mrs. Humphry Ward on a kindred subject to his own, "The New Reformation." Of these he writes on February 27:--]

The Bishop and Wace are hammering away in the "Nineteenth". Mrs. Ward's article very good, and practically an answer to Wace. Won't I stir them up by and by.

[And a few days later:--]

Mrs. Ward's service consists in her very clear and clever exposition of critical results and methods.

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, February 29, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

I have just been delighted with Mrs. Ward's article. She has swept away the greater part of Wace's sophistries as a dexterous and strong-wristed housemaid sweeps away cobwebs with her broom, and saved a lot of time.

What in the world does the Bishop mean by saying that I have called Christianity "sorry stuff" (page 370)? To my knowledge I never so much as thought anything of the kind, let alone saying it.

I shall challenge him very sharply about this, and if, as I believe, he has no justification for his statement, my opinion of him will be very considerably lowered.

Wace has given me a lovely opening by his profession of belief in the devils going into the swine. I rather hoped I should get this out of him.

I find people are watching the game with great interest, and if it should be possible for me to give a little shove to the "New Reformation," I shall think the f.a.g end of my life well spent.

After all, the reproach made to the English people that "they care for nothing but religion and politics" is rather to their credit. In the long run these are the two things that ought to interest a man more than any others.

I have been much bothered with ear-ache lately, but if all goes well I will send you a screed by the middle of March.

Snowing hard! They have had more snow within the last month than they have known for ten years here.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[He set to work immediately, and within ten days despatched his second contribution, "Agnosticism, a Rejoinder," which appeared in the April number of the "Nineteenth Century".

On March 3 he writes:--]

I am possessed by a writing demon, and have pretty well finished in the rough another article for Knowles, whose mouth is wide open for it.

[And on the 9th:--]

I sent off another article to Knowles last night--a regular facer for the clericals. You can't think how I enjoy writing now for the first time in my life.

[He writes at greater length to Mr. Knowles]

3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, March 10, 1889.

My dear Knowles,

There's a Divinity that shapes the ends (of envelopes!) rough-hew them how we will. This time I went and bought the strongest to be had, and sealed him up with wax in the shop. I put no note inside, meaning to write to you afterwards, and then I forgot to do so.

I can't understand Peterborough nohow. However, so far as the weakness of the flesh would permit me to abstain from smiting him and his brother Amalekite, I have tried to turn the tide of battle to matters of more importance.

The pith of my article is the proposition that Christ was not a Christian. I have not ventured to state my thesis exactly in that form--fearing the Editor--but, in a mild and proper way, I flatter myself I have demonstrated it. Really, when I come to think of the claims made by orthodox Christianity on the one hand, and of the total absence of foundation for them on the other, I find it hard to abstain from using a phrase which shocked me very much when Strauss first applied it to the Resurrection, "Welthistorischer Humbug!"

I don't think I have ever seen the portrait you speak of. I remember the artist--a clever fellow, whose name, of course, I forget--but I do not think I saw his finished work. Some of these days I will ask to see it.