Of his nearer contemporaries the two most intimate and faithful of
his life-long friendships were with Tyndall and Hooker, concerning the
utter frankness of which he writes to the latter:--
I wish you wouldn't be apologetic about criticism from
people who have a right to criticize. I always look upon any
criticism as a compliment, not but what the old Adam in T.H.H.
_will_ arise and fight vigorously against all impugnment and
irrespective of all odds in the way of authority, but that
is the way of the beast. Why I value your and Tyndall's and
Darwin's friendship so much is, among other things, that you
all pitch into me when necessary. You may depend upon it,
however blue I may look when in the wrong, it's wrath with
myself and nobody else.
The common note in these friendships was not only community of aims,
but an essential generosity and sincerity. This it was that had drawn
him so strongly to Edward Forbes among the leaders of biology when he
returned, an unknown but promising pioneer of science, from the voyage
of the _Rattlesnake_. For Forbes inspired his admiration and affection
as a man of letters and an artist who had not merged the _man_ in
the man of science; free from pedantry or jealousy--the two besetting
faults of literary and scientific men; earnest, disinterested, ready
to give his time and influence to help any man who was working for the
cause; one of the few to whom a proud man could feel obliged without
losing a particle of independence or self-respect.
My notions [he writes] are diametrically opposed to his in
some matters, and he helps me to oppose him.... I had a long
paper read at the Royal Society which opposed some of his
views, and he got up and spoke in the highest terms of it
afterwards. This is all as it should be. I can reverence such
a man and yet respect myself.
Without his aid and sympathy the young man would never have persevered
in the course he ventured to choose, and in following which it was one
of his greatest hopes that they should work in harmony for long years
at the aims so dear to both.
"One could trust him so thoroughly!" There lay the root of friendship.
And the trust was thoroughly reciprocated. The entire frankness
between friends is brightly illustrated by the history of the award
of the Royal Medal in 1854. As a member of the Royal Society Council,
Huxley had to vote on the names proposed for the various medals.
For the Royal Medal first Hooker was named, and received his hearty
support; then Forbes was put up, in his eyes equally deserving, and
almost more closely bound to him by ties of active friendship, so
that, whichever way he ultimately voted, his action might possibly be
ascribed to personal, not scientific, motives. Thereupon he explained
to the Council that he considered their claims equal; that, whichever
chanced to have been put forward first, he would never have proposed
the other in opposition to him. As he had spoken of Hooker's
merits, so also he spoke of Forbes's, positively, and not by way of
comparison; and this done, voted for both!
Hooker was actually elected. Huxley then wrote to both his friends,
explaining fully what he had done. Had he felt that one of the two had
strongly superior claims, and thought it right to vote for him only,
the other, he was sure, would have fully appreciated his motives, and
it would have done no injury to their friendship.
He was not mistaken. Among his most precious possessions he kept
Forbes's reply:--
I heartily concur in the course you have taken, and, had I
been placed as you have been, would have done exactly
the same.... Your way of proceeding was as true an act of
friendship as any that could be performed. As to myself, I
dream so little about medals that the notion of being on the
list never entered my brain, even when asleep. If it ever
comes, I shall be pleased and thankful; if it does not, it is
not the sort of thing to break my equanimity. Indeed, I would
always like to see it given not as a mere honour, but as a
help to a good man, and this it is assuredly in Hooker's case.
Government people are so ignorant that they require to have
people's merits drummed into their heads by all possible
means, and Hooker's getting the medal may be of real service
to him before long. I am in a snug, though not an idle, nest;
he has not got his resting-place yet. And so, my dear Huxley,
I trust that you know me too well to think that I am either
grieved or envious; and you, Hooker, and I are much of the
same way of thinking.
Frankness was the only remedy for such an imbroglio, and, as Huxley
wrote to Hooker about a similar case a couple of years later:--
It's deuced hard to keep straight in this wicked world, but,
as you say, the only chance is to out with it, and I thank you
much for writing so frankly about the matter.
[Illustration: From a Photograph by Downey, 1890 To face p. 102]
With Hooker, the keen observer and critical reasoner, the man of warm
impulses and sane judgments, he had a peculiarly intimate bond of
friendship summed up in a letter of 1888, when they had received the
Copley medal in successive years:--
It is very pleasant to have our niches in the Pantheon close
together. It is getting on for forty years since we were first
"acquent," and, considering with what a very considerable dose
of tenacity, vivacity, and that glorious firmness (which the
beasts who don't like us call obstinacy) we are both endowed,
the fact that we have never had the shadow of a shade of a
quarrel is more to our credit than being ex-Presidents and
Copley medallists. But we have had a masonic bond in both
being well salted in early life. I have always felt that I
owed a great deal to my acquaintance with the realities of
things gained in the old _Rattlesnake_.
