Tenby, South Wales | Oct. 22nd. 1854.
My dear Tyndall,
I am rejoiced to find you entertaining my proposition1 at all – No one believes how hard you work more than I, but I was not going to be such a bad diplomatist as to put that at the head of my letter – and if I had thought that what I want you to do involved any great accession thereto I think I could not have mustered up the face to ask you. But really and truly as long as it is confined to one’s own department it is no great affair. You make me laugh at the long face you pull about the duties2 – based on my phrase – The fact is you notice what you like, and what you do not, you leave undone, unless you get an editorial request to say something about a particular book. The whole affair is entirely in your own hands – at least it is in mine – as I went upon my principle of having a row at starting.
Ordinarily Chapman sends me such books as come to him; to these such as I ask for are added if he can get them; and then I select whatever I like for texts – omitting the rest or lumping them together.
I should have mentioned that all the books go back to him.
Now here is an equitable proposition – Look at my work: I have a couple of monographs; odds and ends of papers for journals; a manual and some three courses of Lectures to provide for this winter. ‘My necessities are as great as thine’ as Sir Philip Sidney3 didn’t say. So be a brick, and split the difference, and say you will be ready for the April number. I will then write and announce the fact to Chapman.
What idiots we all are to toil and slave at this rate! I almost repent me of tempting you, after all; so I promise to hold on – if you really think you will be overdoing it. With you I envy Francis his gastric energies. I feel I have done for myself in that line and am in for a life long dyspepsia. I have not now nervous energy enough for stomach and brain both; and if I work the latter, not even the breezes of this place will keep the former in order. That is a discovery I have made here and though highly instructive it is not so pleasant as some other physiological results that have turned up.
Chapman who died of cholera4 was a distant relation of my man. The poor fellow vanished in the middle of an unfinished article which has appeared in the last Westminster,5 as his forlorn Vale!6 to the world – After all that is the way to die – better a thousand times than driveling up into eternity betwixt awake and asleep in a fatuous old age.
Please to let me hear from you at once | and believe me | Ever yours faithfully | T.H. Huxley
IC HP 8.18
RI MS JT/1/TYP/9/2868
my proposition: Huxley had requested that Tyndall join him in writing the regular ‘Science’ column for the Westminster Review (see letter 0980, n. 3). Tyndall hesitated in accepting the offer in letter 0982.
the long face you pull about the duties: Tyndall was concerned that the column would require a great amount of effort (see letter 0982).
Sir Philip Sidney: Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86), an author and courtier, known as one of the most influential writers of the Elizabethan age. The quote by Huxley is a play on one attributed to a gravely wounded Sidney, who was believed to have offered another dying soldier his bottle with the words, ‘Thy necessity is yet greater than mine’ (ODNB).
Chapman who died of cholera: John Chapman (1801–54), distant relative of the editor of the Westminster Review, was an English engineer and political writer. He had recently died of cholera on 11 September 1854 (ODNB).
unfinished article … last Westminster: the unfinished article was published as ‘The Civil Service’, Westminster Review 62 (July 1854), pp. 68–95.
Vale!: ‘farewell; goodbye; adieu’ (OED).
Please cite as “Tyndall0985,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on