1889-90.
From the middle of June to the middle of September, Huxley was in
Switzerland, first at Monte Generoso, then, when the weather became
more settled, at the Maloja. Here, as his letters show, he
"rejuvenated" to such an extent that Sir Henry Thompson, who was at the
Maloja, scoffed at the idea of his ever having had dilated heart.]
Monte Generoso, Tessin, Suisse, June 25, 1889.
My dear Hooker,
I am quite agreed with the proposed arrangements for the x, and hope I
shall show better in the register of attendance next session.
When I am striding about the hills here I really feel as if my
invalidism were a mere piece of malingering. When I am well I can walk
up hill and down dale as well as I did twenty years ago. But my margin
is abominably narrow, and I am at the mercy of "liver and lights."
Sitting up for long and dining are questions of margin.
I do not know if you have been here. We are close on 4000 feet up and
look straight over the great plain of North Italy on the one side and
to a great hemicycle of mountains, Monte Rosa among them, on the other.
I do not know anything more beautiful in its way. But the whole time we
have been here the weather has been extraordinary. On the average,
about two thunderstorms per diem. I am sure that a good meteorologist
might study the place with advantage. The barometer has not varied
three-twentieths of an inch the whole time, notwithstanding the storms.
I hear the weather has been bad all over Switzerland, but it is not
high and dry enough for me here, and we shall be off to the Maloja on
Saturday next, and shall stay there till we return somewhere in
September. Collier and Ethel will join us there in August. He is none
the worse for his scarlatina.
"Aged Botanist?" marry come up! [Sir J. Hooker jestingly congratulated
him on taking up botany in his old age.] I should like to know of a
younger spark. The first time I heard myself called "the old gentleman"
was years ago when we were in South Devon. A half-drunken Devonian had
made himself very offensive, in the compartment in which my wife and I
were travelling, and got some "simple Saxon" from me, accompanied, I
doubt not, by an awful scowl "Ain't the old gentleman in a rage," says
he.
I am very glad to hear of Reggie's success, and my wife joins with me
in congratulations. It is a comfort to see one's shoots planted out and
taking root, though the idea that one's cares and anxieties about them
are diminished, we find to be an illusion.
I inclose cheque for my contributions due and to come. [For the x
Club.] If I go to Davy's Locker before October, the latter may go for
consolation champagne!
Ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.
[He writes from the Maloja on August 16 to Sir M. Foster, who had been
sitting on the Vaccination Commission:--]
I wonder how you are prospering, whether you have vaccination or
anti-vaccination on the brain; or whether the gods have prospered you
so far as to send you on a holiday. We have been here since the
beginning of July. Monte Generoso proved lovely--but electrical. We had
on the average three thunderstorms every two days. Bellagio was as hot
as the tropics, and we stayed only a day, and came on here--where,
whatever else may happen, it is never too hot. The weather has been
good and I have profited immensely, and at present I do not know
whether I have a heart or not. But I have to look very sharp after my
liver. H. Thompson, who has been here with his son Herbert (clever
fellow, by the way), treats the notion that I ever had a dilated heart
with scorn! Oh these doctors! they are worse than theologians.
[And again on August 31:--]
I walked eighteen miles three or four days ago, and I think nothing of
one or two thousand feet up! I hope this state of things will last at
the sea-level.
I am always glad to hear of and from you, but I have not been idle long
enough to forget what being busy means, so don't let your conscience
worry you about answering my letters.
...X. is, I am afraid, more or less of an ass. The opposition he and
his friends have been making to the Technical Bill is quite
unintelligible to me. Y. may be, and I rather think is, a knave, but he
is no fool; and if I mistake not he is minded to kick the ultra-radical
stool down now that he has mounted by it. Make friends of that Mammon
of unrighteousness and swamp the sentimentalists.
...I despise your insinuations. All my friends here have been
theological--Bishop, Chief Rabbi, and Catholic Professor. None of your
Maybrick discussors.
On June 25 he wrote to Professor Ray Lankester, enclosing a letter to
be read at a meeting called by the Lord Mayor, on July 1, to hear
statements from men of science with regard to the recent increase of
rabies in this country, and the efficiency of the treatment discovered
by M. Pasteur for the prevention of hydrophobia.
[I quote the latter from the report in "Nature" for July 4:--]
Monte Generoso, Tessin, Suisse, June 25, 1889.
My dear Lankester,
I enclose herewith a letter for the Lord Mayor and a cheque for 5
pounds as my subscription. I wish I could make the letter shorter, but
it is pretty much "pemmican" already. However, it does not much matter
being read if it only gets into print.
It is uncommonly good of the Lord Mayor to stand up for Science, in the
teeth of the row the anti-vivisection pack--dogs and doggesses--are
making.
May his shadow never be less.
We shall be off to the Maloja at the end of this week, if the weather
mends. Thunderstorms here every day, and sometimes two or three a day
for the last ten days.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Monte Generoso, Switzerland, June 25, 1889.
