390 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xxi 



HODESLEA, EASTBOURNE, Nov. 9, 1893. 

 Gossip of the Town. 



" Professor Huxley receives 200 guineas for each of his 

 articles for the Nineteenth Century." 



MY DEAR KNOWLES I have always been satisfied with the 

 Nineteenth Century in the capacity of paymaster, but I did not 

 know how much reason I had for my satisfaction till I read the 

 above ! 



Totting up the number of articles and multiplying by 200 it 

 strikes me I shall be behaving very handsomely if I take 2000 

 for the balance due. 



So sit down quickly, take thy cheque-book, and write five 

 score, and let me have it at breakfast time to-morrow. I once 

 got a cheque for 1000 at breakfast, and it ruined me morally. 

 1 have always been looking out for another. 



I hope you are all flourishing. We are the better for Maloja, 

 but more dependent on change of weather and other trifles than 

 could be wished. Yet I find myself outlasting those who started 

 in life along with me. Poor Andrew Clark and I were at Haslar 

 together in 1846, and he was the younger by a year and a half. 

 Ever yours very faithfully, T. H. HUXLEY. 



All my time is spent in the co-ordination of my eruptions 

 when I am an active volcano. 



I hope you got the volumes which I told Macmillan to send 

 you. 



The following letter to Professor Romanes, whose failing 

 eyesight was a premonitory symptom of the disease which 

 proved fatal the next year, reads, so to say, as a solemn 

 prelude to the death of three old friends this autumn of 

 Andrew Clark, his old comrade at Haslar, and cheery 

 physician for many years ; of Benjamin Jowett, Master of 

 Balliol, whose acquaintance he had first made in 1851 at 

 the Stanleys' at Harrow, and with whom he kept up an 

 intimacy to the end of his life, visiting Balliol once or twice 

 every year ; and, heaviest blow, of John Tyndall, the friend 

 and comrade whose genial warmth of spirit made him almost 

 claim a brother's place in early struggles and later success, 

 and whose sudden death was all the more poignant for the 

 cruel touch of tragedy in the manner of it : 