From earliest days, soon after they had returned, the one from the
South Seas, the other from the Himalayas, they had stood shoulder
to shoulder confidently in the struggle to put science on a firm
and independent footing. When the future of the Natural History
Collections at the British Museum was in the balance, they
energetically resolved to constitute themselves into a permanent
"Committee of Safety," to watch over what was being done and take
measures with the advice of others when necessary. Together as
biologists they realized the greatness of Darwin's vision; together
they bore the brunt of the battle of the _Origin_ at Oxford. In
seeking a good mouthpiece for scientific opinion, in reorganizing
and administering the great scientific societies, in their work for
scientific education, they shared the same ideas, and their friendship
and Tyndall's formed the starting-point of the _x_ Club, with its
regular meetings of old friends. More than once they went off on a
short holiday tour together, and when Huxley was invalided in 1873 it
was Hooker who took charge and carried him off for a month's active
trip in the geological paradise of the Auvergne. The care and company
of so good a friend made the crowning ingredient in a most successful
prescription. And when both had retired from official life a new
interest in common sprang up through Huxley's incursion into botany.
While recruiting his health in the high Alps, his interest was aroused
by the Gentians, and he wrote a valuable paper on their morphology
and distribution. This interest continued itself into the making of
a rock-garden in his Eastbourne home, where, in his spare hours,
he proceeded to put into happy practice Candide's famous maxim,
"_Cultivons notre jardin_," and drew from this occupation the simile
of the wild chalk down and the cultivated garden in his Romanes
Lecture to illustrate the contrast between the cosmic process and the
social organism.
Hooker often sent his friend plants from his own garden, sometimes
banteringly including one which would "flourish in any neglected
corner."
An unclouded intimacy of friendship lasted to the end, and it was
Hooker who received the last letter written by his friend.
Close as a brother, too, and claiming the name of brother in
affectionate adoption, was John Tyndall, radiant in genial warmth
and high spirits. They, too, were at one in thoughts, sympathies, and
aims; they travelled together, especially in the Alps, where Tyndall
mainly carried out the investigation of certain problems in relation
to the glaciers which Huxley had suggested to him, and, being "a
masterful man and over-generous," insisted that the resulting paper on
glaciers should bear both their names.
Tyndall came to the School of Mines as Professor of Physics in 1859 at
his friend's instigation, and for nine years they were, as colleagues,
in daily contact, and indeed were not far separated when Tyndall
succeeded Faraday at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street.
Tyndall, who remained a bachelor till late in middle life, always
found a warm corner beside his friend's hearth. From the earliest days
of the household in the little house at Waverley Place he was admitted
to the inner circle of a lively friendship by Mrs. Huxley also, that
keen judge of character, and to the children ranked as a kind of
unofficial uncle. On New Year's Day he was chief among the two or
three intimates who were bidden here, having no domestic hearth of
their own, Herbert Spencer and Hirst being the other "regulars," and
later Michael Foster.
As the two men both had ready pens and stood side by side in many
controversies, they came to be regarded by the public as a pair of
Great Twin Brethren, the Castor and Pollux of many a scientific battle
of Lake Regillus. Odd confusions sometimes followed. In 1876, not
long after Tyndall's marriage to the daughter of Lord Claud Hamilton,
Huxley was described in a newspaper paragraph as setting out for
America "with his titled bride," and even, on Tyndall's death,
received the doubtful honour of a funeral sermon.
True that they did not see eye to eye on some of the most fundamental
matters of social and political principle, and where they did
Tyndall's vehement enthusiasm would sometimes sweep him into
activities where his friend could not follow. But these things were
no bar to their mutual affection and esteem, and in token of this two
letters of 1866 may be quoted, when England was sharply divided on the
question of Governor Eyre's action in suppressing an incipient revolt
in Jamaica.
In particular, a negro preacher named Gordon had been arrested,
court-martialled, and summarily executed. A Royal Commission appointed
to inquire into the case declared that the evidence given appeared to
be wholly insufficient to establish the charge upon which the prisoner
took his trial, and that in the evidence adduced they could not see
any sufficient proof of Gordon's complicity in the outbreak, or of
having been a party to any general conspiracy against the Government.
To many thoughtful and law-abiding persons such a proceeding
appeared to be no better than judicial murder, constituting a hideous
precedent; a committee was formed to present a formal indictment
against Governor Eyre and obtain a judicial pronouncement on the
question, quite apart from the two other questions persistently
confused with it--namely, was Gordon a Jamaica Hampden or was he a
psalm-singing firebrand, and was Governor Eyre actuated by the highest
and noblest motives, or was he under the influence of panic-stricken
rashness or worse impulses?
With this high constitutional end in view--the protection of
individual liberty--Huxley joined the committee. To Charles Kingsley,
who confessed to taking the hero-worshipper's view of Governor Eyre,
Huxley replied:--
I dare say he did all this with the best of motives and in a
heroic vein. But if English law will not declare that heroes
have no more right to kill people in this fashion than other
folk, I shall take an early opportunity of migrating to Texas
or some other quiet place where there is less hero-worship
and more respect for justice, which is to my mind of much more
importance than hero-worship.
