My dear Spencer,

Your conscience has been treating you with the most extreme and unjust severity.

I recollect you looked rather savage at one point in our discussion, but I do assure you that you committed no overt act of ferocity; and if you had, I think I should have fully deserved it for joining in the ferocious onslaught we all made upon you.

What your sins may be in this line to other folk I don’t know, but so far as I am concerned I assure you I have often said that I know no one who takes aggravated opposition better than yourself, and that I have not a few times been ashamed of the extent to which I have tried your patience.

So you see that you have, what the Buddhists call a stock of accumulated merit, envers moi—­and if you should ever feel inclined to “d—­n my eyes” you can do so and have a balance left.

Seriously, my old friend, you must not think it necessary to apologise to me about any such matters, but believe me (d—­nd or und—­d)

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

26 Abbey Place, November 11, 1866.

My dear Darwin,

I thank you for the new edition of the “Origin,” and congratulate you on having done with it for a while, so as to be able to go on to that book of a portion of which I had a glimpse years ago.  I hear good accounts of your health, indeed the last was that you were so rampageous you meant to come to London and have a spree among its dissipations.  May that be true.

I am in the thick of my work, and have only had time to glance at your
“Historical Sketch.”

What an unmerciful basting you give “our mutual friend.”  I did not know he had put forward any claim! and even now that I read it black and white, I can hardly believe it.

I am glad to hear from Spencer that you are on the right (that is my) side in the Jamaica business.  But it is wonderful how people who commonly act together are divided about it.

My wife joins with me in kindest wishes to Mrs. Darwin and yourself.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

You will receive an elementary physiology book, not for your reading but for Miss Darwin’s.  Were you not charmed with Haeckel?

[The “Jamaica business” here alluded to was Governor Eyre’s suppression of the negro rising, in the course of which he had executed, under martial law, a coloured leader and member of the Assembly, named Gordon.  The question of his justification in so doing stirred England profoundly.  It became the touchstone of ultimate political convictions.  Men who had little concern for ordinary politics, came forward to defend a great constitutional principle which they conceived to be endangered.  A committee was formed to prosecute Governor Eyre on a charge of murder, in order to vindicate the right of a prisoner to trial by due process of law.  Thereupon a counter-committee was organised for the defence of the man who, like Cromwell, judged that the people preferred their real security to forms, and had presumably saved the white population of Jamaica by striking promptly at the focus of rebellion.