iSsS LETTER TO MRS. SCOTT 



173 



ing up the " Croonian," and want L' Archetype to refer to. So 

 if you can let me have it I shall be obliged. When do you 

 return? — Ever yours faithfully, T. H. Huxley. 



14 Waverlev Place, /an. i, 1859. 



My dearest Lizzie — If intentions were only acts, the quan- 

 tity of letter paper covered with my scrawl which you would 

 have had by this time would have been something wonderful. 

 But I live at high pressure, with always a number of things 

 crying out to be done, and those that are nearest and call loudest 

 get done, while the others, too often, don't. However, this day 

 shall not go by without my wishing you all happiness in the 

 new year, and that wish you know necessarily includes all be- 

 longing to you, and my love to them. 



I have been long wanting to send you the photographs of 

 myself, wife, and boy, but one reason or other (Nettie's inces- 

 sant ill-health being, I am sorry to say, the chief) has inces- 

 santly delayed the procuring of the last. However, at length, 

 we have obtained a tolerably successful one, though you must 

 not suppose that Noel has the rather washed out look of his 

 portrait. That comes of his fair hair and blue gray eyes — for 

 the monkey is like his mother and has not an atom of resem- 

 blance to me. 



He was two years old yesterday, and is the apple of his 

 father's eye and chief deity of his mother's pantheon, which at 

 present contains only a god and goddess. Another is expected 

 shortly, however, so that there is no fear of Olympus looking 

 empty. 



. . . Here is the 26th of January and no letter gone yet. . . . 

 Since I began this letter I have been very busy with lectures and 

 other sorts of work, and besides, my whole household almost has 

 been ill — chicks with whooping cough, mother with influenza, a 

 servant ditto. I don't know whether you have such things in 

 Tennessee. 



Let me see what has happened to me that will interest you 

 since I last wrote. Did I tell you that I have finally made up 

 my mind to stop in London — the Government having made it 

 worth my while to continue in Jermyn Street? They give me 

 £600 a year now, with a gradual rise up to £800, which I reckon 

 as just enough to live on if one keeps very quiet. However, 

 it is the greatest possible blessing to be paid at last, and to be 

 free from all the abominable anxieties which attend a fluctuating 

 income. I can tell you I have had a sufficiently hard fight of it. 



