Ɛpsilon

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

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.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12815,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12815