HUXLEY 



THE MAN 



Thomas Henry Huxley, the seventh and youngest 

 child of George and Rachel Huxley, was born on the 

 4th May, 1825, at Ealing, then a village separated by 

 stretches of open country from London. His father, 

 who was assistant-master in a semi-public school 

 there, is described by him as a man " rather too easy- 

 going for this wicked world," yet with a certain tenac- 

 ity of character which, since he inherited it, Huxley 

 dryly says, " unfriendly observers sometimes call 

 obstinacy." This, together with a faculty for draw- 

 ing, constituted the father's legacy to the son. It is 

 of his mother that he declares himself " physically 

 and mentally " the child, u even down to peculiar 

 movements of the hands " ; her agile mind, with its 

 rapid arrival at conclusions, remained, he says, the 

 perilous but most prized part of his " inheritance of 



mother-wit." His love for her was a passion. 



1 



