Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume I Part 15

After all, that is the way to die, better a thousand times than drivelling off into eternity betwixt awake and asleep in a fatuous old age.

Believe me, ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[On Tyndall consenting, he wrote again on the 29th:--]

I rejoice in having got you to put your head under my yoke, and feel ready to break into a hand gallop on the strength of it.

I have written to Chapman to tell him you only make an experiment on your cerebral substance--whose continuance depends on tenacity thereof.

I didn't suspect you of being seduced by the magnificence of the emolument, you Cincinnatus of the laboratory. I only suggested that as pay sweetens labour, a fortiori it will sweeten what to you will be no labour.

I'm not a miserable mortal now--quite the contrary. I never am when I have too much to do, and my sage reflection was not provoked by envy of the more idle. Only I do wish I could sometimes ascertain the exact juste milieu of work which will suit, not my head or will, THESE can't have too much; but my absurd stomach.

[The Edinburgh candidature, the adoption of his wider scheme for the carrying out of the coast survey, and his approaching marriage, are touched upon in the following letters to Dr. Frederick Dyster of Tenby, whose keen interest in marine zoology was the starting-point of a warm friends.h.i.+p with the rising naturalist, some fifteen years his junior.

(It was to Dyster that Huxley owed his introduction in 1854 to F.D.

Maurice (whose work in educating the people he did his best to help), and later to Charles Kingsley, whom he first met at the end of June 1855.] "What Kingsley do you refer to?" [he writes on May 6,] "ALTON LOCKE Kingsley or Photographic Kingsley? I shall be right glad to find good men and true anywhere, and I will take your bail for any man. But the work must be critically done.") [He was strongly urged by the younger man to complete and systematise his observations by taking in turn all the species of each genus of annelids found at Tenby, and working them up into a series of little monographs] "which would be the best of all possible foundations for a History of the British Annelidae":--

To Dr. Dyster.

January 5, 1855

[He begins by confessing "a considerable liberty" he had been taking with Dyster's name, in calling a joint discovery of this, which he described in the "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal," Protula Dysteri.]

Are you very savage? If so, you must go and take a walk along the sands and see the slant rays of the sunset tipping the rollers as they break on the beach; that always made even ME at peace with all the world, and a fortiori it will you.

Truly, I wish I had any such source of consolation. Chimney pots are highly injurious to my morals, and my temper is usually in proportion to the extent of my horizon.

I have been swallowing oceans of disgust lately. All sorts of squabbles, some made by my own folly and others by the malice of other people, and no great sea and sky to go out under, and be alone and forget it all.

You may have seen my name advertised by Reeve as about to write a memoir of poor Forbes, to be prefixed to a collection of his essays. I found that to be a mere bookseller's dodge on Reeve's part, and when I made the discovery, of course we had a battle-royal, and I have now wholly withdrawn from it.

I find, however, that one's kind and generous friends imagine it was an electioneering manoeuvre on my part for Edinburgh. Imagine how satisfactory. I forget whether I told you that I had been asked to stand for Edinburgh and have done so. Whether I shall be appointed or not I do not know. So far as my own wishes go, I am in a curiously balanced state of mind about it. Many things make it a desirable post, but I dread leaving London and its freedom--its Bedouin sort of life--for Edinburgh and no whistling on Sundays. Besides, if I go there, I shall have to give up all my coast-survey plans, and all their pleasant concomitants.

Apropos of Edinburgh I feel much like the Irish hod-man who betted his fellow he could not carry him up to the top of a house in his hod. The man did it, but Pat turning round as he was set down on the roof, said, "Ye've done it, sure enough, but, bedad, I'd great hopes ye'd let me fall about three rounds from the top." Bedad, I'm nearly at the top of the Scotch ladder, but I've hopes.

It is finally settled that the chair will not be divided. I told them frankly I would not go if it were.

Has Highly sent your books yet?

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Jermyn Street, February 13, 1855.

My dear Dyster,

...I will do my best to help--to some alumni if the chance comes in my way, though, as you say, I don't like him. I can't help it. I respect piety, and hope I have some after my own fas.h.i.+on, but I have a profound prejudice against the efflorescent form of it. I never yet found in people thoroughly imbued with that pietism, the same notions of honour and straightforwardness that obtain among men of the world. It may be otherwise with --, but I can't help my pagan prejudice. So don't judge harshly of me there-anent.

About Edinburgh, I have been going to write to you for days past. I have decided on withdrawing from the candidature, and have done so. In fact the more I thought of it the less I liked it. They require nine months'

lectures some four or five times a week, which would have thoroughly used me up, and completely put a stop to anything like original work; and then there was a horrid museum to be arranged, work I don't care about, and which would have involved an amount of intriguing and heart-burning, and would have required an amount of diplomacy to carry to a successful issue, for which my temper and disposition are wholly unfitted.

