14 Waverley Place, April 3, 1857.

Having subsided from standing upon my head—­which was the immediate causation of your correspondence about the co-extension Imperialis Academia Caesariana Naturae Curiosum (don’t I know their thundering long title well!)—­I have to say that I was born on the 4th of May of the year 1825, whereby I have now more or less mis-spent thirty-one years and a bittock, nigh on thirty-two.

Furthermore, my locus natalis is Ealing, in the county of Middlesex.  Upon my word, it is very obliging of the “curious naturals,” and I must say wholly surprising and unexpected.

I shall hold up my head immensely to-morrow when (blessed be the Lord) I give my last Fullerian.

Among other things, I am going to take Cuvier’s crack case of the ’Possum of Montmartre as an illustration of my views.

I wondered what had become of you, but the people have come talking about me this last lecture or two, so I supposed you had erupted to Kew.

My glacier article is out; tell me what you think of it some day.

I wrote a civil note to Forbes yesterday, charging myself with my crime, and I hope that is the end of the business. [Principal James Forbes, with whose theory of glaciers Huxley and Tyndall disagreed.]

My wife is mending slowly, and if she were here would desire to be remembered to you.

[In December 1858 he became a Fellow of the Linnean, and the following month not only Fellow but Secretary of the Geological Society.

In 1858 also he was elected to the Athenaeum Club under Rule 2, which provides that the committee shall yearly elect a limited number of persons distinguished in art, science, or letters.  His proposer was Sir R. Murchison, who wrote:—­

Athenaeum, January 26.

My dear Huxley,

I had a success as to you that I never had or heard of before.  Nineteen persons voted, and of these eighteen voted for you and no one against you.  You, of course, came in at the head of the poll; no other having, i.e.  Cobden, more than eleven.

Yours well satisfied,

Rod.  I. Murchison.

[From this time forth he corresponded with many foreign men of science; in these years particularly with Victor Carus, Lacaze Duthiers, Kolliker, and de Quatrefages, in reference to their common interest in the study of the invertebrates.

At home, the year 1857 opened very brightly for Huxley with the birth of his first child, a son, on the eve of the New Year.  A Christmas child, the boy was named Noel, and lived four happy years to be the very sunshine of home, the object of passionate devotion, whose sudden loss struck deeper and more ineffaceably than any other blow that befell Huxley during all his life.

As he sat alone that December night, in the little room that was his study in the house in Waverley Place, waiting for the event that was to bring him so much happiness and so much sorrow, he made a last entry in his journal, full of hope and resolution.  In the blank space below follows a note of four years later, when “the ground seemed cut from under his feet,” yet written with restraint and without bitterness.]