When, in the middle seventies, his position was firmly established and he was living in a roomy house, No. 4 Marlborough Place, St. John’s Wood, there were gatherings of friends on Sunday evenings.  An informal meal awaited the guests, who came either on a general invitation or when specially bidden; others put in an appearance later.  There would be much talk, from grave to gay, in those plainly appointed rooms, or on a fine summer evening, perhaps, in the garden with its little lawn behind the house.  Some music, too, was almost sure to be performed by friends or by the daughters of the house, whose progress in the art of singing was ever a matter of concern to Mr. Herbert Spencer, himself a great lover of music.  Letters and Art were well represented there as well as Science, intermingled with the friends of the younger generation.  “Here,” writes G.W.  Smalley,

people from many other worlds than those of abstract science were bidden; where talk was to be heard of a kind rare in any world.  It was scientific at times, but subdued to the necessities of the occasion; speculative, yet kept within such bounds that bishop or archbishop might have listened without offence; political even, and still not commonplace, and, when artistic, free from affectation.

There and elsewhere Mr. Huxley easily took the lead if he cared to, or if challenged.  Nobody was more ready in a greater variety of topics, and if they were scientific it was almost always another who introduced them.  Unlike some of his comrades of the Royal Society, he was of opinion that man does not live by science alone, and nothing came amiss to him....  Even in private the alarm of war is sometimes heard, and Mr. Huxley is not a whit less formidable as a disputant across the table than with pen in hand.  Yet an angry man must be very angry indeed before he could be angry with this adversary.  He disarmed his enemies with an amiable grace that made defeat endurable, if not entirely delightful.

If scientific subjects came up in conversation, the luminous style, so familiar in his written work, reappeared in talk.

Yet it has more than that.  You cannot listen to him without thinking more of the speaker than of his science, more of the solid beautiful nature than of the intellectual gifts, more of his manly simplicity and sincerity than of all his knowledge and his long services.

But in the intermediate period, from about 1860 onwards, the unceasing rush of occupation rendered it very difficult to keep in touch with his friends.  On his initiative a small dining club of scientific friends and allies was established.  Almost all these close friends were members of the Royal Society, and were likely to attend its meetings.  Dinner, therefore, was to be taken at a convenient hotel before the monthly meeting of the Society, and those who were inevitably drifting apart under the stress of circumstances