Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3Huxley, Thomas Henry
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Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895; Naturalists -- England -- Biography
What a little goose you are to go having bad dreams about me--who am
like a stalled ox--browsing in idle comfort--in fact, idle is no word
for it. Sloth is the right epithet. I can't get myself to do anything
but potter in the garden, which is looking lovely.
On June 21 he went to Cambridge for the Harvey Celebration at Gonville
and Caius College, and made a short speech.]
The dinner last night [he writes] was a long affair, and I was the last
speaker; but I got through my speech very well, and was heard by
everybody, I am told.
[But as is the way with influenza, it was thrown off in the summer only
to return the next winter, and on the eve of the Royal Society
Anniversary Dinner he writes to Sir M. Foster:--]
I am in rather a shaky and voiceless condition, and unless I am more up
to the mark to-morrow morning I shall have to forgo the dinner, and,
what is worse, the chat with you afterwards.
[One consequence of the spring attack of influenza was that this year
he went once more to the Maloja, staying there from July 21 to August
25.]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, July 9, 1893.
My dear Hooker,
What has happened to the x meeting you proposed? However, it does not
matter much to me now, as Hames, who gave me a thorough overhauling in
London, has packed me off to the Maloja again, and we start, if we can,
on the 17th.
It is a great nuisance, but the dregs of influenza and the hot weather
between them have brought the weakness of my heart to the front, and I
am gravitating to the condition in which I was five or six years ago.
So I must try the remedy which was so effectual last time.
We are neither of us very fit, and shall have to be taken charge of by
a courier. Fancy coming to that!
Let me be a warning to you, my dear old man. Don't go giving lectures
at Oxford and making speeches at Cambridge, and above all things don't,
oh don't go getting influenza, the microbes of which would be seen
under a strong enough microscope to have this form.
[Sketch of an active little black demon.]
T.H. Huxley.
[Though not so strikingly as before, the high Alpine air was again a
wonderful tonic to him. His diary still contains a note of occasional
long walks; and once more he was the centre of a circle of friends,
whose cordial recollections of their pleasant intercourse afterwards
found expression in a lasting memorial. Beside one of his favourite
walks, a narrow pathway skirting the blue lakelet of Sils, was placed a
gray block of granite. The face of this was roughly smoothed, and upon
it was cut the following inscription:--
In memory of the illustrious English Writer and Naturalist, Thomas
Henry Huxley, who spent many summers at the Kursaal, Maloja.
In a letter to Sir J. Hooker, of October 1, he describes the effects of
his trip, and his own surprise at being asked to write a critical
account of Owen's work:--]
Hodeslea, Eastbourne, October 1, 1893.
My dear Hooker,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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