The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, vol 2 | Page 7

your notions of how friendship should be manifested, and
that you make no allowances for the oppression and exhaustion of the
work entailed by what Jean Paul calls a "Tochtervolles Haus." I hope I
may live to see you with at least ten children, and then my wife and I
will be avenged. Our children will be married and settled by that time,
and we shall have time to write every day and get very wroth when you
do not reply immediately.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
All are well, the children so grown you will not know them.
July 18, 1870.
My dear Dohrn,
Notwithstanding the severe symptoms of "Tochterkrankheit" under
which I labour, I find myself equal to reply to your letter.
The British Association meets in September on the 14th day of that
month, which falls on a Wednesday. Of course, if you come you shall
be provided for by the best specimen of Liverpool hospitality. We have
ample provision for the entertainment of the "distinguished foreigner."
Will you be so good as to be my special ambassador with Haeckel and
Gegenbauer, and tell them the same thing? It would give me and all of
us particular pleasure to see them and to take care of them.
But I am afraid that this wretched war will play the very deuce with our
foreign friends. If you Germans do not give that crowned swindler,
whose fall I have been looking for ever since the coup d'etat, such a
blow as he will never recover from, I will never forgive you. Public
opinion in England is not worth much, but at present, it is entirely
against France. Even the "Times," which generally contrives to be on
the baser side of a controversy, is at present on the German side. And
my daughters announced to me yesterday that they had converted a
young friend of theirs from the French to the German side, which is one
gained for you. All look forward with great pleasure to seeing you in
the autumn.
Ever yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[In addition to this address on September 14, he read his paper on

"Penicillium," etc., in Section D on the 20th. Speaking on the 17th,
after a lecture of Sir J. Lubbock's on the "Social and Religious
Condition of the Lower Races of Mankind," he brought forward his
own experiences as to the practical results of the beliefs held by the
Australian savages, and from this passed to the increasing savagery of
the lower classes in great towns such as Liverpool, which was the great
political question of the future, and for which the only cure lay in a
proper system of education.
The savagery underlying modern civilisation was all the more vividly
before him, because one evening he, together with Sir J. Lubbock, Dr.
Bastian, and Mr. Samuelson, were taken by the chief of the detective
department round some of the worst slums in Liverpool. In thieves'
dens, doss houses, dancing saloons, enough of suffering and criminality
was seen to leave a very deep and painful impression. In one of these
places, a thieves' lodging-house, a drunken man with a cut face
accosted him and asked him whether he was a doctor. He said "yes,"
whereupon the man asked him to doctor his face. He had been fighting,
and was terribly excited. Huxley tried to pacify him, but if it had not
been for the intervention of the detective, the man would have assaulted
him. Afterwards he asked the detective if he were not afraid to go alone
in these places, and got the significant answer, "Lord bless you, sir,
drink and disease take all the strength out of them."
On the 21st, after the general meeting of the Association, which wound
up the proceedings, the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire
presented a diploma of honorary membership and a gift of books to
Huxley, Sir G. Stokes, and Sir J. Hooker, the last three Presidents of the
British Association, and to Professors Tyndall and Rankine and Sir J.
Lubbock, the lecturers at Liverpool. Then Huxley was presented with a
mazer bowl lined with silver, made from part of one of the roof timbers
of the cottage occupied as his headquarters by Prince Rupert during the
siege of Liverpool. He was rather taken aback when he found the bowl
was filled with champagne, after a moment, however, he drank]
"success to the good old town of Liverpool," [and with a wave of his
hand, threw the rest on the floor, saying,] "I pour this as a libation to
the tutelary deities of the town."
[The same evening he was the guest of the Sphinx Club at dinner at the
Royal Hotel, his friend Mr. P.H. Rathbone being in the chair, and in

proposing the toast