We have had a lovely day, quite an Italian sky and sea, with a good deal of Florentine east wind.  I walked up to the Signal House, and was greatly amused by a young sheep-dog whose master could hardly get him away from circling round me and staring at me with a short dissatisfied bark every now and then.  It is the undressed wool of my coat bothers all the dogs.  They can’t understand why a creature which smells so like a sheep should walk on its hind legs.  I wish I could have relieved that dog’s mind, but I did not see my way to an explanation.

From this time on, the effects of several years’ comparative rest became more perceptible.  His slowly returning vigour was no longer sapped by the unceasing strain of multifarious occupations.  And if his recurrent ill-health sometimes seems too strongly insisted on, it must be remembered that he had always worked at the extreme limit of his powers—­the limit, as he used regretfully to say, imposed on his brain by his other organs—­and that after his first breakdown he was never very far from a second.  When this finally came in 1884, his forces were so far spent that he never expected to recover as he did.

In the marriage this year of his youngest daughter, Huxley was doomed to experience the momentary little twinge which will sometimes come to the supporter of an unpopular principle when he first puts it into practice among his own belongings.

Athenaeum Club, January 14, 1889.

My dear Hooker,

I have just left the x “Archives” here for you.  I left them on my table by mischance when I came here on the x day.

I have a piece of family news for you.  My youngest daughter Ethel is going to marry John Collier.

I have always been a great advocate for the triumph of common sense and justice in the “Deceased Wife’s Sister” business—­and only now discover, that I had a sneaking hope that all of my own daughters would escape that experiment!

They are quite suited to one another and I would not wish a better match for her.  And whatever annoyances and social pin-pricks may come in Ethel’s way, I know nobody less likely to care about them.

We shall have to go to Norway, I believe, to get the business done.

In the meantime, my wife (who has been laid up with bronchitic cold ever since we came home) and I have had as much London as we can stand, and are off to-morrow to Eastbourne again, but to more sheltered quarters.

I hope Lady Hooker and you are thriving.  Don’t conceal the news from her, as my wife is always accusing me of doing.

Ever yours,

T.H.  Huxley.

To Mr. W.F.  Collier.

4 Marlborough Place, January 24, 1889.

Many thanks for your kind letter.  I have as strong an affection for Jack as if he were my own son, and I have felt very keenly the ruin we involuntarily brought upon him—­by our poor darling’s terrible illness and death.  So that if I had not already done my best to aid and abet other people in disregarding the disabilities imposed by the present monstrous state of the law, I should have felt bound to go as far as I could towards mending his life.  Ethel is just suited to him...Of course I could have wished that she should be spared the petty annoyances which she must occasionally expect.  But I know of no one less likely to care for them.