My Lord Mayor,
I greatly regret my inability to be present at the meeting which is to
be held, under your Lordship's auspices, in reference to M. Pasteur and
his Institute. The unremitting labours of that eminent Frenchman during
the last half-century have yielded rich harvests of new truths, and are
models of exact and refined research. As such they deserve, and have
received, all the honours which those who are the best judges of their
purely scientific merits are able to bestow. But it so happens that
these subtle and patient searchings out of the ways of the infinitely
little--of the swarming life where the creature that measures
one-thousandth part of an inch is a giant--have also yielded results of
supreme practical importance. The path of M. Pasteur's investigations
is strewed with gifts of vast monetary value to the silk trades, the
brewer, and the wine merchant. And this being so, it might well be a
proper and graceful act on the part of the representatives of trade and
commerce in its greatest centre to make some public recognition of M.
Pasteur's services, even if there were nothing further to be said about
them. But there is much more to be said. M. Pasteur's direct and
indirect contributions to our knowledge of the causes of diseased
states, and of the means of preventing their recurrence, are not
measurable by money values, but by those of healthy life and diminished
suffering to men. Medicine, surgery, and hygiene have all been
powerfully affected by M. Pasteur's work, which has culminated in his
method of treating hydrophobia. I cannot conceive that any competently
instructed person can consider M. Pasteur's labours in this direction
without arriving at the conclusion that, if any man has earned the
praise and honour of his fellows, he has. I find it no less difficult
to imagine that our wealthy country should be other than ashamed to
continue to allow its citizens to profit by the treatment freely given
at the Institute without contributing to its support. Opposition to the
proposals which your Lordship sanctions would be equally inconceivable
if it arose out of nothing but the facts of the case thus presented.
But the opposition which, as I see from the English papers, is
threatened has really for the most part nothing to do either with M.
Pasteur's merits or with the efficacy of his method of treating
hydrophobia. It proceeds partly from the fanatics of laissez faire, who
think it better to rot and die than to be kept whole and lively by
State interference, partly from the blind opponents of properly
conducted physiological experimentation, who prefer that men should
suffer than rabbits or dogs, and partly from those who for other but
not less powerful motives hate everything which contributes to prove
the value of strictly scientific methods of enquiry in all those
questions which affect the welfare of society. I sincerely trust that
the good sense of the meeting over which your Lordship will preside
will preserve it from being influenced by those unworthy antagonisms,
and that the just and benevolent enterprise you have undertaken may
have a happy issue.
I am, my Lord Mayor, your obedient servant,
T.H. Huxley.
Hotel Kursaal, Maloja, Haute Engadine, July 8, 1889.
My dear Lankester,
Many thanks for your letter. I was rather anxious as to the result of
the meeting, knowing the malice and subtlety of the Philistines, but as
it turned out they were effectually snubbed. I was glad to see your
allusion to Coleridge's impertinences. It will teach him to think twice
before he abuses his position again. I do not understand Stead's
position in the Pall Mall. He snarls but does not bite.
I am glad that the audience (I judge from the "Times" report) seemed to
take the points of my letter, and live in hope that when I see last
week's "Spectator" I shall find Hutton frantic.
This morning a letter marked "Immediate" reached me from Bourne, date
July 3. I am afraid he does not read the papers or he would have known
it was of no use to appeal to me in an emergency. I am writing to him.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[On his return to England, however, a fortnight of London, interrupted
though it was by a brief visit to Mr. and Mrs. Humphry Ward at the
delightful old house of Great Hampden, was as much as he could stand.
"I begin to discover," he writes to Sir M. Foster, "I have a heart
again, a circumstance of which I had no reminder at the Maloja." So he
retreated at once to Eastbourne, which had done him so much good
before.]
4 Marlborough Place, September 24, 1889.
My dear Hooker,
How's a' wi' ye'? We came back from the Engadine early in the month,
and are off to Eastbourne to-morrow. I rejuvenate in Switzerland and
senescate (if there is no such verb, there ought to be) in London, and
the sooner I am out of it the better.
When are you going to have an x? I cannot make out what has become of
Spencer, except that he is somewhere in Scotland.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
We shall be at our old quarters--3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne--from
to-morrow onwards.
[The next letter shows once more the value he set upon botanical
evidence in the question of the influence of conditions in the process
of evolution.]
3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, September 29, 1889.
My dear Hooker,
I hope to be with you at the Athenaeum on Thursday. It does one good to
hear of your being in such good working order. My knowledge of orchids
is infinitesimally small, but there were some eight or nine species
plentiful in the Engadine, and I learned enough to appreciate the
difficulties. Why do not some of these people who talk about the direct
influence of conditions try to explain the structure of orchids on that
tack? Orchids at any rate can't try to improve themselves in taking
shots at insects' heads with pollen bags--as Lamarck's Giraffes tried
to stretch their necks!
