Alfred Russel Wallace
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3. ARW to Darwin, 9 July 1881 (LR, 1, 317–18). ‘I do not think I have ever been so attracted by a book, with perhaps the exception of your “Origin of Species” and Spencer’s “First Principles” and “Social Statics”,’ enthused Wallace – a slightly backhanded compliment.
4. Darwin to ARW, 12 July 1881 (LR, 1, 318–19).
5. Desmond and Moore (1991), 669. It was George Darwin’s idea that it would be ‘gracious’ to ask Wallace to be a pall-bearer.
6. ARW to Raphael Meldola, 8 January 1886 (OMNH).
7. ‘The “Why” and the “How” of Land Nationalisation’, Part I, Macmillan’s Magazine, 48, 357–68 (September 1883), and Part II, 48, 485–93 (October 1883).
8. ML, 326.
9. H. Allingham and D. Radford (eds.), William Allingham: A Diary (Penguin, 1985), 264.
10. Ibid. (2 August 1884), 329–30.
11. Ibid. (6 November 1884), 332–5.
12. Wilfred Ward, ‘Tennyson: A Reminiscence’ in Problems and Persons, (Longman Green, 1903), 196–217.
13. William Allingham: A Diary (5 December 1884), 339.
14. Ibid. 340.
15. ML, 270–1. Bad Times etc. (Macmillan and Co., London, 1885 and New York, 1886).
16. ARW to Edmund Gosse, 16 February 1886 (Brotherton Library, University of Leeds).
17. Notebook (WFA).
18. ARW to Meldola, 7 August 1886 (OMNH).
19. ARW to Meldola, 28 August 1886 (OMNH).
20. Wallace’s Journal of his visit to North America is in the library of the Linnean Society. I am very grateful to Mr Michael Pearson for the loan of his typed transcription.
21. ARW to Meldola, 14 November 1886 (OMNH). On the evening of Wednesday 17 November, Gray also exhibited his own letters from Darwin (Cambridge Scientific Club Records, Harvard University Archives).
22. See Wallace’s American journal, and ML vol. 2, 356–7, and notes on 403–5 in Essays in Psychical Research (see next note).
23. See William James, Essays in Psychical Research, vol. 16 in The Works of William James (general editor, F. H. Burkhardt) (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1986). See 29–32 for the letter from James to the Editor of the Banner of Light.
24. ARW to Annie Wallace, 5 April 1887 (WFA). The letter begins ‘My dear Annie’ and finishes ‘your affectionate husband Alfred R. Wallace’.
25. ARW to Annie Wallace, 24 May 1887 (WFA).
26. The manuscript for this lecture is in the Wallace family archive. The text was published in the Golden Gate (June 1887), was reprinted as a pamphlet by, for instance, Banner of Light publishing company, Boston, was reproduced in Banner of Light and Light (London), and was widely reported in excerpt by the San Francisco newspapers.
27. See ML, 278–92, and, for this extract, ‘Flowers and Forests of the Far West’, Fortnightly Review, 50, 796–810 (December 1891), reprinted in Studies Scientific and Social, vol. 2, 234.
28. ARW to Meldola, 19 June 1887 (OMNH).
29. ARW to Meldola, 19 June 1887 (OMNH). ‘I have gathered much information & may perhaps perpetrate another book (a small one) on America.’
30. See Suzanne Bryant Dakin, The Perennial Adventure: A Tribute to Alice Eastwood, 1859–1953 (San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 1954), and Carol Green Wilson, Alice Eastwood’s Wonderland: the adventures of a botanist (San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 1955). Alice Eastwood published A Popular Flora of Denver, Colorado, in 1893.
31. Journal of visit to North America (Linnean Society).
13 THE FUTURE OF THE RACE
1. ML, 286.
2. ML, 292.
3. ARW to Fanny Sims, 24 August 1888 (WFA).
4. ARW to Meldola, 30 August 1888 (OMNH).
5. ARW to Fanny Sims, 24 August 1888 (WFA).
6. ARW to Edward Poulton, 22 February 1889. Quoted in Poulton’s obituary notice for the Zoologist 71 (1913), 470–1.
7. Letter from the Wimborne Estate to ARW, 8 April 1890 (BL, Add. Mss. 46441).
8. ML, 299.
9. From Wallace’s testimony presented before the Royal Commission on vaccination, 1890, Third Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into the Subject of Vaccination (H.M.S.O., 1890), quoted in Charles H. Smith (ed.) (1991), 202. See also ML, 329–33, and The Wonderful Century (1898), 213–323, where vaccination takes up over a quarter of the book.
