Continued from Part 3

Updated and revised: August 1, 2025

All references are quoted as of July 31, 2025 unless otherwise stated.

Continuing with additional information in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley, there are additional significant points about his family:

His brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Andrew Huxley also became outstanding biologists. Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevenen Huxley (1889–1914), who took his own life after a period of clinical depression.

“His mother died in 1908, when he was 14.”

He contracted the eye disease keratitis punctata in 1911; this “left [him] practically blind for two to three years” and “ended his early dreams of becoming a doctor”.

Note that this Wikipedia article–also typical of others–presents many biographical references in its list of Citations.

In 1919, Huxley became a staff member of Athenaeum, a British literary magazine, at the invitation John Middleton Murry.

According to Wikipedia, Huxley married Maria Nys (1899–1955), also a Garsington attendee.

They lived with their young son in Italy part of the time during the 1920s, where Huxley would visit his friend D. H. Lawrence.

Huxley met Gerald Heard in 1929, “a writer and broadcaster, philosopher and interpreter of contemporary science.” Heard’s ideas and knowledge influenced Huxley.

Huxley was strongly influenced by F. Matthias Alexander, on whom he based a character in Eyeless in Gaza.

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Matthias_Alexander), Alexander:

… developed the Alexander Technique, an educational process said to recognize and overcome reactive, habitual limitations in movement and thinking.

The Alexander Technique (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_technique) is considered an alternative therapy. From reading the article, it seems to me that it might have some benefits.

Huxley wrote and edited

non-fiction works on pacifist issues, including Ends and Means (1937), An Encyclopedia of Pacifism, and Pacifism and Philosophy, and was an active member of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Pledge_Union].

In 1937 Huxley moved to Hollywood … with his wife Maria, son Matthew Huxley [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Huxley], and friend Gerald Heard [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Heard].

Heard introduced Huxley to Vedanta [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedanta] (Upanishad-centered philosophy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads]), meditation and vegetarianism through the principle of ahimsa [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa]. In 1938 Huxley befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti], whose teachings he greatly admired. Huxley and Krishnamurti entered into an enduring exchange (sometimes edging on debate) … Huxley wrote a foreword to Krishnamurti’s quintessential statement, The First and Last Freedom (1954) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_and_Last_Freedom].

Huxley and Heard became Vedantists in the group formed around Hindu Swami Prabhavananda [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Prabhavananda], and subsequently introduced Christopher Isherwood [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Isherwood] to the circle. Not long afterwards, Huxley wrote his book on widely held spiritual values and ideas, The Perennial Philosophy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perennial_Philosophy] …

Huxley became a close friend of Remsen Bird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remsen_Bird, president of Occidental College https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occidental_College. He spent much time at the college in the Eagle Rock neighbourhood of Los Angeles. …

According to the article on Occidental College, Huxley was not invited back after lampooning Bird in his novel After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.

Also, this college is very well connected:

Notable alumni include President Barack Obama, a Cabinet member, several members of the United States Congress, CEOs of notable companies, 10 Rhodes Scholars, and recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Tony Award and Emmy Award.

According to the article on Remsen Bird, “Bird was involved in the founding of the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlebury_Institute_of_International_Studies_at_Monterey].”

The article on Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies also indicates significant connections and influence.

…Huxley earned a substantial income as a Hollywood screenwriter; Christopher Isherwood, in his autobiography My Guru and His Disciple, states that Huxley earned more than US$3,000 per week (approximately $50,000 in 2020 dollars) as a screenwriter, and that he used much of it to transport Jewish and left-wing writer and artist refugees from Hitler’s Germany to the US. In March 1938 Huxley’s friend Anita Loos, a novelist and screenwriter, put him in touch with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which hired him for Madame Curie … Huxley received screen credit for Pride and Prejudice (1940) and was paid for his work on a number of other films, including Jane Eyre (1944). He was commissioned by Walt Disney in 1945 to write a script based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the biography of the story’s author, Lewis Carroll. …

The amount of money Huxley made as a screenwriter–and how he is said to have used it–does seem significant. It would be worth comparing the salary of other screenwriters to get some perspective on this.

To be continued