T.H. Huxley.
When is our plan for getting some kind of meeting during the winter to be organised?
[The next two letters refer to the award of the Copley Medal to Mr. Darwin. Huxley was exceedingly indignant at an attempt on the part of the president to discredit the "Origin" by a side wind:—]
Jermyn Street, November 4, 1864.
My dear Darwin,
I write two lines which are NOT TO BE ANSWERED, just as to say how delighted I am at the result of the doings of the Council of the Royal Society yesterday. Many of us were somewhat doubtful of the result, and the more ferocious sort had begun to whet their beaks and sharpen their claws in preparation for taking a very decided course of action had there been any failure of justice this time. But the affair was settled by a splendid majority, and our ruffled feathers are smoothed down.
Your well-won reputation would not have been lessened by the lack of the
Copley, but it would have been an indelible reproach to the Royal
Society not to have given it to you, and a good many of us had no notion
of being made to share that ignominy.
But quite apart from all these grand public-spirited motives and their results, you ought as a philanthropist to be rejoiced in the great satisfaction the award has given to your troops of friends, to none more than my wife (whom I woke up to tell the news when I got home late last night).
Yours ever,
T.H. Huxley.