IN MARCH 1877 the eagle-eyed raptor nodded off on his Secret-
ary's perch and slept through Frank Darwin's paper on teasel plants.
The Royal Society was rather astonished. It wasn't the Huxley of old.
'I am not quite happy about Hal', Nettie told Lizzie as the inner man
sagged, 'but don't say so beyond y^r home'. ¹ Others saw his candle
burning down fast.

Huxley was a glutton for punishing work, with endless opportunity
to indulge himself. Thursday, his last free night, was finally sacrificed
when Stanley started his meet-the-eminent evenings for young clerks
and shop assistants at Westminster Deanery. Nettie was furious.
Even the Professor was finding 'that as I get older doing more than
two or three things at once becomes somewhat troublesome' - or so
he told the Quekett Microscopical Club (of which of course he took
the Presidency). And the 'Government never gives Hal any peace'.
It co-opted him now onto his eighth Royal Commission, to look
into the Scottish universities. Thus began more trips to Edinburgh
and 'much work & no pay'. Even then the Treasury had the gall to
query his expenses. But he had to get aboard to push through his
reforms, and take 'up the case of you troublesome women', as he told
the wife, 'who want admission into the University (very rightly too
I think)'. ²

Nettie sat at home awaiting the daily numbered letter. A genteel
circle came to her aid: Lord Arthur Russell would arrange a ducal
box at Covent Garden, or she would accompany the older girls to the
Season's soirées. By day the younger, boisterous Nettie and brother
Len would 'chase & battle' about the house. 'The rushing, the
screams ... ' and their mother laughing too much to be able to stop
them. And the youngest of all, Harry, 12 in 1877, was 'wonderfully

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