Huxley: From Devil’s Disciple To Evolution’s High Priest

433 Pages·1997·20.44 MB·English

by  Adrian Desmond

Huxley:
Also by Adrian Desmond
THE HOT-BLOODED DINOSAURS From Devil's Disciple
THE APE’S REFLEXION
ARCHETYPES AND ANCESTORS
THE POLITICS OF EVOLUTION to Evolution's
DARWIN (with James Moore)
High Priest
ADRIAN DESMOND
▲
▼T
Addison-Wesley
Reading, Massachusetts
Library of Congress Cataloeinv-in-Publkation Data Contents
Desmond, Adrian J., 1947—
Huxley : from devil’s disciple to evolution's high priest / Adrian
Desmond.
p. cm.
Originally published as 2 separate volumes: Huxley : the devil's
disciple and Huxley : evolution's high priest. London : M. Joseph.
1994-
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-201-95987-9 (alk. paper)
1. Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895. 2. Scientists—Great Britain—
-Biography. I. Title. Illustrations page yh
Q143.H956D47 1997
509.2—dC2I Acknowledgments
97-22480 The Apostle Paul of the New Teaching xiii
CIP
PART ONE: THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE
1825-1846
Dreaming my own Dreams
I Philosophy Can Bake No Bread 3
Copyright © 1994, 1997 by Adrian Desmond
2 Son of the Scalpel 18
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a The Surgeon’s Mate 36
3
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.
1846-1850
Published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Addison-Wesley is an imprint of Addison "Wesley Longman, Inc. Men-of-War 53
4
66
An Ark of Promise
5
345678 9—MA—0201009998 6 The Eighth Circle of Hell 86
Third printing, January 1998 Sepulchral Painted Savages h i
7
8 Homesick Heroes 129
1850-1858
Lost in the Wilderness
The Scientific Sadducee 149
9
10 The Season of Despair 172
11 The Jihad Begins 195
12 The Nature of the Beast 216
v
Contents
13 Empires of the Deep Past 231
1858-1865
The New Luther
14 The Eve of a New Reformation 251
15 Buttered Angels &c Bellowing Apes 266
Illustrations
16 Reslaying the Slain , 292
17 Man’s Place 3I2
1865-1870
The Scientific Swell
18 Birds, Dinosaurs & Booming Guns 339
19 Eyeing the Prize 361
1. The earliest known daguerreotype of Tom Huxley. {By courtesy
of Sir Andrew Huxley)
Part Two: Evolution’s High Priest 2. Fluxley’s self-portrait as a student. (T. H. Huxley to H. Heathorn,
n.d., HH 79, Archives, Imperial College, London)
3. Punch’s satire on ‘sons of the scalpel’. {Punch, 2 [1842], 149)
1870-1884 4. Charing Cross Hospital about 1840. {Charing Cross Hospital,
Marketing the ‘New Nature*
Medical Illustration Group)
io The Gun in the Liberal Armoury 385 5. The studious Huxley, aged twenty. (Sketch by T. H. Huxley:
21 From the City of the Dead to the City of Science 411 Family Correspondence, Archives, Imperial College, London)
22 Automatons 433 6. The newly commissioned sailor, billeted in the ‘Hulks’. {Sketch by
23 The American Dream 463 T. H. Huxley: Family Correspondence, Archives, Imperial
24 A Touch of the Whip 483 College, London)
25 A Person of Respectability 495 7. Assistant Surgeon Huxley, RN {By courtesy of Sir Andrew
16 The Scientific Woolsack 507 Huxley)
8. HMS Rattlesnake off Sydney Heads. {Painting by Oswald Brierly,
National Library of Australia, Canberra)
1885-1895 9. Henrietta Heathorn, painted by Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
The Old Lion the Poisoner. {By Courtesy of Sir Andrew Huxley)
10. Hacking through the scrub with Kennedy’s light party. (Sketch by
27 Polishing off the G.O.M. 537
28 Christ Was No Christian 562 T. H. Huxley: Archives, Imperial College, London)
11. The gallery of Huxley’s Museum. {Reproduced by permission of
29 Combating the Cosmos 583
30 Fighting unto Death 600 the Director, British Geological Survey, GSM 1/105)
12. Huxley raging against the world. {Archives, Imperial College,
Afterword: Huxley in Perspective 615 London)
13. The Irish physicist John Tyndall. (A. S. Eve and C. H. Creasey,
Abbreviations 64 5 Life and World of John Tyndall [Macmillan, 1945])
Notes 648 14. The hawk-eyed Huxley in 1857. (L. Huxley, ed., Life and Letters
Bibliography of Thomas Henry Huxley [Macmillan, 1900])
Index 783 15. Tom and Nettie on honeymoon. {Sketch by T. H. Huxley:
Archives, Imperial College, London)
vi
vii
Illustrations
16. The young lecturer drawing a gorilla skull. (The Library,
Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London)
