348 



LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP, xix 



To MR. W. F. COLLIER 



CON-Y-GEDAL HOTEL, BARMOUTH WATER, 

 Aug. 31, 1892. 



Accept my wife's and my hearty thanks for your kind con- 

 gratulations. When I was a mere boy I took for motto of an 

 essay, "What is honour? Who hath it? He that died o' 

 Wednesday," and although I have my full share of ambition 

 and vanity, I doubt not, yet Falstaff's philosophical observa- 

 tion has dominated my mind and acted as a sort of perpetual 

 refrigerator to these passions. So I have gone my own way, 

 sought for none of these things and expected none and it 

 would seem that the deepest schemer's policy could not have 

 answered better. We must have a new Beatitude, " Blessed is 

 the man who expecteth nothing," without its ordinary appendix. 



I tell Jack * I have worked hard for a dignity which will 

 enable me to put down his aristocratic swaggering. 



It took some time, however, to get used to the title, and 

 it was October before he wrote : 



The feeling that " The Right Honble." on my letters is a 

 piece of chaff is wearing off, and I hope to get used to my ap- 

 pendix in time. 



The " very quaint ' ceremony of kissing hands is de- 

 scribed at some length in a letter to Mrs. Huxley from 

 London on his way back from Osborne : 



GREAT WESTERN HOTEL, Aug. 25, 1892, 6.40 P.M. 



I have just got back from Osborne, and I find there are a few 

 minutes to send you a letter by the help of the extra halfpenny. 

 First-rate weather there and back, a special train, carriage with 

 postillions at the Osborne landing-place, and a grand procession 

 of officers of the new household and P.C.'s therein. Then wait- 

 ing about while the various " sticks " were delivered. 



Then we were shown into the presence chamber where the 

 Queen sat at a table. We knelt as if we were going to say our 

 prayers, holding a testament between two, while the Clerk of 

 the Council read an oath of which I heard not a word. We each 

 advanced to the Queen, knelt and kissed her hand, retired back- 

 wards, and got sworn over again (Lord knows what I promised 



* His son-in-law, Hon. John Collier. 



