Will you tell me what all this has to do with my business in life, and why the last fragments of a misspent life that are left to me are to be frittered away in all this drivel?
Yours savagely,
T.H. Huxley.
[Later in the year, also, he had to serve on another Fishery Commission much against his will, though on the understanding that, in view of his other engagements, he need not attend all the sittings.
A more satisfactory result of the Exhibition was that he found himself brought into close contact with several of the great city companies, whose enormous resources he had long been trying, not without some success, to enlist on behalf of technical and scientific education.
Among these may be noted the Fishmongers, the Mercers, who had already interested themselves in technical education, and gave their hall for the meetings of the City and Guilds Council, of which Huxley was an active member; the Clothworkers, in whose schools he distributed the prizes this year; and, not least, the Salters, who presented him with their freedom on November 13. Their master, Mr. J.W. Clark, writing in August, after Huxley had accepted their proposal, says: "I think you must admit that the City Companies have yielded liberally to the gentle compassion you have exercised on them. So far from helping you to act the traitor, we propose to legitimise your claim for education, which several of us shall be willing to unite with you in promoting." (See above.)
The crowning addition, however, to Huxley's official work was the Presidency of the Royal Society. He had resigned the Secretaryship in 1880, after holding office for nine years under three Presidents—Airy, Hooker, and Spottiswoode. Spottiswoode, like Hooker, was a member of the x Club, and was regarded with great affection and respect by Huxley, who in 1887 wrote of him to Mr. John Morley:—]
It is quite absurd you don't know Spottiswoode, and I shall do both him and you a good turn by bringing you together. He is one of my best friends, and comes under the A1 class of "people with whom you may go tiger-hunting."
[On June 7, writing to Professor (afterwards Sir E.) Frankland, he says:—]
You will have heard that Spottiswoode is seriously ill. The physicians suspect typhoid, but are not quite certain. I called this morning, and hear that he remains much as he has been for the last two or three days. So many of our friends have dropped away in the course of the last two years that I am perhaps morbidly anxious about Spottiswoode, but there is no question that his condition is such as to cause grave anxiety.