Ɛpsilon

From T. H. Huxley   12 September 1881

Grasmere, Westmoreland

Sep 21. 1881.

My dear Darwin

I am heartily glad to hear of your accession of fortune; but I wish you would ‘take the goods the Gods provide you’ like a reasonable man; instead of immediately casting about to despoil yourself in favour of a friend, like a generous man, as I see you have been doing—1 I am very glad you have told me all about the matter so that I may speak freely in return   I quite enter into your feelings & should act in the same way under like circumstances at least I hope I should, for the grasping avarice with which I have been credited lately leaves room for doubt— At the same time if you will put yourself in my place, you will feel that the notion that I or my belongings should in any way profit at the expense of you or yours—must be altogether repellent to me; and that I can but wish that Mr Rich should stand to his guns & in spite of your rendered persuasions leave the provisions of his will untouched—2

If there are any ‘residuary’ crumbs left, as you hint, I shall not quarrel with them if they come my way; otherwise it is my earnest wish that the status quo should remain unchanged— And the kindest thing you can do for me is to use your influence with Mr Rich in this sense—

Polly—that sagacious urhund3—would howl at me if I came among you laden with the spoils of the clan Darwin—and we should feel worse fortune hunters than ever on our next visit to Heene—4

You will find the York address in ‘Nature’.5 It seemed to go down very well—which I was glad of as I mean to retire from this line of business.

These addresses take so much out of one—

The wife sends her love & says she is going to write to Mrs. Darwin. She has been up Helvellyn & if the Athletic sports were not over I should expect her to enter for them!6

Ever | Yours very truly | T. H. Huxley

1
See the letter to T. H. Huxley, 9 September 1881, concerning bequests to CD from Erasmus Alvey Darwin and Anthony Rich. The proverb ‘take the goods the gods provide’ is an exhortation to enjoy good fortune or advantageous circumstances.
2
Rich had intimated that he might make further changes to his will in favour of Huxley (see letter to T. H. Huxley, 9 September 1881 and n. 4).
3
Polly was a rough-haired fox terrier, originally Henrietta Emma Litchfield’s dog (Freeman 1978). Huxley used the term ‘urhund’ to mean primal dog; his sketch of the ‘Ur-hund (Polly)’ was published in Emma Darwin (1915) 2: 199.
4
Rich had already stated his intention of bequeathing his home Chappell Croft in Heene, Worthing, to Huxley (see letter from Anthony Rich, 1 March 1881 and n. 7).
5
In his letter of 9 September 1881, CD had asked whether Huxley’s discourse, ‘The rise and progress of palaeontology’, presented at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in York, was going to be published in Nature; it appeared in the issue for 8 September 1881, pp. 452–5.
6
Helvellyn is the third highest peak in the Lake District, where Henrietta Anne Huxley and T. H. Huxley were on holiday. An article in The Times titled ‘Athletic sports’ provided coverage of the championship meeting of the Amateur Athletic Association held in Birmingham in July 1881, at which there were international competitors and about 14,000 spectators (The Times, 18 July 1881, p. 6).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13348,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13348