WCP116

[1]

Broadstone, Wimborne

January 20th.1906

My dear Will¹

As I have a fair balance at the bank now, I send you £.50 towards the heavy expenses of your illness, which I hope you may soon quite recover from, and never again be exposed to an attack of the same kind.

The terrible amount of rain we had till recently wholly stopped our work at the drain for a week, and for parts of several others, besides making us in an awful mess. During the heaviest rains water began to squirt up through the floor of the potting shed just as you go [2] in from the back greenhouse verandah, flooding it, with the rain that drove in, about a foot deep! Now we have found out the cause of this. [Annotated sketch of the shed and line of drainage appears below]

I had intended to carry the drain no further than A. but this flooding under the floor of the shed made me decide to carry it on up to the wall at B. This is now being [3] done, and along the end at about 5 feet deep they have cut across the first old drain pipes they have met with, which run nearly in the same direction as our big drain at A. They were full of water, and having been cut off when the house was built & no doubt the ends choked up, during the heavy rains the water accumulated under the shed and at last forced its way up in little squirts through the floor. To make this shed thoroughly dry, we are going to make a drain under it, from D. to C., with a good fall into the main drain which will I hope keep the whole of the N. side of the house and sheds [4] dry. Later on I may perhaps cut another drain in the garden paralleled with the west front of the house as there is a place opposite the end of the greenhouse where wet comes up showing I think where there is one of these stopped-up old drain pipes. Harwood remembers when the whole of what is now grass land round us was a wheat-field and it had evidently been deep-drained for the purpose of wheat-growing.

About a month back I had a letter² from a Mr. Allen of Crawley, Sussex, who had been reading my "Life",³ asking me for further details as to the "Salisbury" cure as he also was a sufferer from Asthma. I sent him [5] (5) what I could, and a few days back I had a letter⁴ telling me, that as the result of following my advice he was now "practically free from that wretched disease" — and that he cannot adequately express his gratitude &c. &c.. He is an oldish man & a gardener like myself, & has sent me a nice plant he raised for seed from Ceylon. Of all the people I have told of the Salisbury cure several have received immediate benefit & none have said that it had no effect.

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Now, after the soaking deluges & mild weather filling all evergreens with sap, the usual cussedness of our climate sends us last night [6] a very hard frost, which, if it lasts a few days will inevitably kill off many of my tender things some of which are just coming beautifully with flower.

The mess we shall have; after the drain-work is finished, will be great. Notwithstanding Mr. James had 6 loads of the clay and the cut has been carefully rammed all the way in filling up, there will remain at least another 8 -10 cartloads of clay to be got rid of, while a ridge must be left along it to allow for the slow subsidence that is sure to take place for perhaps a year or more. As I expect there will be a constant run [7] or trickle of water from the outlet, except in very dry summers like the last, I am going to make a small pond at the outlet which will be useful to supply some water without carrying to that part of the garden.

Mr. S. C. Cockerell⁵ — a brother of the sluggist⁶ — sent me Kropofkin’s⁷ Life as a Xmas present, and I have just finished reading it. It is very interesting as showing how good and remarkable is the Russian character, and for the light it throws on present affairs in Russia — of which we have heard nothing the last week or two owing to the absorbing interest of our own [8] little radical revolution! It is to be hoped that that will not be quite a fizzle — but it will be if they do not take advantage, at once, of their majority & their prestige, & their distant mandate for social reform, to effectively deal with the House of Lords — otherwise they will waste their time & energies in passing bills to be "chucked out" after all!

With best wishes | Your affectionate Pa | Alfred R. Wallace — [signature]

P.S. I enclose an account which I presume is for you.

A.R.W.