X Club - Formation of The X Club

Formation of The X Club

In 1864, Huxley wrote to Hooker and explained that he feared he and his group of friends, the other men of the social network, would drift apart and lose contact. He proposed the creation of a club that would serve to maintain social ties among the members of the network, and Hooker readily agreed. Huxley always insisted that sociability was the only purpose of the club, but others in the club, most notably Hirst, claimed that the founding members had other intentions. In his description of the first meeting, Hirst wrote that what brought the men together was actually a "devotion to science, pure and free, untrammelled by religious dogmas," and he predicted that situations would arise when their concerted efforts would be of great use.

On the night of the first meeting, Huxley jokingly proposed that the club be named "Blastodermic Club", in reference to blastoderm, a layer of cells in the ovum of birds that acts as the center of development for the entire bird. Some historians, such as Ruth Barton, feel that Huxley wanted the newly formed club to act as a guide to the development of science. The name "Thorough Club", which referred to the movements that existed at the time for the "freedom to express unorthodox opinion", was also rejected as a possible name. As Spencer would later explain, "X Club" was chosen in May 1865 because "it committed to nothing." The name itself, according to Hirst, was proposed by Mrs. Busk.

It was also decided on the first night that each ensuing meeting would take place on the first Thursday of each month, except during the holiday months of July, August, and September. During the existence of the club, dinners took place at St. George’s Hotel on Albermale Street, Almond’s Hotel on Clifford Street, and finally at the Athenaeum Club after 1886. Meetings always started at six in the evening so that dinner would be over in time for the Royal Society meetings at 8:00 or 8:30 pm in the Burlington House.

Eight men attended the first meeting, and in addition Spottiswoode came to the next meeting in December 1864, making the membership of nine. William Benjamin Carpenter, an English physiologist, and James Fergusson, an architect, were also invited to join the club, but they declined. After some discussion, it was decided, according to Spencer, that no more members would be added because no other men outside their network were friendly or intelligent enough to be part of the X Club. In contrast, Huxley would later write that no others were admitted to the group because it was agreed that the name of any new member would have to contain "all the consonants absent from the names of the old ones." As the members of the club had no Slavonic friends, the matter was supposedly dropped.

According to Spencer, the only rule the club had was to have no rules. When a resolution was proposed in November 1885 to keep formal notes of the meetings, the motion was defeated because it violated the rule. Nevertheless, the club kept both a secretary and a treasurer, and both positions were held in turn by each member of the club. These offices were in charge of account collecting and sending notices of upcoming meetings. Members, including Hirst, Huxley, Hooker, and Tyndall, also took informal notes of the meetings.