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Page 7
No doubt his work was, as he confesses, not systematically spread over
his various subjects; and his energy was fitful, though it was energy
that struck his contemporaries, who gave the name of the "Sign of
the Head and Microscope" to the familiar silhouette of him as he sat
before a window poring over his dissections, while they swarmed out
into the quadrangle after lectures.
He achieved brilliant successes as a student. In 1843 he won the first
prize in Chemistry, with a note that his "extraordinary diligence
and success in the pursuit of this branch of science do him infinite
honour," as well as the first prize in Anatomy and Physiology. He
was only twenty when, in 1845, he went up for his M.B. at London
University, and won a gold medal in his favourite subjects of Anatomy
and Physiology, being second in that section.
Early in 1846, being still too young to qualify at the College of
Surgeons, yet confronted by the imperative necessity for earning his
own bread, he applied, at the suggestion of his fellow-student,
Lyon Playfair, for service as a naval surgeon, passed the necessary
examination, and went to Haslar. His official chief, old John
Richardson, of Arctic fame, silently kept an eye upon him, and,
failing to get him one of the coveted resident appointments, kept him,
all unaware and ill-content, at Haslar till something worthy of his
scientific abilities should turn up. Seven months passed; then
came the chance of sailing on the surveying and exploring ship
_Rattlesnake_, under Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., brother of the more
famous Dean, who was in want of an assistant-surgeon with a turn for
science.
IV
THE VOYAGE OF THE _RATTLESNAKE_, AND ITS SEQUEL
The three friends, Darwin, Hooker, and Huxley, were alike in this,
that each in his turn began his career with a great voyage of
scientific discovery in one of H.M. ships. Darwin was twenty-two when
the _Beagle_ sailed for the Straits of Magellan; Hooker, also, was
twenty-two when he sailed for the Antarctic with Ross on the _Erebus_;
Huxley was but twenty-one when he set forth with Owen Stanley for
Australian waters to survey the Great Barrier Reef and New Guinea.
Each found in the years of distant travel a withdrawal from the
distracting bustle of ordinary life, which enabled him to concentrate
upon original work and to reflect deeply, unhampered by current
doctrines; each came back, not only deeply impressed by the elemental
problems of life, but "salted" with the sea and the discipline of the
sea.
It was good to live under sharp discipline; to be down on the
realities of existence by living on bare necessaries; to find
how extremely well worth living life seemed to be when one
woke up from a night's rest on a soft plank, with the sky for
canopy, and cocoa and weevily biscuit the sole prospect for
breakfast; and, more especially, to learn to work for the sake
of what I got for myself out of it, even if it all went to the
bottom and I along with it.
Huxley was not so well situated as either Darwin, the well-to-do
amateur who was naturalist to the expedition, or Hooker, the son of
a distinguished botanist, receiving many privileges from his father's
friend, Captain Ross, while officially he was but an assistant-surgeon
and second naturalist. Huxley had neither friends nor influence beyond
the simple recommendation of "old John" Richardson. Macgillivray, the
naturalist, and the Captain himself had scientific interests, but not
so the other officers, who disliked seeing the decks messed by the
contents of the tow-net. Yet they were "as good fellows as sailors
ought to be, and generally are," though they did not understand why he
should be so zealous in pursuit of the objects which his friends
the middies christened "Buffons," after his volume of the _Suites �
Buffon_. As assistant-surgeon he messed with the middies, but his good
spirits and fun and freedom from any assumption of superiority made
the boys his good comrades.
From the first he was very busy, glorying in the prospect of being
able to give himself up to his favourite pursuits, without thereby
neglecting the proper duties of life. A twenty-eight gun frigate was
anything but a floating palace. The _Rattlesnake_ was badly fitted
out, and always leaky; the lower deck gave a head-space of four feet
ten, which was cramping to a man of five feet eleven; but he had the
run of the commodious chart-room, as arranged for a surveying ship,
and would have had the run of the library if Captain Stanley's
requisition for books had not been "overlooked" by a parsimonious
Admiralty. His tiny cabin was light enough to work in on a dull day;
but as for the possibility of making a scientific collection, it was
but seven feet by six, by five feet six inches high, and infested with
cockroaches to boot.
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