104 LIFE OF TROFESSOR HUXLEY CUAP. V 



any heart symptoms. And though Beachy Head 

 was not the same thing as the Alps, it made a very 

 efficient substitute for a while, and it was not till 

 April that the need of change began to make itself 

 felt. And so he made up his mind to listen no more 

 to the eager friends who wished him to pitch his tent 

 near them at either end of Surrey, but to settle down 

 at Eastbourne, and, by preference, to build a house 

 of the size and on the spot that suited himself, rather 

 than to take any existing house lower down in the 

 town. He must have been a trifle irritated by un- 

 solicited advice when he wrote the following : — 



It is very odd that people won't give one credit for 

 common sense. We have tried one winter here, and if 

 we tried anotlier we should be just as much dependent 

 upon the experifence of longer residents as ever we were. 

 However, as I told X. I was going to settle matters to- 

 morrow, there won't be any opportunity for discussing 

 that topic when lie comes. If we had taken W.'s house, 

 somebody would have immediately told us that we had 

 chosen the dampest site in winter and the stuffiest iu 

 summer, and where, moreover, the sewage has to be 

 pumped up into the main drain. 



He finally decided upon a site on the high ground 

 near Beachy Head, a little way back from the sea 

 front, at the corner of the Staveley and Buxton 

 Roads, with a guarantee from the Duke of Devon- 

 shire's agent that no house should be built at the 

 contiguous end of the adjoining plot of land in the 

 Buxton Road, a plot which he himself afterwards 

 bought. The principal rooms were planned for the 



