In the autumn of 1851, my friend and I went to the meeting of the British Association at Ipswich, as scientific "items" not, indeed, wholly unknown to the "pillars" of that scientific congregation; and perhaps already regarded as young men whose disposition to keep their proper places could not, under all circumstances, be relied upon. Being young, with any amount of energy, no particular prospects, and no disposition to set about the ordinary methods of acquiring them, we could conduct ourselves with perfect freedom; and we joined very cordially in the proceedings of the "Red Lion Club," of which I had become a member in London, and which had been instituted by that most genial of anti-Philistines, Edward Forbes, as a protest against Dons and Donnishness in science. With this object, the "Red Lions" made a point of holding a feast of Spartan simplicity and anarchic constitution, with rites of a Pantagruelistic aspect, intermingled with extremely unconventional orations and queer songs, such as only Forbes could indite, by way of counterblast to the official banquets of the Association, with their high tables and what we irreverently termed "butter-boat" speeches.
Fuimus![1] The last time I feasted with the "Red Lions" I was a Don myself; the dinner was such as even daintier Dons than I might rejoice in; and I know of only one person who, under a grave, even reverend, exterior, lamented the evolution of "Red Lionism" into respectability.
It was at the Ipswich meeting, that Tyndall and I fell in with Hooker, just returned from the labors and perils of his Himalayan expedition, and who was to make a third in the little company of those who were, thenceforward, to hold fast to one another through good and evil days. Frankland had long been a friend of Tyndall's, Lubbock soon joined us; and it was we four who stood, pondering over many things, in Haslemere Churchyard the other day.
Tyndall became permanently attached to the Royal Institution in 1853, while I cast anchor in Jermyn Street, not far off, in the following year. Before reaching this settlement, we had both done our best to expatriate ourselves by becoming candidates for the chairs of Physics and of Natural History in the University of Toronto, which happened to be simultaneously vacant. These, however, were provided with other occupants. The close relations into which we were thrown, on this and many subsequent occasions, had the effect of associating us in the public mind, as if we formed a sort of firm; with results which were sometimes inconvenient and sometimes ludicrous. When my wife and I went to the United States in 1876, for example, a New York paper was good enough to announce my coming, accompanied by my "titled
- ↑ We were.
