A popular house of assignation was kept in Coventry Street by “Mother” Kate Hamilton, in her youth a much-sought-after courtesan; half the male clientele came there just to hob-nob with the obese patronne and exchange blue-violet repartée with her and the company.

That fruit […] sollicited her longing eye.

Like my dad would say, he was blackity black black. My parents would freak.

It was, however, as Charles Darwin's alter ego, an attack dog for the theory of evolution, that Huxley gained his greatest notoriety.