Sometimes you just have to shut a book when you reach the end and say “Wow!” That’s what I did when I finished reading Alison Bashford’s An Intimate History of Evolution, a dual biography of Thomas Henry (T. H.) Huxley and his grandson Julian Huxley that also drew in all the ‘little’ Huxleys as well. Not that there was anything ‘little’ about this family: it lay at the heart of 19th and 20th century British intellectual life, with links that extended to other illustrious families of science and letters like the Arnolds, Darwins, Galton and Wells.
While family biographies are nothing new, Bashford shapes her approach through two particular Huxley family members: T. H. Huxley (often known as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’) born 1825, and his grandson Julian, born 1887. This jump between generations, largely skipping the intervening generation, breaks up the linear progression of the narrative:
The younger man constantly fashioned himself after his Victorian grandfather, pursuing those signature Huxley knowledge-quests, some profound, others simply grandiose. They were both remarkable and both, on occasion, tortured. Writing these natural scientists together permits a kind of time-lapse over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, precisely because they were so similar. We might even think of them as one very long-lived man, 1825-1975, whose vital dates bookended the colossal shifts in world history from the age of sail to the space age; from colonial wars to world wars to the Cold War; from a time when the Earth was 6,000 years old according to Genesis, to a time when it was 4.5 billion years old, according to rock samples returned from the Apollo missions.
p. xxiii
T. H. Huxley was born into an “educated but struggling and socially declining” family (p.xxx) and had only two years of formal education before being thrown on his own resources as an autodidact. He was apprenticed to anatomists in the family, but did not complete his medical degree. He joined the navy and was made Assistant Surgeon on H.M.S. Rattlesnake, which embarked on a voyage of discovery and collection in Australia and New Zealand. (Actually, there are several references to Australia in this very English biography- perhaps reflecting Alison Bashford’s current position at UNSW). His work on jellyfish and other marine creatures gained him admission to the Royal Society but despite the acclaim he received for this work, he still had to fight for his position as professor of paleontology and natural history at the Royal School of Mines. His grandson, Julian, had a much easier path. His father, Leonard, had benefitted from the upward social and financial mobility of his father, and so Julian attended Eton and then Baillol College at Oxford from 1906. He, too, studied marine life, but he made his scientific name in his study of grebes (birds). He was invited to set up a Department of Biology at Rice University before World War I intervened, and he later moved to Kings College London as Professor of Zoology. He resigned this position to work with H.G. Wells and his son on a book The Science of Life before travelling to East Africa to continue his ornithological work . He returned to London to take up a position running the London Zoo in 1935, followed by a role in the creation of UNESCO and the WWF. He was a fore-runner to David Attenborough in popularizing the natural sciences and conservation through radio and television broadcasts and documentaries.
But both men’s work was broader than this. Their shared interest in evolution, albeit separated by the discoveries in the decades between their work, involved them in the intense debates of their times. Darwin’s theory of evolution (which T. H. Huxley was not initially convinced by, despite later becoming one of its major exponents) led to explorations and assertions about Homo Sapiens, anthropology, political biology and finally led to eugenics, of which Julian was a leading figure although distancing himself from its use in Nazism. Julian looked forward to transhumanism: a landscape that we have yet to traverse.
Both men were interested in the psychic and spiritual realm, particularly in later life. T. H. Huxley coined the religious term ‘agnostic’, meaning a humble ignorance and openness to further knowledge rather than its more hard-edged nature today. He approached the Bible as a historical document, and during his life wrote as much on Biblical themes (albeit critically) as he did on some of his natural science interests. He enjoyed jousting on religious matters with his sister-in-law, Mary Augusta Ward nee Arnold, who as well as writing rather dire ‘improving’ literature and being active in the anti-suffrage movement, was also a strong supporter of women’s education and settlement houses as part of the social reformist movement. His grandson Julian also developed an interest in neo-romanticism and was attracted to the ideas of the Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin with whom he shared a quest towards cosmic unification.
But both men shared the family inheritance of mental illness, in particular an immobilizing depression which saw Julian committed to psychiatric hospitals at various times during his life. This combination of family brilliance and family mental illness is perhaps what gives the title – An Intimate History of Evolution its unusual adjective. Here the theory of inheritance becomes personal.
The structure of the book reflects Bashford’s rejection of a single line of chronological narrative. The book is divided into four parts thematically: Genealogies; Animals; Humans and Spirits, and although dealing first with T.H. and then Julian in each of these themes, the timeline and focus does jump from one man to the other. Nor does the book focus on them alone: the women of the family, particularly T. H.’s wife Henrietta, Mary Augusta Ward, Julia Arnold are also referenced throughout. Other Huxleys especially Julian’s brother Aldous, and the religious writer Francis Huxley are also present. Bashford captures well the network of knowledge and intellectual influence which shaped, and in which the whole family moved.
Bashford’s own grasp of T. H. and Julian Huxley’s work is impressive. As a historian of science, she traces the contours of their scientific work, making it intelligible – and even, when you’re reading about jellyfish, interesting. She is just as comfortable teasing out their philosophical and religious work, which does become rather esoteric at its edges. It is not a particularly easy read, although I made it harder for myself by stopping for about a fortnight to read other things. But she is talking about big ideas – indeed, the biggest of ideas- and as a reader you have to work as well. She is writing about a family who were a tour de force in their intellectual milieu, and this book is Bashford’s own tour de force of biography, science, philosophy and history as well. Brilliant
My rating: 10/10
Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library
Read because: I heard a podcast on it.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 