¹ Huxley, L., Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, 2 vols., London, 1900, i, 476.Google Scholar

² de Beer, G. (ed.), Charles Darwin and T.H.Huxley: Autobiographies, Oxford, 1974, 100Google Scholar; Huxley's ‘autobiography’ was originally published in Engel, L., From Handel to Hallé, London, 1890.Google Scholar

³ For example, Smith, Crosbie and Wise, M. Norton, Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin, Cambridge, 1989.Google Scholar

⁴ Examples of this genre are Jensen, J. Vernon, Thomas Henry Huxley: Communicating for Science, London, 1991Google Scholar, and Paradis, J., T. H. Huxley: Man's Place in Nature, Lincoln, NA, 1978Google Scholar. While Bibby, C., T. H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist and Educator, London, 1959Google Scholar, the oldest ‘modern’ biography, is somewhat distinct, it also places great emphasis on Huxley's writings and speeches.

⁵ Desmond, A., Huxley: The Devil's Disciple, London, 1994Google Scholar, covers only the years up to 1870 of the projected two-volume biography.

⁶ This is not to say that Desmond ignores the social tensions inside such spaces. Nevertheless there is much contrary evidence cited by both Desmond and Bibby that Huxley was far from being a marginal figure in the 1850s and 1860s. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851 at the tender age of 26 after winning prizes and medals since his student days in the 1840s, first became a Council member 1853–54, and again in 1859–60 and 1866–67.

⁷ There are parallels with the historiography of Desmond's earlier works, for example, in Archetypes and Ancestors, Chicago, 1982.Google Scholar

⁸ Desmond, , op. cit. (5), 292Google Scholar; see also 208–11, 292–4 for Huxley's views on his working-class audiences.

⁹ Di Gregorio, M., T. H. Huxley's Place in Natural Science, New Haven, 1984, 172–3Google Scholar; and Huxley, , op. cit. (1), i, 279–83.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Desmond, , op. cit. (5), 351–4.Google Scholar Eyre was not in fact prosecuted.

¹¹ The nomenclature of the institutions in South Kensington is confusing. The Royal School of Mines (itself so named from 1863) encompassed several areas of science teaching and had from 1853 incorporated the Royal College of Chemistry. When partially moved to South Kensington in 1871–72 the name was retained, though it was generally known simply as the Science Schools. In 1881 the name Normal School of Science was chosen with the Continental model of a teacher-training ‘école normale’ in view, although the Royal School of Mines continued to retain its name and something of a separate identity within the larger school. The ‘Normal School’ was never a popular name and in 1890 the school was renamed the Royal College of Science.

¹² Bibby, , op. cit. (4), 141, and 117Google Scholar, ‘the dream of a great central school of science at South Kensington became a reality’. This view, based on the ‘Note of conversation’ of 1869 is discussed in Appendix 1; Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, xxxii, 194 ff.

¹³ It was not until 1872 that the formal decision was taken for the departments of physics, chemistry and natural history to move to South Kensington. These eighteen years were those in which Huxley created his scientific reputation based upon an extraordinarily productive range of books and papers, and the years in which he established his public reputation, both as a controversialist and as someone with views on a wide range of public issues.

¹⁴ Desmond, , op. cit. (5), 201 ff.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Stafford, Robert, Scientist of Empire, Cambridge, 1989, ch. 8.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Desmond, , op. cit. (5), 302.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction, 1872 [c. 536] XXV, Reeks evidence, qu. 457, pp. 29–30; hereafter Devonshire Commission.

¹⁸ Huxley, , op. cit. (1), i, 131–3.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1858, v, 7.Google Scholar

²⁰ This was not finally published until 1865 when the arrangement of the cases was finished; sReport of the Department of Science and Art, 1858, v, 94–5.Google Scholar

²¹ Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1859, vi, 45Google Scholar; 1860, vii, 156.

²² For Salter's career and decline, see Secord, James A., ‘The rise and fall of a Victorian palaeontological career’, in From Linnaeus to Darwin: Commentaries on the History of Biology and Geology (ed. Wheeler, A. and Price, J. H.), London 1985, 61–75.Google Scholar As Secord points out, Salter was unfitted to take decisions on theoretical questions, and his views on stratigraphical questions were regarded by certainly one of the Survey's field men as unsatisfactory and evasive.

