Huxley's Ancestry

Abstract

WITH reference to Lord Avebury's reminiscences of Huxley, and the summary of his views concerning British races, it may be of interest to quote Huxley's account of his own racial characters, as contained in a private letter written ten years ago: “My father was a Warwickshire man; my mother came of Wiltshire people. Except for being somewhat taller than the average of the type, she was a typical example of the ‘Iberian’ variety—dark, thin, rapid in all her ways, and with the most piercing black eyes I have ever seen in anybody's head. Mentally and physically (except in the matter of the beautiful eyes) I am a piece of my mother, and except for my stature, which used to be 5 feet 10, I should do very well for a “black Celt”—supposed to be the worst variety of that type. My father was fresh-coloured and grey-eyed, though dark-haired, good-humoured, though of a quick temper, a kindly man, rather too easy-going for this wicked world. There is a vein of him in me, but the constituents have never mixed properly. … I know of Huxleys in Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Wales, and I incline to think that the Huxleys of Huxley [Cheshire] are responsible for most of us, and that, upon the whole, we are mainly Iberian mongrels, with a good dash of Norman and a little Saxon.” This was written for my private information, as bearing on certain inquiries into “genius” and race, but there can be no objection to its publication now.