skip to content
Home

Darwin Correspondence Project

From T. H. Huxley   14 November 1880

4 Marlborough Place. | Abbey Road, N.W.

Novr. 14th 1880

My dear Darwin

The papers in re Wallace have arrived1 and I lose no time in assuring you that all my ‘might, amity & authority’ as Essex said when that sneak Bacon asked him for a favour, shall be exercised as you wish2

The best course to pursue will need a little thinking over but there shall be no delay on my part in setting to work—

Your ‘pinned-on’ paragraph was so good that if I had written it myself, I should have been unable to refrain from sending it to the Printer. But it is much easier to be virtuous on other people’s account—and though Thomson deserved it & more—I thought it would be better to refrain.3

If I say a savage thing it is only ‘pretty Fanny’s way’4 but if you do it is not likely to be forgotten.

The letter as it stands will be very useful in more ways than one

The wife5 is very much on her back still I am sorry to say

With all our love | Ever | Yours | T H Huxley

Footnotes

1
CD had sent a draft memorial and a list of potential signatories in support of a civil list pension for Alfred Russel Wallace (see letter to T. H. Huxley, 13 November 1880 and n. 1).
2
The remarks are attributed to Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, in reference to Francis Bacon’s bid for the post of attorney-general in 1594: ‘The Attorneyship for Francis is that I must have; and in that I will spend all my power, might, authority, and amity’ (see Macaulay 1843, 2: 308). Bacon served as a prosecutor at Devereux’s trial for treason in 1601 (ODNB s.v. Devereux, Robert).
3
CD had sent Huxley his letter to Nature, 5 November 1880; it was a reply to critical remarks on natural selection made by Charles Wyville Thomson in Thomson 1880, including a sentence that Huxley did not pass on to Nature (see letter to T. H. Huxley, 5 November 1880 and nn. 1 and 3).
4
The expression appears in the poem ‘An elegy, to an old beauty’ by Thomas Parnell: ‘And all that’s madly wild, or oddly gay,/ We call it only pretty Fanny’s way’ (Parnell 1833, p. 81).
5
Huxley’s wife was Henrietta Anne Huxley.

Bibliography

Army list: The army list. London: printed for the compiler of the annual official army list; Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. 1815–1900.

Macaulay, Thomas Babington. 1843. Critical and historical essays: contributed to the Edinburgh Review. 3 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.

Osborne, Michael A. 2014. The emergence of tropical medicine in France. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Parnell, Thomas. 1833. The poetical works of Thomas Parnell. London: William Pickering.

Thomson, Charles Wyville. 1880. General introduction to the zoological series of reports. In Report on the scientific results of the voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873–76. Volume 1 (Zoology). Prepared by C. Wyville Thomson. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Summary

Will support the petition for a pension for Wallace.

CD’s paragraph [about Wyville Thomson, see 12796] was so good that if he had written it he would have sent it to the printer, but [for CD] it is best to refrain.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12815
From
Thomas Henry Huxley
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
London, Marlborough Place, 4
Source of text
DAR 166: 353
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12815,” accessed on 18 May 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12815.xml

letter

Darwin Correspondence Project
darwin@lib.cam.ac.uk

© University of Cambridge 2022

Copyright declaration

Privacy policy

Website by Surface Impression

 

Study at Cambridge

About the University

Research at Cambridge