Alfred Russel Wallace

by Peter Raby

  That summer, Wallace was agonising over his address to the Biological Section, Section D, of the British Association meeting, scheduled for Glasgow. He decided at first, so he told Newton, that it would be wholly zoological, ‘not having read or done anything in anthropology for 4 or 5 years’. Mr Foster had assured him that ‘my charge of the Department was nominal, & a compliment to the Anthropologists’; he did not quite see it like that.37 By the end of August, he had modified his approach, with the first half biological, and the second half on the ‘Antiquity and Origin of Man’ question. The address was duly delivered, but the real fun and games came later. William Barrett, a young physicist who had once been an assistant of John Tyndall, sent in a paper on thought transference in mesmeric trance. The committee of the Biology Section decided not to unpack this unwelcome parcel, and passed it swiftly on to the committee of the Anthropology Sub-section: they decided to approve its reading, but only on the casting vote of Wallace as chairman. Carpenter, self-appointed scourge of psychical phenomena, arrived while the paper was being read, and took part in an unusually animated discussion with Wallace and Lord Rayleigh among others. The debate was seized on by the press, and a heated correspondence followed in The Times. E. R. Lankester, the biologist, had attended a seance with Slade, the American medium, the day before; Rayleigh reported his own experience of slate-writing with Slade; Wallace had also attended one session. Lankester’s letter to The Times accused Slade of fraud, called Wallace’s behaviour ‘more than questionable’, and declared that the BAAS had been degraded. (Only the title of Barrett’s paper ever appeared in the official BAAS report.) Wallace leapt to his own defence, and that of Slade, first in letters to The Times, and then in the lawsuit that Lankester brought against Slade. In spite of Wallace’s evidence, the court found for Lankester. It was perhaps provocative that Wallace went into the witness box not just in his own right, but as, so the Spiritualist reported, ‘the President of the Biological Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science’; and unsurprising that the next year, when Wallace offered himself as a candidate for the assistant secretaryship of the British Association, he was not appointed. Meanwhile, the controversy rumbled on. Carpenter gave a series of lectures on spiritualism at the London Institute, and their publication sparked a series of sharp ripostes from Wallace, with letters in Fraser’s Magazine, Nature and the Athenaeum, as well as the Daily News and the Spectator. He also reviewed Carpenter in the Quarterly Journal of Science – a rather loaded invitation this, since the editor of the Quarterly happened to be the pro-spiritualist William Crookes. Carpenter wrote personally to Wallace as well, asserting that he was merely disputing the evidence – why was Wallace so hostile and aggressive? (Barrett was later largely responsible for founding the Society for Psychical Research, yet one more organisation for Wallace to be involved in.)38

  The Wallaces did not stay long at Dorking, though Tropical Nature and Other Essays was completed there. In spite of the house’s hilltop site, they found the atmosphere enervating. Wallace was consulting an American medium about his own health, who volunteered one day, when in a trance, that his son Will was in danger, and ‘that if we wished to save him we must leave Dorking, go to a more bracing place, and let him be out-of-doors as much as possible and “have the smell of the earth’”.39 This was one reason Wallace advanced for their move to Croydon; another was the better provision of suitable schools. The family occupied two addresses in Croydon from March 1878, first at Duppas Hill and then St Peter’s Road. It was here that he wrote his second great book of the decade, Island Life, and from here that he launched his campaign for a job that really intrigued him, Superintendent of Epping Forest.

  Epping Forest was a cause that aroused all his strongest social and scientific interests, and reawoke in him the feelings about everyone’s common rights in the land that had disturbed him as a young man, when he was carrying out enclosure surveys in Wales. Epping Forest, between five and a half and six thousand acres planted with hornbeam, beech and oak, was one of the surviving remnants of the ancient Forest of Essex, established as a royal hunting forest in the thirteenth century. Hainault Forest had already been largely destroyed in the 1850s, and, as Oliver Rackham has commented, ‘the modern conservation movement began with efforts to prevent a like fate for Epping Forest’.40 The Enclosure Act of 1857 was a signal to the lords of the manor to begin enclosing parts of the land, and they were rewarded by prices of £1000 an acre. Against them, individual commoners, who had ancient rights of pasturage and of lopping firewood, could do little: in one well-publicised case, two commoners, the Willingales, deliberately exercised their right to lop, and were sentenced to two months’ imprisonment with hard labour. Members of the Buxton family were prominent among the influential campaigners, and the great coup was to persuade the Corporation of London to take up the case – the Commissioners of Sewers had bought two hundred acres at Little Ilford in 1854 for a cemetery, which gave them commoners’ rights. A wonderful battle followed, through the law courts and in the Houses of Parliament, via public inquiries and a Royal Commission, with a definitive judgment in 1874 by the Master of the Rolls, Sir George Jessel, in favour of the City of London. In 1878, the Epping Forest Act appointed the Corporation of London as conservators of the forest, with the charge that they should ‘at all times as far as possible preserve the natural aspect of the forest’. The proposed administration was to include four verderers, and a superintendent.

