"Will you come and have a drink over the weekend?"
The archived letters of Lord Victor Rothschild, Sydney Brenner, + Andrew Huxley
Wednesday was the anniversary of Aldous Huxley’s birthday. I tweeted some thoughts on Huxley’s legacy that got a bit more attention than I anticipated. When I saw how many people still take an active interest in Huxley, and the wide array of feelings about him, I decided to do some more digging. I’ve already done a thorough amount of research on Huxley and his family, which informs the material about them in my forthcoming book. And although I felt I’d already gathered more than enough information, the tweet storm generated another wave of curiosity in me.
I was particularly curious about Aldous’ family. For those who are not already aware, the Huxley family was quite wealthy and incredibly influential for many decades. As I wrote in “Opium Money in Prominent US Families,” both of Aldous’s grandfathers (Thomas Huxley and Matthew Arnold) corresponded with Daniel Gilman, an immensely powerful but not well-known figure who was the treasurer of Skull and Bones, co-founded the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and served as president at the University of California, where he oversaw the creation of the Berkeley campus, among numerous other accomplishments.
I mentioned this information in a tweet and got some intriguing pushback from J. S. Rafaeli, a journalist who has written extensively about drugs and whose work I deeply respect. (Until recently, Rafaeli also hosted the Vice series News on Drugs.)
While I may disagree with him about the importance of that particular point, I understand his critique—it is fair. Rafaeli’s tweet urged me to ask myself: if readers don’t already know or care about Skull and Bones, etc., would this information be meaningful to them? Or dreary? Worse, would it be pointless?
This caused me to pause and consider expanding my analysis of the Huxley family. Granted, there is plenty more research I’ve already done that did not make its way into the tweets that day. Still, it pushed me to look for more.
For this I am very grateful to J. S. Rafaeli. (If you’re reading this, thank you!)
Over the last few days, I have been combing through various archives to finalize my sources for the publication of High and Mighty. In so doing, I came across an archived letter from Aldous’ half-brother Andrew Huxley to a scientist named Sydney Brenner.
It caught my eye and inspired me to see what else I could find about Brenner. His name was new to me. But, as I quickly found out, he was closely connected to some very powerful people and organizations.
“Development of the nervous system…”
First, let’s take a look at the correspondence between Andrew Huxley and Sydney Brenner. I located two such letters in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) archives. The first was from Brenner to Huxley. Brenner asked if Huxley knew anyone who would make a good candidate for a master’s program in neurobiology that Brenner was affiliated with. He explained that the program’s research focuses on “development of the nervous system” among other things.
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