Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume II Part 33

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

4 Marlborough Place, December 31, 1878.

My dear Tyndall,

I would sooner have your Boyle, however long we may have to wait for it, than anybody else's d--d simmer. (Now that's a "goak," and you must ask Mrs. Tyndall to explain it to you.)

Two years will I give you from this blessed New Year's eve, 1878, and if it isn't done on New Year's Day 1881 you shall not be admitted to the company of the blessed, but your dinner shall be sent to you between two plates to the most pestiferous corner of the laboratory of the Royal Inst.i.tution. I am very glad you will undertake the job, and feel that I have a proper New Year's gift.

By the way, you ought to have had Hume ere this. Macmillan sent me two or three copies, just to keep his word, on Christmas Day, and I thought I should have a lot more at once.

But there is no sign--not even an advertis.e.m.e.nt--and I don't know what has become of the edition. Perhaps the bishops have bought it up.

With all good wishes,

Ever yours,

T.H. Huxley.

[Two letters--both to Tyndall--show his solicitude for his friends.

The one speaks of a last and unavailing attempt made by W.K.

Clifford's friends to save his life by sending him on a voyage (he died not long after at Madeira); the other urges Tyndall himself to be careful of his health.]

4 Marlborough Place, April 2, 1878.

My dear Tyndall,

We had a sort of council about Clifford at Clark's house yesterday morning--H. Thompson, Corfield, Payne, Pollock, and myself, and I am sure you will be glad to hear the result.

From the full statement of the nature of his case made by Clark and Corfield, it appears that though grave enough in all conscience, it is not so bad as it might be, and that there is a chance, I might almost say a fair chance, for him yet. It appears that the lung mischief has never gone so far as the formation of a cavity, and that it is at present quiescent, and no other organic disease discoverable. The alarming symptom is a general prostration--very sadly obvious when he was with us on Sunday--which, as I understand, rather renders him specially obnoxious to a sudden and rapid development of the lung disease than is itself to be feared.

It was agreed that they should go at once to Gibraltar by the P. and O., and report progress when he gets there. If strong enough he is to go on a cruise round the Mediterranean, and if he improves by this he is to go away for a year to Bogota (in South America), which appears to be a favourable climate for such cases as his.

If he gets worse he can but return. I have done my best to impress upon him and his wife the necessity of extreme care, and I hope they will be wise.

It is very pleasant to find how good and cordial everybody is, helpful in word and deed to the poor young people. I know it will rejoice the c.o.c.kles of your generous old heart to hear it.

As for yourself, I trust you are mending and allowing yourself to be taken care of by your household G.o.ddess.

With our united love to her and yourself,

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

I sent your cheque to Yeo.

May, 1878.

My dear Tyndall,

You were very much wanted on Sat.u.r.day, as your wife will have told you, but for all that I would not have had you come on any account.

You want a thorough long rest and freedom from excitement of all sorts, and I am rejoiced to hear that you are going out of the hurly-burly of London as soon as possible; and, not to be uncivil, I do hope you will stay away as long as possible, and not be deluded into taking up anything exciting as soon as you feel lively again among your mountains.

Pray give up Dublin. If you don't, I declare I will try if I have enough influence with the council to get you turned out of your office of Lecturer, and superseded.

Do seriously consider this, as you will be undoing the good results of your summer's rest. I believe your heart is as sound as your watch was when you went on your memorable slide [On the Piz Morteratsch; "Hours of Exercise in the Alps" by J. Tyndall chapter 19.], but if you go slithering down avalanches of work and worry you can't always expect to pick up "the little creature" none the worse. The apparatus is by one of the best makers, but it has been some years in use, and can't be expected to stand rough work.

You will be glad to hear that we had cheerier news of Clifford on Sat.u.r.day. He was distinctly better, and setting out on his Mediterranean voyage.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H. Huxley.

[A birthday letter to his son concludes the year:--]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., December 10, 1878.

Your mother reminds me that to-morrow is your eighteenth birthday, and though I know that my "happy returns" will reach you a few hours too late, I cannot but send them.

You are touching manhood now, my dear laddie, and I trust that as a man your mother and I may always find reason to regard you as we have done throughout your boyhood.

The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect. I have not troubled you much with paternal didactics--but that bit is "ower true" and worth thinking over.

CHAPTER 2.11.

1879.

[Much of the work noted down for 1878 reappears in my father's list for 1879. He was still at work upon, or meditating his Crayfish, his Introduction to Psychology, the Spirula Memoir, and a new edition of the Elementary Physiology. Professor H.N. Martin writes about the changes necessary for adapting the "Practical Biology" to American needs; the article on Harvey was waiting to be put into permanent form. Besides giving an address at the Working Men's College, he lectured on Sensation and the Uniformity of the Sensiferous Organs ("Collected Essays" 6.), at the Royal Inst.i.tution, Friday evening, March 7; and on Snakes, both at the Zoological Gardens, June 5, and at the London Inst.i.tution, December 1. On February 3 he read a paper at the Royal Society on "The Characters of the Pelvis in the Mammalia, and the Conclusions respecting the Origin of Mammals which may be based on them"; and published in "Nature" for November 6 a paper on "Certain Errors Respecting the Structure of the Heart, attributed to Aristotle."

Great interest attaches to this paper. He had always wondered how Aristotle, in dissecting a heart, had come to a.s.sert that it contained only three chambers; and the desire to see for himself what stood in the original, uncommented on by translators who were not themselves anatomists, was one of the chief reasons (I think the wish to read the Greek Testament in the original was another) which operated in making him take up the study of Greek late in middle life. His practice was to read in his book until he had come to ten new words; these he looked out, pa.r.s.ed, and wrote down together with their chief derivatives. This was his daily portion.

When at last he grappled with the pa.s.sage in question, he found that Aristotle had correctly described what he saw under the special conditions of his dissection, when the right auricle actually appears as he described it, an enlargement of the "great vein." So that this, at least, ought to be removed from the list of Aristotle's errors. The same is shown to be the case with his statements about respiration.

His own estimate of Aristotle as a physiologist is between the panegyric of Cuvier and the depreciation of Lewes: "he carried science a step beyond the point at which he found it; a meritorious, but not a miraculous, achievement." And it will interest scholars to know that from his own experience as a lecturer, Huxley was inclined to favour the theory that the original ma.n.u.scripts of the "Historia Animalium,"

with their mingled accuracy and absurdity, were notes taken by some of his students. This essay was reprinted in "Science and Culture" page 180.

This year he brought out his second volume of essays on various subjects, written from 1870 to 1878, under the t.i.tle of "Critiques and Addresses," and later in the year, his long-delayed and now entirely recast "Introductory Primer" in the Science Primer Series.]

6 Barnepark Terrace, Teignmouth, September 12, 1879.

My dear Roscoe,

I send you by this post my long-promised Primer, and a like set of sheets goes to Stewart. [Balfour Stewart, Professor of Natural Philosophy in Owens College, Manchester.]

You will see that it is quite different from my first sketch, Geikie's primer having cut me out of that line--but _I_ think it much better.