FROM that day Dredge’s progress continued steadily. If not always
perceptible to the untrained eye, in Lanfear’s sight it never deviated,
and the great man began to associate Dredge with his work, and to lean
on him more and more. Lanfear’s health was already failing, and in my
confidential talks with him I saw how he counted on Galen Dredge to
continue and amplify his doctrine. If he did not describe the young man
as his predestined Huxley, it was because any such comparison between
himself and his great predecessors would have been repugnant to his
taste; but he evidently felt that it would be Dredge’s role to reveal
him to posterity. And the young man seemed at that time to take the same
view of his calling. When he was not busy about Lanfear’s work he was
recording their conversations with the diligence of a biographer and the
accuracy of a naturalist. Any attempt to question or minimize Lanfear’s
theories roused in his disciple the only flashes of wrath I have ever
seen a scientific discussion provoke in him. In defending his master
he became almost as intemperate as in the early period of his literary
passions.
Such filial dedication must have been all the more precious to Lanfear
because, about that time, it became evident that Archie would never
carry on his father’s work. He had begun brilliantly, you may remember,
by a little paper on _Limulus Polyphemus_ that attracted a good deal
of notice when it appeared in the _Central Blatt_; but gradually his
zoological ardour yielded to an absorbing passion for the violin,
which was followed by a sudden plunge into physics. At present, after a
side-glance at the drama, I understand he’s devoting what is left of his
father’s money to archaeological explorations in Asia Minor.
“Archie’s got a delightful little mind,” Lanfear used to say to me,
rather wistfully, “but it’s just a highly polished surface held up to
the show as it passes. Dredge’s mind takes in only a bit at a time,
but the bit stays, and other bits are joined to it, in a hard mosaic of
fact, of which imagination weaves the pattern. I saw just how it would
be years ago, when my boy used to take my meaning in a flash, and answer
me with clever objections, while Galen disappeared into one of his
fathomless silences, and then came to the surface like a dripping
retriever, a long way beyond Archie’s objections, and with an answer to
them in his mouth.”
It was about this time that the crowning satisfaction of Lanfear’s
career came to him: I mean, of course, John Weyman’s gift to Columbia
of the Lanfear Laboratory, and the founding, in connection with it, of a
chair of Experimental Evolution. Weyman had always taken an interest in
Lanfear’s work, but no one had supposed that his interest would express
itself so magnificently. The honour came to Lanfear at a time when he
was fighting an accumulation of troubles: failing health, the
money difficulties resulting from his irrepressible generosity, his
disappointment about Archie’s career, and perhaps also the persistent
attacks of the new school of German zoologists.
“If I hadn’t Galen I should feel the game was up,” he said to me once,
in a fit of half-real, half-mocking despondency. “But he’ll do what I
haven’t time to do myself, and what my boy can’t do for me.”
That meant that he would answer the critics, and triumphantly affirm
Lanfear’s theory, which had been rudely shaken, but not displaced.
“A scientific hypothesis lasts till there’s something else to put in
its place. People who want to get across a river will use the old bridge
till the new one’s built. And I don’t see any one who’s particularly
anxious, in this case, to take a contract for the new one,” Lanfear
ended; and I remember answering with a laugh: “Not while Horatius Dredge
holds the other.”
It was generally known that Lanfear had not long to live, and the
Laboratory was hardly opened before the question of his successor in
the chair of Experimental Evolution began to be a matter of public
discussion. It was conceded that whoever followed him ought to be a
man of achieved reputation, some one carrying, as the French say, a
considerable “baggage.” At the same time, even Lanfear’s critics felt
that he should be succeeded by a man who held his views and would
continue his teaching. This was not in itself a difficulty, for German
criticism had so far been mainly negative, and there were plenty of
good men who, while they questioned the permanent validity of Lanfear’s
conclusions, were yet ready to accept them for their provisional
usefulness. And then there was the added inducement of the Laboratory!
The Columbia Professor of Experimental Evolution has at his disposal the
most complete instrument of biological research that modern ingenuity
has yet produced; and it’s not only in theology or politics _que Paris
vaut bien une messe!_ There was no trouble about finding a candidate;
but the whole thing turned on Lanfear’s decision, since it was tacitly
understood that, by Weyman’s wish, he was to select his successor. And
what a cry there was when he selected Galen Dredge!
Not in the scientific world, though. The specialists were beginning to
know about Dredge. His remarkable paper on Sexual Dimorphism had been
translated into several languages, and a furious polemic had broken out
over it. When a young fellow can get the big men fighting over him his
future is pretty well assured. But Dredge was only thirty-four, and some
people seemed to feel that there was a kind of deflected nepotism in
Lanfear’s choice.
“If he could choose Dredge he might as well have chosen his own son,”
I’ve heard it said; and the irony was that Archie--will you believe
it?--actually thought so himself! But Lanfear had Weyman behind him,
and when the end came the Faculty at once appointed Galen Dredge to the
chair of Experimental Evolution.
For the first two years things went quietly, along accustomed
lines. Dredge simply continued the course which Lanfear’s death had
interrupted. He lectured well even then, with a persuasive simplicity
surprising in the slow, inarticulate creature one knew him for. But
haven’t you noticed that certain personalities reveal themselves only
in the more impersonal relations of life? It’s as if they woke only
to collective contacts, and the single consciousness were an unmeaning
fragment to them.
If there was anything to criticize in that first part of the course,
it was the avoidance of general ideas, of those brilliant rockets of
conjecture that Lanfear’s students were used to seeing him fling
across the darkness. I remember once saying this to Archie, who, having
recovered from his absurd disappointment, had returned to his old
allegiance to Dredge.
“Oh, that’s Galen all over. He doesn’t want to jump into the ring till
he has a big swishing knock-down argument in his fist. He’ll wait twenty
years if he has to. That’s his strength: he’s never afraid to wait.”
I thought this shrewd of Archie, as well as generous; and I saw the
wisdom of Dredge’s course. As Lanfear himself had said, his theory was
safe enough till somebody found a more attractive one; and before
that day Dredge would probably have accumulated sufficient proof to
crystallize the fluid hypothesis.