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‘An Influential Set of Chaps’: The X-Club and Royal Society Politics 1864–85

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Ruth Barton
Ruth Barton
Affiliation:
School of Social Sciences, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia.
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Extract

‘Our’ included not only Hooker and Huxley but their fellow-members of the X-Club. ‘Our time’ had been the 1870s and early 1880s. For a five-year period from November 1873 to November 1878 Hooker had been President of the Society, Huxley one of the Secretaries, and fellow X-Club member, William Spottiswoode, the Treasurer. Hooker was followed in the Presidency by Spottiswoode, and on Spottiswoode's death in 1883 Huxley was elected President. During this period other X-Club members—Edward Frankland, John Tyndall, George Busk, Sir John Lubbock, and Thomas Hirst—were ordinary members of the Council of the Society. As the Table below (p. 60) shows, there were at least three members of the X-Club on the Council of the Royal Society from November 1870 until November 1882. On eight occasions in this period there were four or more X-Club members on the Council. ‘Our time’ came to an end in 1885 when ill-health forced Huxley's retirement after only two years in the Presidency, and G. G. Stokes at last became President.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 53 - 81
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Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1990

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138 Foster, to Huxley, 153, 22 04 1887Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. iv, fol. 288.Google Scholar

139 Thiselton-Dyer, to Huxley, 13, 23 10 1893Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. xxvii, fol. 226.Google Scholar

140 Stokes Memoir, op. cit. (79), p. 44.Google Scholar Stokes' theological views are analysed by Wilson, D. B., ‘A Physicist's Alternative to Materialism: The Religious Thought of George Gabriel Stokes’, Victorian Studies, (1984), 28, pp. 69–96.Google Scholar

141 Hooker, and Huxley, 283, 7 11 1887Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. iii, fol. 305Google Scholar and Huxley, to Hooker, 284 and 287, 10 and 14 11 1887Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. ii, fols 295–298.Google Scholar

142 ‘Politics and the Presidency of the Royal Society’, Nature, 17 11 1887, pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

143 Balfour Stewart, letter in Nature, 24 11 1887, p. 76.Google Scholar

144 Thistleton-Dyer, to Huxley, 9, 27 11 1887Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. xxvii, fol. 209Google Scholar; Foster, to Huxley, 156, 16 11 1887Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. iv, fol. 294.Google Scholar

145 Lubbock, to Huxley, 33, 26 11 1887Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. xxii, fols 100–101Google Scholar; Hooker, to Frankland, , 15 11 1887Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. ix, fols 226–227.Google Scholar

146 Foster, , in Stokes Memoir, op. cit. (79), p. 102.Google Scholar

147 Huxley, to Stokes, , 1 12 1887Google Scholar, Life of Huxley, op. cit. (12), vol. ii, p. 175.Google Scholar

148 Foster, to Huxley, 160, 2 12 1887Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, vol. iv, fols 305–306.Google Scholar From 1885 to 1889 Foster's colourful letters to Huxley are full of complaints about the stubborness and inaction of ‘Gabriel’ or ‘Old Stokey’.

149 Huxley, to Foster, , 6 11 1887 and 29 08 1884Google Scholar, Life of Huxley, op. cit. (12), vol. ii, pp. 174, 71.Google Scholar

150 Huxley, to Tyndall, , op. cit. (54).Google Scholar

151 Lyell was active in the Church Reform Movement and both Airy and Lyell supported the Essayists. See above, notes 15, 16 and 68.