Balfour's ballon d'essai [I.e. touching a proposed Roman Catholic
University for Ireland.] (I do not believe it could have been anything
more) is the only big blunder he has made, and it passes my
comprehension why he should have made it. But he seems to have dropped
it again like the proverbial hot potato. If he had not, he would have
hopelessly destroyed the Unionist party.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[At the end of the year he thanks Lord Tennyson for his gift of
"Demeter":--]
December 26, 1889.
My dear Tennyson,
Accept my best thanks for your very kind present of "Demeter." I have
not had a Christmas Box I valued so much for many a long year. I envy
your vigour, and am ashamed of myself beside you for being turned out
to grass. I kick up my heels now and then, and have a gallop round the
paddock, but it does not come to much.
With best wishes to you, and, if Lady Tennyson has not forgotten me
altogether, to her also.
Believe me, yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[A discussion in the "Times" this autumn, in which he joined, was of
unexpected moment to him, inasmuch as it was the starting-point for no
fewer than four essays in political philosophy, which appeared the
following year in the "Nineteenth Century".
The correspondence referred to arose out of the heckling of Mr. John
Morley by one of his constituents at Newcastle in November 1889. The
heckler questioned him concerning private property in land, quoting
some early dicta from the "Social Statics" of Mr. Herbert Spencer,
which denied the justice of such ownership. Comments and explanations
ensued in the "Times"; Mr. Spencer declared that he had since partly
altered that view, showing that contract has in part superseded force
as the ground of ownership; and that in any case it referred to the
idea of absolute ethics, and not to relative or practical politics.
Huxley entered first into the correspondence to point out present and
perilous applications of the absolute in contemporary politics.
Touching on a State guarantee of the title to land, he asks if there is
any moral right for confiscation:--In Ireland, he says, confiscation is
justified by the appeal to wrongs inflicted a century ago; in England
the theorems of "absolute political ethics" are in danger of being
employed to make this generation of land-owners responsible for the
misdeeds of William the Conqueror and his followers. ("Times" November
12.)
His remaining share in the discussion consisted of a brief passage of
arms with Mr. Spencer on the main question [November 18.], and a reply
to another correspondent [November 21.], which brings forward an
argument enlarged upon in one of the essays, namely that if the land
belongs to all men equally, why should one nation claim one portion
rather than another? For several ownership is just as much an
infringement of the world's ownership as is personal ownership.
Moreover, history shows that land was originally held in several
ownership, and that not of the nation, but of the village community.
These signs of renewed vigour induced Mr. Knowles to write him a
"begging letter," proposing an article for the "Nineteenth Century"
either in commendation of Bishop Magee's recent utterances--it would be
fine for eulogy to come from such a quarter after the recent
encounter--or on the general subject of which his "Times" letters dealt
with a part.
Huxley's choice was for the latter. Writing on November 21, he says:--]
Now as to the article. I have only hesitated because I want to get out
a new volume of essays, and I am writing an introduction which gives me
an immensity of trouble. I had made up my mind to get it done by
Christmas, and if I write for you it won't be. However, if you don't
mind leaving it open till the end of this month, I will see what can he
done in the way of a screed about, say, "The Absolute in Practical
Life." The Bishop would come in excellently; he deserves all praises,
and my only hesitation about singing them is that the conjunction
between the "Infidel" and the Churchman is just what the blatant
platform Dissenters who had been at him would like. I don't want to
serve the Bishop, for whom I have a great liking and respect, as the
bear served his sleeping master, when he smashed his nose in driving an
unfortunate fly away!
By the way, has the Bishop published his speech or sermon? I have only
seen a newspaper report.
[Soon after this, he proposed to come to town and talk over the article
with Mr. Knowles. The latter sent him a telegram--reply paid--asking
him to fix a day. The answer named a day of the week and a day of the
month which did not agree; whereupon Mr. Knowles wrote by the safer
medium of the post for an explanation, thinking that the post-office
clerks must have bungled the message, and received the following
reply:--]
3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, November 26, 1889.
My dear Knowles,
May jackasses sit upon the graves of all telegraph clerks! But the boys
are worse, and I shall have to write to the Postmaster-General about
the little wretch who brought your telegram the other day, when my mind
was deeply absorbed in the concoction of an article for THE Review of
our age.
The creature read my answer, for he made me pay three halfpence extra
(I believe he spent it on toffy), and yet was so stupid as not to see
that meaning to fix next Monday or Tuesday, I opened my diary to give
the dates in order that there should be no mistake, and found Monday 28
and Tuesday 29.
And I suppose the little beast would say he did not know I opened it in
October instead of November!
I hate such mean ways. Hang all telegraph boys!
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Monday December 2, if you have nothing against it, and lunch if Mrs.
Knowles will give me some.
[The article was finished by the middle of December and duly sent to
the editor, under the title of "Rousseau and Rousseauism." But fearing
that this title would surely attract attention among the working-men
for whom it was specially designed, Mr. Knowles suggested instead the
"Natural Inequality of Men," under which name it actually appeared in
January. So, too, in the case of a companion article in March, the
editorial pen was responsible for the change from the arid
possibilities of "Capital and Labour" to the more attractive title of
"Capital the Mother of Labour."