10. ‘Human Selection’, Fortnightly Review 48, 325–37 (September 1890).
11. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (Ticknor and Co., Boston, 1888).
12. ML, 386. Unsurprisingly, Wallace’s ideas of what was important included several which had been ‘almost entirely overlooked’; but in fact he only includes this, and ‘The Expressiveness of Speech or Mouth-gesture as a Factor in the Origin of Language’, as possibly neglected ideas in his list of twelve major contributions.
13. See K. R. V. Wikman, ‘Letters from Edward B. Tylor and Alfred Russel Wallace to Edward Westermarck’, Acta Academiae Aboensis Humaniora XIII, 7 (1940), see 13–22 for ARW’s letters.
14. ARW to Galton 3 February 1891 (University College, London). Although Wallace marked this letter ‘Private’, a note on the file by Galton states, ‘Sent to Mrs Romanes & returned 1894. I had previously in 1891/92 lent them to Romanes who was occupied with a similar project.’ ARW would have been startled, and probably outraged. Romanes objected violently when ARW ingenuously informed him that he had seen, in Canada, copies of Romanes’s personal correspondence to Darwin on the subject of spiritualism. ARW’s relations with Romanes were more strained than with any other of his contemporaries. Romanes insulted him by his distinction between Wallace the man of science and the man of nonsense, and by obscurely accusing him of plagiarism. When he declined to retract, Wallace responded by refusing to mention Romanes in print, though he referred to him frequently in his private letters. See ML, vol. 2, 317–18.
15. ARW to Edward Poulton, 28 May 1889, quoted in Zoologist 71, 469.
16. ARW to Violet Wallace, 20 May 1892 (WFA).
17. ARW to Scott Keltie, 8 March 1892 (RGS).
18. ARW to Thiselton-Dyer, 25 October 1892 (RBG, Kew).
19. Thiselton-Dyer to ARW, 12 January 1893 (LR, 2, 220). See also ARW’s reply to Thiselton-Dyer’s ‘very kind letter’, 17 January 1893 (Linnean Society).
20. ARW to Violet Wallace, 31 October 1893 (WFA).
21. Small notebook with details of the Lake District holiday (WFA).
22. ARW to Mitten, 13 August 1893 (WFA).
23. Ibid.
24. ARW to Violet Wallace, 14 July 1894 (WFA).
25. Letter to ARW, 26 September 1893 (BL, Add. Mss. 46439).
26. ARW to Meldola, 8 November 1893 (OMNH).
27. ARW to Violet Wallace, 14 July 1894 (WFA).
28. ARW to Annie Wallace, 9 August 1896 (WFA).
29. ML, 304.
30. Edward Poulton, Zoologist 71, 469.
31. ARW to Violet Wallace, 27 November 1896 (WFA).
32. Edward Poulton, Zoologist 71, 469.
33. ML, 392.
34. ML, 308–9.
35. ARW to Meldola, 26 June 1896 (OMNH) – the letter was marked ‘Private’.
36. ARW to William Wallace, 1 November 1903 (WFA).
37. ARW to William Wallace, 16 March 1902 (WFA).
38. ARW to William Wallace, 15 July 1898 (WFA).
39. A copy of this prospectus is in the Zoological Society’s Archives.
40. ARW to William Wallace, 28 November 1900 (WFA).
41. ARW to Violet Wallace, 25 October 1901 (WFA).
14 THE LAST ORCHARD
1. ARW to Meldola, 17 February 1903 (OMNH).
2. ARW to Thiselton-Dyer, 4 December 1903 (RBG, Kew).
3. Man’s Place in the Universe (1903).
4. ‘Man’s Place in the Universe’, Fortnightly Review 73, 395–411 (March 1903).
5. ARW to William Wallace, 1 November 1903 (WFA).
6. See ML, 316–17, and preface to Is Mars Habitable? (1908).
7. ‘If there were a Socialist Government – How should it Begin?’, The Clarion 715 (18 August 1905).
8. List of books owned by ARW (OMNH).
9. ARW to William Wallace, 1 July 1804 (WFA).
10. ARW to Meldola, 4 November 1905 (OMNH).
11. ARW to Meldola, 2 December 1905 (OMNH).
12. Hilda M. McGill, ‘The case of the missing journal’, Manchester Review, Winter 1960/61, 124–8.
13. ARW to Meldola, 23 June 1908 (OMNH).
14. Edward Poulton, Zoologist 71, 468–71.
15. ARW to Frederick Birch, 30 December 1908 (WFA).
16. ARW to Sir John Lubbock, 23 June 1908, in Horace G. Hutchison, The Life of Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury, 2 vols. (1914), vol. 2, 258.
