OLDEST AND YOUNGEST KEPBESENTATIVES 469 



homage of his friends and admirers. The marks of a hale, 

 serene, and dignified old age were upon him in the softly 

 heightened colour of his face, encircled by a complete halo 

 of silver hair and fringing beard ; in the enhanced prominence 

 and luminous quality of his eyes, which shone very blue from 

 under the veritable penthouse of his eyebrows. As he sat 

 there, still firm and upright, it was hard to believe that he 

 was ninety-two years old. Indeed the two figures which 

 most strongly caught the general imagination as living links 

 with all that those days commemorated, members of Darwin's 

 generation and his close friends in the great days of the past, 

 were such as might move men to love and admire the best 

 gifts of old age. One was Hooker, the other Mrs. T. H. Huxley, 

 then eighty-four. She also was staying in one of the Darwin 

 households, and an historic memento of the reunion of the 

 three families is the photograph here reproduced of the youngest 

 and the oldest representatives of the living tradition : Sir 

 Joseph and Lady Hooker, Mrs. Huxley, and, in her arms, 

 Darwin's great-grandchild, Ursula Darwin. 



The flood of congratulations which poured in upon him 

 a few days later on his birthday prompts the reflection : 



It is a curious episode in old age when a man gets letters 

 of congratulation from all but strangers the tribute being 

 not to the individual but to the age he has attained ! Such 

 old age. (To Dr. Bruce, July 13, 1909.) 



During July he paid three other visits before settling down 

 again at The Camp : to Cirencester for the marriage of his 

 son Charles's eldest daughter ; to his daughter, Lady Thiselton- 

 Dyer, ' in her pretty house and garden on the Cotswold Hills ' 

 near Witcombe ; and thence for a few days to Pendock, a 

 Worcestershire village where Lady Hooker owned * a very 

 out of the way property.' 



To Mrs. Paisley 



August 11, 1909. 



My late father-in-law was Eector of Pendock, and the 

 charm of our visit was the delight of the old peasants who 



