My first meeting your father was in 1851, shortly after his return from the “Rattlesnake” voyage with Captain Stanley.  Hearing that I had paid some attention to marine zoology during the voyage of the Antarctic Expedition, he was desirous of showing me the results of his studies of the Oceanic Hydrozoa, and he sought me out in consequence.  This and the fact that we had both embarked in the Naval service in the same capacity as medical officers and with the same object of scientific research, naturally led to an intimacy which was undisturbed by a shadow of a misunderstanding for nearly forty-five following years.  Curiously enough, our intercourse might have dated from an earlier period by nearly six years had I accepted an appointment to the “Rattlesnake” offered me by Captain Stanley, which, but for my having arranged for a journey to India, might have been accepted.

Returning to the purpose of our interview, the researches Mr. Huxley laid before me were chiefly those on the Salpae, a much misunderstood group of marine Hydrozoa.  Of these I had amused myself with making drawings during the long and often weary months passed at sea on board the “Erebus,” but having other subjects to attend to, I had made no further study of them than as consumers of the vegetable life (Diatoms) of the Antarctic Ocean.  Hence his observations on their life-history, habits, and affinities were on almost all points a revelation to me, and I could not fail to recognise in their author all the qualities possessed by a naturalist of commanding ability, industry, and power of exposition.  Our interviews, thus commenced, soon ripened into a friendship, which led to an arrangement for a monthly meeting, and in the informal establishment of a club of nine, the other members of which were, Mr. Busk, Dr. Frankland, Mr. Hirst, Sir J. Lubbock, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Dr. Tyndall, and Mr. Spottiswoode.

Just a month after this letter to his friend, the same year which had first brought Huxley public recognition outside his special sphere brought him also the greatest sorrow perhaps of his whole life.  I have already spoken of the sudden death of the little son in whom so much of his own and his wife’s happiness was centred.  The suddenness of the blow made it all the more crushing, and the mental strain, intensified by the sight of his wife’s inconsolable grief, brought him perilously near a complete breakdown.  But the birth of another son, on December 11, gave the mother some comfort; and as the result of a friendly conspiracy between her and Dr. Tyndall, Huxley himself was carried off for a week’s climbing in Wales between Christmas and the New Year.

His reply to a long letter of sympathy in which Charles Kingsley set forth the grounds of his own philosophy as to the ends of life and the hope of immortality, affords insight into the very depths of his nature.  It is a rare outburst at a moment of intense feeling, in which, more completely than in almost any other writing of his, intellectual clearness and moral fire are to be seen uniting in a veritable passion for truth:—­]