²³ Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1859, vi, 6.Google Scholar

²⁴ Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1861, viii, 157Google Scholar, and 1862, ix, 136.

²⁵ Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1862, ix, 136.Google Scholar

²⁶ This is discussed in Forgan, S., ‘Bricks and bones: architecture and science in Victorian Britain’Google Scholar (forthcoming).

²⁷ Photograph no. 24 in Desmond, , op. cit. (5)Google Scholar. The main entrance to the Museum was in Jermyn Street, with the steps, doorway and staircase appropriately decorated with different British stones and marbles. This was always used by the public. A small private entrance onto Piccadilly was planned, but was not included when the Museum was actually built.

²⁸ Huxley, , op. cit. (1), i, 88.Google Scholar Leonard Huxley records that Huxley later often recounted this incident against himself.

²⁹ With thanks to Anne Barrett for her information on Working Men's Lectures in the Museum.

³⁰ Between 1860 and 1870 the numbers ranged between five (1862, 1866) and a high point of twenty-four (1869). Figures given in the annual Report of the Department of Science and Art.

³¹ Sollas, W. J., ‘The master’, Nature (1925), 115, 747.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This article (and others cited below) were published as a supplement to Nature to mark the centenary of Huxley's birth.

³² Armstrong, H. E., ‘Our need to honour Huxley's will’, Huxley Memorial Lecture, London, 1933, 10–11.Google Scholar

³³ See Report of the Department of Science and Art, e.g. 1861–1862Google Scholar: Tyndall–283, Huxley–138; 1862–63: Tyndall–123, Huxley–64.

³⁴ For example, Armstrong recalled that ‘attending Tyndall's marvellously illustrated lectures on Physics, also at Jermyn Street, I was enraptured. His Icelandic Strokur, spouting up to the ceiling, ever lives in my mind's eye’; Armstrong, , op. cit. (32), 12.Google Scholar

³⁵ Autobiography, op. cit. (2), 108Google Scholar, and Desmond, , op. cit. (5), 339–40.Google ScholarJenson, Vernon, op. cit. (4)Google Scholar, examines, for example, Huxley's first lecture at the Royal Institution, but deals more with substance of the argument than with actual techniques of delivery.

³⁶ Desmond, , op. cit. (5), 281Google Scholar, and Rupke, N., Richard Owen, Victorian Naturalist, Yale, 1994, 93–5.Google Scholar

³⁷ For example, Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1859, vi, 49Google Scholar; 1860, vii, 162; 1862, ix, 138.

³⁸ Thistleton-Dyer, W. T., Nature (1925), 115, 709CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoting W. H. Flower. Huxley always maintained that drawing was an essential skill that could be mastered by anybody. See also the references to his drawing skills by W. Bateson, H. E. Armstrong and E. F. Russell, ibid., 741, 743, 752.

³⁹ Select Committee on Scientific Instruction, 1867–68, [432] XV, 397–403, qu. 7958. It should of course be remembered that the Select Committee had specifically been set up to deal with such matters, and scientists were naturally going to make the most of such an opportunity.

⁴⁰ As stated in Bibby, , op. cit. (4), 117Google Scholar, and Desmond, , op. cit. (5), 302.Google Scholar

⁴¹ See Bowring, Edgar A., ‘South Kensington’, Nineteenth Century (06 1877), 563–82Google Scholar, on the district where ‘silence and solitude reigned throughout’.

⁴² For example, as stated in a contemporary account by Edwards, E., Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, London, 1870, 594.Google Scholar Cole authorized the construction of the underground station at South Kensington in 1864; Survey of London, London, 1975, xxxviii, 65.Google Scholar

⁴³ Denis, R. C., ‘The Brompton Barracks: war, peace, and the rise of Victorian art and design education’, Journal of Design History (1995), 8.1, 11–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses Cole's unpopularity, as does Desmond's forthcoming volume 2.

