[Illustration: CARICATURE OF HUXLEY DRAWN BY HIMSELF Reproduced by permission from _Natural Science_, vol. vii., No. 46]
Throughout his life, Huxley had never been robust. From his youth upwards he had been troubled by dyspepsia with its usual accompaniment of occasional fits of severe mental and physical depression. In 1872 he was compelled to take a long holiday in Egypt, and, although he returned to resume full labour, it is doubtful if from that time onwards he recovered even the strength normal to him. In 1885, his ill-health became grave; in the following years he had two attacks of pleurisy, and symptoms of cardiac mischief became pressing. He gradually withdrew from his official posts, and, in 1890, retired to Eastbourne, where he had built himself a house on the Downs. The more healthy conditions and the comparative leisure he permitted himself had a good effect, and he was able to write some of his most brilliant essays and to make a few public appearances: at Oxford in 1893, when he delivered the Romanes lecture; at the meeting of the British Association in 1894, when he spoke on the vote of thanks to the President, the Marquis of Salisbury; at the Royal Society in the same year when he received the recently established "Darwin Medal." Early in the spring of 1895, he had a prostrating attack of influenza, and from that time until his death on June 29, 1895, he was an invalid. He was buried in the Marylebone cemetery at Finchley, to the north of London.
Huxley was of middle stature and rather slender build. His face, as Professor Ray Lankester described it, was "grave, black-browed, and fiercely earnest." His hair, plentiful and worn rather long, was black until in old age it became silvery white. He wore short side whiskers, but shaved the rest of his face, leaving fully exposed an obstinate chin, and mobile lips, grim and resolute in repose, but capable of relaxation into a smile of almost feminine charm.
He was a very hard worker and took little exercise. Professor Howes describes a typical day as occupied by lecture and laboratory work at the College of Science until his hurried luncheon; then a cab-drive to the Home Office for his work as Inspector of Fisheries; then a cab home for an hour's work before dinner, and the evening after dinner spent in literary work or scientific reading. While at work, his whole attention was engrossed, and he disliked being disturbed. This abstraction of his attention is illustrated humorously by a story told by one of his demonstrators. Huxley was engaged in the investigations required for his book on the Crayfish, and his demonstrator came in to ask a question about a codfish. "Codfish?" said Huxley; "that's a vertebrate, isn't it? Ask me in a fortnight and I'll consider it." While at work he smoked almost continuously, and from time to time he took a little relaxation, for the strains of a fiddle were occasionally heard from his room. Indeed he was devoted to music, regarding it as one of the highest of the æsthetic pleasures. He tells us himself: