I need not say what I think about your action in the matter, my faithful old friend.  With our love to you both.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

I suppose you are all right again, as you write from the R.S.  Liver permitting I shall attend meeting and dinner.  It is very odd that the Medal should come along with my pronouncement in “Nature”, which I hope you like.  I cut out rather a stinging paragraph at the end.

Hodeslea, Eastbourne, November 11, 1894.

My dear Donnelly,

Why on earth did I not answer your letter before?  Echo (being Irish) says, “Because of your infernal bad habit of putting off; which is growing upon you, you wretched old man.”

Of course I shall be very glad if anything can be done for S—.  Howes has written to me about him since your letter arrived—­and I am positively going to answer his epistle.  It’s Sunday morning, and I feel good.

You will have seen that the R.S. has been giving me the Darwin Medal, though I gave as broad a hint as was proper the last time I spoke at the Anniversary, that it ought to go to the young men.  Nevertheless, with ordinary inconsistency of the so-called “rational animal,” I am well pleased.

I hope you will be at the dinner, and would ask you to be my guest—­but as I thought my boys and boys-in-law would like to be there, I have already exceeded my lawful powers of invitation, and had to get a dispensation from Michael Foster.

I suppose I shall be like a horse that “stands at livery” for some time after—­but it is positively my last appearance on any stage.

We were very glad to hear from Lady Donnelly that you had had a good and effectual holiday.  With our love.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

I return Howes’ letter in case you want it.  I see I need not write to him again after all.  Three cheers!

Please give Lady Donnelly this.  A number of estimable members of her sex have flown at me for writing what I thought was a highly complimentary letter.  But she will be just, I know.

“The best of women are apt to be a little weak in the great practical arts of give-and-take, and putting up with a beating, and a little too strong in their belief in the efficacy of government.  Men learn about these things in the ordinary course of their business; women have no chance in home life, and the boards and councils will be capital schools for them.  Again, in the public interest it will be well; women are more naturally economical than men, and have none of our false shame about looking after pence.  Moreover, they don’t job for any but their lovers, husbands, and children, so that we know the worst.”

[The speech at the Royal Society Anniversary dinner—­which he evidently enjoyed making—­was a fine piece of speaking, and quite carried away the audience, whether in the gentle depreciation of his services to science, or in his profession of faith in the methods of science and the final triumph of the doctrine of evolution, whatever theories of its operation might be adopted or discarded in the course of further investigation.