With regard to this article and a further project of extending his
discussion of the subject, he
writes:--]
3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, December 14, 1889.
My dear Knowles,
I am very glad you think the article will go. It is longer than I
intended, but I cannot accuse myself of having wasted words, and I have
left out several things that might have been said, but which can come
in by and by.
As to title, do as you like, but that you propose does not seem to me
quite to hit the mark. "Political Humbug: Liberty and Equality," struck
me as adequate, but my wife declares it is improper. "Political
Fictions" might be supposed to refer to Dizzie's novels! How about "The
Politics of the Imagination: Liberty and Inequality"?
I should like to have some general title that would do for the
"letters" which I see I shall have to write. I think I will make six of
them after the fashion of my "Working Men's Lectures," as thus: (1)
Liberty and Equality; (2) Rights of Man; (3) Property; (4) Malthus; (5)
Government, the province of the State; (6) Law-making and Law-breaking.
I understand you will let me republish them, as soon as the last is
out, in a cheap form. I am not sure I will not put them in the form of
"Lectures" rather than "Letters."
Did you ever read Henry George's book "Progress and Poverty"? It is
more damneder nonsense than poor Rousseau's blether. And to think of
the popularity of the book! But I ought to be grateful, as I can cut
and come again at this wonderful dish.
The mischief of it is I do not see how I am to finish the introduction
to my Essays, unless I put off sending you a second dose until March.
I will send back the revise as quickly as possible.
Ever yours very truly,
T.H. Huxley.
You do not tell me that there is anything to which Spencer can object,
so I suppose there is nothing.
[And in an undated letter to Sir J. Hooker, he says:--]
I am glad you think well of the "Human Inequality" paper. My wife has
persuaded me to follow it up with a view to making a sort of "Primer of
Politics" for the masses--by and by. "There's no telling what you may
come to, my boy," said the Bishop who reproved his son for staring at
John Kemble, and I may be a pamphleteer yet! But really it is time that
somebody should treat the people to common sense.
[However, immediately after the appearance of this first article on
Human Inequality, he changed his mind about the Letters to Working Men,
and resolved to continue what he had to say in the form of essays in
the "Nineteenth Century".
He then judged it not unprofitable to call public attention to the
fallacies which first found their way into practical politics through
the disciples of Rousseau; one of those speculators of whom he remarks
("Collected Essays" 1 312) that] "busied with deduction from their
ideal 'ought to be,' they overlooked the 'what has been,' the 'what
is,' and the 'what can be.'" "Many a long year ago," [he says in
Natural Rights and Political Rights (1 336)], "I fondly imagined that
Hume and Kant and Hamilton having slain the 'Absolute,' the thing must,
in decency, decease. Yet, at the present time, the same hypostatised
negation, sometimes thinly disguised under a new name, goes about in
broad daylight, in company with the dogmas of absolute ethics,
political and other, and seems to be as lively as ever." This was to
his mind one of those instances of wrong thinking which lead to wrong
acting--the postulating a general principle based upon insufficient
data, and the deduction from it of many and far-reaching practical
consequences. This he had always strongly opposed. His essay of 1871,
"Administrative Nihilism," was directed against a priori individualism;
and now he proceeded to restate the arguments against a priori
political reasoning in general, which seemed to have been forgotten or
overlooked, especially by the advocates of compulsory socialism. And
here it is possible to show in some detail the care he took, as was his
way, to refresh his knowledge and bring it up to date, before writing
on any special point. It is interesting to see how thoroughly he went
to work, even in a subject with which he was already fairly acquainted.
As in the controversy of 1889 I find a list of near a score of books
consulted, so here one note-book contains an analysis of the origin and
early course of the French Revolution, especially in relation to the
speculations of the theorists; the declaration of the rights of man in
1789 is followed by parallels from Mably's "Droits et Devoirs du
Citoyen" and "De la Legislation", and by a full transcript of the 1793
Declaration, with notes on Robespierre's speech at the Convention a
fortnight later. There are copious notes from Dunoyer, who is quoted in
the article, while the references to Rocquain's "Esprit
Revolutionnaire" led to an English translation of the work being
undertaken, to which he contributed a short preface in 1891.
It was the same with other studies. He loved to visualise his object
clearly. The framework of what he wished to say would always be drawn
out first. In any historical matter he always worked with a map. In
natural history he well knew the importance of studying distribution
and its bearing upon other problems; in civil history he would draw
maps to illustrate either the conditions of a period or the spread of a
civilising nation. For instance, among sketches of the sort which
remain, I have one of the Hellenic world, marked off in 25-mile circles
from Delos as centre; and a similar one for the Phoenician world,
starting from Tyre. Sketch maps of Palestine and Mesopotamia, with
notes from the best authorities on the geography of the two countries,
belong in all probability to the articles on "The Flood" and
"Hasisadra's Adventure." To realise clearly the size, position, and
relation of the parts to the whole, was the mechanical instinct of the
engineer which was so strong in him.
