One small incident of this affair is perhaps worth preserving as an example of Huxley’s love of a bantering repartee.  In the midst of the correspondence Mr. Powell seems suddenly to have been seized by an uneasy recollection that Huxley had lately received some honour or title, so he next addressed him as “My dear Sir Thomas.”  The latter, not to be outdone, promptly replied with] “My dear Lord Bishop of the Solent.”

[About the same time comes a letter to Mr. Knowles, based upon a paragraph from the gossiping column of some newspaper which had come into Huxley’s hands:—­]

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, November 9, 1893.

Gossip of the Town.

“Professor Huxley receives 200 guineas for each of his articles for the ’Nineteenth Century’.”

My dear Knowles,

I have always been satisfied with the “Nineteenth Century” in the capacity of paymaster, but I did not know how much reason I had for my satisfaction till I read the above!

Totting up the number of articles and multiplying by 200 it strikes me I shall be behaving very handsomely if I take 2000 pounds for the balance due.

So sit down quickly, take thy cheque-book, and write five score, and let me have it at breakfast time to-morrow.  I once got a cheque for 1000 pounds at breakfast, and it ruined me morally.  I have always been looking out for another.

I hope you are all flourishing.  We are the better for Maloja, but more dependent on change of weather and other trifles than could be wished.  Yet I find myself outlasting those who started in life along with me.  Poor Andrew Clark and I were at Haslar together in 1846, and he was the younger by a year and a half.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

All my time is spent in the co-ordination of my eruptions when I am an active volcano.

I hope you got the volumes which I told Macmillan to send you.

[The following letter to Professor Romanes, whose failing eyesight was a premonitory symptom of the disease which proved fatal the next year, reads, so to say, as a solemn prelude to the death of three old friends this autumn—­of Andrew Clark, his old comrade at Haslar, and cheery physician for many years; of Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, whose acquaintance he had first made in 1851 at the Stanleys’ at Harrow, and with whom he kept up an intimacy to the end of his life, visiting Balliol once or twice every year; and, heaviest blow, of John Tyndall, the friend and comrade whose genial warmth of spirit made him almost claim a brother’s place in early struggles and later success, and whose sudden death was all the more poignant for the cruel touch of tragedy in the manner of it.]

Hodeslea, September 28, 1893.

My dear Romanes,

We are very much grieved to hear such a bad account of your health.  Would that we could achieve something more to the purpose than assuring you and Mrs. Romanes of our hearty sympathy with you both in your troubles.  I assure you, you are much in our thoughts, which are sad enough with the news of Jowett’s, I fear, fatal attack.