  Wallace was ecstatic at the prospect. The rights of the ordinary individual had been upheld against the capitalist lords of the manor, the collective good had triumphed over selfish gain, the tightly packed families of north-east London would be able to breathe fresh, clean air, and the natural richness of the countryside would be protected and conserved. He was already conscious of the destruction of forests. Hooker had alerted him to what was happening in North America: ‘Your description of the process of destruction of the “Big-trees” makes me quite melancholy. What barbarians our successors will consider us if they are not preserved.’41 He hoped that the Californian or the United States government would acquire a tract of the country where the trees flourished as a public park, to protect them from fire and the saw. In August 1878, he wrote again to Hooker, by this time with Epping firmly in his sights. ‘I have long been seeking some employment which would bring me in some fixed income while still allowing me some leisure for literary work,’ he explained. Would Hooker sign the enclosed draft memorial – though Wallace found it unpleasant to lay before him anything so ‘egotistical’. Nevertheless, he asked Hooker to use any influence he might have with Members of the Corporation.42 Two weeks later, he sent him two ‘final draft’ memorials for signature, a longer and a shorter version, and went on accumulating references and testimonials on a grand scale: the presidents of the London natural history societies, local residents, Members of Parliament. Preliminary soundings proved ambiguous. The Epping Forest Committee, he reported to Hooker in October, had got an idea that no ‘scientific man’ was required. Worse, they had got a further idea that ‘I should want to make a “Kew Gardens” of the Forest!’ So he had written a long article in the Fortnightly Review, and proposed to send copies to members of the committee. Meanwhile, could Hooker ‘have a word’ with the First Commissioner of Works, Noel – and then Noel might have a word with the Duke of Connaught, who it was rumoured would be the Ranger – and then the Ranger could give a hint to the committee that some such scheme as Wallace’s ought to be carried out.43 Wallace seems to have had no qualms about making full use of his contacts in trying to exert influence. He was closely in touch with Raphael Meldola, who was then a resident in Epping Forest, was an active member of the Epping Forest and County of Essex Natural Field Club, and was campaigning for an ecological, conservationist solution to the future management of the Forest.

  Wallace’s article appeared in the November issue of the Fortnightly Review.44 It began with a plea for the right to roam: ‘legally there is no such t
hing as a “common”, answering to the popular idea of a tract of land over which anybody has a right to roam at will’. He went on to give an account of the background to the Act of Parliament, and then indicated some of the problems to be addressed. Rehabilitation would be essential. Many of the trees, in the part of the Forest nearest London, were rapidly dying, ‘from the combined effects of want of shelter and the smoky atmosphere’. Then there were the devastations caused by gravel extraction, illegal enclosures, and random timber-felling. He proposed to restore some of these areas as forest or woodland, with sections composed solely of trees and shrubs native to one of the great forest regions of the temperate zone: there would be eastern and western northern American forest zones; another for eastern European/western Asian; another for eastern Asian/Japanese; and one for the southern hemisphere. It would be a huge arboretum, through which the population of London could wander or ride, over footbridges of unpainted wood or stone, along footpaths and rides. This was perhaps going further than ‘preserving the natural aspect of the Forest’; but it upheld the spirit of the Act, which laid down that the Forest should remain a forest, and not be civilised into a park.

