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Page 42
It was one of the penalties of his hard-driven existence that for the
first fifteen or twenty years of his married life he had scarcely any
time to devote to his children. The "lodger," as he used to describe
himself, who went out early and came back late, could sometimes
spare half-an-hour just before or just after dinner to draw wonderful
pictures for the little ones, or on a Sunday he would now and then
walk with the elder ones to Hampstead Heath or to the Zoo, where, as
a constant visitant to the prosector's laboratory, he was a well-known
figure, and admitted by the keepers to their arcana. But, while he
often told us stories of the sea and of animals, he did not talk
"shop" to us, as many people seemed to expect by their inquiries
whether we did not receive quite a scientific education from his
companionship.
At the same time, he was anything but a Bohemian. His inborn gaiety
and high spirits, his humour and love of adventure, found from the
first a balance in his love of science; and the rough experience
of his early days intensified by contrast the spiritual serenity
of united love. Lack of order, whether in mind or in outward
surroundings, was no recommendation to him; and so far as the
conventions represented in brief some valid results of social
experience, he observed them and upheld them. They are not always dry
husks out of which reason has evaporated. But where such were merely
unreasoned custom, he was ready to set aside his mere likes and
dislikes on good cause shown, and to follow reason as against the
simple prejudice of custom, even his own.
On the whole, he made his impression on his children more by example
than by spoken precept; much of his attitude may be gathered from a
letter to his son on his twenty-first birthday:--
You will have a son some day yourself, I suppose, and, if you
do, I can wish you no greater satisfaction than to be able to
say that he has reached manhood without having given a serious
anxiety, and that you can look forward with entire confidence
to his playing the man in the battle of life. I have tried to
make you feel your responsibilities and act independently as
early as possible; but, once for all, remember that I am not
only your father but your nearest friend, ready to help you in
all things reasonable, and perhaps in a few unreasonable.
After he had retired from his professorial work and settled down at
Eastbourne, his grandchildren reaped the advantage of his leisure.
His natural love for children had scope for expression, and children
themselves had an instinctive confidence in the power and sympathy
that irradiated his face and gave his square, rugged features the
beauty of wisdom and kindliness. He could captivate them alike by
lively fun and excellent nonsense, and by lucid explanations of the
wonders of the world about which children love to hear. He fired one
small granddaughter with a love of astronomy, and one day a visitor,
entering unexpectedly, was startled to find the pair of them kneeling
on the floor of the entrance hall before a large sheet of paper, on
which the professor was drawing a diagram of the solar system, with
a little pellet and a big ball to represent earth and sun, while the
child was listening with rapt attention to an account of the planets
and their movements, which he knew so well how to make simple and
precise without ever being dull.
One of the most charming unions of the playful and serious was his
letter to the small boy, still under five, who was reading _The Water
Babies_, wherein his grandfather's name is genially made fun of among
the authorities on Water Babies and Water Beasts of every description.
Moreover, there is a picture by Linley Sambourne, showing Huxley and
Owen examining a bottled Water Baby under big magnifying glasses.
Now, as the child greatly desired more light on the reality of Water
Babies, here was an authority to consult. And, as he had already
learned to write, he indited a letter of inquiry, first anxiously
asking his mother if he would receive in reply a "proper letter" that
he could read for himself, or a "wrong letter" that must be read to
him. The hint bore fruit, and to his carefully pencilled epistle:
Have you seen a Water Baby? Did you put it in a bottle? Did it
wonder if it could get out? Can I see it some day?
came a reply from his grandfather, neatly printed, letter by letter,
very unlike the orderly confusion with which his pen usually rushed
across the paper--to the great perplexity, often, of his foreign
correspondents and sometimes of correspondents nearer home:--
I never could make sure about that Water Baby. I have seen
Babies in water and Babies in bottles; but the Baby in the
water was not in a bottle, and the Baby in the bottle was not
in water.
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