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.

Please remember us kindly to Mrs. Darwin, and make our congratulations to her on owning a Copley medallist.

Jermyn Street, December 3, 1864.

My dear Hooker,

I wish you had been at the Anniversary Meeting and Dinner, because the latter was very pleasant, and the former, to me, very disagreeable.  My distrust of Sabine is as you know chronic, and I went determined to keep careful watch on his address, lest some crafty phrase injurious to Darwin should be introduced.  My suspicious were justified.  The only part of the address to Darwin written by Sabine himself contained the following passage:—­

“Speaking generally and collectively, we have expressly omitted it (Darwin’s theory) from the grounds of our award.”

Of course this would be interpreted by everybody as meaning that, after due discussion, the council had formally resolved not only to exclude Darwin’s theory from the grounds of the award, but to give public notice through the president that they had done so, and furthermore, that Darwin’s friends had been base enough to accept an honour for him on the understanding that in receiving it he should be publicly insulted!

I felt that this would never do, and therefore when the resolution for printing the address was moved, I made a speech which I took care to keep perfectly cool and temperate, disavowing all intention of interfering with the liberty of the president to say what he pleased, but exercising my constitutional right of requiring the minutes of council making the award to be read, in order that the Society might be informed whether the conditions implied by Sabine had been imposed or not.

The resolution was read, and of course nothing of the kind appeared.  Sabine didn’t exactly like it, I believe.  Both Busk and Falconer remonstrated against the passage to him, and I hope it will be withdrawn when the address is printed. [The passage stands in the published address, but followed by another passage which softens it down.]