Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 11

[This summer he again took a long holiday, thanks to the generosity of his friends, and with better results. He went with his old friend Hooker to the Auvergne, walking, geologising, sketching, and gradually discarding doctor's orders. Sir Joseph Hooker has very kindly written me a letter from which I give an account of this trip:--

It was during the many excursions we took together, either by ourselves or with one of my boys, that I knew him best at his best: and especially during one of several weeks' duration in the summer of 1873, which we spent in central France and Germany. He had been seriously ill, and was suffering from severe mental depression. For this he was ordered abroad by his physician, Sir A. Clark, to which step he offered a stubborn resistance. With Mrs. Huxley's approval, and being myself quite in the mood for a holiday, I volunteered to wrestle with him, and succeeded, holding out as an inducement a visit to the volcanic region of the Auvergne with Scrope's cla.s.sical volume, which we both knew and admired, as a guide book.

We started on July 2nd, I loaded with injunctions from his physician as to what his patient was to eat, drink, and avoid, how much he was to sleep and rest, how little to talk and walk, etc., that would have made the expedition a perpetual burthen to me had I not believed that I knew enough of my friend's disposition and ailments to be convinced that not only health but happiness would be our companions throughout.

Sure enough, for the first few days, including a short stay in Paris, his spirits were low indeed, but this gave me the opportunity of appreciating his remarkable command over himself and his ever-present consideration for his companion. Not a word or gesture of irritation ever escaped him; he exerted himself to obey the instructions laid down; nay, more, he was instant in his endeavour to save me trouble at hotels, railway stations, and ticket offices. Still, some mental recreation was required to expedite recovery, and he found it first by picking up at a bookstall, a "History of the Miracles of Lourdes,"

which were then exciting the religious fervour of France, and the interest of her scientific public. He entered with enthusiasm into the subject, getting together all the treatises upon it, favourable or the reverse, that were accessible, and I need hardly add, soon arrived at the conclusion, that the so-called miracles were in part illusions and for the rest delusions. As it may interest some of your readers to know what his opinion was in this early stage of the manifestations, I will give it as he gave it to me. It was a case of two peasant children sent in the hottest month of the year into a hot valley to collect sticks for firewood washed up by a stream, when one of them after stooping down opposite a heat-reverberating rock, was, in rising, attacked with a transient vertigo, under which she saw a figure in white against the rock. This bare fact being reported to the cure of the village, all the rest followed.

Soon after our arrival at Clermont Ferrand, your father had so far recovered his wonted elasticity of spirits that he took a keen interest in everything around, the museums, the cathedral, where he enjoyed the conclusion of the service by a military band which gave selections from the Figlia del Regimento, but above all he appreciated the walks and drives to the geological features of the environs. He reluctantly refrained from ascending the Puy de Dome, but managed the Pic Parion, Gergovia, Royat, and other points of interest without fatigue...

After Clermont they visited the other four great volcanic areas explored by Scrope, Mont Dore, the Cantal, Le Puy, and the valley of the Ardeche. Under the care of his friend, and relieved from the strain of work, my father's health rapidly improved. He felt no bad effects from a night at Mont Dore, when, owing to the crowd of invalids in the little town, no better accommodation could be found than a couple of planks in a cupboard. Next day they took up their quarters in an unpretentious cabaret at La Tour d'Auvergne, one of the villages on the slopes of the mountain, a few miles away.

Here (writes Sir J. Hooker), and for some time afterwards, on our further travels, we had many interesting and amusing experiences of rural life in the wilder parts of central France, its poverty, penury, and too often its inconceivable impositions and overcharges to foreigners, quite consistently with good feeling, politeness, and readiness to a.s.sist in many ways.

By the 10th of July, nine days after setting out, I felt satisfied (he continues) that your father was equal to an excursion upon which he had set his heart, to the top of the Pic de Sancy, 4000 feet above La Tour and 7 miles distant.

It was on this occasion that the friends made what they thought a new discovery, namely evidence of glacial action in central France.

Besides striated stones in the fields or built into the walls, they noticed the glaciated appearance of one of the valleys descending from the peak, and especially some isolated gigantic ma.s.ses of rock on an open part of the valley, several miles away, as to which they debated whether they were low buildings or transported blocks. Sir Joseph visited them next day, and found they were the latter, brought down from the upper part of the peak. (He published an account of these blocks in "Nature" 8 31, 166, but subsequently found that glaciation had been observed by von La.s.saul in 1872 and by Sir William Guise in 1870.)

