Don't ask anybody above the rank of the younger son of a peer, because I shall not be able to go into dinner before him or her, and that part of my dignity is naturally what I prize most. Would you not like me to come in my P.C.[100] suit? All ablaze with gold, and costing a sum with which I could buy, oh! so many books. Only if your late experiences should prompt you to instruct your other guests not to contradict me--don't--I rather like it. Ever yours very truly, T. H. HUXLEY. Bon voyage! You can tell Mr. Jones[101] that I will have him brought before the Privy Council, and fined as in the good old days, if he does not treat you properly. Then came the departure for Madeira, which was a real trial, for never before had Christmas been spent away from home. But the change seemed to do him much good. Save for occasional days of headache he was very bright and well, and worked at his book and wrote several articles for the 'Contemporary Review' on Professor Weismann's theory. But poetry he could not manage. _To Mrs. Henry Pollock._ Madeira: December 18, 1892. My dear Mentor,--I fear you must have been thinking that I am either very ill or very heartless not to have written ere this. Yet neither is the case. Ill I assuredly am, but not so much as to have prevented me from sending you a letter for the marriage day. The fact is I have been trying to write a sonnet for that occasion ever since I came out here, and cannot. Since my breakdown in June I have entirely lost the power of poetising; I suppose it will come back if my general health should ever return, but still I did think that such an occasion ought to have inspired me. Nothing further than rhymes, however, would come, so the day passed over without my intended contribution to its memorials. So, dear Mentor, do not think hardly of me. For indeed both you and Marion have been much in my thoughts; and for you especially I know this time must be one of many and varied feelings of the kind that sink deepest into the heart.[102] So not only my old affection, but a new sympathy, is with you--a sympathy in the joy as in the grief of it. Ethel will have told you what little has to be told about our uneventful life here. As I have said to all my correspondents, it is the island that Tennyson must have had in view when he wrote his 'Lotus-eaters.' The description is so exact, that _I_ need not write anything in the way of description, if you will only read _it_. My headaches are growing less intense, although they still keep wonderfully persistent. I cannot foresee what is likely to happen in the end, as no one seems to know exactly what is the matter with me.