1888.
[It was not till June 23 that Huxley was patched up sufficiently by the
doctors for him to start for the Engadine. His first stage was to
Lugano; the second by Menaggio and Colico to Chiavenna; the third to
the Maloja. The summer visitors who saw him arrive so feeble that he
could scarcely walk a hundred yards on the level, murmured that it was
a shame to send out an old man to die there. Their surprise was the
greater when, after a couple of months, they saw him walking his ten
miles and going up two thousand feet without difficulty. As far as his
heart was concerned, the experiment of sending him to the mountains was
perfectly justified. With returning strength he threw himself once more
into the pursuit of gentians, being especially interested in their
distribution and hybridism, and the possibility of natural hybrids
explaining the apparent connecting links between species. No doubt,
too, he felt some gratification in learning from his friend Mr. (now
Sir W.) Thiselton Dyer, that the results he had already obtained in
pursuing this hobby had been of real value:--
Your important paper "On Alpine Gentians" (writes the latter) has begun
to attract the attention of botanists. It has led Baillon, who is the
most acute of the French people, to make some observations of his own.
At the Maloja he stayed twelve weeks, but it was not until nearly two
months had elapsed that he could write of any decided improvement,
although even then his anticipations for the future were of the
gloomiest. The "secret" alluded to in the following letter is the
destined award to him of the Copley medal:--]
Hotel Kursaal, Maloja, Ober Engadine, August 17, 1888.
My dear Foster,
I know you will be glad to hear that, at last, I can report favourably
of my progress. The first six weeks of our stay here the weather was
cold, foggy, wet, and windy--in short, everything it should not be. If
the hotel had not been as it is, about the most comfortable in
Switzerland, I do not know what I should have done. As it was, I got a
very bad attack of "liver," which laid me up for ten days or so. A
Brighton doctor--Bluett by name, and well up to his work--kindly looked
after me.
With the early days of August the weather changed for the better, and
for the last fortnight we have had perfect summer--day after day. I
soon picked up my walking power, and one day got up to Lake Longhin,
about 2000 feet up. That was by way of an experiment, and I was none
the worse for it, but usually my walks are of a more modest
description. To-day we are all clouds and rain, and my courage is down
to zero, with praecordial discomfort. It seems to me that my heart is
quite strong enough to do all that can reasonably be required of it--if
all the rest of the machinery is in good order, and the outside
conditions are favourable. But the poor old pump cannot contend with
grit or want of oil anywhere.
I mean to stay here as long as I can; they say it is often very fine up
to the middle of September. Then we shall migrate lower, probably on
the Italian side, and get home most likely in October. But I really am
very much puzzled to know what to do.
My wife has not been very well lately, and Ethel has contrived to
sprain her ankle at lawn-tennis. Collier has had to go to Naples, but
we expect him back in a few days.
With our united love to Mrs. Foster and yourself.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
I was very pleased to hear of a secret my wife communicated to me. So
long as I was of any use, I did not care much about having the fact
recognised, but now that I am used up I like the feather in my cap.
"Fuimus." Let us have some news of you.
[Sir M. Foster, who was kept in England by the British Association till
September 10, wrote that he was going abroad for the rest of September,
and proposed to spend some time at Menaggio, whence he hoped to effect
a meeting. He winds up with a jest at his recent unusual
occupation:--"I have had no end of righteousness accounted to me for
helping to entertain Bishops at Cambridge." Hence the postcript in
reply:--]
Hotel Kursaal, Maloja, September 2, 1888.
My dear Foster,
A sharp fall of snow has settled our minds, which have been long
wavering about future plans, and we leave this for Menaggio, Hotel
Vittoria, on Thursday next, 6th. [He did not ultimately leave till the
22nd.]
All the wiseacres tell us that there are fresher breezes (vento di
Lecco) at Menaggio than anywhere else in the Como country, and at any
rate we are going to try whether we can exist there. If it does not
answer, we will leave a note for you there to say where we are gone. It
would be very jolly to forgather.
