LAST LETTER TO HUXLEY 357 



not a conception who I was till I told him, and then he 

 knew nothing of me. 



The year 1895 was marked by another heavy loss. His 

 old friend Huxley had been attacked by influenza in the 

 last week of February. This was followed by pleurisy and 

 other complications. When he rallied early in the summer, 

 Hooker ventured to write to him, a cheery letter, on June 7, 

 but his reply on the 26th, though still buoyed up by the strong 

 will that kept his very senses alert, left no hope in his friend's 

 mind. 



To T. H. Huxley 



June 7, 1895. 



My dear old Fellow, — I have been wearying to write 

 to you for weeks, but dared not till now that I hear from 

 Foster that you are really better ; and have indeed been 

 out in the garden. 



Foster tells me that he will go and see you shortly. He 

 will tell you all the R.S. news. 



We have a scare, my youngest having found diphtheria 

 somewhere — at Dawlish or on the way home. There was 

 plenty of the white film and pain of deglutition, but no 

 complication. We have a sharp young doctor here, but 

 I think he funked Antitoxin. However he got the little 

 chap round all right, and the infant prodigy congratulates 

 himself on knowing diphtheria by experience ! He is quite 

 ready to undertake a case. 



I have been all right all winter — I am stone- ware you 

 know, and shall have to be buried alive if at all, I suppose. 



I was at Torquay the other day, seeing my invalid 

 sister, and went on to Plymouth and over a huge iron-clad, 

 the Endymion. It nearly turned my brain. For com- 

 plexity of structure and function in a given space there 

 is nothing to compare with it in the inorganic world, and 

 Man only in the organic. The discomfort at sea must be 

 extreme, you cannot walk straight for ten yards anywhere — 

 nor can two walk anywhere abreast that I could see. You 

 are ever knocking yourself about and breaking your shins 

 or toes against brass, wood or iron. 



The officers' quarters are good, but for the rest, rather 