17. The clever frontispiece to Huxley’s Man's Place in Nature. (T. H.
Huxley, Man's Place in Nature [Macmillan, 1894])
18. The first known skull of Neanderthal Man. (Archives, Imperial
College, London)
19. Huxley’s jokey sketch of Neanderthal as an ape man. (Archives,
Acknowledgments
Imperial College, London)
20. The tiny bird-like dinosaur Compsognathus. (T. H. Huxley, ‘On
the Animals which are Most Nearly Intermediate Between Birds
and Reptiles’, Popular Science Review, 7 [1868], 244)
21. Huxley’s caricature of a giant dinosaur Cetiosaurus. (T. H.
Huxley to J. Phillips, n.d.1146, Oxford University Museum)
22. On London’s School Board. (Archives, Imperial College, London)
23. The ‘Science Schools’ Building in South Kensington. (Archives,
Imperial College, London)
M y HOME CRITIC Nellie Flexner deserves special credit for read­
24. The Laboratory in 1893. (Archives, Imperial College, London)
ing reams of manuscript and improving the flow of the text. Jim Moore
25. A Haeckelian lineage for mammals. (Archives, Imperial College,
was always on call. He also read a large portion of the book and happily
London)
answered my telephone queries about blasphemy trials or Bishop Wil-
26. The ancestral mollusc curling its shell. (Archives, Imperial
College, London) berforce’s grandmother. While Bernie Lightman kindly commented on
27. Huxley Eikonoklastes in New York. (Archives, Imperial College, the ‘Afterword’ and sections dealing with Huxley’s agnosticism.
London) I owe a great debt to Huxley’s great granddaughter Angela Darwin,
28. O. C. Marsh’s table of fossil horses. (T. H. Huxley, Collected who is currently transcribing Henrietta Huxley’s letters to T.H.’s sister
Essays, 4:130) in Tennessee. These frank family letters are an invaluable resource.
29. A projected five-toed ancestral horse, ‘Eohippus’. (Archives, Angela fed me transcriptions and braced herself for questions of the
Imperial College, London)
kind: ‘Did Henrietta allude to the socialist mob attacking Huxley’s bus
30. Huxley in Birmingham. (By courtesy of Hilary Buzzard)
in 1886?’ ‘Why did she change vicars?’ ‘Did she mention Oscar Wilde
31. The sectarian turmoil. (Archives, Imperial College, London)
turning up one night?’ (Imagine the stir caused by this velveteen embodi­
32. The Inspector of Fisheries. (By courtesy of Angela Darwin)
ment of the new Hedonism, whose salvation by sin was a snub to Hux­
33. Marian Huxley’s painting of John Collier painting her. (By
ley’s rational Puritanism.) The queries went on, I am afraid, but Angela
courtesy of William Collier)
was very understanding.
34. H. G. Wells apeing Huxley. (By courtesy ofM. J. Wells)
My main research centred on the 5,000 Huxley letters in the Ar­
3 5. The Right Honourable T. H. Huxley in his Privy Councillor’s suit.
(By Courtesy of Clare Huxley) chives of Imperial College, London. Anne Barrett’s help here went be­
36. Huxley presenting his droll side. (By courtesy of Michael yond the call of duty as she supplied information and esoteric articles. I
Huxley/Richard Milner) actually used a splendid microfilm of these letters, supplied by Re­
search Publications Ltd, PO Box 45, Reading RGi 8HF, UK. These
fifty-four reels allowed me to trawl through Huxley’s daily correspon­
dence in the wee hours and gain an intimacy which could not otherwise
have been attained. I am grateful to Cristina Ashby at Research Publi­
cations for her generosity.
