INTRODUCTION xiii 



which they claim as theirs, and makes, as a friend wrote 

 of him, hazy thinking and slovenly, half-formed conclu- 

 sions seem the base thing they really are. 



The last years of Huxley's life were indeed the longed- 

 for Indian summer. Away from the noise of London at 

 Eastbourne by the sea, he spent many happy hours with 

 old-time friends and in his garden, which was a great joy 

 to him. His large family of sons and daughters and grand- 

 children brought much cheer to his last days. Almost to 

 the end he was working and writing for publication. Three 

 days before his death he wrote to his old friend, Hooker, 

 that he did n't feel at all like " sending in his checks " and 

 hoped to recover. He died very quietly on June 29, 1895. 

 That he met death with the same calm faith and strength 

 with which he had met life is indicated by the lines which 

 his wife wrote and which he requested to be his epitaph : 



Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep ; 

 For still He giveth His beloved sleep, 

 And if an endless sleep He wills, so best. 



To attempt an analysis of Huxley's character, unique 

 and bafflingly complex as it is, is beyond the scope of this 

 sketch ; but to give only the mere facts of his life is to do 

 an injustice to the vivid personality of the man as it is 

 revealed in his letters. All his human interest _ , 

 in people and things pets, and flowers, and " 



family brightens many pages of the two pon- 

 derous volumes. Now one reads of his grief over some 

 backward-going plant, or over some garden tragedy, as " A 

 lovely clematis in full flower, which I had spent hours in 

 nailing up, has just died suddenly. I am more inconsolable 

 than Jonah ! " Now one is amused with a nonsense letter 

 to one of his children, and again with an account of a pet. 



"I wish you would write seriously to M . She is not 



behaving well to Oliver. I have seen handsomer kittens, 

 but few more lively, and energetically destructive. Just 



now he scratched away at something M says cost 13s. 



6d. a yard and reduced more or less of it to combings. 