The four articles which followed in quick succession on "The Natural
Inequality of Man," "Natural and Political Rights," "Capital the Mother
of Labour," and "Government," appeared in the January, February, March,
and May numbers of the "Nineteenth Century", and, as was said above,
are directed against a priori reasoning in social philosophy. The
first, which appeared simultaneously with Mr. Herbert Spencer's article
on "Justice," in the "Nineteenth Century", assails, on the ground of
fact and history, the dictum that men are born free and equal, and have
a natural right to freedom and equality, so that property and political
rights are a matter of contract. History denies that they thus
originated; and, in fact, "proclaim human equality as loudly as you
like, Witless will serve his brother." Yet, in justice to Rousseau and
the influence he wielded, he adds:--]
It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our
beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our
instincts.
Thus if, in their plain and obvious sense, the doctrines which Rousseau
advanced are so easily upset, it is probable that he had in his mind
something which is different from that sense.
[When they sought speculative grounds to justify the empirical truth:--]
that it is desirable in the interests of society, that all men should
be as free as possible, consistently with those interests, and that
they should all be equally bound by the ethical and legal obligations
which are essential to social existence, "the philosophers," as is the
fashion of speculators, scorned to remain on the safe if humble ground
of experience, and preferred to prophesy from the sublime cloudland of
the a priori.
[The second of these articles is an examination of Henry George's
doctrines as set forth in "Progress and Poverty". His relation to the
physiocrats is shown in a preliminary analysis of the term "natural
rights which have no wrongs," and are antecedent to morality, from
which analysis are drawn the results of confounding natural with moral
rights.
Here again is the note of justice to an argument in an unsound shape
(page 369): "There is no greater mistake than the hasty conclusion that
opinions are worthless because they are badly argued." And a trifling
abatement of the universal and exclusive form of Henry George's
principle may make it true, while even unamended it may lead to
opposite conclusions--to the justification of several ownership in land
as well as in any other form of property.
The third essay of the series, "Capital the Mother of Labour"
("Collected Essays" 9 147), was an application of biological methods to
social problems, designed to show that the extreme claims of labour as
against capital are ill-founded.
In the last article, "Government," he traces the two extreme
developments of absolute ethics, as shown in anarchy and regimentation,
or unrestrained individualism and compulsory socialism. The key to the
position, of course, lies in the examination of the premisses upon
which these superstructures are raised, and history shows that:--]
So far from the preservation of liberty and property and the securing
of equal rights being the chief and most conspicuous object aimed at by
the archaic politics of which we know anything, it would be a good deal
nearer the truth to say that they were federated absolute monarchies,
the chief purpose of which was the maintenance of an established church
for the worship of the family ancestors.
[These articles stirred up critics of every sort and kind; socialists
who denounced him as an individualist, land nationalisers who had not
realised the difference between communal and national ownership, or men
who denounced him as an arm-chair cynic, careless of the poor and
ignorant of the meaning of labour. Mr. Spencer considered the chief
attack to be directed against his position; the regimental socialists
as against theirs, and:--]
as an attempt to justify those who, content with the present, are
opposed to all endeavours to bring about any fundamental change in our
social arrangements (ib. page 423).
So far from this, he continues:--]
Those who have had the patience to follow me to the end will, I trust,
have become aware that my aim has been altogether different. Even the
best of modern civilisations appears to me to exhibit a condition of
mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the
merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express my opinion that, if
there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater
part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowledge,
the winning of a greater dominion over Nature which is its consequence,
and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no
difference in the extent and the intensity of Want, with its
concomitant physical and moral degradation, among the masses of the
people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet, which would
sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable consummation. What profits
it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be
his servant, and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him,
if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and
keep him on the brink of destruction?
Assuredly, if I believed that any of the schemes hitherto proposed for
bringing about social amelioration were likely to attain their end, I
should think what remains to me of life well spent in furthering it.
But my interest in these questions did not begin the day before
yesterday; and, whether right or wrong, it is no hasty conclusion of
mine that we have small chance of doing rightly in this matter (or
indeed in any other) unless we think rightly. Further, that we shall
never think rightly in politics until we have cleared our minds of
delusions, and more especially of the philosophical delusions which, as
I have endeavoured to show, have infested political thought for
centuries. My main purpose has been to contribute my mite towards this
essential preliminary operation. Ground must be cleared and levelled
before a building can be properly commenced; the labour of the navvy is
as necessary as that of the architect, however much less honoured; and
it has been my humble endeavour to grub up those old stumps of the a
priori which stand in the way of the very foundations of a sane
political philosophy.
To those who think that questions of the kind I have been discussing
have merely an academic interest, let me suggest once more that a
century ago Robespierre and St. Just proved that the way of answering
them may have extremely practical consequences.
