He had intellect to comprehend his highest duty distinctly, and force
of character to do it; which of us dare ask for a higher summary of his
life than that?
[Such was Huxley's epitaph upon Henslow; it was the standard which he
endeavoured to reach in his own life. It is the expression of that
passion for veracity which was perhaps his strongest characteristic; an
uncompromising passion for truth in thought, which would admit no
particle of self-deception, no assertion beyond what could be verified;
for truth in act, perfect straightforwardness and sincerity, with
complete disregard of personal consequences for uttering unpalatable
fact.
Truthfulness, in his eyes, was the cardinal virtue, without which no
stable society can exist. Conviction, sincerity, he always respected,
whether on his own side or against him. Clever men, he would say, are
as common as blackberries; the rare thing is to find a good one. The
lie from interested motives was only more hateful to him than the lie
from self-delusion or foggy thinking. With this he classed the "sin of
faith," as he called it; that form of credence which does not fulfil
the duty of making a right use of reason; which prostitutes reason by
giving assent to propositions which are neither self-evident nor
adequately proved.
This principle has always been far from finding universal acceptance.
One of his theological opponents went so far as to affirm that a
doctrine may be not only held, but dogmatically insisted on, by a
teacher who is, all the time, fully aware that science may ultimately
prove it to be quite untenable.
His own course went to the opposite extreme. In teaching, where it was
possible to let the facts speak for themselves, he did not further urge
their bearing upon wider problems. He preferred to warn beginners
against drawing superficial inferences in favour of his own general
theories, from facts the real meaning of which was not immediately
apparent. Father Hahn (S.J.), who studied under him in 1876, writes:--
One day when I was talking to him, our conversation turned upon
evolution. "There is one thing about you I cannot understand," I said,
"and I should like a word in explanation. For several months now I have
been attending your course, and I have never heard you mention
evolution, while in your public lectures everywhere you openly proclaim
yourself an evolutionist." ("Revue des Questions Scientifiques"
(Brussels), for October 1895.)
Now it would be impossible to imagine a better opportunity for
insisting on evolution than his lectures on comparative anatomy, when
animals are set side by side in respect of the gradual development of
functions. But Huxley was so reserved on this subject in his lectures
that, speaking one day of a species forming a transition between two
others, he immediately added:--]
"When I speak of transition I do not in the least mean to say that one
species turned into a second to develop thereafter into a third. What I
mean is, that the characters of the second are intermediate between
those of the two others. It is as if I were to say that such a
Cathedral, Canterbury, for example, is a transition between York
Minster and Westminster Abbey. No one would imagine, on hearing the
word transition, that a transmutation of these buildings actually took
place from one into other." [(Doubtless in connection with the familiar
warning that intermediate types are not necessarily links in the direct
line of descent.)
But to return to his reply:--]
"Here in my teaching lectures [he said to me] I have time to put the
facts fully before a trained audience. In my public lectures I am
obliged to pass rapidly over the facts, and I put forward my personal
convictions. And it is for this that people come to hear me."
[As to the question whether children should be brought up in entire
disregard to the beliefs rejected by himself, but still current among
the mass of his fellow-countrymen, he was of opinion that they ought to
know] "the mythology of their time and country," [otherwise one would
at the best tend to make young prigs of them; but as they grew up their
questions should be answered frankly. (The wording of a paragraph in
Professor Mivart's "Reminiscences" ("Nineteenth Century", December
1897, P. 993), tends, I think, to leave a wrong impression on this
point.)
The natural tendency to veracity, strengthened by the observation of
the opposite quality in one with whom he was early brought into
contact, received its decisive impulse, as has been told before, from
Carlyle, whose writings confirmed and established his youthful reader
in a hatred of shams and make-believes equal to his own.
In his mind no compromise was possible between truth and untruth. (As
he once said, when urged to write a more eulogistic notice of a dead
friend than he thought deserved], "The only serious temptations to
perjury I have ever known have arisen out of the desire to be of some
comfort to people I cared for in trouble. If there are such things as
Plato's 'Royal Lies' they are surely those which one is tempted to tell
on such occasions. Mrs. -- is such a good devoted little woman, and I
am so doubtful about having a soul, that it seems absurd to hesitate to
peril it for her satisfaction.") [Against authorities and influences he
published "Man's Place in Nature," though warned by his friends that to
do so meant ruin to his prospects. When he had once led the way and
challenged the upholders of conventional orthodoxy, others backed him
up with a whole armoury of facts. But his fight was as far as possible
for the truth itself, for fact, not merely for controversial victory or
personal triumph. Yet, as has been said by a representative of a very
different school of thought, who can wonder that he should have hit out
straight from the shoulder, in reply to violent or insidious attacks,
the stupidity of which sometimes merited scorn as well as anger?