⁴⁴ Bibby, , op. cit. (4), 124Google Scholar, and see Huxley's remarks on ‘teaching for the pot’, in ‘Technical education’, 1877, reproduced in Huxley, T. H., Science and Education: Essays, London, 1905, 420.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1865, xii, p. x.Google Scholar On the changing importance of such juxtaposition, see Forgan, S. and Gooday, G., ‘A fungoid assemblage of buildings’, in History of Universities, xiii, 1994, 153–92.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Meanwhile the collection of naval models grew, and in 1868 another long gallery was added to the rooms holding the collection. On the School of Naval Architecture building, see Forgan, and Gooday, , op. cit. (45), 161–4.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Desmond, , op. cit. (5), 251–2.Google Scholar When in 1860 Lord Elcho suggested that the British Museum natural history collections ought to move into Burlington House, it must have caused Huxley a start. This was almost opposite the Geological Museum, and home to the Royal Society, where Huxley needed to cultivate influence. Nothing came of that, nor of the proposal to put the proposed Natural History Museum by the new Embankment along the Thames. In May 1862, Huxley again publicly applauded the defeat of the government's bill to purchase some of the land at South Kensington.

⁴⁸ Port, M. H., Imperial London: Civil Government Building in London 1851–1915, New Haven, 1995, ch. 6Google Scholar, gives an excellent account of the various parliamentary manœuvres.

⁴⁹ Hansard, , 1868 (3rd series), cxcviii, 160.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Huxley's relations with Murchison were generally friendly; Murchison supported him from the start, ensured his election to the Athenaeum, and was always generous in attitude; but by the mid-1860s Huxley was finding Murchison a ‘very trying old party’; Huxley, to Hooker, , 15 07 1865Google Scholar, quoted in Bibby, , op. cit. (4), 112.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1863, x, 192.Google Scholar

⁵² He defended the Survey's need to have a chemist and a palaeontologist on site. Devonshire Commission, 1872, xxv, 151–2. However, it is clear from the ‘Note of conversation’ reproduced in Appendix 1, that it was Huxley who recommended transferring the whole School.

⁵³ Report of the Department of Science and Art, 1867, xiv, 232–3.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ When questioned himself in the proceedings of the Select Committee on Scientific Instruction in July 1868, Huxley was generally circumspect. He agreed with Cole's proposal for a ‘central college of science’ in London (though its lack of central location was not mentioned), averred he knew little about the School of Naval Architecture, but emphasized that the separation, indeed the ‘partial independence’, of the School of Mines and the College of Chemistry was a ‘lamentable circumstance’. Select Committee on Scientific Instruction, 1867–68 (432), XV, 399–400.

⁵⁵ Devonshire Commission, 1872, XXV, 30.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ ‘X’ Club colleague Edward Frankland was also happy to agree that the building for the School of Naval Architecture in South Kensington would probably be big enough to provide enough space for the School of Mines as well.

⁵⁷ Devonshire Commission, Supplementary Report to First Report, XXV, 28 02 1872, pp. ix–x.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Huxley, L., Thomas Henry Huxley: A Character Sketch, London, 1920, 60.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Minutes of Council, Royal School of Mines, i, 5 07 1872Google Scholar, Imperial College Archives, D/4/1 563.

⁶⁰ Huxley used the Devonshire Commission to continue his battle over territory with Owen, as he wrote to Hooker, ‘We had Owen before us today and the old fool had the impudence to make a bad attack upon me – but as I hope I need not tell you, he did not take much by his motion – The Plans for the new Natural History Museum we settled our way’, 18 March 1871, Huxley Papers 2.172, Imperial College Archives.

⁶¹ ‘Z’, ‘The Royal College of Science’, Educational Times (1893), 46, 393.Google Scholar

⁶² For background, see Layton, D., Science for the People: The Origins of the School Science Curriculum in England, London, 1973Google Scholar, and Hatjievgeniadu, A., ‘English Science Education in the 1870s’, M.Sc. thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1990.Google Scholar

⁶³ Gooday, G. ‘“Nature” in the laboratory: domestication and discipline with the microscope in Victorian life science’, BJHS (1991), 24, 307–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lankester, E. Ray ‘Instruction to science teachers at South Kensington’, Nature (1871), 4, 362.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ The DSA's system of paying its schoolteachers by the examination results of their students was an effective incentive for these teachers to come to South Kensington for laboratory training – not least in biology because Huxley himself was the main examiner for this subject, Gooday, , op. cit. (63).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ This sketch is undated, but almost certainly belongs to the period 1870–72 when the internal arrangements for the Science Schools building were being finalized.