[Without pretending to offer any offhand solution for so vast a
problem, he suggests two points in conclusion. One, that in considering
the matter we should proceed from the known to the unknown, and take
warning from the results of either extreme in self-government or the
government of a family; the other, that the central point is] "the fact
that the natural order of things--the order, that is to say, as
unmodified by human effort--does not tend to bring about what we
understand as welfare." [The population question has first to be faced.
The following letters cover the period up to the trip to the Canaries,
already alluded to:--]
3 Jevington Gardens, Eastbourne, January 6, 1890.
My dear Foster,
That capital photograph reached me just as we were going up to town
(invited for the holidays by our parents), and I put it in my bag to
remind me to write to you. Need I say that I brought it back again
without having had the grace to send a line of thanks? By way of making
my peace, I have told the Fine Art Society to send you a copy of the
engraving of my sweet self. I have not had it framed--firstly, because
it is a hideous nuisance to be obliged to hang a frame one may not
like; and secondly, because by possibility you might like some other
portrait better, in which case, if you will tell me, I will send that
other. I should like you to have something by way of reminder of T.H.H.
When Harry [His younger son.] has done his work at Bart's at the end of
March I am going to give him a run before he settles down to practice.
Probably we shall go to the Canaries. I hear that the man who knows
most about them is Dr. Guillemard, a Cambridge man. "Kennst ihn du
wohl?" Perhaps he might give me a wrinkle.
With our united best wishes to you all.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Eastbourne, January 13, 1890.
My dear Hooker,
We missed you on the 2nd, though you were quite right not to come in
that beastly weather.
My boy Harry has had a very sharp attack of influenza at Bartholomew's,
and came down to us to convalesce a week ago, very much pulled down. I
hope you will keep clear of it.
Harry's work at the hospital is over at the end of March, and before
the influenza business I was going to give him a run for a month or six
weeks before he settled down to practice. We shall go to the Canaries
as soon in April as possible. Are you minded to take a look at
Teneriffe? Only 4 1/2 days' sea--good ships.
Ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.
[However, Sir J. Hooker was unable to join "the excursion to the Isles
of the Blest."]
Eastbourne, January 27, 1890.
My dear Foster,
People have been at me to publish my notice of Darwin in the
"Proceedings of the Royal Society" in a separate form.
If you have no objection, will you apply to the Council for me for the
requisite permission?
But if you DO see any objection, I would rather not make the request.
I think if I republish it I will add the "Times" article of 1859 to it.
Omega and Alpha!
Hope you are flourishing. We shall be up for a few days next week.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
Eastbourne, January 31, 1890.
My dear Foster,
Mind you let me know what points you think want expanding in the Darwin
obituary when we meet.
We go to town on Tuesday for a few days, and I will meet you anywhere
or anywhen you like. Could you come and dine with us at 4 P.M. on
Thursday? If so, please let me know at once, that E. may kill the
fatted calf.
Harry has been and gone and done it. We heard he had gone to Yorkshire,
and were anxious, thinking that at the very least a relapse after his
influenza (which he had sharply) had occurred.
But the complaint was one with more serious sequelae still. Don't know
the young lady, but the youth has a wise head on his shoulders, and
though that did not prevent Solomon from overdoing the business, I have
every faith in his choice.
Dr. Guillemard has kindly sent me a lot of valuable information; but as
I suggested to my boy yesterday, he may find Yorkshire air more
wholesome than that of the Canaries, and it is ten to one we don't go
after all.
Ever yours,
T.H. Huxley.
[To his younger son:--]
Eastbourne, January 30, 1890.
You dear old humbug of a Boy,
Here we have been mourning over the relapse of influenza, which alone,
as we said, could have torn you from your duties, and all the while it
was nothing but an attack of palpitation such as young people are
liable to and seem none the worse for after all. We are as happy that
you are happy as you can be yourself, though from your letter that
seems saying a great deal. I am prepared to be the young lady's slave;
pray tell her that I am a model father-in-law, with my love. (By the
way, you might mention her name; it is a miserable detail, I know, but
would be interesting.) Please add that she is humbly solicited to grant
leave of absence for the Teneriffe trip, unless she thinks Northampton
air more invigorating.
Ever your loving dad,
T.H. Huxley.
On April 3, accompanied by his son, he left London on board the
"Aorangi". At Plymouth he had time to meet his friend W.F. Collier, and
to visit the Zoological Station, while], "to my great satisfaction,"
[he writes], "I received a revise (i.e. of 'Capital the Mother of
Labour') for the May 'Nineteenth Century'--from Knowles. They must have
looked sharp at the printing-office."
[It did not take him long to recover his sea-legs, and he thoroughly
enjoyed even the rougher days when the rolling of the ship was too much
for other people. The day before reaching Teneriffe he writes:--]
I have not felt so well for a long time. I do nothing, have a
prodigious appetite, and Harry declares I am getting fat in the face.