I am sorry to leave this most comfortable of hotels, but I do not think
that cold would suit either of us. I am marvellously well so long as I
am taking sharp exercise, and I do my nine or ten miles without
fatigue. It is only when I am quiet that I know that I have a heart.
I do not feel at all sure how matters may be 4000 feet lower, but what
I have gained is all to the good in the way of general health. In spite
of all the bad weather we have had, I have nothing but praise for this
place--the air is splendid, excellent walks for invalids, capital
drainage, and the easiest to reach of all places 6000 feet up.
My wife sends her love, and thanks Mrs. Foster for her letter, and
looks forward to meeting her.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
Wash yourself clean of all that episcopal contamination or you may
infect me!
[But adverse circumstances prevented the meeting.]
Hotel Kursaal, Maloja, September 24, 1888.
My dear Foster,
As ill luck would have it, we went over to Pontresina to-day (for the
first time), and have only just got back (5.30). I have just
telegraphed to you.
All our plans have been upset by the Fohn wind, which gave us four
days' continuous downpour here--upset the roads, and flooded the
Chiavenna to Colico Railway. We hear that the latter is not yet
repaired.
I was going to write to you at the Vittoria, but thought you could have
hardly got there yet. We took rooms there a week ago, and then had to
countermand them. If there are any letters kicking about for us, will
you ask them to send them on?
By way of an additional complication, my poor wife gave herself an
unlucky strain this morning, and even if the railway is mended I do not
think she will be fit to travel for two or three days. We are very
disappointed. What is to be done?
I am wonderfully better. So long as I am taking active exercise and the
weather is dry, I am quite comfortable, and only discover that I have a
heart when I am kept quiet by bad weather or get my liver out of order.
Here I can walk nine or ten miles up hill and down dale without
difficulty or fatigue. What I may be able to do elsewhere is doubtful.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
It would do you and Mrs. Foster a great deal of good to come up here.
Not out of your way at all! Oh dear no!
Zurich, October 4, 1888.
My dear Foster,
I should have written to you at Stresa, but I had mislaid your
postcard, and it did not turn up till too late.
We made up our minds after all that we would as soon not go down to the
Lakes--where the ground would be drying up after the inundations--so we
went the other way over the Julier to Tiefenkasten, and from T. to
Ragatz, where we stayed a week. Ragatz was hot and steamy at
first--cold and steamy afterwards--but earlier in the season, I should
think, it would be pleasant.
Last Monday we migrated here, and have had the vilest weather until
to-day. All yesterday it rained cats and dogs.
To-day we are off to Neuhausen (Schweitzerhof) to have a look at the
Rhine falls. If it is pleasant we may stop there a few days. Then we go
to Stuttgart, on our way to Nuremberg, which neither of us have seen.
We shall be at the "Bavarian Hotel," and a letter will catch us there,
if you have anything to say, I daresay up to the middle of the month.
After that Frankfort, and then home.
We do not find long railway journeys very good for either of us, and I
am trying to keep within six hours at a stretch.
I am not so vigorous as I was at Maloja, but still infinitely better
than when I left England.
I hope the mosquitoes left something of you in Venice. When I was there
in October there were none!
My wife joins with me in love to Mrs. Foster and yourself.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Some friendly chaff in Sir M. Foster's reply to the latter contains at
least a real indication of the way in which Huxley became the centre of
the little society at the Maloja:--]
You may reflect that you have done the English tourists a good service
this summer. At most table d'hotes in the Lakes I overheard people
talking about the joys of Maloja, and giving themselves great airs on
account of their intimacy with "Professor Huxley"!!
[But indeed he made several friends here, notably one in an unexpected
quarter. This was Father Steffens, Professor of Palaeography in
Freiburg University, resident Catholic priest at Maloja in the summer,
with whom he had many discussions, and whose real knowledge of the
critical questions confronting Christian theology he used to contrast
with the frequent ignorance and occasional rudeness of the English
representatives of that science who came to the hotel.
A letter to Mr. Spencer from Ragatz shows him on his return journey:--]
In fact, so long as I was taking rather sharp exercise in sunshine I
felt quite well, and I could walk as well as any time these ten years.