In his theological controversies he was no less careful to avoid any
approach to mere abuse or ribaldry such as some opponents of Christian
dogma indulged in. For this reason he refused to interpose in the
well-known Foote case. Discussion, he said, could be carried on
effectually without deliberate wounding of others' feelings.
As he wrote in reply to an appeal for help in this case (March 12,
1883):--]
I have not read the writings for which Mr. Foote was prosecuted. But,
unless their nature has been grossly misrepresented, I cannot say that
I feel disposed to intervene on his behalf.
I am ready to go great lengths in defence of freedom of discussion, but
I decline to admit that rightful freedom is attacked, when a man is
prevented from coarsely and brutally insulting his neighbours' honest
beliefs.
I would rather make an effort to get legal penalties inflicted with
equal rigour on some of the anti-scientific blasphemers--who are quite
as coarse and unmannerly in their attacks on opinions worthy of all
respect as Mr. Foote can possibly have been.
[The grand result of his determination not to compromise where truth
was concerned, was the securing freedom of thought and speech. One man
after another, looking back on his work, declares that if we can say
what we think now, it is because he fought the battle of freedom. Not
indeed the battle of toleration, if toleration means toleration of
error for its own sake. Error, he thought, ought to be extirpated by
all legitimate means, and not assisted because it is conscientiously
held.
As Lord Hobhouse wrote, soon after his death:--
I see now many laudatory notices of him in papers. But I have not seen,
and I think the younger men do not know, that which (apart from
science) I should put forward as his strongest claim to reverence and
gratitude; and that is the steadfast courage and consummate ability
with which he fought the battle of intellectual freedom, and insisted
that people should be allowed to speak their honest convictions without
being oppressed or slandered by the orthodox. He was one of those,
perhaps the very foremost, who won that priceless freedom for us; and,
as is too common, people enter into the labours of the brave, and do
not even know what their elders endured, or what has been done for
themselves.
With this went a proud independence of spirit, intolerant of patronage,
careless of titular honours, indifferent to the accumulation of worldly
wealth. He cared little even for recognition of his work. "If I had 400
pounds a year" [A sum which might have supported a bachelor, but was
entirely inadequate to the needs of a large family.], he exclaimed at
the outset of his career, "I should be content to work anonymously for
the advancement of science." The only recognition he considered worth
having, was that of the scientific world; yet so little did he seek it,
so little insist on questions of priority, that, as Professor Howes
tells me, there are at South Kensington among the mass of unpublished
drawings from dissections made by him, many which show that he had
arrived at discoveries which afterwards brought credit to other
investigators.
He was as ready to disclaim for himself any merits which really
belonged to his predecessors, whether philosophical or scientific. He
was too well read in their works not to be aware of the debt owed them
by his own generation, and he reminded the world how little the
scientific insight of Goethe, for instance, or the solid labours of
Buffon or Reaumur or Lamarck, deserved oblivion.
The only point on which he did claim recognition was the honesty of his
motives. He was incapable of doing anything underhand, and he could not
bear even the appearance of such conduct towards his friends, or those
with whom he had business relations. In such cases he always took the
bull by the horns, acknowledged an oversight or explained what was
capable of misunderstanding. The choice between Edward Forbes and
Hooker for the Royal Society's medal, or the explanations to Mr.
Spencer for not joining a social reform league of which the latter was
a prominent member, will serve as instances.]
The most considerable difference I note among men [he wrote], is not in
their readiness to fall into error, but in their readiness to
acknowledge these inevitable lapses.
[For himself, he let no personal feelings stand in the way when fact
negatived his theories: once convinced that they were untenable, he
gave up Bathybius and the European origin of the Horse without
hesitation.
The regard in which he was held by his friends was such that he was
sometimes appealed to by both parties in a dispute. He was a man to be
trusted with the confidence of his friends.] "Yes, you are quite right
about 'loyal,'" [he writes to Mr. Knowles], "I love my friends and hate
my enemies--which may not be in accordance with the Gospel, but I have
found it a good wearing creed for honest men." [But he only regarded as
"enemies" those whom he found to be double-dealers, shufflers,
insincere, untrustworthy; a fair opponent he respected, and he could
agree to differ with a friend without altering his friendship.
A lifelong impression of him was thus summed up by Dr. A.R. Wallace:--
I find that he was my junior by two years, yet he has always seemed to
me to be the older, mainly no doubt, because from the very first time I
saw him (now more than forty years ago), I recognised his vast
superiority in ability, in knowledge, and in all those qualities that
enable a man to take a foremost place in the world. I owe him thanks
for much kindness and for assistance always cordially given, and
although we had many differences of opinion, I never received from him
a harsh or unkind word.
