The feeling that "The Right Honourable" on my letters is a piece of chaff is wearing off, and I hope to get used to my appendix in time.
[The "very quaint" ceremony of kissing hands is described at some length in a letter to Mrs. Huxley from London on his way back from Osborne:—]
Great Western Hotel, August 25, 1892, 6.40 P.M.
I have just got back from Osborne, and I find there are a few minutes to send you a letter—by the help of the extra halfpenny. First-rate weather there and back, a special train, carriage with postillions at the Osborne landing-place, and a grand procession of officers of the new household and P.C.'s therein. Then waiting about while the various "sticks" were delivered.
Then we were shown into the presence chamber where the Queen sat at a table. We knelt as if we were going to say our prayers, holding a testament between two, while the Clerk of the Council read an oath of which I heard not a word. We each advanced to the Queen, knelt and kissed her hand, retired backwards, and got sworn over again (Lord knows what I promised and vowed this time also). Then we shook hands with all the P.C.'s present, including Lord Lorne, and so exit backwards. It was all very curious…
After that a capital lunch and back we came. Ribblesdale and several other people I knew were of the party, and I found it very pleasant talking with him and Jesse Collings, who is a very interesting man.
"Oh," he said, "how I wish my poor mother, who was a labouring woman—a great noble woman—and brought us nine all up in right ways, could have been alive." Very human and good and dignified too, I thought.
He also used to tell how he was caught out when he thought to make use of the opportunity to secure a close view of the Queen. Looking up, he found her eyes fixed upon him; Her Majesty had clearly taken the opportunity to do the same by him.
Regarding the Privy Councillorship as an exceptional honour for science, over and above any recognition of his personal services, which he thought amply met by the Civil List pension specially conferred upon him as an honour at his retirement from the public service, Huxley was no little vexed at an article in "Nature" for August 25 (volume 46 page 397), reproaching the Government for allowing him to leave the public service six years before, without recognition. Accordingly he wrote to Sir J. Donnelly on August 27:—]
It is very unfair to both Liberal and Conservative Governments, who did much more for me than I expected, and I feel that I ought to contradict the statement without loss of time.