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