  The Commissioners took their time. In June 1879, there was a proposal to appoint a general superintendent at a salary of £500, and this was agreed in October. Applications poured in, 152 of them, with a ‘short list’ of forty-one names: school teachers, retired servicemen, police inspectors, land surveyors. On 3 December, twelve selected candidates were interviewed at the Guildhall, and on Monday, 8 December, the three final candidates, Alexander McKenzie, Frank Butler and Wallace were summoned: ‘I am to remind you that personal canvassing will be a disqualification and residence in the Forest will be required.’ The Commissioners, impervious to the testimonials of the influential men of science, and perhaps more alarmed than impressed by Wallace’s visionary schemes, appointed McKenzie. According to Wallace, the ‘City merchants and tradesmen’ wanted a ‘practical man’ to use the open spaces for games and sports, and to encourage excursions and school treats.45

  Wallace was becoming desperate, clutching at straws. ‘By the bye,’ he enquired of Newton, ‘do you know any of the Trustees of the Josiah Mason College of Science at Birmingham?’46 They were advertising for professors in Nature – perhaps there would be a post such as registrar, or curator, or even librarian for which he would be fitted, as he was very much in want of ‘some employment less precarious than writing books etc. which are wretched pay’. (He heard in February, 1880, that the Trustees had decided not to elect a librarian.)

  Wallace’s failure over Epping Forest was a bitter blow, to his pride, his pocket, and his confidence. He had been strongly attracted to the challenge, because he believed in the philosophy of preserving the countryside for the public to enjoy, and he had a particular vision, conservationist and educational, for the area. Besides, he pictured it as a healthy life, involving working out of doors, and drawing on his experience as a land-surveyor as well as his expertise as a naturalist – a return to his days in Wales, or as a collector. Perhaps his age – fifty-six – was beginning to tell against him. He foresaw years of struggle, writing articles, examining, giving lectures. Disheartened, he confided his anxieties to Arabella Buckley, explaining that literary work tired him, and that the ‘uncertainty of it’ was a great worry to him: ‘I want some regular work either partially outdoors, or if indoors then not more than 5 or 6 hours a day & capable of being done partially at home.’47 Sir Charles Lyell, a loyal friend to Wallace, had died in 1875, so Arabella Buckley turned instead to Darwin. If people knew that Wallace wanted only some ‘modest’ kind of work could not Hooker or Lubbock think of some way of putting his ‘great Natural History power’ to good use? She felt he ought to have something, and ‘could think of no one so good as yourself to whom I could say so’.48 Darwin responded warmly. A job was unlikely, ‘but a Government pension might perhaps be possible’. Darwin, as usual, indicated initially that he was not the best person to help – ‘aid ought to come from someone who can see and sound many persons’ – but he would do his best: he would ask Hooker’s advice, as he had done on so many occasions. By the same post he wrote to Hooker, suggesting that a ‘fairly strong claim might be made out’, ‘especially if an influential man like yourself could say a word in his favour’.49

  Hooker’s reply was acidly negative. Wallace had ‘lost caste terribly’. Hooker cited his spiritualism, and his advocacy of Barrett’s paper at the British Association, ‘done in an underhand manner’. (There was nothing ‘underhand’ about it, unless Hooker was referring to the fact that Wallace, a spiritualist, gave his casting vote to allow the paper to be read: the controversy rumbled on in a very public way for over a year, with Wallace and William Carpenter as the chief antagonists.) Then there was Wallace’s conduct over Hampden, ‘taking up the Lunatic bet about the sphericity of the earth, & pocketing the money’, a course of action that was ‘not honourable to a scientific man, who was certain of his ground’. (Wallace later described his own behaviour as ‘an ethical lapse’, and ‘the most regrettable incident in my life’. He lost financially, but had, initially, ‘pocketed the money’.) How could a man ask his friends to sign such an application? ‘Added to which Govt, should in fairness be informed that the candidate is a public & leading Spiritualist!’ There was, in any case, little chance for a man ‘not in absolute poverty’, Hooker argued rather inaccurately, considering that he had just helped secure a pension for James Joule; and, after all, he added cuttingly, ‘Wallace’s claim is not that he is in need, so much as that he can’t find employment.’50

  Hooker’s litany deflated Darwin, at least temporarily. His letter was ‘conclusive’: ‘What a mistake & mess I shd. have made had I not consulted you.’ Hooker was quite right: what he said about spiritualism ‘& especially about the bet, never once crossed my mind’.51 It was all hopeless, he reported to Miss Buckley, who replied perceptively that she had always feared that ‘Mr Wallace’s want of worldly caution might injure him’. The next day, Hooker learned directly from Wallace that the Corporation would not have him for Superintendent of Epping Forest.