Lepuy offered a special attraction apart from scenery and geology. In the museum was the skeleton of a prehistoric man that had been found in the breccia of the neighbourhood, a.s.sociated with the remains of the rhinoceros, elephant, and other extinct mammals. My father's sketch-book contains drawings of these bones and of the ravine where they were discovered, although in spite of directions from M. Aymard, the curator, he could not find the exact spot. Under the sketch is a description of the remains, in which he notes,] "The bones do not look fresher than some of those of Elephas and Rhinoceros in the same or adjacent cases."

[As for the final stage of the excursion:--

After leaving the Ardeche (continues Sir J. Hooker), with no Scrope to lead or follow, our scientific ardours collapsed. We had vague views as to future travel. Whatever one proposed was unhesitatingly acceded to by the other. A more happy-go-lucky pair of idlers never joined company.

As will be seen from the following letters, they made their way to the Black Forest, where they stayed till Sir Joseph's duties called him back to England, and my mother came out to join my father for the rest of his holiday. (You ask me (Sir Joseph adds) whether your father smoked on the occasion of this tour. Yes, he did, cigars in moderation. But the history of his addiction to tobacco that grew upon him later in life, dates from an earlier excursion that we took together, and I was the initiator of the practice. It happened in this wise; he had been suffering from what was supposed to be gastric irritation, and, being otherwise "run down," we agreed to go, in company with Sir John Lubbock, on a tour to visit the great monoliths of Brittany. This was in 1867. On arriving at Dinan he suffered so much, that I recommended his trying a few cigarettes which I had with me. They acted as a charm, and this led to cigars, and finally, about 1875 I think, to the pipe. That he subsequently carried the use of tobacco to excess is, I think, unquestionable. I repeatedly remonstrated with him, at last I think (by backing his medical adviser) with effect.

I have never blamed myself for the "teaching him" to smoke, for the practice habitually palliated his distressing symptoms when nothing else did, nor can his chronic illness be attributed to the abuse of tobacco.)

The following letters to Sir H. Roscoe and Dr. Tyndall were written during this tour:--]

Le Puy, Haute Loire, France, July 17, 1873.

My dear Roscoe,

Your very kind letter reached me just as I was in the hurry of getting away from England, and I have been carrying it about in my pocket ever since.

Hooker and I have been having a charming time of it among the volcanoes of the Auvergne, and we are now on our way to those of the Velay and Vivarrais. The weather has been almost perfect. Perhaps a few degrees of temperature could have been spared now and then, especially at Clermont, of which somebody once said that having stayed there the climate of h.e.l.l would have no terrors for him.

It has been warm in the Mont Dore country and in the Cantal, as it is here, but we are very high up, and there is a charming freshness and purity about the air.

I do not expect to be back before the end of September, and my lectures begin somewhere in the second week of October. After they commence I shall not be able to leave London even for a day, but I shall be very glad to come to the inauguration of your new buildings if the ceremony falls within my possible time. And you know I am always glad to be your guest.

I am thriving wonderfully. Indeed all that plagues me now is my conscience, for idling about when I feel full of vigour. But I promised to be obedient, and I am behaving better than Auld Clootie did when he fell sick.

I hope you are routing out the gout. This would be the place for you--any quant.i.ty of mineral waters.

Pray remember me very kindly to Mrs. Roscoe, and believe me, ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

Hotel de France, Baden-Baden, July 30, 1873.

My dear Tyndall,

We find ourselves here after a very successful cruise in the Auvergne and Ardeche, successful at least so far as beauty and geological interest go. The heat was killing, and obliged us to give up all notion of going to Ursines, as we had at first intended to do. So we turned our faces north and made for Gren.o.ble, hoping for a breath of cool air from the mountains of Dauphiny. But Gren.o.ble was hotter even than Clermont (which, by the way, quite deserves its reputation as a compet.i.tor with h.e.l.l), a neighbour's drains were adrift close to the hotel, and we got poisoned before we could escape. Luckily we got off with nothing worse than a day or two's diarrhoea. After this the best thing seemed to be to rush northward to Gernsbach, which had been described to me as a sort of earthly paradise. We reached the place last Sat.u.r.day night, and found ourselves in a big rambling hotel, crammed full of people, and planted in the bottom of a narrow valley, all hot and steaming. A large pigstye "convenient" to the house mingled its vapours with those of the seventy or eighty people who ate and drank without any other earthly occupation that we could discern during the three days we were bound, by stress of letters and dirty linen, to stop. On Monday we made an excursion over here, prospecting, and the air was so fresh and good, and things in general looked so promising that I made up my mind to put up in Baden-Baden until the wife joins me. She writes me that you talk of leaving England on Friday, and I may remark that Baden is on the high road to Switzerland. Verb.u.m sap.

