I think Karen Pfeiffer captures Laura exactly with her comment that “she was the most beautifully eccentric person I've ever known."
I just met Laura once in 2006 when we visited her in her old rambling Spanish hacienda style house in the Hollywood Hills. Jim had met with her a number of times and she had always been welcoming and gracious. We were looking forward to seeing her again this winter when we are going to be in California. She was so enjoyable to talk to and had a wonderful wit and amazing memory.
On this visit Jim spoke with her about the volume of Huxley's letters that he was working on at the time (now recently published). She recounted a couple of anecdotes about letters from Aldous she wished she still had. One was the one he wrote to her father asking permission to marry her. The other was the letter he wrote to the Queen explaining why he was refusing the knighthood offered. Laura said it was really mainly because of her because she wanted to be free to "wear shorts or any old thing" and not feel she had to live up to being "Lady Huxley"!
Laura touched many people in very positive ways and she will be missed.
Laura and Jim.
Laura and me.
View from her terasse.
The following is an excerpt from the LA Times Obituary:
“Laura Archera Huxley, a lay therapist, author and widow of Aldous Huxley, who shared his vision of human potential and devoted the nearly five decades since his death to preserving his legacy and helping others -- particularly children -- achieve happiness, died Thursday at her home in the Hollywood Hills. She was 96.
She created her foundation after the granddaughter of a lifelong friend came to live with her for a week in 1978. Huxley told The Times in an interview that year that the child's visit "threw me into a state of expanded consciousness. I wandered through the house feeling great love and compassion."
Among Huxley's many brainstorms was a room in Venice that she called the caressing room, where people could come to hold babies. She regarded it as a place "where the new and the old will meet and loneliness will dissolve," she wrote in a description of the project in 1978. She said there should be such a place on every city block.
Well into her 90s, she worked out an hour a day on a treadmill and could balance herself on a rubber exercise ball. She practiced yoga and extolled the benefits of seeing the world upside down, standing on one's head.
Asked many years ago why she never had children of her own, she replied, laughing, "I never thought I was old enough to have one."
