XVI 



HOME LIFE 407 



At the Christmas dinner he invariably delighted 

 the children by carving wonderful beasts, generally 

 pigs, out of orange peel. When the marriage of his 

 eldest daughter had taken her away from this 

 important function, she was sent the best specimen 

 as a reminder. 



4 Marlborough Place, 

 Dec. 25, 1878. 



Dearest Jess — We have just finished the mid-day 

 Christmas dinner, at which function you were badly 

 wanted. The inflammation of the pudding was highly 

 successful — in fact Vesuvian not to say ^Etnaic — and I 

 have never yet attained so high a pitch in piggygenesis 

 as on this occasion. 



The specimen I enclose, wrapped in a golden cere- 

 cloth, and with the remains of his last dinner in the 

 proper region, will prove to you the heights to which 

 the creative power of the true artist may soar. I call 

 it a " Piggurne, or a Harmony in Orange and White." 



Preserve it, my dear child, as evidence of the paternal 

 genius, when those light and fugitive productions which 

 are buried in the philosophical transactions and else- 

 where are forgotten. 



My best wishes to Fred and you, and may you succeed 

 better than I do in keeping warm. — Ever your loving 

 father, T. H. Huxley. 



Later on, however, the younger children who 

 kept up the home at Marlborough Place after the 

 elder ones had married or gone out into the world, 

 enjoyed more opportunities of his ever -mellowing 

 companionship. Strongly as he upheld the conven- 

 tions when these represented some valid results of 



