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ready to 'smash Darwin.' The bishop's principal qualifications for this role were his great powers as a smoothly persuasive orator (he was commonly known by his detractors as 'Soapy Sam'), but he met more than his match in Huxley.
Because no complete transcript of this celebrated debate was made at the time, Huxley's son Leonard (1860?1933), in writing his father's biography, had to reconstruct the scene by combining quotations from reports made by magazine writers and other witnesses. The account given here is from chapter 14.
From The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley
[THE HUXLEY-WILBERFORCE DEBATE AT OXFORD]
The famous Oxford Meeting of 1860 was of no small importance in Huxley's career. It was not merely that he helped to save a great cause from being stifled under misrepresentation and ridicule?that he helped to extort for it a fair hearing; it was now that he first made himself known in popular estimation as a dangerous adversary in debate?a personal force in the world of science which could not be neglected. From this moment he entered the front fighting line in the most exposed quarter of the field. * * *
It was the merest chance, as I have already said, that Huxley attended the meeting of the section that morning. Dr. Draper' of New York was to read a paper on the Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin. 'I can still hear,' writes one who was present, 'the American accents of Dr. Draper's opening address when he asked 'Air we a fortuitous concourse of atoms?' ' However, it was not to hear him, but the eloquence of the Bishop, that the members of the Association crowded in such numbers into the Lecture Room of the Museum, that this, the appointed meeting place of the section, had to be abandoned for the long west room, since cut in two by a partition for the purposes of the library. It was not term time, nor were the general public admitted; nevertheless the room was crowded to suffocation long before the protagonists appeared on the scene, 700 persons or more managing to find places. The very windows by which the room was lighted down the length of its west side were packed with ladies, whose white handkerchiefs, waving and fluttering in the air at the end of the Bishop's speech, were an unforgettable factor in the acclamation of the crowd.
On the east side between the two doors was the platform. Professor Hen- slow, the President of the section, took his seat in the center; upon his right was the Bishop, and beyond him again Dr. Draper; on his extreme left was Mr. Dingle, a clergyman from Lanchester, near Durham, with Sir J. Hooker and Sir J. Lubbock in front of him, and nearer the center, Professor Beale of King's College, London, and Huxley.2
The clergy, who shouted lustily for the Bishop, were massed in the middle of the room; behind them in the northwest corner a knot of undergraduates (one of these was T. H. Green,3 who listened but took no part in the cheering) had gathered together beside Professor Brodie,4 ready to lift their voices, poor
1. John W. Draper (1811-1882), British-born John Lubbock (1834-1913), banker, statesman, chemist, photographer, and historian who was a naturalist, and Darwin's neighbor; and Lionel professor at the University of the City of New York. Smith Beale (1828-1905), professor of medicine. 2. Except for the clergyman Dingle, all those 3. Later a prominent British philosopher (1836? named are scientists of some repute: John Stevens 1882). Henslow (1796-1861), professor of botany at 4. Sir Benjamin Brodie (1783?1862), physiologist Cambridge; Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817? and surgeon. 1911), botanist (and Henslow's son-in-law); Sir
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HUXLEY: LIFE AND LETTERS OF THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY / 1551
minority though they were, for the opposite party. Close to them stood one of the few men among the audience already in Holy orders, who joined in?and indeed led?the cheers for the Darwinians.
So 'Dr. Draper droned out his paper, turning first to the right hand and then to the left, of course bringing in a reference to the Origin of Species which set the ball rolling.'
An hour or more that paper lasted, and then discussion began. The President 'wisely announced in limine5 that none who had not valid arguments to bring forward on one side or the other would be allowed to address the meeting; a caution that proved necessary, for no fewer than four combatants had their utterances burked6 by him, because of their indulgence in vague declamation.'
First spoke (writes Professor Farrar7) a layman from Brompton, who gave his name as being one of the Committee of the (newly formed) Economic section of the Association. He, in a stentorian voice, let off his theological venom. Then jumped up Richard Greswell8 with a thin voice, saying much the same, but speaking as a scholar; but we did not merely want any theological discussion, so we shouted them down. Then a Mr. Dingle got up and tried to show that Darwin would have done much better if he had taken him into consultation. He used the blackboard and began a mathematical demonstration on the question?'Let this point Abe man, and let that point B be the mawnkey.' He got no further; he was shouted down with cries of 'mawnkey.' None of these had spoken more than three minutes. It was when these were shouted down that Henslow said he must demand that the discussion should rest on scientific grounds only.
Then there were calls for the Bishop, but he rose and said he understood his friend Professor Beale had something to say first. Beale, who was an excellent histologist,9 spoke to the effect that the new theory ought to meet with fair discussion, but added, with great modesty, that he himself had not sufficient knowledge to discuss the subject adequately. Then the Bishop spoke the speech that you know, and the question about his mother being an ape, or his grandmother.
From the scientific point of view, the speech was of small value. It was evident from his mode of handling the subject that he had been 'crammed up to the throat,' and knew nothing at first hand; he used no argument beyond those to be found in his Quarterly article, which appeared a few days later, and is now admitted to have been inspired by Owen.1 'He ridiculed Darwin badly and Huxley savagely; but,' confesses one of his strongest opponents, 'all in such dulcet tones, so persuasive a manner, and in such well turned periods, that I who had been inclined to blame the President for allowing a discussion that could serve no scientific purpose, now forgave him from the bottom of my heart.'
The Bishop spoke thus 'for full half an hour with inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness.' 'In a light, scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution; rock pigeons were what rock
5. As a starting point (Latin). 9. A biologist specializing in the study of the mi6. Suppressed, hushed. nute structure of the tissues of plants and animals. 7. Adam Storey Farrar (1826-1905), canon of 1. Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), a leading zool- Durham and professor of divinity at Durham Uni-ogist and paleontologist who was opposed to Darversity. win's theories. Wilberforce's review of Darwin's 8. A clergyman who was a tutor of Worcester Col-The Origin of Species (1859) appeared in the July lege, Oxford. 1860 issue of the Quarterly Revieiv.
