After he had retired from his professorial work and settled down at Eastbourne, his grandchildren reaped the advantage of his leisure. His natural love for children had scope for expression, and children themselves had an instinctive confidence in the power and sympathy that irradiated his face and gave his square, rugged features the beauty of wisdom and kindliness. He could captivate them alike by lively fun and excellent nonsense, and by lucid explanations of the wonders of the world about which children love to hear. He fired one small granddaughter with a love of astronomy, and one day a visitor, entering unexpectedly, was startled to find the pair of them kneeling on the floor of the entrance hall before a large sheet of paper, on which the professor was drawing a diagram of the solar system, with a little pellet and a big ball to represent earth and sun, while the child was listening with rapt attention to an account of the planets and their movements, which he knew so well how to make simple and precise without ever being dull.
One of the most charming unions of the playful and serious was his letter to the small boy, still under five, who was reading The Water Babies, wherein his grandfather's name is genially made fun of among the authorities on Water Babies and Water Beasts of every description. Moreover, there is a picture by Linley Sambourne, showing Huxley and Owen examining a bottled Water Baby under big magnifying glasses. Now, as the child greatly desired more light on the reality of Water Babies, here was an authority to consult. And, as he had already learned to write, he indited a letter of inquiry, first anxiously asking his mother if he would receive in reply a "proper letter" that he could read for himself, or a "wrong letter" that must be read to him. The hint bore fruit, and to his carefully pencilled epistle:
Have you seen a Water Baby? Did you put it in a bottle? Did it wonder if it could get out? Can I see it some day?
came a reply from his grandfather, neatly printed, letter by letter, very unlike the orderly confusion with which his pen usually rushed across the paper—to the great perplexity, often, of his foreign correspondents and sometimes of correspondents nearer home:—
I never could make sure about that Water Baby. I have seen
Babies in water and Babies in bottles; but the Baby in the
water was not in a bottle, and the Baby in the bottle was not
in water.
My friend who wrote the story of the Water Baby was a very kind man and very clever. Perhaps he thought I could see as much in the water as he did. There are some people who see a great deal and some who see very little in the same things.
When you grow up I dare say you will be one of the great-deal seers and see things more wonderful than Water Babies where other folks can see nothing.
There is a story of Mohammed that once, rather than disturb a favourite cat, he cut off the sleeve of his robe on which it lay asleep. Whether in like circumstances my father would have done the same—had flowing sleeves been a Victorian fashion—I cannot certainly say, though he once was found similarly dispossessed of his favourite study chair; but he always regarded this anecdote as displaying an agreeable trait in the Prophet. For he himself was very fond of animals, and, though we seldom kept dogs in London, cats were invariable members of the household. Apropos of these, a letter may be quoted which was written in 1893 in reply to an inquiry from a journalist who was collecting anecdotes for an article on the Home Pets of Celebrities:—
A long series of cats has reigned over my household for the last forty years, or thereabouts, but I am sorry to say that I have no pictorial or other record of their physical and moral excellences.
The present occupant of the throne is a large, young, grey Tabby—Oliver by name. Not that he is in any sense a protector, for I doubt whether he has the heart to kill a mouse. However, I saw him catch and eat the first butterfly of the season, and trust that this germ of courage, thus manifested, may develop with age into efficient mousing.