It needed damp cold weather to remind me that my pumping apparatus was
not to be depended upon under unfavourable conditions. Four thousand
feet descent has impressed that fact still more forcibly upon me, and I
am quite at sea as to what it will be best to do when we return. Quite
certainly, however, we shall not go to Bournemouth. I like the place,
but the air is too soft and moist for either of us.
I should be very glad if we could be within reach of you and help to
cheer you up, but I cannot say anything definite at present about our
winter doings...
My wife sends her kindest regards. She is much better than when we
left, which is lucky for me, as I have no mind, and could not make it
up if I had any. The only vigour I have is in my legs, and that only
when the sun shines.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[A curious incident on this journey deserves recording, as an instance
of a futile "warning." On the night of October 6-7, Huxley woke in the
night and seemed to hear an inward voice say, "Don't go to Stuttgart
and Nuremberg; go straight home." All he did was to make a note of the
occurrence and carry out his original plan, whereupon nothing happened.
The following to his youngest daughter, who had gone back earlier from
the Maloja, refers to her success in winning the prize for modelling at
the Slade School of Art.]
Schweitzerhof, Neuhausen, October 7, 1888.
Dearest Babs,
I will sit to you like "Pater on a monument smiling at grief" for the
medallion. As to the photographs, I will try to get them done to order
either at Stuttgart or Nuremberg, if we stay at either place long
enough. But I am inclined to think they had better be done at home, and
then you could adjust the length of the caoutchouc visage to suit your
artistic convenience.
We have been crowing and flapping our wings over the medal and
trimmings. The only thing I lament is that "your father's influence"
was not brought to bear; there is no telling what you might have got if
it had been. Thoughtless--very!!
So sorry we did not come here instead of stopping at Ragatz. The falls
are really fine, and the surrounding country a wide tableland, with the
great snowy peaks of the Oberland on the horizon. Last evening we had a
brilliant sunset, and the mountains were lighted up with the most
delicate rosy blush you can imagine.
To-day it rains cats and dogs again. You will have seen in the papers
that the Rhine and the Aar and the Rhone and the Arve are all in flood.
There is more water here in the falls than there has been these ten
years. However, we have got to go, as the hotel shuts up to-morrow, and
there seems a good chance of reaching Stuttgart without water in the
carriage.
Long railway journeys do not seem to suit either of us, and we have
fixed the maximum at six hours. I expect we shall be home some time in
the third week of this month.
Love to Hal and anybody else who may be at home.
Ever your Pater.
4 Marlborough Place, October 20, 1888.
My dear Foster,
We got back on Thursday, and had a very good passage, and took it easy
by staying the night at Dover. The "Lord Warden" gave us the worst
dinner we have had for four months, at double the price of the good
dinners. I wonder why we cannot manage these things better in England.
We are both very glad to be at home again, and trust we may be allowed
to enjoy our own house for a while. But, oh dear, the air is not
Malojal! not even at Hempstead, whither I walked yesterday, and the
pump labours accordingly.
I found the first part of the fifth edition of the Text-book among the
two or three hundredweight of letters and books which had accumulated
during four months. Gratulire!
By the way, South Kensington has sent me some inquiry about
Examinations, which I treat with contempt, as doubtless you have a
duplicate.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[On October 25 he announces his return to Sir Joseph Hooker, and
laments his loss of vigour at the sea-level:--]
Hames won't let me stay here in November, and I think we shall go to
Brighton. Unless on the flat of my back, in bed, I shall not have been
at home a month all this year.
I have been utterly idle. There was a lovely case of hybridism,
Gentiana lutea and G. punctata, in a little island in the lake of Sils;
but I fell ill and was confined to bed just after I found it out. It
would be very interesting if somebody would work out Distribution five
miles round the Maloja as a centre. There are the most curious local
differences.
You asked me to send you a copy of my obituary of Darwin. So I put one
herewith, though no doubt you have seen it in the "Proceedings of the
Royal Society."
I should like to know what you think of 17 to 27. If ever I am able to
do anything again I will enlarge on these heads.
