CHAPTEE III 



1888 



Huxley had returned to town before Christmas, for 

 the house in St. John's Wood was still the rallying- 

 point for the family, although his elder children were 

 now married and dispersed. But he did not stay 

 long. " Wife wonderfully better," he writes to Sir 

 M. Foster on January 8, " self as melancholy as a 

 pelican in the wilderness." He meant to have left 

 London on the 16 th, but his depressed condition 

 proved to be the beginning of a second attack of 

 pleurisy, and he was unable to start for Bournemouth 

 till the 24:th. 



Here, however, his recovery was very slow. He 

 was unable to come up to the first meeting of the x 

 Club. " I trust," he writes, " I shall be able to be at 

 the next % — but I am getting on very slowly. I 

 can't walk above a couple of miles without being 

 exhausted, and talking for twenty minutes has the 

 same effect. I suppose it is all Anno Domini." 



But he had a pleasant visit from one of the «, 

 and writes : — 



58 



