Thomas Henry Huxley - Satires

Satires

Darwin's ideas and Huxley's controversies gave rise to many cartoons and satires. It was the debate about man's place in nature that roused such widespread comment: cartoons are so numerous as to be almost impossible to count; Darwin's head on a monkey's body is one of the visual clichés of the age. The "Great Hippocampus Question" attracted particular attention:

• Monkeyana (Punch vol 40, 18 May 1861). Signed 'Gorilla', this turned out to be by Sir Philip Egerton MP, amateur naturalist, fossil fish collector and — Richard Owen's patron! Last two stanzas:

  Next HUXLEY replies
  That OWEN he lies
  And garbles his Latin quotation;
  That his facts are not new,
  His mistakes not a few,
  Detrimental to his reputation.
  
  To twice slay the slain
  By dint of the Brain
  (Thus HUXLEY concludes his review)
  Is but labour in vain,
  unproductive of gain,
  And so I shall bid you "Adieu"!

• The Gorilla's Dilemma (Punch 1862, vol 43 p164). First two lines:

  Say am I a man or a brother,
  Or only an anthropoid ape?

• Report of a sad case recently tried before the Lord Mayor, Owen versus Huxley. Lord Mayor asks whether either side is known to the police:

  Policeman X — Huxley, your Worship, I take to be a young hand, but very vicious; but Owen I have seen before. He got into trouble with an old bone man, called Mantell, who never could be off complaining as Owen prigged his bones. People did say that the old man never got over it, and Owen worritted him to death; but I don't think it was so bad as that. Hears as Owen takes the chair at a crib in Bloomsbury. I don't think it will be a harmonic meeting altogether. And Huxley hangs out in Jermyn Street.

  (Tom Huxley's 'low set' included Hooker 'in the green and vegetable line' and 'Charlie Darwin, the pigeon-fancier'; Owen's 'crib in Bloomsbury' was the British Museum, of which Natural History was but one department.)
• The Water Babies, a fairy tale for a land baby by Charles Kingsley (serialised in Macmillan's Magazine 1862–63, published in book form, with additions, in 1863). Kingsley had been among first to give a favourable review to Darwin's On the Origin of Species, having "long since... learnt to disbelieve the dogma of the permanence of species", and the story includes a satire on the reaction to Darwin's theory, with the main scientific participants appearing, including Richard Owen and Huxley. In 1892 Thomas Henry Huxley's five-year-old grandson Julian saw the illustration by Edward Linley Sambourne (right) and wrote his grandfather a letter asking:

  Dear Grandpater – Have you seen a Waterbaby? Did you put it in a bottle? Did it wonder if it could get out? Could I see it some day? – Your loving Julian.

  Huxley wrote back:

  My dear Julian – I could never make sure about that Water Baby... My friend who wrote the story of the Water Baby was a very kind man and very clever. Perhaps he thought I could see as much in the water as he did – There are some people who see a great deal and some who see very little in the same things.
  
  When you grow up I dare say you will be one of the great-deal seers, and see things more wonderful than the Water Babies where other folks can see nothing.