Henrietta Anne Heathorn Huxley

“ Bright, cheerful, happy to the last in her literary creation, in the reminiscences of old days, and the visits of family and friends, bearing inevitable aches and pains with a humorous fortitude, she gave a wonderful example of a beautiful and inspiring old age following a strenuous life. ”

“ The scientific circles into which she entered by marriage were naturally a strange world to her. but she soon adapted herself to them, and by her singleness of aim her straightforward character, her wise sympathy and native humour, she won many lifelong friends and helped to make the well-known Sunday evening at 4, Marlborough-place a centre of friendship and good talk. In old age she attracted a new circle of friends of all ages, and, with a vivacity that never failed, kept up a correspondence of delightful nonsense with some of her grandchildren. ”

“ Under the affectionate and open-minded care of this she often stayed while her father, always eager for new ventures, pursued elusive fortune For two very happy years she was at school at Neuwied on the Rhine, where mind and character ripened and the foundation was laid of that excellent knowledge of the German language and literature which she shard, later, with her husband. In 1843, at the age of 18, she and her mother and half-sister took the long voyage to Australia to join her father, who had established a brewery and a sawmill some 90 miles from Sydney. ”