[In these pages of the Obituary Notice ("Proceedings of the Royal
Society" 44 Number 269) he endeavours:--]
to separate the substance of the theory from its accidents, and to show
that a variety, not only of hostile comments, but of friendly would-be
improvements lose their raison d'etre to the careful student...
It is not essential to Darwin's theory that anything more should be
assumed than the facts of heredity, variation, and unlimited
multiplication; and the validity of the deductive reasoning as to the
effect of the last (that is, of the struggle for existence which it
involves) upon the varieties resulting from the operation of the
former. Nor is it essential that one should take up any particular
position in regard to the mode of variation, whether, for example, it
takes place per saltum or gradually; whether it is definite in
character or indefinite. Still less are those who accept the theory
bound to any particular views as to the causes of heredity or of
variation.
[The remaining letters of the year trace the gradual bettering of
health, from the "no improvement" of October to the almost complete
disappearance of bad symptoms in December. He had renounced Brighton,
which he detested, in favour of Eastbourne, where the keen air of the
downs and the daily walk over Beachy Head acted as a tolerable
substitute for the Alps. Though he would not miss the anniversary
meeting of the Royal Society, when he was to receive the Copley medal,
one more link binding him to his old friend Hooker, he did not venture
to stay for the dinner in the evening.
This autumn also he resigned his place on the board of Governors of
Eton College.] "I think it must be a year and a half," [he writes,]
"since I attended a meeting, and I am not likely to do better in the
future."
4 Marlborough Place, October 28, 1888.
My dear Hooker,
Best thanks for your suggestion about the cottage, namely "that before
you decide on Brighton Mrs. Huxley should come down and look at the
cottage below my house" at Sunningdale, but I do not see my way to
adopting it. A house, however small, involves servants and ties one to
one place. The conditions that suit me do not seem to be found anywhere
but in the high Alps, and I can't afford to keep a second house in the
country and pass the summer in Switzerland as well.
We are going to Brighton (not because we love it, quite t'other) on
account of the fine weather that is to be had there in November and
December. We shall be back for some weeks about Christmas, and then get
away somewhere else--Malvern possibly--out of the east winds of
February and March.
I do not like this nomadic life at all, but it appears to be Hobson's
choice between that and none.
I am sorry to hear you are troubled by your ears. I am so deaf that I
begin to fight shy of society. It irritates me not to hear; it
irritates me still more to be spoken to as if I were deaf, and the
absurdity of being irritated on the last ground irritates me still
more.
I wish you would start that business of giving a competent young
botanist with good legs 100 pounds to go and study distribution in the
Engadine--from the Maloja as centre--in a circle of a radius of eight
or ten miles. The distribution of the four principal conifers, Arolla
pine, larch, mountain pine and spruce, is most curious, the why and
wherefore nowise apparent.
I am very sorry I cannot be at x on Thursday, but they won't let me be
out at night at present.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
4 Marlborough Place, October 28, 1888.
My dear Foster,
No fear of my trying to stop in London. Hames won't have it. He came
and overhauled me the other day. As I expected, the original mischief
is just as it was. One does not get rid either of dilatation or its
results at my time of life. The only thing is to keep the pipes clear
by good conditions of existence.
After endless discussion we have settled on Brighton for November and
December. It is a hateful place to my mind, but there is more chance of
sunshine there (at this time) than anywhere else. We shall come up for
a week or two on this side of Christmas, and then get away somewhere
else out of the way of the east winds of February and March.
I do not think that the Hazlemere country would do for us, nor indeed
any country place so long as we cannot regularly set up house.
Heaven knows I don't want to bother about anything at present. But I
should like to convince -- that he does not yet understand the elements
of his subject. What a copious ink-spilling cuttlefish of a writer he
is!
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
4 Marlborough Place, London, N.W., November 2, 1888.
My dear Skelton,
Best thanks for the second volume of "Maitland of Lethington." I have
been in the Engadine for the last four months, trying to repair the
crazy old "house I live in," and meeting with more success than I hoped
for when I left home.
