Frankness was the only remedy for such an imbroglio, and, as Huxley wrote to Hooker about a similar case a couple of years later:—
It's deuced hard to keep straight in this wicked world, but, as you say, the only chance is to out with it, and I thank you much for writing so frankly about the matter.
[Illustration: From a Photograph by Downey, 1890 To face p. 102]
With Hooker, the keen observer and critical reasoner, the man of warm impulses and sane judgments, he had a peculiarly intimate bond of friendship summed up in a letter of 1888, when they had received the Copley medal in successive years:—
It is very pleasant to have our niches in the Pantheon close together. It is getting on for forty years since we were first "acquent," and, considering with what a very considerable dose of tenacity, vivacity, and that glorious firmness (which the beasts who don't like us call obstinacy) we are both endowed, the fact that we have never had the shadow of a shade of a quarrel is more to our credit than being ex-Presidents and Copley medallists. But we have had a masonic bond in both being well salted in early life. I have always felt that I owed a great deal to my acquaintance with the realities of things gained in the old Rattlesnake.
From earliest days, soon after they had returned, the one from the South Seas, the other from the Himalayas, they had stood shoulder to shoulder confidently in the struggle to put science on a firm and independent footing. When the future of the Natural History Collections at the British Museum was in the balance, they energetically resolved to constitute themselves into a permanent "Committee of Safety," to watch over what was being done and take measures with the advice of others when necessary. Together as biologists they realized the greatness of Darwin's vision; together they bore the brunt of the battle of the Origin at Oxford. In seeking a good mouthpiece for scientific opinion, in reorganizing and administering the great scientific societies, in their work for scientific education, they shared the same ideas, and their friendship and Tyndall's formed the starting-point of the x Club, with its regular meetings of old friends. More than once they went off on a short holiday tour together, and when Huxley was invalided in 1873 it was Hooker who took charge and carried him off for a month's active trip in the geological paradise of the Auvergne. The care and company of so good a friend made the crowning ingredient in a most successful prescription. And when both had retired from official life a new interest in common sprang up through Huxley's incursion into botany. While recruiting his health in the high Alps, his interest was aroused by the Gentians, and he wrote a valuable paper on their morphology and distribution. This interest continued itself into the making of a rock-garden in his Eastbourne home, where, in his spare hours, he proceeded to put into happy practice Candide's famous maxim, "Cultivons notre jardin," and drew from this occupation the simile of the wild chalk down and the cultivated garden in his Romanes Lecture to illustrate the contrast between the cosmic process and the social organism.
Hooker often sent his friend plants from his own garden, sometimes banteringly including one which would "flourish in any neglected corner."
An unclouded intimacy of friendship lasted to the end, and it was
Hooker who received the last letter written by his friend.
Close as a brother, too, and claiming the name of brother in affectionate adoption, was John Tyndall, radiant in genial warmth and high spirits. They, too, were at one in thoughts, sympathies, and aims; they travelled together, especially in the Alps, where Tyndall mainly carried out the investigation of certain problems in relation to the glaciers which Huxley had suggested to him, and, being "a masterful man and over-generous," insisted that the resulting paper on glaciers should bear both their names.
Tyndall came to the School of Mines as Professor of Physics in 1859 at his friend's instigation, and for nine years they were, as colleagues, in daily contact, and indeed were not far separated when Tyndall succeeded Faraday at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street.