That sagacious old gentleman stared at me as if I had lost my senses. But, in fact, the Bishop had justified the severest retort I could devise, and I made up my mind to let him have it. I was careful, however, not to rise to reply, until the meeting called for me—then I let myself go.
In justice to the Bishop, I am bound to say he bore no malice, but was always courtesy itself when we occasionally met in after years. Hooker and I walked away from the meeting together, and I remember saying to him that this experience had changed my opinion as to the practical value of the art of public speaking, and that from that time forth I should carefully cultivate it, and try to leave off hating it. I did the former, but never quite succeeded in the latter effort.
I did not mean to trouble you with such a long scrawl when I began about this piece of ancient history.
Ever yours very faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.
[In the evening there was a crowded conversazione in Dr. Daubney's rooms, and here, continues the writer in "Macmillan's," "everyone was eager to congratulate the hero of the day. I remember that some naive person wished 'it could come over again'; Mr. Huxley, with the look on his face of the victor who feels the cost of victory, put us aside saying,] 'Once in a lifetime is enough, if not too much.'"
[In a letter to me the same writer remarks—
I gathered from Mr. Huxley's look when I spoke to him at Dr. Daubeny's that he was not quite satisfied to have been forced to take so personal a tone—it a little jarred upon his fine taste. But it was the Bishop who first struck the insolent note of personal attack.
Again, with reference to the state of feeling at the meeting:—
I never saw such a display of fierce party spirit, the looks of bitter hatred which the audience bestowed—(I mean the majority) on us who were on your father's side—as we passed through the crowd we felt that we were expected to say "how abominably the Bishop was treated"—or to be considered outcasts and detestable.