Severe he might be on occasion, but never harsh.  His idea in bringing up his children was to accustom them as early as possible to a certain amount of independence, at the same time trying to make them regard him as their best friend.

This aspect of his character is specially touched upon by Sir Leslie Stephen, in a letter written to my mother in July 1895:—­

No one, I think, could have more cordially admired Huxley’s intellectual vigour and unflinching honesty than I. It pleases me to remember that I lately said something of this to him, and that he received what I said most heartily and kindly.  But what now dwells most in my mind is the memory of old kindness, and of the days when I used to see him with you and his children.  I may safely say that I never came from your house without thinking how good he is; what a tender and affectionate nature the man has!  It did me good simply to see him.  The recollection is sweet to me now, and I rejoice to think how infinitely better you know what I must have been dull indeed not more or less to perceive.

As he wrote 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 you 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.

[This domestic happiness which struck others so forcibly was one of the vital realities of his existence.  Without it his quick spirit and nervous temperament could never have endured the long and often embittered struggle—­not merely with equanimity, but with a constant growth of sympathy for earnest humanity, which, in early days obscured from view by the turmoil of strife, at length became apparent to all as the tide of battle subsided.  None realised more than himself what the sustaining help and comradeship of married life had wrought for him, alike in making his life worth living and in making his life’s work possible.  Here he found the pivot of his happiness and his strength; here he recognised to the full the care that took upon itself all possible burdens and left his mind free for his greater work.

He had always a great tenderness for children.  “One of my earliest recollections of him,” writes Jeffery Parker, “is in connection with a letter he wrote to my father, on the occasion of the death, in infancy, of one of my brothers.  ‘Why,’ he wrote, ’did you not tell us before that the child was named after me, that we might have made his short life happier by a toy or two.’  I never saw a man more crushed than he was during the dangerous illness of one of his daughters, and he told me that, having then to make an after-dinner speech, he broke down for the first time in his life, and for one painful moment forgot where he was and what he had to say.  I can truly say that I never knew a man whose way of speaking of his family, or whose manner in his own home, was fuller of a noble, loving, and withal playful courtesy.”