To those who could only judge him from his controversial literature, or
from a formal business meeting, he often appeared hard and
unsympathetic, but never to those who saw beneath the surface. In
personal intercourse, if he disliked a man--and a strong individuality
has strong likes and dislikes--he would merely veil his feelings under
a superabundant politeness of the chilliest kind; but to any one
admitted to his friendship he was sympathy itself. And thus, although I
have heard him say that his friends, in the fullest sense of the word,
could be reckoned on the fingers of one hand, the impression he made
upon all who came within the circle of his friendship was such that
quite a number felt themselves to possess his intimacy, and one wrote,
after his death: "His many private friends are almost tempted to forget
the public loss, in thinking of the qualities which so endeared him to
them all."
Both the speculative and the practical sides of his intellect were
strongly developed. On the one hand, he had an intense love of
knowledge, the desire to attain true knowledge of facts, and to
organise them in their true relations. His contributions to pure
science never fail to illustrate both these tendencies. His earlier
researches brought to light new facts in animal life, and new ideas as
to the affinities of the creatures he studied; his later investigations
were coloured by Darwin's views, and in return contributed no little
direct evidence in favour of evolution. But while the progress of the
evolution theory in England owed more to his clear and unwearied
exposition than to any other cause, while from the first he had
indicated the points, such as the causes of sterility and variation,
which must be cleared up by further investigation in order to complete
the Darwinian theory, he did not add another to the many speculations
since put forward.
On the other hand, intense as was his love of pure knowledge, it was
balanced by his unceasing desire to apply that knowledge in the
guidance of life. Always feeling that science was not solely for the
men of science, but for the people, his constant object was to help the
struggling world to ideas which should help them to think truly and so
to live rightly. It is still true, he declared, that the people perish
for want of knowledge. "If I am to be remembered at all," he writes
(see volume 2), "I should like to be remembered as one who did his best
to help the people." And again, he says in his Autobiographical Sketch,
that other marks of success were as nothing if he could hope that he
"had somewhat helped that movement of opinion which has been called the
New Reformation."
This kind of aim in his work, of taking up the most fruitful idea of
his time and bringing it home to all, is typified by his remark as he
entered New York harbour on his visit to America in 1876, and watched
the tugs hard at work as they traversed the bay.] "If I were not a
man," [he said], "I think I should like to be a tug."
[Two incidents may be cited to show that he did not entirely fail of
appreciation among those whom he tried to help. Speaking of the year
1874, Professor Mivart writes ("Reminiscences of T.H. Huxley,"
"Nineteenth Century", December 1897.)
I recollect going with him and Mr. John Westlake, Q.C., to a meeting of
artisans in the Blackfriars Road, to whom he gave a friendly address.
He felt a strong interest in working-men, and was much beloved by them.
On one occasion, having taken a cab home, on his arrival there, when he
held out his fare to the cabman, the latter replied, "Oh no, Professor,
I have had too much pleasure and profit from hearing you lecture to
take any money from your pocket--proud to have driven you, sir!"
The other is from a letter to the "Pall Mall Gazette" of September 20,
1892, from Mr. Raymond Blaythwayt, on "The Uses of Sentiment":--
Only to-day I had a most striking instance of sentiment come beneath my
notice. I was about to enter my house, when a plain, simply-dressed
working-man came up to me with a note in his hand, and touching his
hat, he said, "I think this is for you, sir," and then he added, "Will
you give me the envelope, sir, as a great favour?" I looked at it, and
seeing it bore the signature of Professor Huxley, I replied, "Certainly
I will; but why do you ask for it?" "Well," said he, "it's got
Professor Huxley's signature, and it will be something for me to show
my mates and keep for my children. He have done me and my like a lot of
good; no man more."
In practical administration, his judgment of men, his rapid perception
of the essential points at issue, his observance of the necessary
limits of official forms, combined with the greatest possible
elasticity within these limits, made him extremely successful.
As Professor (writes the late Professor Jeffery Parker), Huxley's rule
was characterised by what is undoubtedly the best policy for the head
of a department. To a new subordinate, "The General," as he was always
called, was rather stern and exacting, but when once he was convinced
that his man was to be trusted, he practically let him take his own
course; never interfered in matters of detail, accepted suggestions
with the greatest courtesy and good humour, and was always ready with a
kindly and humorous word of encouragement in times of difficulty. I was
once grumbling to him about how hard it was to carry on the work of the
laboratory through a long series of November fogs, "when neither sun
nor stars in many days appeared."] "Never mind, Parker," [he said,
instantly capping my quotation], "cast four anchors out of the stern
and wish for day."
[Nothing, indeed, better illustrates this willingness to listen to
suggested improvements than the inversion of the order of studies in
the biological course which he inaugurated in 1872, namely, the
substitution of the anatomy of a vertebrate for the microscopic
examination of a unicellular organism as the opening study. This was
entirely Parker's doing. "As one privileged at the time to play a minor
part," writes Professor Howes ("Nature" January 6, 1898 page 228), "I
well recall the determination in Parker's mind that the change was
desirable, and in Huxley's, that it was not. Again and again did Parker
appeal in vain, until at last, on the morning of October 2, 1878, he
triumphed."
On his students he made a deep and lasting impression.
