The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, vol 1 | Page 5

set over us cared about as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as if they were baby-farmers. We were left to the operation of the struggle for existence among ourselves; bullying was the least of the ill practices current among us. Almost the only cheerful reminiscence in connection with the place which arises in my mind is that of a battle I had with one of my classmates, who had bullied me until I could stand it no longer. I was a very slight lad, but there was a wild-cat element in me which, when roused, made up for lack of weight, and I licked my adversary effectually. However, one of my first experiences of the extremely rough-and-ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of things in general, arose out of the fact that I--the victor--had a black eye, while he--the vanquished--had none, so that I got into disgrace and he did not. We made it up, and thereafter I was unmolested. One of the greatest shocks I ever received in my life was to be told a dozen years afterwards by the groom who brought me my horse in a stable-yard in Sydney that he was my quondam antagonist. He had a long story of family misfortune to account for his position; but at that time it was necessary to deal very cautiously with mysterious strangers in New South Wales, and on inquiry I found that the unfortunate young man had not only been "sent out," but had undergone more than one colonial conviction.
[His brief school career was happily cut short by the break up of the Ealing establishment. On the death of Dr. Nicholas, his sons attempted to carry on the school; but the numbers declined rapidly, and George Huxley, about 1835, returned to his native town of Coventry, where he obtained the modest post of manager of the Coventry savings bank, while his daughters eked out the slender family resources by keeping school.
In the meantime the boy Tom, as he was usually called, got little or no regular instruction. But he had an inquiring mind, and a singularly early turn for metaphysical speculation. He read everything he could lay hands on in his father's library. Not satisfied with the ordinary length of the day, he used, when a boy of twelve, to light his candle before dawn, pin a blanket round his shoulders, and sit up in bed to read Hutton's "Geology." He discussed all manner of questions with his parents and friends, for his quick and eager mind made it possible for him to have friendships with people considerably older than himself. Among these may especially be noted his medical brother-in-law, Dr. Cooke of Coventry, who had married his sister Ellen in 1839, and through whom he early became interested in human anatomy; and George Anderson May, at that time in business at Hinckley (a small weaving centre some dozen miles distant from Coventry), whom his friends who knew him afterwards in the home which he made for himself on the farm at Elford, near Tamworth, will remember for his genial spirit and native love of letters. There was a real friendship between the two. The boy of fifteen notes down with pleasure his visits to the man of six-and-twenty, with whom he could talk freely of the books he read, and the ideas he gathered about philosophy.
Afterwards, however, their ways lay far apart, and I believe they did not meet again until the seventies, when Mr. May sent his children to be educated in London, and his youngest son was at school with me; his younger daughter studied art at the Slade school with my sisters, and both found a warm welcome in the home circle at Marlborough Place.
One of his boyish speculations was as to what would become of things if their qualities were taken away; and lighting upon Sir William Hamilton's "Logic," he devoured it to such good effect that when, years afterwards, he came to tackle the greater philosophers, especially the English and the German, he found he had already a clear notion of where the key of metaphysic lay.
This early interest in metaphysics was another form of the intense curiosity to discover the motive principle of things, the why and how they act, that appeared in the boy's love of engineering and of anatomy. The unity of this motive and the accident which bade fair to ruin his life at the outset, and actually levied a lifelong tax upon his bodily vigour, are best told in his own words:--]
As I grew older, my great desire was to be a mechanical engineer, but the fates were against this, and while very young I commenced the study of medicine under a medical brother-in-law. But, though the Institute of Mechanical Engineers