To this
must be added a share in the supervision of the staff officers, of the
library and correspondence, and the details of house-keeping." All the
work connected with this and many other offices bespeaks a life too
hard-driven and accounts fully for the continued ill-health which
finally resulted in a complete break-down.
Huxley had always advocated that the age of sixty was the time for
"official death," and had looked forward to a peaceful "Indian summer."
With this object in mind and troubled by increasing ill-health, he began
in 1885 to give up his work. But to live even in comparative idleness,
after so many years of activity, was difficult. "I am sure," he says,
"that the habit of incessant work into which we all drift is as bad
in its way as dram-drinking. In time you cannot be comfortable without
stimulus." But continued bodily weakness told upon him to the extent
that all work became distasteful. An utter weariness with frequent
spells of the blues took possession of him; and the story of his life
for some years is the story of the long pursuit of health in England,
Switzerland, and especially in Italy.
Although Huxley was wretchedly ill during this period, he wrote letters
which are good to read for their humor and for their pictures of foreign
cities. Rome he writes of as an idle, afternoony sort of place from
which it is difficult to depart.
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