His lectures (writes Jeffery Parker) were like his writings, luminously
clear, without the faintest disposition to descend to the level of his
audience; eloquent, but with no trace of the empty rhetoric which so
often does duty for that quality; full of a high seriousness, but with
no suspicion of pedantry; lightened by an occasional epigram or flashes
of caustic humour, but with none of the small jocularity in which it is
such a temptation to a lecturer to indulge. As one listened to him one
felt that comparative anatomy was indeed worthy of the devotion of a
life, and that to solve a morphological problem was as fine a thing as
to win a battle. He was an admirable draughtsman, and his blackboard
illustrations were always a great feature of his lectures, especially
when, to show the relation of two animal types, he would, by a few
rapid strokes and smudges, evolve the one into the other before our
eyes. He seemed to have a real affection for some of the specimens
illustrating his lectures, and would handle them in a peculiarly loving
manner; when he was lecturing on man, for instance, he would sometimes
throw his arm over the shoulder of the skeleton beside him and take its
hand, as if its silent companionship were an inspiration. To me his
lectures before his small class at Jermyn Street or South Kensington
were almost more impressive than the discourses at the Royal
Institution, where for an hour and a half he poured forth a stream of
dignified, earnest, sincere words in perfect literary form, and without
the assistance of a note.
Another description is from the pen of an old pupil in the autumn of
1876, Professor H. Fairfield Osborn, of Columbia College:--
Huxley, as a teacher, can never be forgotten by any of his students. He
entered the lecture-room promptly as the clock was striking nine (In
most years the lectures began at ten.), rather quickly, and with his
head bent forward "as if oppressive with its mind." He usually glanced
attention to his class of about ninety, and began speaking before he
reached his chair. He spoke between his lips, but with perfectly clear
analysis, with thorough interest, and with philosophic insight which
was far above the average of his students. He used very few charts, but
handled the chalk with great skill, sketching out the anatomy of an
animal as if it were a transparent object. As in Darwin's face, and as
in Erasmus Darwin's or Buffon's, and many other anatomists with a
strong sense of form, his eyes were heavily overhung by a projecting
forehead and eyebrows, and seemed at times to look inward. His lips
were firm and closely set, with the expression of positiveness, and the
other feature which most marked him was the very heavy mass of hair
falling over his forehead, which he would frequently stroke or toss
back. Occasionally he would light up the monotony of anatomical
description by a bit of humour.
Huxley was the father of modern laboratory instruction; but in 1879 he
was so intensely engrossed with his own researches that he very seldom
came through the laboratory, which was ably directed by T. Jeffery
Parker, assisted by Howes and W. Newton Parker, all of whom are now
professors, Howes having succeeded to Huxley's chair. Each visit,
therefore, inspired a certain amount of terror, which was really
unwarranted, for Huxley always spoke in the kindest tones to his
students, although sometimes he could not resist making fun at their
expense. There was an Irish student who sat in front of me, whose
anatomical drawings in water-colour were certainly most remarkable
productions. Huxley, in turning over his drawing-book, paused at a
large blur, under which was carefully inscribed, "sheep's liver," and
smilingly said], "I am glad to know that is a liver; it reminds me as
much of Cologne cathedral in a fog as of anything I have ever seen
before." [Fortunately the nationality of the student enabled him to
fully appreciate the humour.
The same note is sounded in Professor Mivart's description of these
lectures in his Reminiscences:--
The great value of Huxley's anatomical ideas, and the admirable
clearness with which he explained them, led me in the autumn of 1861 to
seek admission as a student to his course of lectures at the School of
Mines in Jermyn Street. When I entered his small room there to make
this request, he was giving the finishing touches to a dissection of
part of the nervous system of a skate, worked out for the benefit of
his students. He welcomed my application with the greatest cordiality,
save that he insisted I should be only an honorary student, or rather,
should assist at his lectures as a friend. I availed myself of his
permission on the very next day, and subsequently attended almost all
his lectures there and elsewhere, so that he one day said to me, "I
shall call you my 'constant reader.'" To be such a reader was to me an
inestimable privilege, and so I shall ever consider it. I have heard
many men lecture, but I never heard any one lecture as did Professor
Huxley. He was my very ideal of a lecturer. Distinct in utterance, with
an agreeable voice, lucid as it was possible to be in exposition, with
admirably chosen language, sufficiently rapid, yet never hurried, often
impressive in manner, yet never otherwise than completely natural, and
sometimes allowing his audience a glimpse of that rich fund of humour
ever ready to well forth when occasion permitted, sometimes accompanied
with an extra gleam in his bright dark eyes, sometimes expressed with a
dryness and gravity of look which gave it a double zest.
I shall never forget the first time I saw him enter his lecture-room.