[Santa Cruz was reached early on April 10, and in the afternoon he
proceeded to Laguna, which he made his headquarters for a week. That
day he walked 10 miles, the next 15, and the third 20 in the course of
the day. He notes finding the characteristic Euphorbia and Heaths of
the Canaries; notes, too, one or two visitations of dyspepsia from
indigestible food. He writes from Laguna:--]
From all that people with whom we meet tell me, I gather that the usual
massive lies about health resorts pervade the accounts of Teneriffe.
Santa Cruz would reduce me to jelly in a week, and I hear that Orotava
is worse--stifling. Guimar, whither we go to-morrow, is warranted to be
dry and everlasting sunshine. We shall see. One of the people staying
in the house said they had rain there for a fortnight together...I am
all right now, and walked some 15 miles up hill and down dale to-day,
and I am not more than comfortably tired. However, I am not going to
try the peak. I find it cannot be done without a night out at a
considerable height when the thermometer commonly goes down below
freezing, and I am not going to run that risk for the chance of seeing
even the famous shadows.
[By some mischance, no letters from home reached him till the 26th, and
he writes from Guimar on the 23rd:--]
A lady who lives here told me yesterday that a postmistress at one
place was in the habit of taking off the stamps and turning the letters
on one side! But that luckily is not a particular dodge with ours.
We drove over here on the 17th. It is a very picturesque place 1000
feet up in the midst of a great amphitheatre of high hills, facing
north, orange-trees laden with fruit, date palms and bananas are in the
garden, and there is lovely sunshine all day long. Altogether the
climate is far the best I have found anywhere here, and the house,
which is that of a Spanish Marquesa, only opened as a hotel this
winter, is very comfortable. I am sitting with the window wide open at
nine o'clock at night, and the stars flash as if the sky were
Australian.
On Saturday we had a splendid excursion up to the top of the pass that
leads from here up to the other side of the island. Road in the proper
sense there was none, and the track incredibly bad, worse than any
Alpine path owing to the loose irregular stones. The mules, however,
pick their way like cats, and you have only to hold on. The pass is
6000 feet high, and we ascended still higher. Fortune favoured us. It
was a lovely day and the clouds lay in a great sheet a thousand feet
below. The peak, clear in the blue sky, rose up bare and majestic 5000
feet out of as desolate a desert clothed with the stiff retama shrubs
(a sort of broom) as you can well imagine. [(The Canadas, which he
calls] "the one thing worth seeing there.") It took us three hours and
a half to get up, passing for a good deal of the time through a kind of
low brush of white and red cistuses in full bloom. We saw Palma on one
side, and Grand Canary on the other, beyond the layer of clouds which
enveloped all the lower part of the island. Coming down was worse than
going up, and we walked a good part of the way, getting back about six.
About seven hours in the saddle and walking.
You never saw anything like the improvement in Harry. He is burnt deep
red; he says my nose is of the same hue, and at the end of the journey
he raced Gurilio, our guide, who understands no word of English any
more than we do Spanish, but we are quite intimate nevertheless. [My
brother indeed averred that his language of signs was far more
effectual than the Spanish which my father persisted in trying upon the
inhabitants. This guide, by the way, was very sceptical as to any
Englishman being equal to walking the seventeen miles, much less
beating him in a race over the stony track. His experience was entirely
limited to invalids.]
He reiterates his distress at not getting letters from his wife:
"Certainly I will never run the risk of being so long without--never
again." When, after all, the delayed letters reached him on his way
back from the expedition to the Canadas, thanks to a traveller who
brought them up from Laguna, he writes (April 24):--]
Catch me going out of reach of letters again. I have been horridly
anxious. Nobody--children or any one else--can be to me what you are.
Ulysses preferred his old woman to immortality, and this absence has
led me to see that he was as wise in that as in other things.
[Here is a novel description of an hotel at Puerto Orotava:--]
It is very pretty to look at, but all draughts. I compare it to the air
of a big wash-house with all the doors open, and it was agreed that the
likeness was exact.
[On May 2 he sailed for Madeira by the "German", feeling already "ten
years younger" for his holiday. On the 3rd he writes:--]
The last time I was in this place was in 1846. All my life lies between
the two visits. I was then twenty-one and a half and I shall be
sixty-five to-morrow. The place looks to me to have grown a good deal,
but I believe it is chiefly English residents whose villas dot the
hill. There were no roads forty-four years ago. Now there is one, I am
told, to Camera do Lobos nearly five miles long. That is the measure of
Portuguese progress in half a century. Moreover, the men have left off
wearing their pigtail caps and the women their hoods.
[To his youngest daughter:--]
Bella Vista Hotel, Funchal, May 6, 1890.
Dearest Babs,
This comes wishing you many happy returns of the day, though a little
late in the arrival. Harry sends his love, and desires me to say that
he took care to write a letter which should arrive in time, but
unfortunately forgot to mention the birthday in it! So I think, on the
whole, I have the pull of him. We ought to be back about the 18th or
19th, as I have put my name down for places in the "Conway Castle",
which is to call here on the 12th, and I do not suppose she will be
full. In the meanwhile, we shall fill up the time by a trip to the
other side of the island, on which we start to-morrow morning at 7.30.
