34 MY LIFE 



indebted for valuable information or useful suggestions in the 

 course of my work, and to these I must also add Professor 

 E. B. Poulton, of Oxford; F. W. II. Myers, Professors W. F. 

 Barrett and Percival Wright, of Dublin, with Professors 

 Patrick Geddes, of Edinburgh, and J. A. Thomson, of Aber- 

 deen. For the last quarter of a century I have lived so 

 completely in the country that I have ceased to have personal 

 intercourse with most of them ; and of those still among us, 

 I can only say here that I hope and believe they all continue 

 to be my very good friends. In future chapters I may have 

 to refer to some of them again, in connection with special 

 conditions of my life. Here I will only give a few indications 

 as to my personal relations with a few of them. 



Of all those I have mentioned I became, I think, most 

 intimate with Huxley. At an early date after my return 

 home he asked me to his house in Marlborough Place, where 

 I soon became very friendly with his children, then all quite 

 young, all very animated and not at all shy. Mrs. Huxley 

 was also exceedingly kind and pleasant, and the whole 

 domestic tone of the house was such as to make me quite 

 at my ease, which is what happens to me with only a few 

 persons. I used often to go there on Sunday afternoons, or 

 to spend the evening, while I was several times asked to dine 

 to meet persons of similar pursuits to my own. One of those 

 occasions that I particularly remember was to meet Dr. 

 Miklucho Maklay, a Russian anthropologist, who was going 

 to New Guinea, and as I was the only Englishman who had 

 lived some months alone in that country, Huxley thought we 

 should be interested with each other. 



"Maklay was a small, wiry man, somewhat younger than 

 myself; he spoke English well, and told us all about what 

 he was going to do. His idea was that you could really 

 learn nothing about natives unless you lived with them and 

 became almost one of themselves; above all, you must win 

 their confidence, and must therefore begin by trusting them 

 absolutely. He proposed to go in a Russian warship, and 

 be left for a year at some part of the north coast where 

 Europeans were wholly unknown, with one servant, but with- 



