i8Ss RETIREMENT nj 



posal which is in itself an honour, and which is rendered ex- 

 tremely gratifying to me by the great kindness of the expressions 

 in which you have been pleased to embody it. 



I am happy to say that I am getting steadily better at last, 

 and under the regime of " peace with honour " that now seems to 

 have fallen to my lot, I may fairly hope yet to do a good stroke 

 of work or two. — I remain, my dear Lord Iddesleigh, faithfully 

 yours, T. H. Huxley. 



4 Marlborough Place, Nov. 24, 1885. 



My dear Donnelly ■ — I believe you have been at work 

 again ! 



Lord Iddesleigh has written to me to ask if I will be recom- 

 mended for a Civil List Pension of £300 a year, a very pretty 

 letter, not at all like the Treasury masterpiece you admired so 

 much. 



Didn't see why I should not accept, and have accepted ac- 

 cordingly. When the announcement comes out the Liberals 

 will say the Tory Govt, have paid me for attacking the G.O.M. ! 

 to a dead certainty. — Ever yours, T. H. Huxley. 



Five days later he replies to the congratulations of 

 Mr. Eckersley (whose son had married Huxley's third 

 daughter) : — 



. . . Lord Iddesleigh's letter offering to submit my name 

 for an honorary pension was a complete surprise. 



My chiefs in the late Government wished to retire me on full 

 pay, but the Treasury did not see their way to it, and cut off 

 £300 a year. Naturally I am not sorry to have the loss made 

 good, but the way the thing was done is perhaps the pleasantest 

 part of it. 



There was a certain grim appropriateness in his " official 

 death " following hard upon his sixtieth birthday, for sixty 

 was the age at which he had long declared that men of 

 science ought to be strangled, lest age should harden them 

 against the reception of new truths, and make them into 

 clogs upon progress, the worse, in proportion to the influ- 

 ence they had deservedly won. This is the allusion in a 

 birthday letter from Sir M. Foster : — 



Reverend Sir — So the " day of strangulation " has arrived 

 at last, and with it the humble petition of your friends that you 