He came in rapidly, yet without bustle, and as the clock struck, a
brief glance at his audience and then at once to work. He had the
excellent habit of beginning each lecture (save, of course, the first)
with a recapitulation of the main points of the preceding one. The
course was amply illustrated by excellent coloured diagrams, which, I
believe, he had made; but still more valuable were the chalk sketches
he would draw on the blackboard with admirable facility, while he was
talking, his rapid, dexterous strokes quickly building up an organism
in our minds, simultaneously through ear and eye. The lecture over, he
was ever ready to answer questions, and I often admired his patience in
explaining points which there was no excuse for any one not having
understood.
Still more was I struck with the great pleasure which he showed when he
saw that some special points of his teaching had not only been
comprehended, but had borne fruit, by their suggestiveness in an
appreciative mind.
To one point I desire specially to bear witness. There were persons who
dreaded sending young men to him, fearing lest their young friends'
religious beliefs should be upset by what they might hear said. For
years I attended his lectures, but never once did I hear him make use
of his position as a teacher to inculcate, or even hint at, his own
theological views, or to depreciate or assail what might be supposed to
be the religion of his hearers. No one could have behaved more loyally
in that respect, and a proof that I thought so is that I subsequently
sent my own son to be his pupil at South Kensington, where his
experience confirmed what had previously been my own.
As to science, I learnt more from him in two years than I had acquired
in any previous decade of biological study.
The picture is completed by Professor Howes in the "Students' Magazine"
of the Royal College of Science:--
As a class lecturer Huxley was facile princeps, and only those who were
privileged to sit under him can form a conception of his delivery.
Clear, deliberate, never hesitant nor unduly emphatic, never
repetitional, always logical, his every word told. Great, however, as
were his class lectures, his working-men's were greater. Huxley was a
firm believer in the "distillatio per ascensum" of scientific knowledge
and culture, and spared no pains in approaching the artisan and
so-called "working classes." He gave the workmen of his best. The
substance of his "Man's Place in Nature", one of the most successful
and popular of his writings, and of his "Crayfish", perhaps the most
perfect zoological treatise ever published, was first communicated to
them. In one of the last conversations I had with him, I asked his
views on the desirability of discontinuing the workmen's lectures at
Jermyn Street, since the development of working-men's colleges and
institutes is regarded by some to have rendered their continuance
unnecessary. He replied, almost with indignation], "With our central
situation and resources, we ought to be in a position to give the
workmen that which they cannot get elsewhere," [adding that he would
deeply deplore any such discontinuance.
And now, a word or two concerning Huxley's personal conduct towards his
pupils, hearers, and subordinates.
As an examiner he was most just, aiming only to ascertain the
examinee's knowledge of fundamentals, his powers of work, and the
manner in which he had been taught. A country school lad came near the
boundary line in the examination; though generally weak, his worst
fault was a confusion of the parts of the heart. In his description of
that organ he had transposed the valves. On appeal, Huxley let him
through, observing, most characteristically, "Poor little beggar, I
never got them correctly myself until I reflected that a bishop was
never in the right." (The "mitral" valve being on the left side.)
Again, a student of more advanced years, of the "mugging" type, who had
come off with flying colours in an elementary examination, showed signs
of uneasiness as the advanced one approached. "Stick an observation
into him," said Huxley. It was stuck, and acted like a stiletto, a jump
into the air and utter collapse being the result.
With his hearers Huxley was most sympathetic. He always assumed
absolute ignorance on their part, and took nothing for granted. (This
was a maxim on lecturing, adopted from Faraday.) When time permitted,
he would remain after a lecture to answer questions; and in connection
with his so doing his wonderful power of gauging and rising to a
situation, once came out most forcibly. Turning to a student, he asked,
"Well, I hope you understood it all." "All, sir, but one part, during
which you stood between me and the blackboard," was the reply: the
rejoinder, "I did my best to make myself clear, but could not render
myself transparent." Quick of comprehension and of action, he would
stand no nonsense. The would-be teacher who, wholly unfitted by nature
for educational work, was momentarily dismissed, realised this, let us
hope to his advantage. And the man suspected of taking notes of
Huxley's lectures for publication unauthorised, probably learned the
lesson of his life, on being reminded that, in the first place, a
lecture was the property of the person who delivered it, and, in the
second, he was not the first person who had mistaken aspiration for
inspiration.
Though candid, Huxley was never unkind...
Huxley never forgot a kindly action, never forsook a friend, nor
allowed a labour to go unrewarded. In testimony to his sympathy to
those about him and his self-sacrifice for the cause of science, it may
be stated that in the old days, when the professors took the fees and
disbursed the working expenses of the laboratories, he, doing this at a
loss, would refund the fees of students whose position, from friendship
or special circumstances, was exceptional.
As for his lectures and addresses to the public, they used to be
thronged by crowds of attentive listeners.
Huxley's public addresses (writes Professor Osborn) always gave me the
impression of being largely impromptu; but he once told me: "I always
think out carefully every word I am going to say. There is no greater
danger than the so-called INSPIRATION OF THE MOMENT, which leads you to
say something which is not exactly true, or which you would regret
afterwards."
