Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 1
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
[Several letters dating from 1851 to 1853 help to fill up the outlines
of Huxley's life during those three years of struggle. There is a
description of the British Association meeting at Ipswich in 1851]
("Forbes advises me to go down to the meeting of the British Association
this year and make myself notorious somehow or other. Thank Heaven I
have impudence enough to lecture the savans of Europe if necessary. Can
you imagine me holding forth?" [June 6, 1851.]), with the traditional
touch of gaiety to enliven the gravity of its proceedings, and the
unconventional jollity of the Red Lion Club (a dining-club of members of
the Association), whose palmy days were those under the inspiration of
the genial and gifted Forbes. This was the meeting at which Huxley first
began his alliance with Tyndall, with whom he travelled down from town,
although he does not mention his name in this letter. With Hooker he had
already made acquaintance; and from this time forwards the three were
closely bound together by personal regard as well as by similarity of
aims and interests.
Then follow his sketch of the English scientific world as he found it in
1851, given in his letter to W. Macleay; several letters to his sister;
the description of his first lecture at the Royal Institution, which,
though successful on the whole, was very different in manner and
delivery from the clear and even flow of his later style, with the voice
not loud but distinct, the utterance never hurried beyond the point of
immediate comprehension, but carrying the attention of the audience with
it, eager to the end. Two letters of warning and remonstrance against
the habits of lecturing in a colloquial tone, suitable to a knot of
students gathered round his table, but not to a large audience--of
running his words, especially technical terms, together--of pouring out
new and unfamiliar matter at breakneck speed, were addressed to him--one
by a "working man" of his Monday evening audience at Jermyn Street in
1855, the other, undated, by Mr. Jodrell, a frequenter of the Royal
Institution, and afterwards founder of the Jodrell Lectureships at
University College, London, and other benefactions to science, and these
he kept by him as a perpetual reminder, labelled "Good Advice." How much
can be done by the frank acceptance of criticism and by careful practice
is shown by the difference between the feelings of the later audiences
who flocked to his lectures, and those of the members of an Institute in
St. John's Wood, who, as he often used to tell, after hearing him in his
early days, petitioned "not to have that young man again."]
July 12, 1851.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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