20 Walter Frank Raphael Weldon. 1860—1906. 
and Lis energy and enthusiasm were of immense service. We had to fight our 
own College authorities as well as outside influences. It is not now the fitting 
occasion to tell the complete history. A joint letter to the Times roused the 
authorities, there were rumours of dismissal from chairs, and of wiser counsels 
prevailing solely at the instance of a distinguished Liberal statesman then on the 
College Council. The authorities wei'e supporting a scheme which would have 
united King's and University Colleges in a second-rate and duplicate London 
University to be termed the Albert University, and rebellion had to go to extremes, 
if this project was to be defeated. Weldon with the help of one or two colleagues 
circularised every member of the College, and the night before the discussion 
of the charter a widely signed petition against it was in the hands of every 
member of the House of Commons ; the Albert charter was dead, and the College 
Council hopelessly defeated. 
The destructive attitude was now dropt ; at a meeting in Wimpole Street, 
Weldon, G. Carey-Foster and the present writer drafted the scheme, afterwards 
accepted with small modifications, of an " Association for Promoting a Professorial 
University for London." The idea was to bring all the London teachers into one 
camp, to get them to accept a common ideal, and to enlist support for it among 
thinking men outside. The ideal was the foundation of a university in which 
teaching should be done by the university professors only, who should largely 
control the university ; the separate colleges were to be absorbed. The aim was 
thus expressed : 
"The creation of a homogeneous academic body with power to absorb, not to federate existing 
institutions of academic rank, seems the real solution of the problem. An academic body of 
this character might well be organised so far as teaching is concerned on the broad lines of a 
Scottish University. Such a corporation may be conveniently spoken of as a professorial 
university to distinguish it from a collegiate or federal university." 
The Association met a real need, the London teachers to our surprise and joy 
joined readily. We got the support of great names in literature and science. We 
produced a distinct effect on public opinion and by our witnesses even on the 
Royal Commission. But we considered that we ought to have a leader of great 
name, and we asked Huxley to be president. Huxley accepted, and came to us 
with views diverging to some extent from those of the initiators of the Association. 
Instead of holding up an ideal of academic reform, his plan was to find the 
minimum which would be accepted by various opposed interests and compromise 
on the basis of this. The alternatives were a long campaign to impress the powers 
that be with true notions of academic life, or the immediate acceptance of a 
teaching university, which should be an omnmm gatherum of all the teaching 
institutions in London. The present writer resigned the secretaryship of the 
Association, and was succeeded by Weldon. It was only after very anxious con- 
sideration that the open letter of the former to Professor Huxley of December 3, 
1892, was sent to the Times*. It was a course which Weldon strongly condemned. 
* Personal requests to join the Association had been made to many on the basis of a circular con- 
taining the words cited above, the spirit of which was directly repudiated by Huxley. 
