The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thomas Henry Huxley, by Leonard Huxley

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Title: Thomas Henry Huxley A Character Sketch

Author: Leonard Huxley

Release Date: March 21, 2005 [EBook #15429]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY ***

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LIFE-STORIES OF FAMOUS MEN

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED

[Illustration: From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry: Frontispiece]

LIFE-STORIES OF FAMOUS MEN

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

A CHARACTER SKETCH

BY

LEONARD HUXLEY, LL.D.

  LONDON:
  WATTS & CO.,
  17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.4
  1920

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. INTRODUCTORY 1 II. EARLY DAYS 2 III. MEDICAL TRAINING 13 IV. VOYAGE OF THE "RATTLESNAKE" AND ITS SEQUEL 17 V. LEHRJAHRE 23 VI. VERACITY AND AGNOSTICISM 29 VII. CONTROVERSY AND THE BATTLE OF THE "ORIGIN" 37 VIII. PUBLIC SPEAKING AND LECTURES 43 IX. POPULAR EDUCATION 51 X. EDUCATION; ESPECIALLY OF TEACHERS AND WOMEN 60 XI. METHODS OF WORK 65 XII. SCIENCE AND ETHICS 72 XIII. MORALITY AND THE CHURCH 80 XIV. LIFE AND FRIENDSHIPS 84 XV. CHARLES DARWIN 92 XVI. HOOKER, FORBES, TYNDALL, SPENCER 100 XVII. IN THE FAMILY CIRCLE 111 XVIII. SOME LETTERS AND TABLE-TALK 117

ILLUSTRATIONS

  PORTRAIT FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY
  ELLIOTT AND FRY Frontispiece

FROM A DAGUERROTYPE MADE IN 1846 _To face p._20

  PORTRAIT FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY
  MAULL AND POLYBLANK, 1857 _To face p._44

  PORTRAIT FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY
  DOWNEY, 1890 _To face p._102

I

INTRODUCTORY

The object of a full-dress biography is to present as complete a picture as may be of a man and his work, the influence of his character upon his achievement, the struggle with opposing influences to carry out some guiding purpose or great idea. With abundant documents at hand the individual development, the action of events upon character, and of character upon events, can be shown in the spontaneous freedom of letters, as well as in considered publications. But this little book is not a full-dress biography, although it may induce readers to turn to the larger Life and Letters, in which (or in the Aphorisms and Reflections of T.H. Huxley) facts and quotations can be turned up by means of the index; it is designed rather as a character sketch, to show not so much the work done as what manner of man Huxley was, and the spirit in which he undertook that work. It will not be a history of his scientific investigations or his philosophical researches; it will be personal, while from the personal side illustrating his attitude towards his scientific and philosophical thought.

II

EARLY DAYS

Thomas Henry Huxley was born ten years after Waterloo, while the country was still in the backwash of the long-drawn Napoleonic wars. It was a time of material reconstruction and expansion, while social reconstruction lagged sadly and angrily behind. The year of his birth saw the first railway opened in England; it was seven years before electoral reform began, with its well-meant but dispiriting sequel in the new Poor Law. The defeat of the political and aggressive cause which had imposed itself upon the revolutionary inspiration of freedom strengthened the old orthodoxies here. Questioning voices were raised at their proper peril.

Thomas Henry was the seventh child of George Huxley and Rachel Withers, his wife. He was born on May 4, 1825, at half-past nine in the morning, according to the entry in the family Bible, at Ealing, where his father was senior assistant-master in the well-known school of Dr. Nicholas, of Wadham College, Oxford. The good doctor, who had succeeded his father-in-law here in 1791, was enough of a public character to have his name parodied by Thackeray as Dr. Tickleus.

"I am not aware," writes Huxley playfully in an autobiographical sketch,

that any portents preceded my arrival in this world; but in my childhood I remember hearing a traditional account of the manner in which I lost the chance of an endowment of great practical value. The windows of my mother's room were open, in consequence of the unusual warmth of the weather. For the same reason, probably, a neighbouring bee-hive had swarmed, and the new colony, pitching on the window-sill, was making its way into the room when the horrified nurse shut down the sash. If that well-meaning woman had only abstained from her ill-timed interference, the swarm might have settled on my lips, and I should have been endowed with that mellifluous eloquence which, in this country, leads far more surely than worth, capacity, or honest work, to the highest places in Church and State. But the opportunity was lost, and I have been obliged to content myself through life with saying what I mean in the plainest of plain language, than which, I suppose, there is no habit more ruinous to a man's prospects of advancement.

The fact that he received the name of the doubting apostle was by no means one of those superhuman coincidences in which some naive people see portents. In later years my father used to make humorous play with its appropriateness, but in plain fact he was named after his grandfather, Thomas Huxley. I have not traced the origin of the Henry.

Both parents were of dark complexion, and all the children were dark-haired and dark-eyed. The father was tall, and, I believe, well set-up: a miniature shows him with abundant, brown, curling hair brushed high above a good forehead, giving the effect, so fashionable in 1830, of a high-peaked head. The features are well cut and regular; the nose rather long and inclined to be aquiline; the cheeks well covered; the eyes, under somewhat arched brows, expressive and interesting. Outwardly, there is a certain resemblance traceable between the miniature and a daguerrotype of Huxley at nineteen; but the debt, physical and mental, owed to either parent is thus recorded:—

Physically, I am the son of my mother so