sons: Noel Huxley (1856–60), died of scarlet fever. Jessie Oriana Huxley (1858 −1927), married architect Fred Waller in 1877. Marian Huxley (1859–87), married artist John Collier in 1879. Leonard Huxley, (1860–1933) author, father of Julian, Aldous and Andrew Huxley. Rachel Huxley (1862–1934) married civil engineer Alfred Eckersley in 1884; he died 1895. They were parents of the physicist Thomas Eckersley and the first BBC Chief Engineer Peter Eckersley. Henrietta (Nettie) Huxley (1863–1940), married Harold Roller, travelled Europe as a singer. Henry Huxley (1865–1946), became a fashionable general practitioner in London. Ethel Huxley (1866–1941), married her sister's widower John Collier in 1889. Huxley's relationships with his relatives and children were genial by the standards of the day—so long as they lived their lives in an honourable manner, which some did not. After his mother, his eldest sister Lizzie was the most important person in his life until his own marriage. He remained on good terms with his children, more than can be said of many Victorian fathers. This excerpt from a letter to Jessie, his eldest daughter is full of affection: "Dearest Jess, You are a badly used young person—you are; and nothing short of that conviction would get a letter out of your still worse used Pater, the bête noir of whose existence is letter-writing. Catch me discussing the Afghan question with you, you little pepper-pot! No, not if I know it..." [goes on nevertheless to give strong opinions of the Afghans, at that time causing plenty of trouble to the British Raj—see Second Anglo-Afghan War] "There, you plague—ever your affec. Daddy, THH." (letter 7 December 1878, Huxley L 1900) Huxley's descendants include children of Leonard Huxley: Sir Julian Huxley FRS was the first Director of UNESCO and a notable evolutionary biologist and humanist. Aldous Huxley was a famous author (Brave New World 1932, Eyeless in Gaza 1936, The Doors of Perception 1954). Sir Andrew Huxley OM PRS won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963. He was the second Huxley to become President of the Royal Society. Other significant descendants of Huxley, such as Sir Crispin Tickell, are treated in the Huxley family. Mental problems in the family Biographers have sometimes noted the occurrence of mental illness in the Huxley family. His father became "sunk in worse than childish imbecility of mind", and later died in Barming Asylum; brother George suffered from "extreme mental anxiety" and died