November 6, 1854.

My dear Hooker,

I have been so busy with lecturing here and there that I have not had time to write and congratulate you on the award of the medal.  The queer position in which I was placed prevents me from being able to congratulate myself on having any finger in the pie, but I am quite sure there was no member of the Council who felt more strongly than myself that what honour the bauble could confer was most fully won, and no more than your just deserts; or who rejoiced more when the thing was settled in your favour.

However, I do trust that I shall never be placed in such an awkward position again.  I would have given a great deal to be able to back Forbes tooth and nail—­not only on account of my personal friendship and affection for him, but because I think he well deserves such recognition.  And had I thought right to do so, I felt sure that you would have fully appreciated my motives, and that it would have done no injury to our friendship.

But as I told the Council I did not think this a case where either of you had any right to be excluded by the other.  I told them that had Forbes been first named, I should have thought it injudicious to bring you forward, and that, as you were named, I for my own part should not have brought forward Forbes as a candidate; that therefore while willing to speak up to any extent for Forbes’ positive merits and deserts, I would carefully be understood to give no opinion as to your and his relative standing.

They did not take much by my speech therefore either way, more especially as I voted for both of you.

I hate doing anything of the kind “unbeknownst” to people, so there is the exact history of my proceedings.  If I had been able to come to the clear conclusion that the claims of either of you were strongly superior to those of the other, I think I should have had the honesty and moral courage to “act accordin’,” but I really had not, and so there was no part to play but that of a sort of Vicar of Bray.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[Forbes’ reply was a letter which Huxley, after his friend’s death, held] “among his most precious possessions.” [It appeared without names in the obituary notice of Forbes in the “Literary Gazette” for November 25, 1854, as an example of his unselfish generosity:—­

I heartily concur in the course you have taken, and had I been placed as you have been, would have done exactly the same...Your way of proceeding was as true an act of friendship as any that could be performed.  As to myself, I dream so little about medals, that the notion of being on the list never entered my brain, even when asleep.  If it ever comes I shall be pleased and thankful; if it does not, it is not the sort of thing to break my equanimity.  Indeed, I would always like to see it given not as a mere honour, but as a help to a good man, and this it is