Mr. G.W. Smalley has also left a striking description of him as a
lecturer in the seventies and early eighties.
I used always to admire the simple and business-like way in which
Huxley made his entry on great occasions. He hated anything like
display, and would have none of it. At the Royal Institution, more than
almost anywhere else, the lecturer, on whom the concentric circles of
spectators in their steep amphitheatre look down, focuses the gaze.
Huxley never seemed aware that anybody was looking at him. From
self-consciousness he was, here as elsewhere, singularly free, as from
self-assertion. He walked in through the door on the left, as if he
were entering his own laboratory. In these days he bore scarcely a mark
of age. He was in the full vigour of manhood and looked the man he was.
Faultlessly dressed--the rule in the Royal Institution is evening
costume--with a firm step and easy bearing, he took his place
apparently without a thought of the people who were cheering him. To
him it was an anniversary. He looked, and he probably was, the master.
Surrounded as he was by the celebrities of science and the ornaments of
London drawing-rooms, there was none who had quite the same kind of
intellectual ascendancy which belonged to him. The square forehead, the
square jaw, the tense lines of the mouth, the deep flashing dark eyes,
the impression of something more than strength he gave you, an
impression of sincerity, of solid force, of immovability, yet with the
gentleness arising from the serene consciousness of his strength--all
this belonged to Huxley and to him alone. The first glance magnetised
his audience. The eyes were those of one accustomed to command, of one
having authority, and not fearing on occasion to use it. The hair swept
carelessly away from the broad forehead and grew rather long behind,
yet the length did not suggest, as it often does, effeminacy. He was
masculine in everything--look, gesture, speech. Sparing of gesture,
sparing of emphasis, careless of mere rhetorical or oratorical art, he
had nevertheless the secret of the highest art of all, whether in
oratory or whatever else--he had simplicity. The force was in the
thought and the diction, and he needed no other. The voice was rather
deep, low, but quite audible, at times sonorous, and always full. He
used the chest-notes. His manner here, in the presence of this select
and rather limited audience--for the theatre of the Royal Institution
holds, I think, less than a thousand people--was exactly the same as
before a great company whom he addressed at [Liverpool], as President
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. I remember
going late to that, and having to sit far back, yet hearing every word
easily; and there too the feeling was the same, that he had mastered
his audience, taken possession of them, and held them to the end in an
unrelaxing grip, as a great actor at his best does. There was nothing
of the actor about him, except that he knew how to stand still, but
masterful he ever was.
Up to the time of his last illness, he regularly breakfasted at eight,
and avoided, as far as possible, going out to that meal, a "detestable
habit" as he called it, which put him off for the whole day. He left
the house about nine, and from that time till midnight at earliest was
incessantly busy. His regular lectures involved an immensity of labour,
for he would never make a statement in them which he had not personally
verified by experiment. In the Jermyn Street days he habitually made
preparations to illustrate the points on which he was lecturing, for
his students had no laboratory in which to work out the things for
themselves. His lectures to working-men also involved as much careful
preparation as the more conspicuous discourses at the Royal Institution.
This thoroughness of preparation had no less effect on the teacher than
on the taught. He writes to an old pupil:--]
It is pleasant when the "bread cast upon the water" returns after many
days; and if the crumbs given in my lectures have had anything to do
with the success on which I congratulate you, I am very glad.
I used to say of my own lectures that if nobody else learned anything
from them, I did; because I always took a great deal of pains over
them. But it is none the less satisfactory to find that there WERE
other learners.
[As for the ordinary course of a day's work, the more fitful energy and
useless mornings of the earliest period in London were soon left
behind. He was never one of those portentously early risers who do a
fair day's work before other people are up; there was only one period,
about 1873, when he had to be specially careful of his health, and,
under Sir Andrew Clark's regime, took riding exercise for an hour each
day before starting for South Kensington, that he records the fact of
doing any work before breakfast, and that was letter-writing.
Much of the day during the session, and still more when his lectures
were over, would thus be spent in original research, or in the
examination and description of fossils in his official duty as
Paleontologist to the Survey. As often as not, there would be a sitting
of some Royal Commission to attend; committees of some learned society;
meetings or dinners in the evening; if not, there would be an article
to write or proofs to correct. Indeed, the greater part of the work by
which the world knows him best was done after dinner, and after a long
day's work in the lecture-room and laboratory.
He possessed a wonderful faculty for tearing out the heart of a book,
reading it through at a gallop, but knowing what it said on all the
points that interested him. Of verbal memory he had very little; in
spite of all his reading I do not believe he knew half a dozen
consecutive lines of poetry by heart. What he did know was the
substance of what an author had written; how it fitted into his own
scheme of knowledge; and where to find any point again when he wished
to cite it.
