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Huxley family

The Huxley family is a British family, with outstanding scientific, medical, artistic, and literary talent. The 'founder' (for the purpose of this article) was the zoologist and comparative anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley.

Family tree

Thomas Henry Huxley

(1825–1895) English biologist, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his defence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Himself a self-educated man, he had an extraordinary influence on the British educated public. He successfully campaigned against the stifling of scientific debate by the Church, transformed the teaching of science in British schools, and created the model for biology teaching in British universities. He was a member of eight Royal Commissions and two other commissions. A noted unbeliever, he used the term "agnostic" to describe his attitude to theism.

Huxley's lasting scientific achievement was his work on the evolution of man. Starting in 1860, Huxley gave lectures and published papers which analysed the zoological position of man. The best were collected in a landmark work: Evidence as to Man's place in nature (1863). This contained two themes: First, man is related to the great apes, and second, man has evolved in a similar manner to all other forms of life. These were ideas which the careful and cautious Darwin had only hinted at in the Origin, but with which he was in full agreement.

In 1855, he married Henrietta Anne Heathorn (1825–1915), an English émigrée whom he had met in Sydney. They had five daughters and three sons:

Noel Huxley (1856–1860) died aged 4.
Jessie Oriana Huxley (1856–1927), married architect Fred Waller in 1877.
Marian Huxley (1859–1887) married artist John Collier in 1879.
Leonard Huxley (1860–1933).
Rachel Huxley (1862–1934) married civil engineer Alfred Eckersley in 1884.
Henrietta (Nettie) Huxley (1863–1940), married Harold Roller, travelled Europe as a singer.
Henry Huxley (1865–1946), became a fashionable general practitioner in London.
Ethel Huxley (1866–1941) married artist John Collier (widower of sister) in 1889.

Huxley's relationship with his relatives and children were quite genial by the standards of the day—so long as they lived their lives in an honourable manner, which some did not. After his mother, his eldest sister Lizzie was the most important person in his life until his own marriage. He remained on good terms with his own children, which is more than can be said of many Victorian fathers.

John Collier

The Honourable John Maler Collier OBE RP ROI (January 27, 1850–April 11, 1934) was a British writer and painter in the Pre-Raphaelite style. He was one of the leading portrait painters of his generation. He married twice: both were daughters of THH. The National Portrait Gallery's collection of Collier's portraiture is weak, but they did recently (2007) purchase his first wife's portrait of him painting her.

Collier painted numerous portraits of members of the family. He painted both his wives, Marion (Mady) and Ethel (daughters of THH), his second daughter, both THH and his wife, Aldous Huxley and the young Gervas Huxley. Indeed, Clark reports a total of thirty-two Huxley family portraits during the half-century after his marriage to Mady. There are certainly portraits of other scientists, including Charles Darwin (twice), William Kingdom Clifford. James Prescott Joule and Michael Foster.

Collier's views on religion and ethics are interesting for their comparison with the views of Thomas and Julian Huxley, both of whom gave Romanes lectures on that subject. In The religion of an artist (1926) Collier explains "It [the book] is mostly concerned with ethics apart from religion... I am looking forward to a time when ethics will have taken the place of religion... My religion is really negative. [The benefits of religion] can be attained by other means which are less conducive to strife and which put less strain on upon the reasoning faculties." On secular morality: "My standard is frankly utilitarian. As far as morality is intuitive, I think it may be reduced to an inherent impulse of kindliness towards our fellow citizens." On the idea of God: "People may claim without much exaggeration that the belief in God is universal. They omit to add that superstition, often of the most degraded kind, is just as universal." And "An omnipotent Deity who sentences even the vilest of his creatures to eternal torture is infinitely more cruel than the cruellest man." And on the Church: "To me, as to most Englishmen, the triumph of Roman Catholicism would mean an unspeakable disaster to the cause of civilization." His views, then, were very close to the agnosticism of T.H. Huxley and the humanism of Julian Huxley.

Collier and his first wife Marian (Mady) had one child, Joyce Collier, a portrait miniaturist. By his second wife Ethel he had a daughter and a son, Sir Laurence Collier KCMG, British Ambassador to Norway 1939-1950.

