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

a community
composed of human beings at their most heartlessly cruel age,
untempered by any external influence.
Here he had little enough of mental discipline, or that deliberate
training of character which is a leading object of modern education. On
the contrary, what he learnt was a knowledge of undisciplined human
nature.]
My regular school training [he tells us], was of the briefest, perhaps
fortunately; for though my way of life has made me acquainted with all
sorts and conditions of men, from the highest to the lowest, I
deliberately affirm that the society I fell into at school was the worst I
have ever known. We boys were average lads, with much the same
inherent capacity for good and evil as any others; but the people who
were 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