⁶⁶ Drawing on the work of Beale, Carpenter and others, and on his own experiences at Charing Cross Hospital and on board HMS Rattlesnake in the 1840s, Huxley made constant daily use of the microscope, the key feature of his teacher-training programme. On establishing the institutional laboratory as the key site for microscopy, see Gooday, , op. cit. (63).Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Extant models are stored in Imperial College Archives.

⁶⁸ Huxley, , op. cit. (1), i, 365–7.Google Scholar The adverse effects of Huxley's ill health from this period onwards is emphasized by Desmond in his forthcoming volume 2.

⁶⁹ Huxley, , op. cit. (1), i, 427–41.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Huxley, T. H., ‘On elementary instruction in physiology’, 1877Google Scholar, in Huxley, , op. cit. (44), 300–2.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Geddes, Patrick, ‘Huxley as teacher’, Nature (1925), 115, 741.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The practice of a daily professorial visit was well known to British scientists from the German model, exemplified in England by Augustus Hofmann at the Royal College of Chemistry. It may also be compared with the daily round of the physician or surgeon to the hospital wards.

⁷² Bower, F. O., ‘Teaching of biological science’, Nature (1925), 115, 712.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷³ Gooday, , op. cit. (63), 336–40.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Wells, H. G., Experiment in Autobiography, 2 vols., London, 1934, i, 201.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Thistleton-Dyer later admitted that when undertaking a botanical variant of Huxley's physiological course, the ‘difficulties’ faced by him and his Oxford-based assistant Lawson were ‘enormous’; they were ‘generally up half the night’ preparing materials freshly arrived from Kew Gardens and ‘rehearsing’ demonstrations for the laboratory exercises on the following day. Fortunately, they were able to work the class up to a high pitch of receptive ‘enthusiasm’, and some of the ‘more expert men’ apparently had ‘good luck in “getting things out”’, so much so that they succeeded in showing ‘shoals of things which had never been seen in England before’. Thistleton-Dyer, W.: ‘Plant biology in the seventies’, Nature (1925), 115, 711.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Boys, C. V., ‘Personal impressions’, Nature (1925), 115, 751.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁷ Wells, , op. cit. (74), 201.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Wells, , op. cit. (74), 206–18.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Wells, , op. cit. (74), 201.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Royal Commission on Technical Instruction, 1882 [c. 3981–11], Huxley evidence, qu. 3037, pp. 331–2; hereafter Mundella Commission. Compare with another anecdote cited by Huxley, in Gooday, , op. cit. (63), 307.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Wells, , op. cit. (74), 201–2.Google Scholar

⁸² Geison, G., Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology, Princeton, 1978, 130–47.Google Scholar

⁸³ Copy in the Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, xlii, 157. Walter Crane (1845–1913) was a well-known designer and illustrator, active in the Arts and Crafts movement and design education; see DNB and Naylor, G., The Arts and Crafts Movement, London, 1971.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Bibby's claim is that Huxley ‘generally seemed to get his way’ (Bibby, , op. cit. (4), 231).Google Scholar

⁸⁵ See Bibby, , op. cit. (4), 126Google Scholar, and the thorough rebuttal in an archivist's note in Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,865/7.

⁸⁶ Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,813, Minutes of Executive Subcommittee, unpaginated.

⁸⁷ Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, xlix, 54. See also Huxley, , op. cit. (44)Google Scholar, ‘Technical education’ (1877), 404–26.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, xlix, 55.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,813, 19 December 1877.

⁹⁰ This report was discussed and negotiated with Huxley and Donnelly over the next three months; at the end of March, Donnelly invited the various Guild dignitaries over to South Kensington; Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive MS 21,813, 25 March 1878.

⁹¹ Lang, J., City and Guilds of London Institute Centenary, London, 1978, 14–53.Google Scholar

⁹² 1851 Commissioners Archive, Imperial College, City and Guilds Correspondence: Box 1(71), 135.

