From A. R. Wallace   5 September [1868]1

9, St. Marks’ Crescent N.W.

Sept. 5th.

Dear Darwin

It will give me great pleasure to accept your kind invitation for next Saturday & Sunday, and my wife would very much like to come too, & will if possible.2 Unfortunately there is a new servant coming that very day, & there is a baby at the mischievous age of a year and a quarter to be left in somebody’s care;3—but I dare say it will be managed somehow.

I will drop a line on Friday to say if we are coming the time you mention.

Believe me | Yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace—

1
The year is established by the reference to the Wallaces’ visit to Down on 12 September 1868 (see n. 2, below).
2
CD’s invitation to Wallace has not been found, but see the letter to J. J. Weir, 1 September 1868. Wallace and his wife, Annie Wallace, as well as John Jenner Weir and Edward Blyth, arrived on Saturday 12 September 1868, and stayed over 13 September (see letter to J. D. Hooker, [8–10 September 1868]).
3
The Wallaces’ first son, Herbert Spencer Wallace, was born in June 1867 (Raby 2001, p. 194).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6350,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6350