Not that it is exactly easy to decipher Huxley’s scrawl. His handwrit­
ing is notorious among scholars. When he was in a rush (which was al­
ways), it resembled one of his drunken crayfish which had fallen into the
IX
Acknowledgments Acknowledgments
ink pot and staggered across the page to its doom. Compositors con­ Operative Union, Manchester; Jennifer Jeynes, South Place Ethical Soci­
stantly complained, as did Huxley when they took enterprising stabs at ety, London; Solene Morris, Darwin Museum, Down House (permis­
his words. ‘Your printers are abominable’, he told the editor of Nature. sion to publish is courtesy of English Heritage, who now own Down
‘They make me say that “Tyndall did not see the drift of my statement”, House); AnneMarie Robinson and the University of London Library,
when I wrote “draft” as plainly as possible’. After twenty years, my sym­ Senate House; the British Library; the Wellcome Institute for the History
pathy is still with the printers. of Medicine, London, and the National Library of Australia, Canberra.
Many other scholars and Huxley family historians discussed their spe­ Angela Darwin made available pen-and-ink sketches from the family
cialities with me: David Allen talked on Huxley’s medical in-laws; Ralph letters. A number of the portraits, paintings and sketches have not been
Colp on illnesses; Eric Hollowday on microscopes; Sophie Forgan on published before. They are still in private possession and for permission
that ‘fungoid’ spread of buildings (as H. G. Wells had it) at South Kens­ to include them I am grateful to Sir Andrew Huxley, Clare Huxley,
ington; John Laurent on New South,Wales; Robert Ralph on drunken Richard Milner\Michael Huxley, William Collier, and Hilary Buzzard.
John MacGillivray; Giacomo Scarpelli on points Italian; Jim Strick on Likewise my thanks go to the Archives at Imperial College, London, for
spontaneous generation; William Collier on John Collier; Martin Cooke the liberty to use many photographs from their collection.
on Henrietta Huxley; and Mario di Gregorio on Huxley’s marginalia. G.P. Darwin kindly allowed me to quote from Charles Darwin’s cor­
Others who rallied or supplied material include Ruth Barton, Peter respondence. And Sir Andrew Huxley graciously consented to my pub­
Bowler, Derek Freeman, C.G.Gross, Boyd Hilton, David Knight, Rich­ lishing extracts from his grandfather’s letters.
ard Milner, Ron Rainger, Evelleen Richards, Marsha Richmond, Nico-
laas Rupke, Simon Schaffer, Jim Secord, Sonia Uyterhoeven, Antonello
la Vergata, Mary P. Winsor and Alison Winter. Jim Secord and Evelleen
Richards at the Huxley Centenary Conference at Imperial College in
1995 inspired me to wrap up my major conclusions in a separate section.
A reflexive ‘Afterword’ connects the narrative text to the latest Huxley
historiography.
To the following archivists and scholars I extend my thanks, for access
to archives, help and hospitality, and to the libraries themselves for per­
mission to quote from manuscript material: the American Philosophical
Society for supplying a microfilm of their Huxley letters; Howard
Hague, Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School; John Thackray
at the British Museum (Natural History); Ian Lyle, Royal College of Sur­
geons of England; Perry O’Donovan of the Darwin Letters Project, and
the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; Frank James and the
Royal Institution archives; Gill Furlong and Victoria Lane at University
College London Manuscripts Library; King’s College, London, ar­
chives; Graham McKenna, British Geological Survey; C. A. Piggot,
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Gina Douglas, the Linnean Society of
London; Reg Fish and his successor Ann Sylph, Zoological Society of
London; Mary Sampson, The Royal Society; David Webb, the Bishops-
gate Institute, London; Virginia Murray at John Murray (publishers);
Christine Weideman and Judith Ann Schiff for permission to cite from
the Othneil Charles Marsh Papers at Yale University Library; Joan
Grattan, The Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University;
Stella Newton, Oxford University Museum; Gillian F. Lonergan, Co-
x xi
The Apostle Paul of the New Teaching
‘M y GOOD 6c KIND agent for the propagation of the Gospel’, Dar­
win called him, ‘ie the Devil’s gospel’. Thomas Henry Huxley became
Darwin’s Rottweiler, instantly recognizable by his deep-set dark eyes
and lashing tongue. Where Darwin held back, Huxley lunged at his
limping prey. It was he, not Darwin, who enraptured and outraged audi­
ences in the 18 60s with talk of our ape ancestors and cave men. Listeners
were agog in a prim, evangelical age. These were terrifying, tantalizing
images. ‘It is not the bishops and archbishops I am afraid of’, Samuel
Butler once said. ‘Men like Huxley... are my natural enemies’.1 No-one
stirred passions like Thomas Henry Huxley.