In point of fact, men take sides on this question, not so much
by looking at the mere facts of the case, but rather as their
deepest political convictions lead them. And the great use of
the prosecution, and one of my reasons for joining it, is
that it will help a great many people to find out what their
profoundest political beliefs are.
The hero-worshippers who believe that the world is to be
governed by its great men, who are to lead the little ones,
justly if they can, but, if not, unjustly drive or kick them
the right way, will sympathize with Mr. Eyre.
The other sect (to which I belong), who look upon hero-worship
as no better than any other idolatry and upon the attitude of
mind of the hero-worshipper as essentially immoral; who think
it is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right
in chains; who look upon the observance of inflexible justice
as between man and man as of far greater importance than even
the preservation of social order, will believe that Mr. Eyre
has committed one of the greatest crimes of which a person in
authority can be guilty, and will strain every nerve to obtain
a declaration that their belief is in accordance with the law
of England.
People who differ on fundamentals are not likely to convert
one another. To you, as to my dear friend Tyndall, with whom
I almost always act, but who in this matter is as much opposed
to me as you are, I can only say, let us be strong enough and
wise enough to fight the question out as a matter of principle
and without bitterness.
To Tyndall, whose convictions were bred in Ulster and fostered by an
ardent devotion to Carlyle, he wrote in the same strain, apropos of a
friend's banter on their sudden division:--
I replied to the jest earnestly enough--that I hoped and
believed our old friendship was strong enough to stand any
strain that might be put on it, much as I grieved that we
should be ranged in opposite camps in this or any other case.
That you and I have fundamentally different political
principles must, I think, have become obvious to both of us
during the progress of the American War. The fact is made
still more plain by your printed letter, the tone and spirit
of which I greatly admire, without being able to recognize in
it any important fact or argument which had not passed through
my mind before I joined the Jamaica Committee.
Thus there is nothing for it but for us to agree to differ,
each supporting his own side to the best of his ability and
respecting his friend's freedom as he would his own, and doing
his best to remove all petty bitterness from that which is
at bottom one of the most important constitutional battles in
which Englishmen have for many years been engaged.
If you and I are strong enough and wise enough, we shall be
able to do this, and yet preserve that love for one another
which I value as one of the good things of my life.
That public controversy could be conducted without loss of friendship
he showed also in debate with Herbert Spencer. Their private
encounters in argument were often very lively, for Spencer was a most
tenacious disputant, to whom argument was as the breath of life.
It was probably after a meeting of the _x_ Club, in the freedom of
which debate was likely to be of the liveliest, that Spencer wrote
accusing himself of losing his temper, and received the following
reply:--
Your conscience has been treating you with the most extreme
and unjust severity.
I recollect you _looked_ rather savage at one point in our
discussion, but I do assure you that you committed no overt
act of ferocity; and if you had, I think I should have fully
deserved it for joining in the ferocious onslaught we all made
upon you.
What your sins may be in this line to other folk I don't know,
but, so far as I am concerned, I assure you I have often said
that I know no one who takes aggravated opposition better than
yourself, and that I have not a few times been ashamed of the
extent to which I have tried your patience.
So you see that you have what the Buddhists call a stock of
accumulated merit, _envers moi_; and if you should ever feel
inclined to "d---- my eyes," you can do so and have a balance
left.
Seriously, my old friend, you must not think it necessary to
apologize to me about any such matters, but believe me (d--ned
or und--d),--Ever yours faithfully....
If he was comrade and brother among the friends of his own generation,
he was a living inspiration to the friends of the next generation,
especially to the pupils and teaching lieutenants who worked in
close touch with him. His younger disciples always felt that in acute
criticism and vast learning nobody surpassed him; but what they yet
more admired than his learning was his wisdom. It was a delight to
read an essay fresh from his pen, but an ever so much higher delight
to hear him talk for five minutes. "His," says Professor Hubrecht,
"was the most beautiful and the most manly intellect I ever knew
of." The personal affection as well as admiration he inspired may be
gathered from Sir E. Ray Lankester's words: "There has been no man or
woman whom I have met in 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." And Professor Jeffery Parker concludes his
Recollections of his old chief 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."
Indeed, his relations with his demonstrators were typical of his
judgment of men, his distinction between the essential and the
unessential, which made him a successful administrator.
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."
The first passport to his friendship was entire sincerity. Whatever
other claims might be advanced, he would shut out from any approach to
intimacy those whom he found to be untruthful or not straightforward.
Naturally he did not offer any unnecessary encouragement to bores and
dullards, but in his intercourse with these undesirables and wasters
of his time he adopted none of the "offensive-defensive" methods
of, say, Dr. Johnson or Lord Westbury. He armed himself with a cold
correctitude of politeness, and lowered the social temperature instead
of raising it.