Your volume turned up amidst a mountain of accumulated books, papers,
and letters, and I can only hope it has not been too long without
acknowledgment.
I have been much interested in your argument about the "Casket
letters." The comparison of Crawford's deposition with the Queen's
letter leaves no sort of doubt that the writer of one had the other
before him; and under the circumstances I do not see how it can be
doubted that the Queen's letter is forged.
But though thus wholly agreeing with you in substance, I cannot help
thinking that your language on page 341 may be seriously pecked at.
My experience of reporters leads me to think that there would be no
discrepancy at all comparable to that between the two accounts, and I
speak from the woeful memories of the many Royal Commissions I have
wearied over. The accuracy of a good modern reporter is really
wonderful.
And I do not think that "the two documents were drawn by the same
hand." I should say that the writer of the letter had Crawford's
deposition before him, and made what he considered improvements here
and there.
You will say this letter is like Falstaff's reckoning, with but a
pennyworth of thanks to this monstrous quantity of pecking.
But the gratitude is solid and the criticism mere two-dimension stuff.
It is a charming book.
With kind remembrances to Mrs. Skelton.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
10 Southcliff Terrace, Eastbourne, November 9, 1888.
My dear Foster,
We came here on Tuesday, on which day, by ill luck, the east wind also
started, and has been blowing half a gale ever since. We are in the
last house but one to the west, and as high up as we dare go--looking
out on the sea. The first day we had to hold on to our chairs to
prevent being blown away in the sitting-room, but we have hired a
screen and can now croon over the fire without danger.
A priori, the conditions cannot be said to have been promising for two
people, one of whom is liable to bronchitis and rheumatism and the
other to pleurisy, but, as I am so fond of rubbing into Herbert
Spencer, a priori reasonings are mostly bosh, and we are thriving.
With three coats on I find the air on Beachy Head eminently refreshing,
and there is so much light in the southern quarter just now, that we
confidently hope to see the sun once more in the course of a few days.
As I told you in my official letter, I am going up for the 30th. But I
am in a quandary about the dinner, partly by reason of the inevitable
speech, and partly the long sitting. I should very much like to attend,
and I think I could go through with it. On the other hand, my wife
declares it would be very imprudent, and I am not quite sure she is
wrong. I wish you would tell me exactly what you think about the
matter.
The way I pick up directly I get into good air makes me suspect myself
of malingering, and yet I certainly had grown very seedy in London
before we left.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
10 Southcliff Terrace, Eastbourne, November 13, 1888.
My dear Foster,
We are very sorry to hear about Michael Junior. [Sir M. Foster's son
was threatened with lung trouble, and was ordered to live abroad. He
proposed to carry his medical experience to the Maloja and practise
there during the summer. Huxley offered to give him some
introductions.] Experto crede; of all anxieties the hardest to bear is
that about one's children. But considering the way you got off yourself
and have become the hearty and bucolic person you are, I think you
ought to be cheery. Everybody speaks well of the youngster, and he is
bound to behave himself well and get strong as swiftly as possible.
Though very loth, I give up the dinner. But unless I am on my back I
shall turn up at the meeting. I think that is a compromise very
creditable to my prudence.
Though it is blowing a gale of wind from south-west to-day there is
real sunshine, and it is fairly warm. I am very glad we came here
instead of that beastly Brighton.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
10 Southcliff Terrace, Eastbourne, November 15, 1888.
My dear Evans,
I am very sorry to have missed you. I told my doctor that while the
weather was bad it was of no use to go away, and when it was fine I
might just as well stop at home; but he did not see the force of my
reasoning, and packed us off here.
The award of the Copley is a kindness I feel very much...
The Congress [The International Geological Congress, at which he was to
have presided.] seems to have gone off excellently. I consider that my
own performance of the part of dummy was distinguished.
So the Lawes business is fairly settled at last! "Lawes Deo," as the
Claimant might have said. But the pun will be stale, as you doubtless
have already made all possible epigrams and punnigrams on the topic.