Huxley was one of the founders of the sceptical, scientific twentieth
century. We owe to him that enduring military metaphor, the ‘war’ of
science against theology. He coined the word ‘agnostic’ and contributed
to the West’s existential crisis. All of this makes him look so modern that
we want to snatch him from his age. Today his agnostic stand seems ob­
vious. But yesterday it was an immensely daring, motivated, ideological
position. That plodding zoological autocrat, Richard Owen, called him
a pervert with ‘some, perhaps congenital, defect of mind’ for denying Di­
vine will in Nature.2 Who can realize the prissy, patronage-based, un­
democratic, sermon-dominated, Anglican-controlled, different society
Huxley faced, and faced squarely?
He remains a saint to some, a sinner to others. He had a huge, multi­
talented intellect and seemed to run ten lives simultaneously. ‘Brilliant’
was George Eliot’s word for him, but even she wondered where this
agent provocateur would strike next. He had a stiletto of a pen. ‘Cutting
up monkeys was his forte, and cutting up men was his foible’, the Pall
Mall Gazette noted. The alternative, for Huxley, was ‘to lie still 6c let the
devil have his own way. And I will be torn to pieces before I am forty
xiii
Introduction Introduction
sooner than see that’.3 He was built ‘on the high pressure tubular boiler racy in America. He rose with the muddy-booted engineers, the indus­
principle’, and adoring students came from every continent to see this trial Dissenters hacking at the obstructive Anglican edifice. His life is
social engineer thundering onto society’s mainline like an unscheduled a chronicle of the rising middle classes. It is also the tale of a society
express. George Eliot thought he was out of control half the time. The in crisis, out of which came today’s scientific world.
corpulent cosmic theist John Fiske travelled from America and under­ He was born into an age of bishops in cauliflower wigs deliberating on
stood him perfectly: God’s goodness in Nature. At the end he was riding a penny-farthing
through a new world, lit by electricity and criss-crossed by telephone
I am quite wild over Huxley. He is as handsome as an Apollo . ..
wires. He left a secular society probing human ancestry, a society led by
I never saw such magnificent eyes in my life. His eyes are black,
and his face expresses an eager burning intensity ... He seems intellectuals proudly wearing his ‘agnostic’ badge.
earnest, - immensely in earnest, - and thoroughly frank and The wrenches as England industrialized told in his gritty, tub-
cordial and modest. And, by Jove, what a pleasure it is to meet thumping, scientific life, with its hunger and pain, and its campaign for a
such a clean-cut mind! It is like Saladin’s sword which cut new intellectual aristocracy. Beatrice Webb saw ‘a strain of madness in
through the cushion.4 him’.6 Indeed the whole family had its ups and down - scandals, traumas
and asylums were as much a part of his private world as the medals,
Huxley is a contextual biography, for want of a better word: as often
presidencies and praise.
as not it looks up from street level to provide a fresh perspective on the
There was a flawed perfection to Huxley as no other eminent Victo­
people’s scientist. At the outset my goal was to write it in a way that
rian. Contradiction wrapped themselves up in his tall, wiry frame: he
would humanize science and its history in order to make it accessible
was the great educational reformer who had next to no formal educa­
and interesting. As such the historiography remains hidden, however
tion; the sceptic who made Biblical phraseology his stock-in-trade (‘Pope
much it shapes our picture of T.H. Huxley, and the theoretical issues
Huxley’, the Spectator dubbed him); the materialist with a messianic
only become overt in a separate Afterword. Even so, the book is in­
streak. He tailored evolution to middle-class needs. He harangued, he
tended as a contribution to the new contextual history of science. It
applied it to man and mind, even worse he took it to the masses. And yet
looks at evolution’s use in order to understand the class, religious or po­
he had excruciating trouble assimilating Darwin’s doctrine of Natural
litical interests involved. It raises questions about new practices and new
Selection himself.
