Poor Brian.—­Brutal jest!

[(Sir Joseph’s son, Brian, had fallen into a pan of brine.)

The following was written to a friend who had alluded to his painful recollection of a former occasion when he was Huxley’s guest at the anniversary dinner of the Royal Society, and was hastily summoned from it to find his wife dying.]

I fully understand your feeling about the R.S.  Dinner.  I have not forgotten the occasion when you were my guest:  still less my brief sight of you when I called the next day.

These things are the “lachrymae rerum”—­the abysmal griefs hidden under the current of daily life, and seemingly forgotten, till now and then they come up to the surface—­a flash of agony—­like the fish that jumps in a calm pool.

One has one’s groan and goes to work again.

If I knew of anything else for it, I would tell you; but all my experience ends in the questionable thanksgiving, “It’s lucky it’s no worse.”

With which bit of practical philosophy, and our love, believe me, ever yours affectionately,

T.H.  Huxley.

[Before speaking of his last piece of work, in the vain endeavour to complete which he exposed himself to his old enemy, influenza, I shall give several letters of miscellaneous interest.

The first is in reply to Lord Farrer’s inquiry as to where he could obtain a fuller account of the subject tersely discussed in the chapter he had contributed to the “Life of Owen”. ("Which,” wrote Lord Farrer, “is just what I wanted as an outline of the Biological and Morphological discussion of the last 100 years.  But it is ‘Pemmican’ to an aged and enfeebled digestion.  Is there such a thing as a diluted solution of it in the shape of any readable book?")]

Hodeslea, January 26, 1895.

My dear Farrer,

Miserable me!  Having addressed myself to clear off a heap of letters that have been accumulating, I find I have not answered an inquiry of yours of nearly a month’s standing.  I am sorry to say that I cannot tell you of any book (readable or otherwise) that will convert my “pemmican” into decent broth for you.

There are histories of zoology and of philosophical anatomy, but they all of them seem to me to miss the point (which you have picked out of the pemmican).  Indeed, that is just why I took such a lot of pains over these 50 or 60 pages.  And I am immensely tickled by the fact that among all the critical notices I have seen, not a soul sees what I have been driving at as you have done.  I really wish you would write a notice of it, just to show these Gigadibses (vide Right Reverend Blougram) what blind buzzards they are! [See Browning’s “Bishop Blougram’s Apology":—­“Gigadibs the literary man” with his Abstract intellectual plan of life Quite irrespective of life’s plainest laws.]

Enter a maid.  “Please sir, Mrs. Huxley says she would be glad if you would go out in the sun.”  “All right, Allen.”  Anecdote for your next essay on Government!