My wife joins with me in kindest regards to Mrs. Evans and yourself. If
Mrs. Evans had only come up to the Maloja, she would have had real
winter and no cold.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
10 Southcliff Terrace, Eastbourne, November 15, 1888.
My dear Hooker,
You would have it that the Royal Society broke the law in giving you
the Copley, and they certainly violated custom in giving it to me the
year following. Whoever heard of two biologers getting it one after
another? It is very pleasant to have our niches in the Pantheon close
together. It is getting on for forty years since we were first
"acquent," and considering with what a very considerable dose of
tenacity, vivacity, and that glorious firmness (which the beasts who
don't like us call obstinacy) we are both endowed, the fact that we
have never had the shadow of a shade of a quarrel is more to our credit
than being ex-Presidents and Copley medallists.
But we have had a masonic bond in both being well salted in early life.
I have always felt I owed a great deal to my acquaintance with the
realities of things gained in the old "Rattlesnake".
I am getting on pretty well here, though the weather has been mostly
bad. All being well I shall attend the meeting of the Society on the
30th, but not the dinner. I am very sorry to miss the latter, but I
dare not face the fatigue and the chances of a third dose of pleurisy.
My wife sends kindest regards and thanks for your congratulations.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
10 Southcliff Terrace, Eastbourne, November 17, 1888.
My dear Flower,
...Many thanks for taking my troublesomeness in good part. My friend
will be greatly consoled to know that you have the poor man "in your
eye." Schoolmaster, naturalist, and coal merchant used to be the three
refuges for the incompetent. Schoolmaster is rapidly being eliminated,
so I suppose the pressure on Natural History and coals will increase.
I am glad you have got the Civil Service Commissioners to listen to
common sense. I had an awful battle with them (through the Department)
over Newton, who is now in your paleontological department. If I
recollect rightly, they examined him inter alia on the working of the
Poor Laws!
The Royal Society has dealt very kindly with me. They patted me on the
back when I started thirty-seven years ago, and it was a great
encouragement. They give me their best, now that my race is run, and it
is a great consolation. At the far end of life all one's work looks so
uncommonly small, that the good opinion of one's contemporaries
acquires a new value.
We have a summer's day, and I am writing before an open window!
Yesterday it blew great guns.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[The following letter to Lady Welby, the point of which is that to be
"morally convinced" is not the same thing as to offer scientific proof,
refers to an article in the "Church Quarterly" for October called
"Truthfulness in Science and Religion," evoked by Huxley's "Nineteenth
Century" article on "Science and the Bishops."]
November 27, 1888.
Dear Lady Welby,
Many thanks for the article in the "Church Quarterly", which I return
herewith. I am not disposed to bestow any particular attention upon it;
as the writer, though evidently a fair-minded man, appears to me to be
entangled in a hopeless intellectual muddle, and one which has no
novelty. Christian beliefs profess to be based upon historical facts.
If there was no such person as Jesus of Nazareth, and if His biography
given in the Gospels is a fiction, Christianity vanishes.
Now the inquiry into the truth or falsehood of a matter of history is
just as much a question of pure science as the inquiry into the truth
or falsehood of a matter of geology, and the value of evidence in the
two cases must be tested in the same way. If any one tells me that the
evidence of the existence of man in the miocene epoch is as good as
that upon which I frequently act every day of my life, I reply that
this is quite true, but that it is no sort of reason for believing in
the existence of miocene man.
Surely no one but a born fool can fail to be aware that we constantly,
and in very grave conjunctions, are obliged to act upon extremely bad
evidence, and that very often we suffer all sorts of penalties in
consequence. And surely one must be something worse than a born fool to
pretend that such decision under the pressure of the enigmas of life
ought to have the smallest influence in those judgments which are made
with due and sufficient deliberation. You will see that these
considerations go to the root of the whole matter. I regret that I
cannot discuss the question more at length and deal with sundry topics
put forward in your letter. At present writing is a burden to me.
[A letter to Professor Ray Lankester mixes grave and gay in a little
homily, edged by personal experience, on the virtues and vices of
combativeness.]
