Huxley succeeded in tracing his good Warwickshire friends again. A
letter of May 11, 1852, from one of them, Miss K. Jaggard, tells how
they had lost sight of the Huxleys after their departure from Coventry;
how they were themselves dispersed by death, marriage, or retirement;
and then proceeds to draw a lively sketch of the long delicate-looking
lad, which clearly refers to this period or a little later.]

My brother and sister who were living at Grove Fields when you visited
there, have now retired from the cares of business, and are living very
comfortably at Leamington...I suppose you remember Mr. Joseph Russell,
who used to live at Avon Dassett. He is now married and gone to live at
Grove Fields, so that it is still occupied by a person of the same name
as when you knew it. But it is very much altered in appearance since the
time when such merry and joyous parties of aunts and cousins used to
assemble there. I assure you we have often talked of "Tom Huxley" (who
was sometimes one of the party) looking so thin and ill, and pretending
to make hay with one hand, while in the other he held a German book! Do
you remember it? And the picnic at Scar Bank? And how often too your
patience was put to the test in looking for your German books which had
been hidden by some of those playful companions who were rather less
inclined for learning than yourself?

[It is interesting to see from this letter and from a journal, to be
quoted hereafter, that he had thus early begun to teach himself German,
an undertaking more momentous in its consequences than the boy dreamed
of. The knowledge of German thus early acquired was soon of the utmost
service in making him acquainted with the advance of biological
investigation on the continent at a time when few indeed among English
men of science were able to follow it at first hand, and turn the light
of the newest theories upon their own researches.