17. A full account of the Linnean Society meeting is given in LR, 1, 110–22.
18. ARW to Frederick Birch, 30 December 1908 (WFA).
19. ARW to Edward Poulton, 6 November 1908 (OMNH).
20. Ibid.
21. ARW to Frederick Birch, 30 December 1908 (WFA).
22. This amazingly courteous, even subservient, letter, an example of Edwardian public relations at full throttle, was sent to ARW by New & Co, Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s High Class Tailors, on 16 January 1909.
23. ARW to Meldola, 20 December 1908 (OMNH).
24. The World of Life, 6, quoting Haeckel’s The Riddle of the Universe.
25. The World of Life, 392–3.
26. ARW to Meldola, 27 June 1909 (OMNH).
27. ARW to William Wallace, undated, ‘Monday’ (WFA).
28. ARW to William Wallace, 11 June 1911 (WFA).
29. See ARW to William Wallace, 20 August 1911, LR, 2, 163–4.
30. ARW to Edward Poulton, 12 November 1912, quoted in Zoologist 71.
31. LR, 2, 136.
32. Tape-recording of Dr Scott’s memories (WFA).
33. LR, 2, 252.
15 THE OLD HERO
1. The portrait of Wallace, hung beside that of Darwin, in the lecture room of the Linnean Society, was unveiled on 30 May 1998, in the presence of members of the Wallace family, including his two grandsons. In an address marking the 140th anniversary of the 1858 meeting, the President, Sir Ghillean Prance FRS, spoke in the persona of Wallace himself, concluding, as he unveiled the portrait, ‘and now I will reveal myself’. On July 1958, the Centenary meeting, the President Dr C. F. Pantin FRS unveiled a plaque in the Meeting Room to commemorate the joint communication.
2. Besides fish, other Wallace drawings, of palms and artefacts, are reproduced. The fish drawings are due to be published in full in 2001, edited and introduced by Monica de Toledo-Piza Ragazzo.
3. Daws and Fujita (1999).
4. Wilson, (2000). Dr Wilson visited many locations in Malaysia and Indonesia where Wallace collected, which gives his book an especially personal flavour.
5. Letter to the Reverend St John Thorpe from the Secretary of the RGS, 15 May 1917 (RGS).
6. George (1964).
7. Beddall (1968, 1969 and 1972).
8. This interview is quoted by Arnold Brackman in A Delicate Arrangement (see note 10), 348.
9. McKinney (1966, 1969 and 1972).
10. Arnold C. Brackman (1980).
11. Brooks (1984).
12. Ibid., 257.
13. Brackman (1980), 298.
14. See CCD 7, and the Introduction, pp. xvii–xix, where the evidence is very fairly reviewed.
15. This much-studied envelope is in the Wallace Family Archive. Brooks’s research into the mail schedules is set out in Brooks (1984), 252–7.
16. Darwin to Lyell, 3 May 1856 (CCD, 6, 100). Lyell had written to Darwin after hearing that Hooker, Huxley and Wollaston had visited him at Down, and ‘made light of all Species & grew more & more unorthodox’. Darwin explained to Lyell that to give just a sketch of his view went against his prejudices. ‘To give a fair sketch would be absolutely impossible, for every proposition requires such an array of facts. If I were to do anything it could only refer to the main agency of change, selection–’.
17. Darwin to Lyell, 18 June 1858 (CCD, 7, 107).
18. Darwin to Lyell, 25–6 June 1858 (CCD, 7, 117–19).
19. Darwin to Hooker, 13 July 1858 (CCD, 7, 129–30).
20. Wallace describes the incident in ML, 246–7, and includes Huxley’s generous letter of apology (14 February 1870) – Huxley confessed that he ‘certainly felt rather sore’ when he read Wallace’s paper; ‘But I dare say I should have “consumed my own smoke” in that matter as I do in most, if I had not been very tired, very hungry, very cold, and consequently very irritable, when I met you yesterday.’ Thiselton-Dyer and Asa Gray both took Wallace to task for using their ideas, or ideas which they had already published, in Island Life.
21. Canon H. B. Tristram to Alfred Newton, 31 July 1860, quoted in I. Bernard Cohen, ‘Three Notes on the Reception of Darwin’s Ideas on Natural Selection’, in D. Kohn (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage, (1985), 589–607.
22. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, was first published in Blackwood’s Magazine 1899–1900. Chapter 20, especially, seems indebted to Wallace. When Marlow tells Stein that he has come to ‘describe a specimen’, Stein asks, ‘with an unbelieving and humorous eagerness’, ‘A butterfly?’ ‘Nothing so perfect’, was the answer. ‘A man!’
23. January 1913 (BL, Add. Mss. 46411).
Sources and Selected Bibliography
Sources
Wallace’s notebooks, journals, manuscripts of books and letters exist in abundance, but in a variety of locations. Among the principal collections are:
American Philosophical Society (letters from or relating to Wallace)
British Library (The largest collection of letters – Add. Mss. 46414–42)
Cambridge University Library (letters to Darwin; Samuel Stevens; Alfred Newton)
Imperial College, London (letters to Huxley)
Linnean Society (letters; notebooks relating to the Malay Archipelago; journals, including the American journal; books, with annotations)
Natural History Museum (letters; 2 notebooks; drawings of Amazon fish)
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (letters to Hooker; Thiselton-Dyer et al.; also letters of Spruce and Mitten about Wallace)
Oxford Museum of Natural History, Hope Library (letters to Meldola, Poulton)
Royal Geographical Society (letters from Wallace, and about Wallace)
University College, London (letters to Galton)
Wallace family (letters, notebooks, manuscripts, lecture notes, drawings)
Zoological Society, London (Wallace’s letters to Sclater)
See also the lists in McKinney (1972), in Archives of British Men of Science, Guides to Sources of British History, Natural History Manuscript Resources in the British Isles etc.
Major Works by Alfred Russel Wallace
For Wallace’s huge output of articles, reviews and letters, see the comprehensive listings in Charles H. Smith (ed.), Alfred Russel Wallace: An Anthology of His Shorter Writings (Oxford University Press, 1991), an invaluable source.
Palm Trees of the Amazon and their Uses (John Van Voorst, 1853)
A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, with an Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley (Reeve and Co., 1853; 2nd edn, Minerva Library, Ward, Lock and Co., 1889)
The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise: A Narrative of Travel with Studies of Man and Nature, 2 vols. (Macmillan and Co., 1869)
Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (London and New York, Macmillan and Co., 1870)
On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism: Three Essays (James Burns, 1875)
The Geographical Distribution of Animals; with a Study of the Relations of Living and Extinct Faunas as Elucidating the Past Changes of the Earth’s Surface, 2 vols. (Macmillan and Co., 1876)
Tropical Nature, and Other Essays (London and New York, Macmillan and Co., 1878)
A
ustralasia, edited and extended (Stanford’s Compendium of Geography and Travel, Edward Stanford, 1879)
Island Life: or, The Phenomenon and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras, Including a Revision and Attempted Solution of the Problem of Geological Climates (Macmillan and Co., 1880)
Land Nationalisation: Its Necessity and its Aims; Being a Comparison of the System of Landlord and Tenant with that of Occupying Ownership in their Influence on the Well-being of the People (Trübner and Co., 1882)
Bad Times: An Essay on the Present Depression of Trade, Tracing it to its Sources in Enormous Foreign Loans, Excessive War Expenditure, the Increase of Speculation and of Millionaires, and the Depopulation of the Rural Districts; with Suggested Remedies (London and New York, Macmillan and Co., 1889)
Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of its Applications (London and New York, Macmillan and Co., 1889)
Natural Selection and Tropical Nature: Essays on Descriptive and Theoretical Biology (London and New York, Macmillan and Co., 1891)
The Wonderful Century: Its Successes and its Failures (Swann Sonnenschein and Co., 1898)
Studies Scientific and Social, 2 vols. (Macmillan and Co., 1900)
Man’s Place in the Universe: A Study of the Results of Scientific Research in relation to the Unity or Plurality of Worlds (Chapman and Hall Ltd, 1903)
My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions, 2 vols. (Chapman and Hall Ltd, 1905; new edn, condensed and revised, Chapman and Hall Ltd, 1908)
Is Mars Habitable? A Critical Examination of Professor Percival Lowell’s Book ‘Mars and its Canals’, with an Alternative Explanation (Macmillan and Co., 1907)
Spruce, Richard, Notes of a Botanist on the Amazon and Andes, edited by A. R. Wallace, 2 vols. (Macmillan and Co., 1908)
The World of Life: A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose (Chapman and Hall Ltd, 1910)
Social Environment and Moral Progress (London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne, Cassell and Co., 1913)
The Revolt of Democracy (London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne, Cassell and Co., 1913)