4 Marlborough Place, November 10, 1883.

My dear Foster,

...I have been trying to get some political and other swells to come to the dinner.  Lord Mayor is coming—­thought I would ask him on account of City and Guilds business—­Lord Chancellor, probably, Courtney, M.P., promised, and I made the greatest blunder I ever made in all my life by thoughtlessly writing to ask Chamberlain (!!!) utterly forgetting the row with Tyndall. [Concerning the Lighthouses.]

By the mercy of Providence he can’t come this year, though I must ask him next (if I am not kicked out for my sins before that), as he is anxious to come.  Science ought to be in league with the Radicals...

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

[He had made prompt confession as soon as he discovered his mistake, to Tyndall himself, who ultimately came to the dinner and proposed the health of his old friend Hirst.]

4 Marlborough Place, November 9, 1883.

My dear Tyndall,

I have been going to write to you for two or three days to ask you to propose Hirst’s health as Royal Medallist on the 30th November.  I am sure your doing so would give an extra value to the medal to him.

But now I realise the position of those poor devils I have seen in lunatic asylums and who believed they have committed the unforgivable sin.  It came upon me suddenly in Waterloo Place this evening, that I had done so; and I went straight to the Royal Institution to make confession, and if possible get absolution.  But I heard you had gone to Hindhead, and so I write.

Yesterday I was sending some invitations to the dinner on the 30th, and thinking to please the Society I made a shot at some ministers.  The only two I know much about are Harcourt and Chamberlain, and the devil (in whom I now firmly believe) put it into my head to write to both.

The enormous stupidity of which I had been guilty in asking Chamberlain under the circumstances, and the sort of construction you and others might put upon it, never entered my head till this afternoon.  It really made me ill, and I went straight to find you.  If Providence is good to me the letter will miscarry and he won’t come.  But anyhow I want you to know that I have been idiotically stupid, and that I shall wish the Presidency and the dinner and everything connected with it at the bottom of the sea, if you are as much disgusted with me as you have a perfect right to be.

Ever yours faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

[The following refers to the Tyneside Sunday Lecture Society at Newcastle, which had invited him to become one of its vice-presidents:—­]

4 Marlborough Place, N.W., December 30, 1883.

My dear Morley,