Tom Arnold

Arnold (1823–1900) was the second son of the Rugby School headmaster Thomas Arnold; his elder brother was the poet Matthew Arnold. After taking a first at Oxford University, Arnold grew discontented, and eventually moved to Tasmania (1850) as Inspector of Schools. He married Julia Sorell, granddaughter of a former Governor and had nine children (four of whom died young). One of them was Julia, who married Leonard Huxley, the son of Thomas Huxley, and gave birth to Julian and Aldous Huxley.

Leonard Huxley and issue

Leonard Huxley (1860–1933)

Huxley was Assistant Master at Charterhouse School, then Assistant Editor and later Editor of the Cornhill Magazine. Huxley's major biographies were the three volumes of Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley and the two volumes of Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM GCSI.

He married firstly Julia Arnold, founder of Prior's Field School in Godalming, Surrey, a sister of the novelist Mary Augusta Ward, niece of the poet Matthew Arnold, and granddaughter of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School. Their four children included the biologist Sir Julian Sorell Huxley and the writer Aldous Leonard Huxley. Their middle son, Noel Trevenen (born in 1889) committed suicide in 1914. Their daughter, Margaret Arnold Huxley, was born in 1899 and died on October 11 1981.

After the death of his first wife, Leonard married Rosalind Bruce, and had two further sons. The elder of these was David Bruce Huxley (born 1915), whose daughter Angela Huxley married George Pember Darwin, son of the physicist Sir Charles Galton Darwin (and thus a great-grandson of Charles Darwin married a great-granddaughter of Thomas Huxley). The younger son was the Nobel prizewinner, physiologist Andrew Fielding Huxley.

Sir Julian Huxley

(1887–1975): First Director-General of UNESCO. Secretary of Zoological Society and co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund. Won the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society, the Darwin-Wallace Medal of the Linnaean Society, the Kalinga Prize and the Lasker Award. Presided over the founding conference for the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Author of fifty books.

Huxley was important as a proponent of natural selection at a time when Darwin's idea was denigrated by many. His master-work Evolution: the modern synthesis gave the name to a mid-century movement which united biological theory and overcame problems caused by over-specialisation.

Huxley married Juliette Baillot in 1919. They had two children, and both became scientists: Anthony Julian Huxley, a botanist and horticulturalist, and Francis Huxley, an anthropologist.

Aldous Huxley

(1894–1963): Julian's brother, an outstanding novelist. His style was iconoclastic; disenchanted social commentary and a dystopic view of the future were repeated themes. He was regarded in California, where he spent the latter part of his life, as a considerable intellectual guru. He was associated with Vedanta.

His main works include Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Brave New World (1932), which began as a parody of Men Like Gods by H.G. Wells, Eyeless in Gaza (1936) and Island (1960).

Island, his last novel, is a utopia, in profound contrast to Brave New World. The central theme is the development of a society which unites the best of western and eastern culture. It contains, amongst more serious ideas, the utterly charming notion of parrots who utter uplifting slogans. Huxley also wrote many essays: The Doors of Perception, (1954), is perhaps the best known collection. Its title was taken from a poem by William Blake, which also inspired the name of the band The Doors.

Huxley was maried twice, to Maria Nys (1918), and secondly, after Maria's death, to Laura Archera (1956). Huxley's only child, Matthew Huxley (1920 – 10 February 2005, age 84) was also an author, as well as an educator, anthropologist and prominent epidemiologist. His work ranged from promoting universal health care to establishing standards of care for nursing home patients and the mentally ill to investigating the question of what is a socially sanctionable drug. Matthew's first marriage, to documentary filmmaker Ellen Hovde, ended in divorce. His second wife died in 1983. He was survived by his third wife, Franziska Reed Huxley; and two children from his first marriage, Trevenen Huxley and Tessa Huxley.

Sir Andrew Huxley OM

(b. 1917): Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for studies of the central nervous system, especially the activity of nerve fibres. He was knighted in 1974 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1983. He was the second Huxley to be President of the Royal Society, the first being his grandfather, T.H.H.

In 1947 he married Jocelyn Richenda Gammell Pease (1925-2003), the daughter of the geneticist Michael Pease and his wife Helen Bowen Wedgwood, the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood. They had one son and five daughters: Janet Rachel Huxley (born 20 April 1948); Stewart Leonard Huxley (born 19 December 1949); Camilla Rosalind Huxley (born 12 March 1952); Eleanor Bruce Huxley (born 21 February 1959); Henrietta Catherine Huxley (born 25 December 1960); Clare Marjory Pease Huxley (born 4 November 1962).

Jessica Oriana Huxley (1858–1927) and issue

Jessica, T.H. Huxley's eldest daughter, was always called 'Jess' or 'Jessie'. She survived scarlet fever when two yeas old, a disease which had killed her brother Noel. She grew up to marry Frederick Waller, who became architect to the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester Cathedral and, of course, unofficial architect-in-chief to the Huxley family.

Jessie and Fred had a son, Noel Huxley Waller, and a daughter, Oriana Huxley Waller. Noel won the Military Cross in the Gloucestershire Regiment in WWI, later becoming Colonel of the 5th Gloucesters, a Territorial Battalion of the Regiment. He succeeded his father as architect to Gloucester Cathedral.

Oriana married ESP Haynes, an Eton and Balliol scholar who became a dedicated divorce reformer. They had three daughters, Renée, Celia and Elvira. Renée, a successful novelist, married Jerrard Tickell, an Irish writer. They had three sons, of whom Crispin became one of the finest civil servants of the 20th century.

Sir Crispin Tickell

Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO (b.1930) is a British diplomat, academic and environmentalist. He is the great grandson of Jessica Huxley, and one of the most eminent members of the family. He was Chef de Cabinet to the President of the European Commission (1977–1980), British Ambassador to Mexico (1981–1983), Permanent Secretary of the Official Development Assistance (now Department for International Development) (1984–1987), and British Ambassador to the United Nations and Permanent Representative on the UN Security Council (1987–1990).

Tickell was Warden of Green College, Oxford between 1990 and 1997 and is Director of the Policy Foresight Programme of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at the University of Oxford. He has been the recipient, between 1990 and 2006, of 23 honorary doctorates.

He is currently the president of the UK charity TREE AID, which enables communities in Africa's drylands to fight poverty and become self-reliant, while improving the environment. He has many interests, including climate change, population issues, conservation of biodiversity and the early history of the Earth.

His son, Oliver Tickell, is a journalist, author and campaigner on environmental issues.

Crispin Tickell online CV:

Rachel Huxley (1862–1934) and issue

Rachel Huxley married civil engineer Alfred Eckersley in 1884, who built railways in various parts of the world. Their eldest son, Roger Huxley Eckersley, was born in Algeria; their second, Thomas Lydwell Eckersley, was born the next year. The family moved to Mexico, and their third son, Peter Eckersley, was born there.

Henry Huxley (1865–1946) and issue

Henry Huxley, Thomas' youngest son, trained in medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. He married Sophy Stobart, a nurse. She, it turned out, was the daughter of a considerable land-owning and church-going family in Yorkshire, who were somewhat nervous of a connection with the son of a famous infidel. According to Clark, family meetings were held to smooth feelings and avoid difficulties. After the marriage the couple were set up in London, with a medical practice for Henry.

The couple had five children: Marjorie (m. Sir E.J. Harding), Gervas, Michael (m. Ottille de Lotbinière Mills, 3c.), Christopher (m. Edmée Ritchie, 3c.) and Anne (m. Geoffrey Cooke, 3c.).

Gervas Huxley CMG MC (1894–1978?)

Eldest son of Henry Huxley, served in the British Army from 1914, became battalion bombing officer. Received the Military Cross on the first day of Passchendaele for capturing prisoners whose presence showed the arrival of a fresh German Guards Division. Demobilised in 1919.

Gervas was recruited in 1939 to help set up the wartime Ministry of Information. After the war he sat on the Executive Committee of the British Council, and became a successful author of biographies.

