Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1Huxley, Thomas Henry
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Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
With you I envy Francis his gastric energies. I feel I have done for
myself in that line, and am in for a life-long dyspeps. I have not, now,
nervous energy enough for stomach and brain both, and if I work the
latter, not even the fresh breezes of this place will keep the former in
order. That is a discovery I have made here, and though highly
instructive, it is not so pleasant as some other physiological results
that have turned up.
Chapman, who died of cholera, was a distant relative of my man. The poor
fellow vanished in the middle of an unfinished article, which has
appeared in the last "Westminster," as his forlorn vale! to the world.
After all, that is the way to die, better a thousand times than
drivelling off into eternity betwixt awake and asleep in a fatuous old
age.
Believe me, ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[On Tyndall consenting, he wrote again on the 29th:--]
I rejoice in having got you to put your head under my yoke, and feel
ready to break into a hand gallop on the strength of it.
I have written to Chapman to tell him you only make an experiment on
your cerebral substance--whose continuance depends on tenacity thereof.
I didn't suspect you of being seduced by the magnificence of the
emolument, you Cincinnatus of the laboratory. I only suggested that as
pay sweetens labour, a fortiori it will sweeten what to you will be no
labour.
I'm not a miserable mortal now--quite the contrary. I never am when I
have too much to do, and my sage reflection was not provoked by envy of
the more idle. Only I do wish I could sometimes ascertain the exact
juste milieu of work which will suit, not my head or will, THESE can't
have too much; but my absurd stomach.
[The Edinburgh candidature, the adoption of his wider scheme for the
carrying out of the coast survey, and his approaching marriage, are
touched upon in the following letters to Dr. Frederick Dyster of Tenby,
whose keen interest in marine zoology was the starting-point of a warm
friendship with the rising naturalist, some fifteen years his junior.
(It was to Dyster that Huxley owed his introduction in 1854 to F.D.
Maurice (whose work in educating the people he did his best to help),
and later to Charles Kingsley, whom he first met at the end of June
1855.] "What Kingsley do you refer to?" [he writes on May 6,] "ALTON
LOCKE Kingsley or Photographic Kingsley? I shall be right glad to find
good men and true anywhere, and I will take your bail for any man. But
the work must be critically done.") [He was strongly urged by the
younger man to complete and systematise his observations by taking in
turn all the species of each genus of annelids found at Tenby, and
working them up into a series of little monographs] "which would be the
best of all possible foundations for a History of the British
Annelidae":--
To Dr. Dyster.
January 5, 1855
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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