[The lectures were met at first with astonishing quiet, but it was not long before the stones began to fly.  The “Witness” of January 11 lashed itself into a fury over the fact that the audience applauded this “anti-scriptural and most debasing theory...standing in blasphemous contradiction to biblical narrative and doctrine,” instead of expressing their resentment at this “foul outrage committed upon them individually, and upon the whole species as ‘made in the likeness of God,’” by deserting the hall in a body, or using some more emphatic form of protest against the corruption of youth by “the vilest and beastliest paradox ever vented in ancient or modern times amongst Pagans or Christians.”  In his finest vein of sarcasm, the writer expresses his surprise that the meeting did not instantly resolve itself into a “Gorilla Emancipation Society,” or propose to hear a lecture from an apostle of Mormonism; “even this would be a less offensive, mischievous, and inexcusable exhibition than was made in the recent two lectures by Professor Huxley,” etc.]

Jermyn Street, January 13, 1862.

My dear Darwin,

In the first place a new year’s greeting to you and yours.  In the next, I enclose this slip (please return it when you have read it) to show you what I have been doing in the north.

Everybody prophesied I should be stoned and cast out of the city gate, but, on the contrary, I met with unmitigated applause!!  Three cheers for the progress of liberal opinion!!

The report is as good as any, but they have not put quite rightly what I said about your views, respecting which I took my old line about the infertility difficulty.

Furthermore, they have not reported my statement that whether you were right or wrong, some form of the progressive development theory is certainly true.  Nor have they reported here my distinct statement that I believe man and the apes to have come from one stock.

Having got thus far, I find the lecture better reported in the “Courant,” so I send you that instead.

I mean to publish the lecture in full by and by (about the time the orchids come out).

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

I deserved the greatest credit for not having made an onslaught on Brewster for his foolish impertinence about your views in “Good Words,” but declined to stir nationality, which you know (in him) is rather more than his Bible.

Jermyn Street, January 16, 1862.

My dear Hooker,

I wonder if we are ever to meet again in this world!  At any rate I send to the remote province of Kew, Greeting, and my best wishes for the new year to you and yours.  I also inclose a slip from an Edinburgh paper containing a report of my lecture on the “Relation of Man,” etc.  As you will see, I went in for the entire animal more strongly, in fact, than they have reported me.  I told them in so many words that I entertained no doubt of the origin of man from the same stock as the apes.