workplaces. How did England’s vicarage view of a designed, happy
‘Extinguished theologians’, ran one of his wonderfully bloodcurdling
world in 1830 become the cold, causal, and Calvinistic evolutionary
slogans, ‘lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes be­
vista of 1870—that passionless cosmos reflected in an impersonal labo­
side that of Hercules’.7 For a century historians have debated, champi­
ratory?5 Put simply, Huxley shows the external world changing with the
oned and denounced Huxley’s ‘war’ on theology. But why did he rise
social world. It shows Huxley marketing the ‘new Nature’ to give his
like Saul to ‘smite the Amalekites’ - these enemies of his scientific Israel?
low-status professionals more esteem in an Oxbridge-dominated cul­
And how are we to interpret the ‘warfare’ anyway? As rational science
ture. This is a story of Class, Power and Propaganda.
triumphing over holy obscurantism? At the dawn of the twenty-first cen­
Such an approach allows me to paint an unashamedly social por­
tury ‘reason’ seems a precarious, value-laden yardstick, and one which
trait - to pan across London’s splashy streets to catch Huxley in ac­
has an infuriating habit of changing allegiance. In Huxley’s young day, it
tion, to locate him firmly in a reforming, industrializing, urbanizing,
lay with the natural theologians. Not only is the ‘warfare’ image hack­
Dickensian Britain, with its slums, its trade unions and its great de­
neyed; so is the reaction to it - the harmonious history born in the 1970s,
bates on evolution, emancipation and moral authority.
which smooths over the Victorian conflict. The point is not to deny the
Thomas Henry Huxley came from nowhere, proud, pushy, a new Lu­
struggle, any more than to refight the good fight. It is to understand why
ther looking for a pulpit. He seemed half mad at times, messianic at oth­
an angry outsider used science as a weapon to claw power, and to appre­
ers. An outsider with a cutting tongue and a chip on his shoulder, he
ciate the social currents that swept this rapier-wielding doubting Tho­
would claw his way from London’s dockside slums to the presidency of
mas to the summit.
the ‘Parliament of Science , the British Association for the Advancement
Those swirling currents were industrial Dissent. If biography can have
of Science, and then be hailed as the great prophet of the new technoc­
a thesis (a subject tackled in the Afterword), this is Huxley's - he was at
xiv
xv
Introduction Introduction
the extreme cutting edge of an alienated and excluded radical Dissent. ‘symbolic capital’ - the medals and kudos - into real cash.10 His conver­
To dub him ‘The Devil’s Disciple’ in Part i is to use a provocative title sion of knowledge into a paying commodity was a major step in the
with multiple meanings. The Devil was Darwin. But, as in George Ber­ making of a salaried scientist. In Darwin we see an older ideal, the
nard Shaw’s play, Huxley turns out to be doing the Lord’s work,8 riding wealthy, self-financed gent whose home was his laboratory - and in
the crest of a radical Dissenting secularism, which wanted fair play for Huxley twentieth-century corporate science in the making.
non-Anglicans: the moralizing ‘agnostic’ began by ridding society of its Science had a new breed of star performer. Huxley transported audi­
idolatry and ended up establishing a rival evolutionary priesthood. ences to strange dinosaurian worlds and conjured up alien pithecoid
Ultimately this is a story of how scientists, with their agnostic evolu­ people. Bushy-bearded labourers with blistered hands flocked to his
tionary beliefs, came to hold such a position of authority in the twentieth talks on our ancestry. He drew the sort of crowds that are reserved for
century. But it is the nuances that make history interesting. We have to evangelists or rock stars today. Two thousand were turned away from St
capture the rich texture of Huxley’s emotional, religious and scientific Martin’s Hall in London one Sunday when he delivered a ‘lay sermon’
life, trace his Unitarian friendships, his industrial backers, his oscillating on material salvation (the outraged Lord’s Day Observance Society
relationship with the workers, his broad alliances with an avant garde promptly stopped the lecture series). He was the most scintillating sci­
raging against the privileged Anglican Church. If we see him developing entific missionary to stand on a soap-box.
a rival profession of science, with its ideological roots in industrial Dis­ Bishops’ wives were astounded that he wasn’t a sort of scientific Jack
sent, the antagonisms begin to clear up. the Ripper; ‘and yet’, one exclaimed, ‘I hear that he is a devoted husband
And we can only do that by prising open the closed areas of his life. & an affectionate father’. Behind the headlines lay this quieter Huxley,
The teenage Huxley is unknown: no papers have been published on the family man, the teacher, the fossil expert who showed that dinosaurs
his shadowy medical origins, no books entitled Young Huxley, no Ph.D were the ancestors of today’s birds. Here too we see the realpolitik.