10 Southcliff Terrace, Eastbourne, December 6, 1888.
I think it would be a very good thing both for you and for Oxford if
you went there. Oxford science certainly wants stirring up, and
notwithstanding your increase in years and wisdom, I think you would
bear just a little more stirring down, so that the conditions for a
transfer of energy are excellent!
Seriously, I wish you would let an old man, who has had his share of
fighting, remind you that battles, like hypotheses, are not to be
multiplied beyond necessity. Science might say to you as the
Staffordshire collier's wife said to her husband at the fair, "Get thee
foighten done and come whoam." You have a fair expectation of ripe
vigour for twenty years; just think what may be done with that capital.
No use to tu quoque me. Under the circumstances of the time, warfare
has been my business and duty.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[Two more letters of the year refer to the South Kensington
examinations, for which Huxley was still nominally responsible. As
before, we see him reluctant to sign the report upon papers which he
had not himself examined; yet at the same time doing all that lay in
his power to assist by criticising the questions and thinking out the
scheme of teaching on which the examination was to be based. He replies
to some proposed changes in a letter to Sir M. Foster of December 12:--]
I am very sorry I cannot agree with your clients about the examination.
They should recollect the late Master of Trinity's aphorism that even
the youngest of us is not infallible.
I know exactly upon what principles I am going, and so far as I am at
present informed that advantage is peculiar to my side. Two points I am
quite clear about--one is the exclusion of Amphioxus, and the other the
retention of so much of the Bird as will necessitate a knowledge of
Sauropsidan skeletal characters and the elements of skeletal homologies
in skull and limbs.
I have taken a good deal of pains over drawing up a new
syllabus--including dogfish--and making room for it by excluding
Amphioxus and all of bird except skeleton. I have added Lamprey
(cranial and spinal skeleton, NOT face cartilages), so that the
intelligent student may know what a notochord means before he goes to
embryology. I have excluded Distoma and kept Helix.
The Committee must now settle the matter. I have done with it.
[On December 27 he writes:--]
I have been thinking over the Examinership business without coming to
any very satisfactory result. The present state of things is not
satisfactory so far as I am concerned. I do not like to appear to be
doing what I am not doing.
-- would of course be the successor indicated, if he had not so
carefully cut his own throat as an Examiner...He would be bringing an
action against the Lord President before he had been three years in
office!...As I told Forster, when he was Vice-President, the whole
value of the Examiner system depends on the way the examiners do their
work. I have the gravest doubt about -- steadily plodding through the
disgustful weariness of it as you and I have done, or observing any
regulation that did not suit his fancy.
[With this may be compared the letter of May 19, 1889, to Sir J.
Donnelly, when he finally resolved to give up the "sleeping
partnership" in the examination.
His last letter of the year was written to Sir J. Hooker, when
transferring to him the "archives" of the x Club, as the new Treasurer.]
4 Marlborough Place, December 29, 1888.
My dear Hooker,
All good wishes to you and yours, and many of them.
Thanks for the cheque. You are very confiding to send it without
looking at the account. But I have packed up the "Archives," which poor
dear Busk handed over to me, and will leave them at the Athenaeum for
you. Among them you will find the account book. There are two or three
cases, when I was absent, in which the names are not down. I have no
doubt Frankland gave them to me by letter, but the book was at home and
they never got set down. Peccavi!
I have been picking up in the most astonishing way during the last
fortnight or three weeks at Eastbourne. My doctor, Hames, carefully
examined my heart yesterday, and told me that though some slight
indications were left, he should have thought nothing of them if he had
not followed the whole history of the case. With fresh air and exercise
and careful avoidance of cold and night air I am to be all right again
in a few months.
I am not fond of coddling; but as Paddy gave his pig the best corner in
his cabin--because "shure, he paid the rint"--I feel bound to take care
of myself as a household animal of value, to say nothing of any other
grounds. So, much as I should like to be with you all on the 3rd, I
must defer to the taboo.
The wife got a nasty bronchitic cold as soon as she came up. She is
much better now. But I shall be glad to get her down to Eastbourne
again.
Except that, we are all very flourishing, as I hope you are.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.