I am wonderfully better, and really feel ashamed of loafing about when I might very well be at work. But I have promised to make holiday, and make holiday I will.

No proof of your answer to Forbes' biographer reached me before I left, so I suppose you had not received one in time. I am dying to see it out.

Hooker is down below, but I take upon myself to send his love. He is in great force now that he has got rid of his Gren.o.ble mulligrubs.

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[After parting company with Hooker, he paid a flying visit to Professor Bonnet at Geneva; then he was joined by his wife and son for the last three weeks of the holiday, which were spent at Baden and in the Bernese Oberland. Before this, he writes home:--]

I feel quite a different man from what I was two months ago, and you will say that you have a much more creditable husband than the broken-down old fellow who has been a heart-ache to you so long, when you see me. The sooner you can get away the better. If the rest only does you as much good as it does me, I shall be very happy.

Axenstein, Luzerne, August 24, 1873.

My dear Tyndall,

The copies of your booklet ["Princ.i.p.al Forbes and his Biographers."]

intended for Hooker and me reached me just as I left Baden last Tuesday. Hooker had left me for home a fortnight before, and I hardly know whether to send his to Kew or keep them for him till I return. I have read mine twice, and I think that nothing could be better than the tone you have adopted. I did not suspect that you had such a shot in your locker as the answer to Forbes about the direction of the "creva.s.ses" referred to by Rendu. It is a deadly thrust; and I shall be curious to see what sort of parry the other side will attempt. For of course they will attempt something. Scotland is, I believe, the only country in the world in which you can bring in action for "putting to silence" an adversary who will go on with an obviously hopeless suit. The lawgivers knew the genius of the people; and it is to be regretted that they could not establish a process of the same sort in scientific matters.

I wrote to you a month ago to tell you how we had been getting on in France. Hooker and I were very jolly, notwithstanding the heat, and I think that the Vivarrais is the most instructive country in the world for seeing what water can do in cutting down the hardest rocks.

Scrope's book is very good on the whole, though the pictures are a little overdone.

My wife and Leonard met me at Cologne on the 11th. Then we went on to Baden and rested till last Tuesday, when we journeyed to Luzerne and, getting out of that hot and unsavoury hole as fast as we could, came here last Thursday.

We find ourselves very well off. The hotel is perched up 1800 feet above the lake, with a beautiful view of Pilatus on the west and of the Urner See on the south. On the north we have the Schwyz valley, so that we are not shut in, and the air is very good and fresh. There are plenty of long walks to be had without much fatigue, which suits the wife. Leonard promises to have very good legs of his own with plenty of staying power. I have given him one or two sharp walks, and I find he has plenty of vigour and endurance. But he is not thirteen yet and I do not mean to let him do overmuch, though we are bent on a visit to a glacier. I began to tell him something about the glaciers the other day, but I was promptly shut up with, "Oh, yes! I know all about that.

It's in Dr. Tyndall's book."--which said book he seems to me to have got by heart. He is the sweetest little fellow imaginable; and either he has developed immensely in the course of the last year, or I have never been so much thrown together with him alone, and have not had the opportunity of making him out.

You are a fatherly old bachelor, and will not think me a particularly great donkey for prattling on in this way about my swan, who probably to unprejudiced eyes has a power of goose about him.

I suppose you know that in company with yourself and Hooker, the paternal gander (T.H.H.) has been honoured by the King of Sweden and made into a Polar Goose by the order of the North Star. Hooker has explained to the Swedish Amba.s.sador that English officials are prohibited by order in Council from accepting foreign orders, and I believe keeps the cross and ribbon on these conditions. If it were an ordinary decoration I should decline with thanks, but I am told it is a purely scientific and literary affair like the Prussian "pour le merite"; so when I get back I shall follow Hooker's line.

I met Laugel on board the Luzerne steamboat the other day, and he told me that you were at the Belalp--gallivanting as usual, and likely to remain there for some time. So I send this on the chance of finding you.

With best love from us all, ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

I am as well as I ever was in my life--regularly set up--in token whereof I have shaved off my beard.

[In another letter to his wife, dated August 8, from Baden, there is a very interesting pa.s.sage about himself and his aims. He has just been speaking about his son's doings at school:--]