Huxley v Wilberforce. How a provincial newspaper reported the Oxford debate of 1860

Any sense of achievement gained from doing a job once done by Thomas Henry Huxley—Vice-President of the Zoological Society of London—is at once nullified by the knowledge that another predecessor was the ‘unctuous, oleaginous, saponaceous’ Samuel ‘Soapy Sam’ Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and later Lord Bishop of Winchester.

New light on who said what at and when at the famous 1860 British Association meeting in Oxford during the famous debate on Darwin’s work was published last year in Notes and Records of the Royal Society in a paper by Richard England.

After the debate, what was said was largely passed by word of mouth since the semi-official record in The Athenaeum magazine (eventually merged into what is now the New Statesman) was censored in order to remove material that was considered objectionable in that it emphasised the chasm between science and faith and, given the morality of the day, a little risqué on account of Wilberforce’s question to Huxley. However, it has now been found that the Oxford Chronicle carried a much fuller account which does contain Wilberforce’s ape as grandfather or grandmother jibe and Huxley’s devastating riposte:

…Glancing at Professor Huxley’s remarks, on the previous day, in a discussion with Professor Owen, the Bishop facetiously asked if he had any particular predilection for a monkey ancestry, and, if so, on which side - whether he would prefer an ape for his grandfather, and a woman for his grandfather, or a man for his grandfather, and an ape for his grandmother. (Much laughter.)…

Wilberforce continued with his diatribe so the rejoinder when it came was not so spontaneous as some of us may have thought. But it did come:

Professor Huxley followed. In reply to the Bishop’s query he said that if the alternative were given him of being descended from a man conspicuous for his talents and eloquence, but who misused his gifts to ridicule the laborious investigators of science and obscure the lights of scientific truth, or from the humble origin alluded to, he would far rather choose the latter than the former. (Oh. oh, and laughter and cheering.)…

It is often remarked that in later years Wilberforce and Huxley served together on the Council of the Zoological Society. But in that mannerly fashion that can still be found, if less commonly, in academia and public life, I cannot but wonder what Huxley actually thought of having to deal with Wilberforce whom he had, by implication, described in Oxford as an amateur in science.

The famous Vanity Fair cartoons of Wilberforce and Huxley by
Carlo Pellegrini (1839-1889), 'Ape'

England R. 2017. Censoring Huxley and Wilberforce: A new source for the meeting that the Athenaeum ‘wisely softened down’. Notes and Records of the Royal Society 71, 371-384. DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2016.0058