My wife is wonderfully well.  As I tell her, Providence has appointed her to take care of me when I am broken down and decrepit.

I hope you can say as much of Mrs. Darwin.  Pray give her my kind regards.

And believe me, ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[A letter to his sister gives a sketch of his position at this time, speaking of which he says to Dr. (afterwards Sir J.) Fayrer,] “You and I have travelled a long way, in all senses, since you settled my career for me on the steps of the Charing Cross Hospital.” [It must be remembered that his sister was living in Tennessee, and that her son at fifteen was serving in the Confederate army.]

Jermyn Street, May 4, 1864.

You will want to know something about my progress in the world.  Well, at this moment I am Professor of Natural History here, and Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the College of Surgeons.  The former is the appointment I have held since 1855; the latter chair I was asked to take last year, and now I have delivered two courses in that famous black gown with the red facings which the doctor will recollect very well.  What with the duties of these two posts and other official and non-official business, I am worked to the full stretch of my powers, and sometimes a little beyond them; though hitherto I have stood the wear and tear very well.

I believe I have won myself a pretty fair place in science, but in addition to that I have the reputation (of which, I fear, you will not approve) of being a great heretic and a savage controversialist always in rows.  To the accusation of heresy I fear I must plead guilty; but the second charge proceeds only, I do assure you, from a certain unconquerable hatred of lies and humbug which I cannot get over.

I have read all you tell me about the south with much interest and with the warmest sympathy, so far as the fate of the south affects you.  But I am in the condition of most thoughtful Englishmen.  My heart goes with the south, and my head with the north.

I have no love for the Yankees, and I delight in the energy and self-sacrifice of your people; but for all that, I cannot doubt that whether you beat the Yankees or not, you are struggling to uphold a system which must, sooner or later, break down.

I have not the smallest sentimental sympathy with the negro; don’t believe in him at all, in short.  But it is clear to me that slavery means, for the white man, bad political economy; bad social morality; bad internal political organisation, and a bad influence upon free labour and freedom all over the world.  For the sake of the white man, therefore, for your children and grandchildren, directly, and for mine, indirectly, I wish to see this system ended. [Cf.  “Reader,” February 27 onwards, where these general arguments against slavery appear in a controversy arising from his ninth Hunterian Lecture, in which, while admitting negro inferiority, he refutes those who justify slavery on the ground that physiologically the negro is very low in the scale.] Would that the south had had the wisdom to initiate that end without this miserable war!