In his biological studies his immense knowledge was firmly fixed in his
mind by practical investigation; as is said above, he would take at
second hand nothing for which he vouched in his teaching, and was
always ready to repeat for himself the experiments of others, which
determined questions of interest to him. The citations, analyses, maps,
with which he frequently accompanied his reading, were all part of the
same method of acquiring facts and setting them in order within his
mind. So careful, indeed, was he in giving nothing at second hand, that
one of his scientific friends reproached him with wasting his time upon
unnecessary scientific work, to which competent investigators had
already given the stamp of their authority. "Poor--," was his comment
afterwards, "if that is his own practice, his work will never live." On
the literary side, he was omnivorous--consuming everything, as Mr.
Spencer put it, from fairy tales to the last volume on metaphysics.
Unlike Darwin, to whom scientific research was at length the only thing
engrossing enough to make him oblivious of his never-ending ill-health,
to the gradual exclusion of other interests, literary and artistic,
Huxley never lost his delight in literature or in art. He had a keen
eye for a picture or a piece of sculpture, for, in addition to the
draughtsman's and anatomist's sense of form, he had a strong sense of
colour. To good music he was always susceptible. (To one breaking in
upon him at certain afternoon hours in his room at South Kensington, "a
whiff of the pipe" (writes Professor Howes), "and a snatch of some
choice melody or a Bach's fugue, were the not infrequent welcome.") He
played no instrument; as a young man, however, he used to sing a
little, but his voice, though true, was never strong. But he had small
leisure to devote to art. On his holidays he would sometimes sketch
with a firm and rapid touch. His illustrations to the "Cruise of the
Rattlesnake" show what his untrained capacities were. But to go to a
concert or opera was rare after middle life; to go to the theatre rarer
still, much as he appreciated a good play. His time was too deeply
mortgaged; and in later life, the deafness which grew upon him added a
new difficulty.
In poetry he was sensitive both to matter and form. One school of
modern poetry he dismissed as "sensuous caterwauling": a busy man, time
and patience failed him to wade through the trivial discursiveness of
so much of Wordsworth's verse; thus unfortunately he never realised the
full value of a poet in whom the mass of ore bears so large a
proportion to the pure metal. Shelley was too diffuse to be among his
first favourites; but for simple beauty, Keats; for that, and for the
comprehension of the meaning of modern science, Tennyson; for strength
and feeling, Browning as represented by his earlier poems--these were
the favourites among the moderns. He knew his eighteenth-century
classics, but knew better his Milton and his Shakespeare, to whom he
turned with ever-increasing satisfaction, as men do who have lived a
full life.
His early acquaintance with German had given him a lasting admiration
of the greatest representatives of German literature, Goethe above all,
in whose writings he found a moral grandeur to be ranked with that of
the Hebrew prophets. Eager to read Dante in the original, he spent much
of his leisure on board the "Rattlesnake" in making out the Italian
with the aid of a dictionary, and in this way came to know the beauties
of the "Divina Commedia". On the other hand, it was a scientific
interest which led him in later life to take up his Greek, though one
use he put it to was to read Homer in the original.
Though he was a great novel-reader, and, as he grew older, would always
have a novel ready to take up for a while in the evening, his chief
reading, in German and French as well as English, was philosophy and
history.
His recreations were, as a rule, literary, and consisted in a change of
mental occupation. The only times I can remember his playing an outdoor
game are in the late sixties, when he started his elder children at
cricket on the common at Littlehampton, and in 1871 when he played golf
at St. Andrews. When first married, he promised his wife to reserve
Saturday afternoons for recreation, and constantly went with her to the
Ella concerts. About 1861 she urged him to take exercise by joining Mr.
Herbert Spencer at racquets; but the pressure of work before long
absorbed all his time. In his youth he was extremely fond of chess, and
played eagerly with his fellow-students at Charing Cross Hospital or
with his messmates on board the "Rattlesnake". But after he taught me
the game, somewhere about 1869 or 1870, I do not think he ever found
time for it again.
His principal exercise was walking during the holidays. In his earlier
days especially, when overwrought by the stress of his life in London,
he used to go off with a friend for a week's walking tour in Wales or
the Lakes, in Brittany or the Eifel country, or in summer for a longer
trip to Switzerland. In this way he "burnt up the waste products," as
he would say, of his town life, and came back fresh for a new spell of
unintermittent work.
But on the whole, the amount of exercise he took was insufficient for
his bodily needs. Even the riding prescribed for him when he first
broke down, became irksome, and was not continued very long, although
his bodily machine was such as could only be kept in perfect working
order by more exercise than he would give. His physique was not adapted
to burn up the waste without special stimulus. I remember once, as he
and I were walking up Beachy Head, we passed a man with a splendid big
chest. "Ah," said my father regretfully, "if I had only had a chest
like that, what a lot of work I could have done."
