From T. H. Huxley 3 November 1873
Athenæum Club | Pall Mall
Novr. 3rd. 1873
My dear Darwin
You will have heard, (in fact I think I mentioned the matter when I paid you my pleasant visit the other day) that Flower is ill & obliged to go away for six months to a warm climate—1 It is a great grief to me as he is a man for whom I have great esteem & affection apart from his high scientific merits—and his symptoms are such as to cause very grave anxiety— I shall be happily disappointed if that accursed consumption has not got hold of him—
The College Authorities have behaved as well as they possibly could to him and I do not suppose that his enforced retirement, for a while, gives him the least pecuniary anxiety as his people are all well off—& he himself has an income apart from his College pay— Nevertheless, under such circumstances a man with half a dozen children always wants all the money he can lay hands on; and whether he does or no, he ought not to be allowed to deprive himself of any—2 Which leads me to the gist of my letter— His name was on your list as one of those hearty friends who came to my rescue last year; and it was the only name which made me a little uneasy—for I doubted whether it was right for a man with his responsibilities, to make sacrifices of this sort3
However, I stifled that feeling not seeing what else I could do without wounding him— But now my conscience won’t let me be; and I do not think that any consideration ought to deter me from getting his contribution back to him some how or other— There is no one to whose judgment on a point of honour I would defer more readily than yours—and I am quite sure you will agree with me— I really am quite unhappy & ashamed to think of myself as vigorous & well at the expense of his denying himself any rich man’s caprice he might take a fancy to—
So my dear good friend let me know what his contribution was that I may get it back to him somehow or other—even if I go like Nicodemus privily & by night to his bankers—4
Ever | Yours faithfully | T. H. Huxley
Not one solitary moment have I had to devote to Nitella yet5
Footnotes
Bibliography
ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
Summary
W. H. Flower is ill and obliged to go off for six months. Wants to return the money Flower contributed to fund for his holiday, asks the amount.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-9126
- From
- Thomas Henry Huxley
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Athenaeum Club
- Source of text
- DAR 166: 329
- Physical description
- ALS 6pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9126,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9126.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 21