Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

10 Southcliff Terrace, Eastbourne, November 15, 1888.

My dear Evans,

I am very sorry to have missed you.  I told my doctor that while the weather was bad it was of no use to go away, and when it was fine I might just as well stop at home; but he did not see the force of my reasoning, and packed us off here.

The award of the Copley is a kindness I feel very much...

The Congress [The International Geological Congress, at which he was to have presided.] seems to have gone off excellently.  I consider that my own performance of the part of dummy was distinguished.

So the Lawes business is fairly settled at last!  “Lawes Deo,” as the Claimant might have said.  But the pun will be stale, as you doubtless have already made all possible epigrams and punnigrams on the topic.

My wife joins with me in kindest regards to Mrs. Evans and yourself.  If Mrs. Evans had only come up to the Maloja, she would have had real winter and no cold.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

10 Southcliff Terrace, Eastbourne, November 15, 1888.

My dear Hooker,

You would have it that the Royal Society broke the law in giving you the Copley, and they certainly violated custom in giving it to me the year following.  Whoever heard of two biologers getting it one after another?  It is very pleasant to have our niches in the Pantheon close together.  It is getting on for forty years since we were first “acquent,” and considering with what a very considerable dose of tenacity, vivacity, and that glorious firmness (which the beasts who don’t like us call obstinacy) we are both endowed, the fact that we have never had the shadow of a shade of a quarrel is more to our credit than being ex-Presidents and Copley medallists.

But we have had a masonic bond in both being well salted in early life.  I have always felt I owed a great deal to my acquaintance with the realities of things gained in the old “Rattlesnake”.

I am getting on pretty well here, though the weather has been mostly bad.  All being well I shall attend the meeting of the Society on the 30th, but not the dinner.  I am very sorry to miss the latter, but I dare not face the fatigue and the chances of a third dose of pleurisy.

My wife sends kindest regards and thanks for your congratulations.

Ever yours very faithfully,

T.H.  Huxley.

10 Southcliff Terrace, Eastbourne, November 17, 1888.

My dear Flower,

...Many thanks for taking my troublesomeness in good part.  My friend will be greatly consoled to know that you have the poor man “in your eye.”  Schoolmaster, naturalist, and coal merchant used to be the three refuges for the incompetent.  Schoolmaster is rapidly being eliminated, so I suppose the pressure on Natural History and coals will increase.