CHAPTER VII 



CHARACTER AND FRIENDSHIPS 



A STRONG friendship with Dean Stanley played an 

 important part in the lives of both Sir William and 

 his wife. 



The friendship began spontaneously, yet there 

 was, as is often the case, a kind of common link, 

 which possibly aided the first acquaintance inci- 

 dentally. Captain Owen Stanley, a brother of 

 Arthur Stanley's, had been commander of H.M.S. 

 Rattlesnake, on board which Huxley sailed on the 

 four years' surveying cruise round the world during 

 which Owen Stanley died. "The fact that Huxley 

 had sailed under Captain Owen Stanley brought 

 him into very friendly communication with the 

 Captain's brother, the late Dean of Westminster," 

 Flower wrote in some reminiscences of Professor 

 Huxley — ** the Dean as many of us liked to, and 

 still do call him, just as the first Duke of Wellington 

 was always called the Duke." Notwithstanding the 

 great differences of their interests and pursuits, they 

 remained in the closest intimacy, Stanley's marriage 

 only increasing the friendship. In 1863 he married 



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