"They are a sore burden to the conscience if you don't go to see them, and an awful trial to the back and legs if you do," he complained. He found Florence, nevertheless, a lovely place and full of most interesting things to see and do. His letters with reference to himself also are vigorously and entertainingly expressed. He writes in a characteristic way of his growing difficulty with his hearing. "It irritates me not to hear; it irritates me still more to be spoken to as if I were deaf, and the absurdity of being irritated on the last ground irritates me still more." And again he writes in a more hopeful strain, "With fresh air and exercise and careful avoidance of cold and night air I am to be all right again." He then adds: "I am not fond of coddling;but as Paddy gave his pig the best corner in his cabin--because 'shure, he paid the rint'--I feel bound to take care of myself as a household animal of value, to say nothing of other points."Although he was never strong after this long illness, Huxley began in 1889 to be much better. The first sign of returning vigor was the eagerness with which he entered into a controversy with Gladstone. Huxley had always enjoyed a mental battle; and some of his fiercest tilts were with Gladstone. He even found the cause of better health in this controversy, and was grateful to the "Grand Old Man" for making home happy for him. From this time to his death, Huxley wrote a number of articles on politics, science, and religion, many of which were published in the volume called Controverted Questions. The main value of these essays lies in the fact that Huxley calls upon men to give clear reasons for the faith which they claim as theirs, and makes, as a friend wrote of him, hazy thinking and slovenly, half-formed conclusions seem the base thing they really are.
The last years of Huxley's life were indeed the longed-for Indian summer. Away from the noise of London at Eastbourne by the sea, he spent many happy hours with old-time friends and in his garden, which was a great joy to him. His large family of sons and daughters and grandchildren brought much cheer to his last days.
Almost to the end he was working and writing for publication.
Three days before his death he wrote to his old friend, Hooker, that he didn't feel at all like "sending in his checks" and hoped to recover. He died very quietly on June 29, 1895. That he met death with the same calm faith and strength with which he had met life is indicated by the lines which his wife wrote and which he requested to be his epitaph:--Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep;For still He giveth His beloved sleep, And if an endless sleep He wills, so best.
To attempt an analysis of Huxley's character, unique and bafflingly complex as it is, is beyond the scope of this sketch; but to give only the mere facts of his life is to do an injustice to the vivid personality of the man as it is revealed in his letters. All his human interest in people and things--pets, and flowers, and family--brightens many pages of the two ponderous volumes. Now one reads of his grief over some backward-going plant, or over some garden tragedy, as "A lovely clematis in full flower, which I had spent hours in nailing up, has just died suddenly. I am more inconsolable than Jonah!" Now one is amused with a nonsense letter to one of his children, and again with an account of a pet. "Iwish you would write seriously to M----. She is not behaving well to Oliver. I have seen handsomer kittens, but few more lively, and energetically destructive. Just now he scratched away at something M---- says cost 13s. 6d. a yard and reduced more or less of it to combings. M---- therefore excludes him from the dining-room and all those opportunities of higher education which he would have in MY house." Frequently one finds a description of some event, so vividly done that the mere reading of it seems like a real experience. An account of Tennyson's burial in Westminster is a typical bit of description:--Bright sunshine streamed through the windows of the nave, while the choir was in half gloom, and as each shaft of light illuminated the flower-covered bier as it slowly travelled on, one thought of the bright succession of his works between the darkness before and the darkness after. I am glad to say that the Royal Society was represented by four of its chief officers, and nine of the commonalty, including myself. Tennyson has a right to that, as the first poet since Lucretius who has understood the drift of science.
No parts of the Life and Letters are more enjoyable than those concerning the "Happy Family," as a friend of Huxley's names his household. His family of seven children found their father a most engaging friend and companion. He could tell them wonderful sea stories and animal stories and could draw fascinating pictures.