theses on his opium-hazed teachers or his skew-hatted student days.9 Everyone knows of his clash with a purple-vested Bishop Wilberforce in
Darwin’s gentrified opulence was never his. Huxley’s birth above a i860, when Huxley declared that he would rather have an ape for a
butcher’s shop spoke for itself. His was a world of sots and scandals, of grandparent than a bishop who prostituted his gifts. But who knew that
debts and ne’er-do-wells. He was a man on the make, a ‘plebeian’, he the two were quietly working together in the Zoological Society, sacking
said. We have to track him through the slums that made Dickens shud­ drunken keepers and arranging exhibits?
der, through a turbulent student world - of Gin Palace lowlife and fiery If he caricatured eminent bishops we cannot simply cheer or hiss, we
medical democrats. Understand the Church-baiting, reforming 1830s have to ask why. His singular sort of science - based on a non-
and 1840s and Huxley’s public emergence in 1851, ‘soul sickened and miraculous, cause-and-effect Nature - was for battering down seminary
sceptical’, makes sense. doors. Evolution cradled within an agnostic framework seems obvious
The newer approaches to science, emphasizing its class and social un­ today, precisely because we have inherited the victor’s mantle. But it was
derpinnings, push us further in this direction. Only a backcloth of steam far from obvious in 1870. Then the English public schools and universi­
factories, professionalization, imperial expansion, liberal Dissent and ties shunned science as useless and dehumanizing. Their world was of
laissez-faire will allow us to appreciate why Huxley’s New Model Army character-forming Classics and Theology. Oxford and Cambridge were
of outsiders pledged its allegiance, not to the old aristocracy and clergy, finishing schools for prosperous Anglicans. Against 145 Classics Fellow­
but to the new captains of industry and the professions. ships at Oxford in 1870, there were four in science.11 The stacked odds
The young hothead scrambled to the top of his profession; indeed he explain Huxley’s single-minded assault on the ivy seminaries using his
made a profession of science. With him the ‘scientist’ was born. The newly-professionalized forces.
word only came into vogue from the late 1870s to describe a struggling Huxley’s satires of Anglican supernaturalism and Oxbridge privilege
professional, systematically probing Nature, paid to research, engaged have helped to distort our view of the Victorians. Just as Oscar Wilde
on an unprecedented open-ended quest. Huxley boosted the ‘Scientist’s’ parodied Huxley’s Puritan generation, so Huxley caricatured Bishop
profile by trenching on the clergy’s domain, raising the territorial tension Wilberforce’s day. He saw strangled priests around evolution’s cradle
by equating authority with technical expertise. He was the self-perceived and lampooned Gladstone’s first-century beliefs; and he finally made
poor boy, one of Thackeray’s thrusting blades, trying to turn so much Christ himself rebuke Victorian Christianity. This was black propa-
XVI xvn
Introduction Introduction
ganda for his rival scientific priesthood. And successful too: he per­
This is the human story behind these sea-changes. Huxley was long
suaded sceptical, Classically-trained politicians that science was
crushed under an inverted financial pyramid, chocked with boozy rela­
essential to an industrial nation. It became an arm of the state, con­
tions. The sober Darwinian was trying to hold the lid down, trying to
trolled by Huxley. But his scientists incorporated all their mid-Victorian
usher in a new scientific morality as the gin-sodden floozies threatened
prejudices into the new civil service biology.12 The slamming lab doors
scandal. Here was the reverse side to Huxley’s public face. And it re­
shut out the women and workers and priests. Inside the lab, the new
mains partly hidden. Huxley’s extended family is unknown to histori­
man, having trouble with the ‘new woman’, could bolster Darwin’s gen­
ans, and my account throws up more questions than answers. Given the
dered and class image of evolutionary ‘reality’.