When, in 1872, he built his new house in Marlborough Place, my father
bargained for two points; one, that each member of the family should
have a corner of his or her own, where, as he used to say, it would be
possible to "consume their own smoke"; the other, that the common
living-rooms should be of ample size. Thus from 1874 onwards he was
enabled to see something of his many friends who would come as far as
St. John's Wood on a Sunday evening. No formal invitation for a special
day was needed. The guests came, before supper or after, sometimes
more, sometimes fewer, as on any ordinary at-home day. There was a
simple informal meal at 6.30 or 7 o'clock, which called itself by no
more dignified name than high tea--was, in fact, a cold supper with
varying possibilities in the direction of dinner or tea. It was a
chance medley of old and young--friends of the parents and friends of
the children, but all ultimately centring round the host himself, whose
end of the table never flagged for conversation, grave or gay.
Afterwards talk would go on in the drawing-room, or, on warm summer
evenings, in the garden--nothing very extensive, but boasting a lawn
with an old apple-tree at the further end, and in the borders such
flowers and trees as endure London air. Later on, there was almost sure
to be some music, to which my father himself was devoted. His daughters
sang; a musical friend would be there; Mr. Herbert Spencer, a frequent
visitor, was an authority on music. Once only do I recollect any other
form of entertainment, and that was an occasion when Sir Henry Irving,
then not long established at the Lyceum, was present and recited
"Eugene Aram" with great effect.
In his "London Letters" Mr. G.W. Smalley has recorded his impressions
of these evenings (Another interesting account from the same pen is to
be found in the article "Mr. Huxley," Scribner's Magazine, October
1895.), at which he was often present:--
There used to be Sunday evening dinners and parties in Marlborough
Place, to which people from many other worlds than those of abstract
science were bidden; where talk was to be heard of a kind rare in any
world. It was scientific at times, but subdued to the necessities of
the occasion; speculative, yet kept within such bounds that bishop or
archbishop might have listened without offence; political even, and
still not commonplace; literary without pretence, and when artistic,
free from affectation.
There and elsewhere Mr. Huxley easily took the lead if he cared to, or
if challenged. Nobody was more ready in a greater variety of topics,
and if they were scientific it was almost always another who introduced
them. Unlike some of his comrades of the Royal Society, he was of
opinion that man does not live by science alone, and nothing came amiss
to him. All his life long he has been in the front of the battle that
has raged between science and--not religion, but theology in its more
dogmatic form. Even in private the alarm of war is sometimes heard, and
Mr. Huxley is not a whit less formidable as a disputant across the
table than with pen in hand. Yet an angry man must be very angry indeed
before he could be angry with this adversary. He disarmed his enemies
with an amiable grace that made defeat endurable if not entirely
delightful.
As for his method of handling scientific subjects in conversation:--
He has the same quality, the same luminous style of exposition, with
which his printed books have made all readers in America and England
familiar. Yet it has more than that. You cannot listen to him without
thinking more of the speaker than of his science, more of the solid
beautiful nature than of the intellectual gifts, more of his manly
simplicity and sincerity than of all his knowledge and his long
services.
But his personality left the deepest impression, perhaps, upon those
who studied under him and worked with him longest, before taking their
place elsewhere in the front ranks of biological science.
With him (Professor A. Hubrecht (Of Utrecht University.) writes), we
his younger disciples, always felt that in acute criticism and vast
learning nobody surpassed him, but still what we yet more admired than
his learning was his wisdom. It was always a delight to read any new
article or essay from his pen, but it was an ever so much higher
delight to hear him talk for five minutes. His was the most beautiful
and the most manly intellect I ever knew of.
So, too, Professor E. Ray Lankester:--
There has been no man or woman whom I have met on my journey through
life, whom I have loved and regarded as I have him, and I feel that the
world has shrunk and become a poor thing, now that his splendid spirit
and delightful presence are gone from it. Ever since I was a little boy
he has been my ideal and hero.
While the late Jeffery Parker concludes his Recollections with these
words:--
Whether a professor is usually a hero to his demonstrator I cannot say;
I only know that, looking back across an interval of many years and a
distance of half the circumference of the globe, I have never ceased to
be impressed with the manliness and sincerity of his character, his
complete honesty of purpose, his high moral standard, his scorn of
everything mean or shifty, his firm determination to speak what he held
to be truth at whatever cost of popularity. And for these things "I
loved the man, and do honour to his memory, on this side idolatry, as
much as any."
Even those who scarcely knew him apart from his books, underwent the
influence of that "determination to speak what he held to be truth." I
may perhaps be allowed to quote in illustration two passages from
letters to myself--one written by a woman, the other by a man:--
"'The surest-footed guide' is exactly true, to my feeling. Everybody
else, among the great, used to disappoint one somewhere. He--never!"
"He was so splendidly brave that one can never repay one's debt to him
for his example. He made all pretence about religious belief, and the
kind of half-thinking things out, and putting up in a slovenly way with
half-formed conclusions, seem the base thing which it really is."