[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."
After he had retired to Eastbourne, his grandchildren reaped the benefit of his greater leisure. In his age his love of children brimmed over with undiminished force, unimpeded by circumstances. He would make endless fun with them, until one little mite, on her first visit, with whom her grandfather was trying to ingratiate himself with a vast deal of nonsense, exclaimed: "Well, you are the curioustest old man I ever seen."
Another, somewhat older, developed a great liking for astronomy under her grandfather's tuition. One day a visitor, entering unexpectedly, was astonished to find the pair of them kneeling on the floor in the hall before a large sheet of paper, on which the professor was drawing a diagram of the solar system on a large scale, with a little pellet and a large ball to represent earth and sun, while the child was listening with the closest 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.
Children seemed to have a natural confidence in the expression of mingled power and sympathy which, especially in his later years, irradiated his "square, wise, swarthy face" ("There never was a face, I do believe" (wrote Sir Walter Besant of the portrait by John Collier), "wiser, more kindly, more beautiful for wisdom and the kindliness of it, than this of Huxley."—The "Queen", November 16, 1895.), and proclaimed to all the sublimation of a broad native humanity tried by adversity and struggle in the pursuit of noble ends. It was the confidence that an appeal would not be rejected, whether for help in distress, or for the satisfaction of the child's natural desire for knowledge.
Spirit and determination in children always delighted him. His grandson Julian, a curly-haired rogue, alternately cherub and pickle, was a source of great amusement and interest to him. The boy must have been about four years old when my father one day came in from the garden, where he had been diligently watering his favourite plants with a big hose, and said: "I like that chap! I like the way he looks you straight in the face and disobeys you. I told him not to go on the wet grass again. He just looked up boldly, straight at me, as much as to say, 'What do YOU mean by ordering me about?' and deliberately walked on to the grass."
The disobedient youth who so charmed his grandfather's heart was the prototype of Sandy in Mrs. Humphry Ward's "David Grieve". When the book came out my father wrote to the author: "We are very proud of Julian's apotheosis. He is a most delightful imp, and the way in which he used to defy me on occasion, when he was here, was quite refreshing. The strength of his conviction that people who interfere with his freedom are certainly foolish, probably wicked, is quite Gladstonian."
A year after, when Julian had learned to write, and was reading the immortal "Water Babies", wherein fun is poked at his grandfather's name among the authorities on water-babies and water-beasts of every description, he greatly desired more light as to the reality of water-babies. There is a picture by Linley Sambourne, showing my father and Owen examining a bottled water-baby under big magnifying glasses. Here, then, was a real authority to consult. So he wrote 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 kind of letter" that must be read to him.
Dear Grandpater,
Have you seen a Waterbaby? Did you put it in a bottle? Did it wonder if it could get out? Can I see it some day?