tragedy of his daughter Mady’s illness and death, one wonders what lay
Biography gets us around the sepia image of a static, strait-laced Vic­
behind his sister-in-law’s shriek ‘No wonder you drove Mady mad’. Was
torian age. We can plot one man’s trajectory through a seething century
this just the deranged raving of a widow high on chloral and gin? More
- indeed, understand why the laces slowly straightened as the old radi­
needs to be done on the relationship of these talented Victorian daugh­
cals became the new reactionaries. So in Part 2, ‘Evolution’s High
ters with their pressured, patriarchal fathers.16 If nothing else, tragedy
Priest’, which takes the story from 1870 to Huxley’s death in 1895, the
and trauma provide a continuity after 1870 as the rational tornado
sets change. The Darwinians were in place and underpinning the new so­
cial order. We find Huxley deflecting the spotlight from his own ideo­ worked like ten men to support dozens of dependants.
The sexagenarian scourge continued to fascinate, just as the enfant
logical assumptions.13 He made ‘neutral’ science a moral Saladin’s
sword. And a political one: he recast Darwinism in the middle of the terrible had. There was more to Huxley than a brilliant early-peaking
Great Depression (1874-96) to contain his workers’ Leftward drift - scientist. He continued to change hats, becoming the supreme cultural
turning open-competition radicalism into a darker Social Darwinism. critic - part political fixer in private, part matinee idol in public; charis­
And as the bottom dropped out of history and the Victorians peered, matic from his holier-than-thou agnosticism, authoritative from his
horrified, into the unfathomable abyss of geological time,14 it was the command of the ‘new Nature’. He had his finger on the pulse; or rather
silver-haired Huxley who cast a stabilizing anchor from the evolutionary he speeded up the pulse, making the Victorian heart thump with his
ship. goading talk of the ‘sin of faith’. It explains why Beatrice Webb, arriving
The social order was increasingly professional as the second industrial late on the scene, should consider him ‘greater as a man than a scientific
revolution got underway after 1870. Northern capital was flowing into thinker’.17
London, but the steel barons were investing in more than the stockmar- But we cannot snap judge so chimerical a character. He had the
ket.15 Quakers and Congregationalists, munitions manufacturers and confidence to remake himself with the times. The idiosyncratic enrage
factory free-traders were funding Huxley. These social alignments be­ becomes the stern moralizer. The self-perceived ‘plebeian’ transforms
come more explicit as we get beneath the scientist’s neutral veneer. into the powerful Privy Councillor. The scientific radical rebukes Liberal
The Victorian era was ‘hinged’ about 1870 with the industrial retool­ Prime Ministers and takes tea with Tory ones. And every now and then
ing. So was Huxley’s life. He moved to the forerunner of London’s Impe­
the scowling mask shatters, to reveal a smile (so rarely captured in pho­
rial College, honed a new laboratory biology, and started training
tographs). It was the beam of a brilliant boy, having arrived in Olympus.
schoolmasters for the industrial regions. It was the beginning of that
The last two photographs typify the contrast: the public face of the Privy
base-up reconstruction which ensured science’s take-off. Money was
Councillor, and the endearing - and disarming - ‘phiz’ that was, per­
switching from charity to education, the street arabs were being swept
haps, ultimately the man.
into schools, the Divinely ordered society was becoming Darwinianly
ordered, and the middle classes were beginning to look to Nature for
That Victorian shrine, the Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, is
their ultimate explanations. There was Huxley at every turn. The Pall
a splendidly cracked monument, like an old imperial statue, good in its
Mall Gazette saw his hand ‘in all the moving subjects of the day’. By the
day for inspiring the troops, but now covered in historiographic vines. In
time the knighted legions stood over his grave in 1895 there had been a
1900 it did not matter that the letters were bowdlerized and con­
total re-evaluation of knowledge. Science and the middle-class profes­
tracted.18 As we approach 2000 it does, and retranscribing his 5,000 let­
sionals were in. Evolution had become ‘natural’.
ters, diaries and manuscripts housed at Imperial College in London has
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xix
Introduction
enabled me to discover how many of Huxley’s famous bons mots were
Victorian misquotes.
The Times claimed that no one could ‘estimate the forces which have
been at work to mould the intellectual, moral, and social life of the cen­
tury’ without appreciating T.H. Huxley. It is crucial today, as the after­
shocks of the great Victorian crisis of faith rumble on in the West, to
understand this ‘apostle Paul of the new teaching’.19 To understand, in
short, the making of our modern Darwinian world.
Part One
The Devil’s Disciple
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