⁹³ Waterlow, S. to Scott, General, 25 10 1879Google Scholar, 1851 Commissioners Archive, Imperial College, City and Guilds Correspondence: Box 1(71), 137–8.

⁹⁴ Scott, to Bramwell, 16 05 1879Google Scholar, 1851 Commissioners Archive, Imperial College, City and Guilds Correspondence: Box 1(71), 151–2.

⁹⁵ See report in Nature (1879), 21, 139 and 221Google Scholar; compare with Huxley's letter to George Howell of 2 January 1880 in Huxley, , op. cit. (1), i, 476 cited below.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Huxley, to Watney, John, 21 10 1879Google Scholar, Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,906/1.

⁹⁷ Waterlow, to Scott, , 25 10 1879Google Scholar; 1851 Commissioners Archive, Imperial College, City and Guilds Correspondence: Box 1(71), 137–8.

⁹⁸ Huxley, to Howell, George, 2 01 1880Google Scholar, in Huxley, , op. cit. (1), i, 476.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Letter Huxley, to Scott, , 20 02 1880Google Scholar, 1851 Commissioners Archive, Imperial College, City and Guilds Correspondence: Box 1(71), 124.

¹⁰⁰ For details of the problems of construction see Forgan, and Gooday, , op. cit. (45), 166–72.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Evidence to the Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), 1883, qu. 4424.

¹⁰² SirWaterlow, S. et al. , Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), qu. 4420.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), qu. 4441.

¹⁰⁴ Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), qu. 4439.

¹⁰⁵ Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), qu. 4422.

¹⁰⁶ Mundella Commission, op. cit. (80), qu. 4455 and 4542. These four companies subscribed £10,000 each.

¹⁰⁷ Huxley, , op. cit. (1), ii, 49–50.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Bibby, , op. cit. (4), 128–9.Google Scholar

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¹¹¹ See the record of the proceedings in City and Guilds of London Report to Governors (1884), 1Google Scholar, Imperial College Archives.

¹¹² Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,819/1, Minutes of Subcommittee A, 23 January 1885, 147.

¹¹³ Donnelly, to Huxley, , 13 02 1885Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, 42.53.

¹¹⁴ Donnelly, to Huxley, , 13 02 1885, op. cit. (113)Google Scholar. Philip Magnus was the Secretary to the City and Guilds of London Institute, and later MP for London University. Roberts, as noted above, was a member of the Clothworkers Company.

¹¹⁵ In the first full year 1885–86 there were fourteen students in Mechanical Engineering, thirteen in Applied Physics and eight in Chemistry – a total of thirty-five; Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,914.

¹¹⁶ See details of appointments in the ‘Old students notes’ in volumes of The Central, from 1903 to c. 1920, Imperial College Archives.

¹¹⁷ See Gooday, G., ‘The premisses of premises’Google Scholar in Smith, Crosbie and Agar, J. (eds.), Making Space (forthcoming)Google Scholar. Note also that John Watney resigned from his post as City and Guilds Secretary on 17 July 1885 in protest at the huge budgetary overspend in which the subcommittee had indulged the Professor of Chemistry, H. E. Armstrong. Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,819/1, Minutes of SubCommittee A, 1885, 186–7.

¹¹⁸ Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, 42.158.

¹¹⁹ Published on 19 February 1887, Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, 42.158.

¹²⁰ See Donnelly, to Huxley, , 27 02 1887Google Scholar, Huxley Papers, Imperial College Archives, 14.76.

¹²¹ Memorandum of Proceedings at a Drawing Room Meeting for the Promotion of Technical Education, 1887, 40Google Scholar, copy in Imperial College Archives; see commentary in Electrician (8 04 1887), 480–1.Google Scholar

¹²² Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,819/1, p. 180, 4 June 1885.

¹²³ For a total of eighty-one teachers from as far afield as Edinburgh, Stoke-on-Trent, Cardiff and Barnstaple. Guildhall Library Archives, City and Guilds Institute Archive, MS 21,906/1.

¹²⁴ See Gooday, , op. cit. (117).Google Scholar

¹²⁵ The forthcoming volume 2 of Desmond's biography reflects this strongly.

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