The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, vol 2 | Page 3

that "Devonshire men are as little

Anglo-Saxons as Northumbrians are Welsh." Huxley replied on the
21st, meeting his historical arguments with citations from Freeman, and
especially by completing his opponent's quotation from Caesar, to show
that under certain conditions, the Gaul was indistinguishable from the
German. The assertion that the Anglo-Saxon character is midway
between the pure French or Irish and the Teutonic, he met with the
previous question, Who is the pure Frenchman? Picard, Provencal, or
Breton? or the pure Irish? Milesian, Firbolg, or Cruithneach?
But the "Devonshire Man" did not confine himself to science. He
indulged in various personalities, to the smartest of which, a parody of
Sydney Smith's dictum on Dr. Whewell, Huxley replied:--]
"A Devonshire Man" is good enough to say of me that "cutting up
monkeys is his forte, and cutting up men is his foible." With your
permission, I propose to cut up "A Devonshire Man"; but I leave it to
the public to judge whether, when so employed, my occupation is to be
referred to the former or to the latter category.
[For this he was roundly lectured by the "Spectator" on January 29, in
an article under the heading "Pope Huxley." Regardless of the rights or
wrongs of the controversy, he was chidden for the abusive language of
the above paragraph, and told that he was a very good anatomist, but
had better not enter into discussions on other subjects.
The same question is developed in the address to the Ethnological
Society later in the year and in "Some Fixed Points in British
Ethnology" (see above), and reiterated in an address from the chair in
Section D at the British Association in 1878 at Dublin, and in a letter to
the "Times" for October 12, 1887, apropos of a leading article upon
"British Race-types of To-day."
Letter-writing was difficult under such pressure of work, but the claims
of absent friends were not wholly forgotten, though left on one side for
a time, and the warm-hearted Dohrn, could not bear to think himself
forgotten, managed to get a letter out of him--not on scientific
business.]
26 Abbey Place, January 30, 1870.
My dear Dohrn,
In one sense I deserve all the hard things you may have said and
thought about me, for it is really scandalous and indefensible that I
have not written to you. But in another sense, I do not, for I have very

often thought about you and your doings, and as I have told you once
before, your memory always remains green in the "happy family."
But what between the incessant pressure of work and an inborn
aversion to letter-writing, I become a worse and worse correspondent
the longer I live, and unless I can find one or two friends who will [be]
content to bear with my infirmities and believe that however long
before we meet, I shall be ready to take them up again exactly where I
left off, I shall be a friendless old man.
As for your old Goethe, you are mistaken. The Scripture says that "a
living dog is better than a dead lion," and I am a living dog. By the way,
I bought Cotta's edition of him the other day, and there he stands on my
bookcase in all the glory of gilt, black, and marble edges. Do you know
I did a version of his "Aphorisms on Nature" into English the other day.
[For the first number of "Nature," November 1869.] It astonishes the
British Philistines not a little. When they began to read it they thought
it was mine, and that I had suddenly gone mad!
But to return to your affairs instead of my own. I received your volume
on the "Arthropods" the other day, but I shall not be able to look at it
for the next three weeks, as I am in the midst of my lectures, and have
an annual address to deliver to the Geological Society on the 18th
February, when, I am happy to say, my tenure of office as President
expires.
After that I shall be only too glad to plunge into your doings and, as
always, I shall follow your work with the heartiest interest. But I wish
you would not take it into your head that Darwin or I, or any one else
thinks otherwise than highly of you, or that you need "re-establishing"
in any one's eyes. But I hope you will not have finished your work
before the autumn, as they have made me President of the British
Association this year, and I shall be very busy with my address in the
summer. The meeting is to take place in Liverpool on the 14th
September, and I live in hope that you will be able to come over. Let
me know