You have to take your own provisions and rugs to sleep upon and under,
as the fleas la bas are said to be unusually fine and active. We start
quite a procession with a couple of horses, a guide, and two men
(owners of the nags) to carry the baggage; and I suspect that before
to-morrow night we shall have made acquaintance with some remarkably
bad apologies for roads. But the horses here seem to prefer going up
bad staircases at speed (with a man hanging on by the tail to steer),
and if you only stick to them they land you all right. I have developed
so much prowess in this line that I think of coming out in the
character of Buffalo Bill on my return. Hands and face of both of us
are done to a good burnt sienna, and a few hours more or less in the
saddle don't count. I do not think either of us have been so well for
years.
You will have heard of our doings in Teneriffe from M--. The Canadas
there is the one thing worth seeing, altogether unique. As a health
resort I should say the place is a fraud--always excepting Guimar--and
that, excellent for people in good health, is wholly unfit for a real
invalid, who must either go uphill or downhill over the worst of roads
if he leaves the hotel.
The air here is like that of South Devon at its best--very soft, but
not stifling as at Orotava. We had a capital expedition yesterday to
the Grand Corral--the ancient volcanic crater in the middle of the
island with walls some 3000 feet high, all scarred and furrowed by
ravines, and overgrown with rich vegetation. There is a little village
at the bottom of it which I should esteem as a retreat if I wished to
be out of sight and hearing of the pomps and vanities of this world. By
the way, I have been pretty well out of hearing of everything as it is,
for I only had three letters from M-- while we were in Teneriffe, and
not one here up to this date. After I had made all my arrangements to
start to-morrow I heard that a mail would be in at noon. So the letters
will have to follow us in the afternoon by one of the men, who will
wait for them.
We went to-day to lunch with Mr. Blandy, the head of the principal
shipping agency here, whose wife is the daughter of my successor at the
Fishery Office.
Well, our trip has done us both a world of good; but I am getting
homesick, and shall rejoice to be back again. I hope that Joyce is
flourishing, and Jack satisfied with the hanging of his pictures, and
that a millionaire has insisted on buying the picture and adding a
bonus. Our
best love to you all.
Ever your loving Pater.
Don't know M--'s whereabouts. But if she is with you, say I wrote her a
long screed (Number 8) and posted it to-day--with my love as a model
husband and complete letter-writer.
[On returning home he found that the Linnean medal had been awarded
him.]
4 Marlborough Place, May 18, 1890.
My dear Hooker,
How's a' wi' you? My boy and I came back from Madeira yesterday in
great feather. As for myself, riding about on mules, or horses, for six
to ten hours at a stretch--burning in sun or soaking in rain--over the
most entirely breakneck roads and tracks I have ever made acquaintance
with, except perhaps in Morocco--has proved a most excellent tonic,
cathartic, and alterative all in one. Existence of heart and stomach
are matters of faith, not of knowledge, with me at present. I hope it
may last, and I have had such a sickener of invalidism that my
intention is to keep severely out of all imprudences.
But what is a man to do if his friends take advantage of his absence,
and go giving him gold medals behind his back? That you have been an
accomplice in this nefarious plot--mine own familiar friend whom I
trusted and trust--is not to be denied. Well, it is very pleasant to
have toil that is now all ancient history remembered, and I shall go to
the meeting and the dinner and make my speech in spite of as many
possible devils of dyspepsia as there are plates and dishes on the
table.
We were lucky in getting in for nothing worse than heavy rolling,
either out or in. Teneriffe is well worth seeing. The Canadas is
something quite by itself, a bit of Egypt 6000 feet up with a bare
volcanic cone, or rather long barrow sticking up 6000 feet in the
middle of it.
Otherwise, Madeira is vastly superior. I rode across from Funchal to
Sao Vicente, up to Paul da Serra, then along the coast to Santa Anna,
and back from Santa Anna to Funchal. I have seen nothing comparable
except in Mauritius, nor anything anywhere like the road by the cliffs
from Sao Vicente to Santa Anna. Lucky for me that my ancient nautical
habit of sticking on to a horse came back. A good deal of the road is
like a bad staircase, with no particular banisters, and a well of 1000
feet with the sea at the bottom. Your heart would rejoice over the
great heaths. I saw one, the bole of which split into nearly equal
trunks; and one of these was just a metre in circumference, and had a
head as big as a moderate-sized ash. Gorse in full flower, up to 12 or
15 feet high. On the whole a singular absence of flowering herbs except
Cinerarias and, especially in Teneriffe, Echium. I did not chance to
see a Euphorbia in Madeira, though I believe there are some. In
Teneriffe they are everywhere in queer shapes, and there was a thing
that mimicked the commonest Euphorbia but had no milk, which I will ask
you about when I see you. The Euphorbias were all in flower, but this
thing had none. But you will have had enough of my scrawl.
Ever yours affectionately,
T.H. Huxley.