And then I felt above all things that it was for me an imposture. Here have I been fighting and struggling for years, sacrificing everything to be a man of science, a genuine worker, and if I had obtained the Edinburgh chair, I should have been in reality a mere pedagogue and a man of science only in name. Such were my notions, and if I hesitated at all and allowed myself to become a candidate, it was only because I have other interests to consult than my own. Intending to "range myself" one of these days and become a respectable member of society, I was bound to consider my material interests. And so I should have been still a candidate for Edinburgh had not the Government here professed themselves unwilling to lose my services, adding the "material guarantee" of an addition to my income, which, though by no means bringing it up to the point of Edinburgh, will still enable me (das heisst "us") to live comfortably here.

I must renounce the "pomps and vanities," but all those other "l.u.s.ts of the flesh" which may beseem a gentleman may be reasonably gratified.

Don't you think I have been wise in my Hercules choice? After all I don't lay claim to any great merit, seeing it was anything but certain I should get Edinburgh.

The best of all is that I have every reason to believe that Government will carry out my scheme for a coast survey, so happily and pleasantly begun at Tenby last year.

The final arrangements are almost complete, and I believe you may make up your mind to have four months of me next year. Tenby shall be immortalised and Jenkyn converted into a philosopher. [Jenkyn was employed to collect sh.e.l.ls, etc., at Tenby. He is often alluded to as "the Professor."] By the way, I think the best way would be to retain the sh.e.l.ls till I come. My main purpose is to have in them a catalogue of what Tenby affords.

Pray give my kind remembrances to Mrs. Dyster, and believe me, ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

April 1, 1855.

My dear Dyster,

By all that's good, your last note, which lies before me, has date a month ago. I looked at it just now, and became an April fool on the instant.

All the winds of March, however, took their course through my thorax and eventuated in lectures. At least that is all the account I can give to myself of the time, and an unprofitable account it is, for everything but one's exchequer.

So far as knowledge goes it is mere prodigality spending one's capital and adding nothing, for I find the physical exertion of lecturing quite unfits me for much else. Fancy how last Friday was spent. I went to Jermyn Street in the morning with the intention of preparing for my afternoon's lecture. People came talking to me up to within a quarter of an hour of the time, so I had to make a dash without preparation. Then I had to go home to prepare for a second lecture in the evening, and after that I went to a soiree, and got home about one o'clock in the morning.

I go on telling myself this won't do, but to no purpose.

You will be glad to hear that my affairs here are finally settled, and I am regularly appointed an officer of the survey with the commission to work out the natural history of the coast.

Edinburgh has been tempting me again, and in fact I believe I was within an ace of going there, but the Government definitely offering me this position, I was too glad to stop where I am.

I can make six hundred a year here, and that being the case, I conceive I have a right to consult my own inclinations and the interest of my scientific reputation. The coast survey puts in my hands the finest opportunities that ever a man had, and it is a pity if I do not make myself something better than a Caledonian pedagogue.

The great first scheme I have in connection with my new post is to work out the Marine Natural History of Britain, and to have every species of sea beast properly figured and described in the reports which I mean from time to time to issue. I can get all the engravings and all the printing I want done, but of course I am not so absurd as to suppose I can work out all these things myself. Therefore my notion is to seek in all highways and byways for fellow labourers. Busk will, I hope, supply me with figures and descriptions of the British Polyzoa and Hydrozoa, and I have confidence in my friend, Mr. Dyster of Tenby (are you presumptuous enough to say you know him?) for the Annelids, if he won't object to that mode of publis.h.i.+ng his work. The Mollusks, the Crustaceans, and the Fishes, the Echinoderms and the Worms, will give plenty of occupation to the other people, myself included, to say nothing of distribution and of the recent geological changes, all of which come within my programme.

Did I not tell you it was a fine field, and could the land o' cakes give me any scope like this?

April 9, 1855.

My dear Dyster,

I didn't by any means mean to be so sphinx-like in my letter, though you have turned out an Oedipus of the first water. True it is that I mean to "range myself," "live cleanly and leave off sack," within the next few months--that is to say, if nothing happens to the good s.h.i.+p which is at present bearing my fiancee homewards.

So far as a restless mortal--more or less aweary of most things--like myself can be made happy by any other human being, I believe your good wishes are safe of realisation; at any rate, it will be my fault if they are not, and I beg you never to imagine that I could confound the piety of friends.h.i.+p with the "efflorescent" variety.

I hope to marry in July, and make my way down to Tenby shortly afterwards, and I am ready to lay you a wager that your vaticinations touching the amount of work that WON'T be done don't come true.