| Reference number | VF/18 |
| Alternative reference number | VF18 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Portrait of Thomas Henry Huxley by Carlo Pellegrini |
| Artist | Pellegrini, Carlo ['Ape'] |
| Date | 28 January 1871 |
| Description | Vanity Fair cartoon titled 'A great Med'cine-Man among the Inqui-ring Redskins [sic]' featuring Thomas Henry Huxley. Full length, left profile. Number 117 of the 'Men of the Day' series. |
| InscriptionContent | Recto inscription: '306 VANITY FAIR. Jan. 28, 1871./ No. 117. MEN OF THE DAY No. 19./ “A great Med'cine-Man among the inquiring Redskins [sic]"’ |
| Caption | Professor Huxley, the inventor of Protoplasm, is a great Med'cine Man among the Inqui-ring Redskins. The renowned Ongpatonga himself was not more popular in the solemn Calumet dance than Professor Huxley in the annual gatherings and other ceremonials observed by the various tribes of the great Philistine family who roam over the deserts of the metropolis, to the terror of the ecclesiastical police and the intense disgust of the respectble portion of society who go clothed and in their right mind. Professor Huxley, like the rest of the Ongpatonga tribe, is wonderfully matter-of-fact; but,. with all his hardness and anti-transcendentalism, his geniality of temperament and his happy talent for illustration are hardly less remarkable than the logical clearness of his discourse - of which it will be quite sufficient to state that the denizens of 'Vanity Fair' will find a good popular specimen in his "Lay Sermons". Professor Huxley favours the movement for the Scientific education for Women. He wants them to be the associates of men in the "feast of reason and the flow of soul", and would no longer feed them with the fag-ends and scraps of knowledge which they have been accustomed to pick-up. In this respect his practice differs essentially from that of the Un-inqui-ring Redskins, whose squaws are compelled to keep in the background until their lords have dined, and are then admitted to a scramble for the bones and shreds of the repast. If Ongpataonga has a fault, it is one which may fairly be ascribed to incompleteness tather than intellectual vice. He refuses to believe in angels, because the telescope has not yet discovered them. Like a man who hops on one leg, instead of walking erect with his face heavenwards, he has to pick his steps with care through the mud of Materialism, and in this way it has come to pass that he has stumbled on Protoplasm, which he sees on the seamy side, but not on the shining inner surface. In good time, when he is tired of hopping, he will get both his feet firmly on the ground, and then trusting to his eyes and his inner senses, he will have more to tell the world than the telescope has ever told him. Take him for all in all, there is no popular teacher who has contributed more to the awakening of the intellect, and whose career in the future may be more comfidently associated in idea with all that is manly and progressive in social science, and comprehensive, to say the least, in physical research. |
| Format | Lithograph |
| Physical description | Coloured lithograph on paper, mounted on card |
| Dimensions | 380mm x 263mm |
| Notes | No accompanying article with this lithogrph, but for what the article said, see text |
| Access status | Open |
| Copyright | The Royal Society |
| Provenance | Purchased by the Royal Society from Patrick Pollak Antiquarian & Rare Books, September 1999 |
| Related material | Colour transparency, Box N101. IM/002353. Alan H Sykes 'The Doctors in Vanity Fair' 1995, page 11 |
| Related records in the catalogue | IM/002353 |
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