Elspeth Huxley (1907–1997). Gervas married Elspeth Grant (his second marriage) in 1931; she had grown up in Kenya and was a friend of Joy Adamson. After the marriage she wrote White man's country: Lord Delamere and the making of Kenya. Elspeth Huxley's life and work are the subject of a biography. As an author she was well up to Huxley standards, and one of the few who was better-known than her husband. The flame trees of Thika (1959) was perhaps the most celebrated of her thirty books; it was later adapted for television. They had one son, Charles, b.1944.

Other relatives

Sir Leonard George Holden Huxley KBE

(1902–1988) Second cousin once removed of T.H.H. Much of his life spent in Australia, though he was at Oxford from 1923-30. He obtained his D.Phil from Oxford University in 1928. The final period of his life was spent in Australia, University of Adelaide (1949-60); Australian National University (1960-67), latterly as Vice-Chancellor. A key figure in the establishment of the Anglo-Australian Telescope.

Crompton R.W. 1982. Records of the Australian Academy of Science, 8, #4.
Huxley L.G.H. 1947. The diffusion and drift of electrons in gases.

Mental problems in the family

Biographers have sometimes noted the occurrence of mental illness in the Huxley family. T.H. Huxley's father became "sunk in worse than childish imbecility of mind" , and later died in Barming Asylum; brother George suffered from "extreme mental anxiety" and died in 1863 leaving serious debts. Brother James was at 55 "as near mad as any sane man can be" ; and there is more.

His favourite daughter, the artistically talented Mady (Marion), who became the first wife of artist John Collier, was troubled by mental illness for years. By her mid-twenties it was becoming clear that she was not sane, and was getting steadily worse (the diagnosis is uncertain). Huxley persuaded Jean-Martin Charcot, one of Freud's teachers, to examine her with a view to treatment; but soon Mady died of pneumonia.

About Huxley himself we have a more complete record. As a young apprentice to a physician, Huxley was taken to watch a post-mortem dissection. Afterwards he sank into a 'deep lethargy' and though Huxley ascribed this to dissection poisoning, Bibby and others are probably right to suspect that emotional shock precipitated a depression. The next episode we know of in Huxley's life was on the third voyage of HMS Rattlesnake in 1848. This voyage was mostly to New Guinea and the NE Australian coast, including the Great Barrier Reef, which is a kind of wonderland for any zoologist, especially a young man hoping to make his career. The story is clear from the diary Huxley kept: p112 'little interest in the Barrier Reef'; p116 'two entries in seven weeks'; p117 '3 months passed and no journal' p124 'the black months of struggle and depression'. For Huxley to pass up such a golden opportunity speaks of his state of mind quite painfully.

Huxley had periods of depression at the end of 1871: alleviated by a cruise to Egypt ('overwork' the explanation, true, but when was he not overworked?). And again in 1873, this time coincident with expensive building work on his house. His friends were really alarmed, and his doctor ordered three months rest. Darwin picked up his pen, and with Tyndall's help raised £2,100 for him — an enormous sum! The money was partly to pay for his recuperation, and partly to pay his bills. Huxley set out in July with Hooker to the Auvergne, and his wife and son Leonard joined him in Cologne, while the younger children stayed at Down House in Emma Darwin's care.

Finally, in 1884 he sank into another depression, and this time it precipitated his decision to retire in 1885, at the age of only 60. He resigned the Presidency of the Royal Society in mid-term, the Inspectorship of Fisheries, and his chair (as soon as he decently could) and took six month's leave. His pension was a fairly handsome £1500 a year.

This is enough to indicate the way depression (or perhaps a moderate bi-polar disorder) interfered with his life, but he was able to function well at other times.

The problems continued sporadically into the third generation. Two of Leonard's sons suffered serious depression: Trevennen committed suicide in 1914 and Julian suffered a number of breakdowns. Of course, there are many family members for whom no information one way or the other is available, but both the talent and the mental problems would have interested Francis Galton. His Hereditary Genius contained this comment: "The direct result of this enquiry is... to prove that the laws of heredity are as applicable to the mental faculties as to the bodily faculties".