  Hooker, who had succeeded his own father effortlessly at Kew, seems strangely unsympathetic to Wallace’s predicament, but it is an interesting example of the way in which Wallace’s transparent enthusiasm for spiritualism, and his general naïvety, disadvantaged him. Perhaps Hooker recalled Wallace’s own impatience at Hooker’s public reticence over natural selection, and its implications. Perhaps Wallace’s persistent requests – and Wallace could be very persistent – over Epping Forest had irritated him. Wallace seems to have been serenely unaware of Hooker’s refusal. In July, he sent him two chapters of Island Life, which were very dependent on Hooker’s work on New Zealand and Arctic flora: he did not like to bother him, but could he recommend a botanist who might check the proofs?52 Hooker duly responded, with valuable corrections and suggestions, and in August Wallace sought Hooker’s permission to dedicate the book to him, a wonderfully disarming gesture.

  With his new book almost complete, Wallace had a little more time to sort out his domestic life. There was some money put by from the sale of the Dell, and now that he knew the outcome of the Epping Forest decision, he decided it would be cheaper to build than continue to rent. His requirements did not change: a ridge with a view, enough land for a good-sized garden, easy access to a main-line train service. He bought a plot of building land at Frith Hill, on the outskirts of Godalming. A cousin of his mother, Miss Eliza Roberts, learning of his difficulties, gave him the £1000 she intended to leave to him in her will, and the interest provided a bit of a buffer. Even so, with two children to educate, he badly needed a more regular source of income than the odd guineas brought in by articles in Science for All, or the occasional commission such as his volume on Australasia for Stanford. Scientific books might add to his reputation, but they did little for his bank balance, although he did receive a £50 advance from Harper’s for the American edition of Isla
nd Life. He sifted through his dwindling assets, and sold off some surplus books to a dealer in the Strand. Then there was a collection of bird skins from his South American expedition. He wrote to Sclater, at the London Zoological Society: did he know of someone who was beginning a collection? If not, they would go straight to Stevens’s auctions rooms. Sclater asked for a list: 311 specimens, and 250 species. Wallace packed them off. He was hoping for £25, ‘but if you really think they are not worth that, I must accept your valuation’.53 He was in no position to bargain.

  Darwin, meanwhile, had not forgotten Wallace, in spite of his initial recoil in the face of Hooker’s scorn. He sounded out first Lubbock and then, in October 1880, Huxley. Both were positive, and Huxley even volunteered to ‘endeavour to talk over’ Hooker and William Spottiswoode. Darwin wrote again to Miss Buckley: he needed some facts about Wallace’s present circumstances, and biographical details to help him draw up a memorial for the government; Wallace, she reported, confessed that a pension would be ‘a very great relief’ – ‘if men such as Darwin & Huxley think I may accept it I suppose I may’.54

  Darwin set to work, and drafted a memorial for Huxley’s commentary. Huxley’s original suggestion was that a petition to Gladstone from Darwin alone would be sufficient; Darwin disagreed, and his view prevailed. Hooker was the key. In November, Island Life was published, with its dedication ‘as a token of admiration and regard’ to Hooker ‘who, more than any other writer, has advanced our knowledge of the geographical distribution of plants, and especially of insular floras’.

  Island Life examined animal and plant dispersal and speciation, investigating how different kinds of islands – oceanic and continental, ancient and recent – had been colonised, and adding to the dimension of geological change the particular climatic impact of, for example, successive ice ages. So many of the complex problems that naturalists had grappled with were clearly discussed and, just as he had done with geographical distribution of animals, Wallace combined a lucid synthesis of existing fact and theory with challenging speculation. ‘Quite excellent,’ wrote Darwin. ‘[It] seems to me the best book which you have ever published.’55 Wallace had cast his net wide, and acknowledged the assistance he had received from many sources. Even so, Asa Gray and William Thiselton-Dyer both wrote to rap his knuckles. ‘The close of your chapter VII … would so completely serve as an abstract of the gist of a published lecture of mine, which you once did me the honour to commend, that I should have been pleased if the coincidence of view had been referred to,’ commented Gray acerbically.56 Thiselton-Dyer, the Assistant Director at Kew and a good friend, was equally brusque. ‘If I had had your lecture before me when writing the last chapter of my book,’ Wallace replied, ‘I should certainly have quoted you in support of the view of the northern origin of the southern flora by migration along existing continents …’ His view had been arrived at quite independently, drawing on the facts of Sir Joseph Hooker and George Bentham.57 The next month he offered Thiselton-Dyer a few artefacts for the Kew Museum, as a peace offering: a pandanus-leaf sleeping-mat from New Guinea, a large piece of bark cloth from the Moluccas, and a bamboo harp from Timor.58