WCP1295

Letter (WCP1295.1074)

[1]

9, St. Mark’s Crescent N. W.

May 12th. [1869]1

Dear Fanny

I have just received the accounts &c. Completed from Mr. Spence.2 The enclosed copy is for you. The balance due to you now is £282. 10. 6, — but the £5, for clothes is charged to us all.

Now as John3 has nothing of my mother’s, & I have a few articles of furniture this £5 should go to him. I propose therefore that I shall pay him £287. 11. 6 and that you & I take each £280.

Let me know if you think this fair & agree to it.

[2] If you have decided what to pay to John on account of the Albany Street houses4, — shall I remit it to with the then money? If so let me know what it is and I will send you the balance of the £282. or perhaps it will be better for me to send you the whole & you send me a separate cheque for the amount you want to send to John.

If you have decided to [3] invest what balance you have, now is a good time, as owing to [the] Bank having just raised its rates of discount all stocks have fallen.

I should strongly recommend the Atlantic & St Lawrence R[ailwa]y Stock5, —which is leased to the Grand Trunk of Canada6 and is a first charge on that line. It is 4 p[er] cent & can be bought now I think at 56 — paying more than 7 per cent with almost absolute security. But the great advantage of it is, that in 3 years the percentage will be raised to 6, by Act of Parliament which I have seen, and the [4] stock will certainly then be worth 80 or 90 instead of 56 or 60.

Let me hear from you by return as I should like to send the money to John as soon as possible.

I remain | Your affectionate Brother | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

1
The date 1864, crossed out and corrected to 1869, is added in pencil by a later hand.
2
Unidentified person.
3
Wallace, John (1818-1895). Brother of ARW; engineer and surveyor.
4
In late 1852-54 ARW rented a house at 44 Upper Albany Street and lived there with his mother, his sister Fanny, and her husband, Thomas Sims. (Beccaloni, G.W. 2008. [2010]. Homes Sweet Homes: A Biographical Tour of Wallace's Many Places of Residence. 7-43. In: Smith, C. & Beccaloni, G. W. (Eds.). Natural Selection and Beyond: The Intellectual Legacy of Alfred Russel Wallace. [p.21])
5
In 1845, the company Atlantic and St. Lawrence was charted to construct a railway line from Portland to the Quebec-Vermont border, while another company, the St. Lawrence and Atlantic built the Canadian section. Alexander T. Galt, the commissioner of the British-American Land Company, went to England to sell Atlantic and St. Lawrence railway stock to members of the British public but the company ran into numerous financial difficulties. (Easterbrook, W.T. and Aitken, H. G. J., 1988. Canadian Economic History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 296-298).
6
The Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada was incorporated in 1852 to build trunk-line railways in Halifax and a complete railway line from Quebec along the St. Lawrence and the north shore of Lake Ontario to Hamilton. Later arrangements were made for the Grand Trunk Company to lease the Montreal to Portland line of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic. (Easterbrook, W.T. and Aitken, H. G. J., 1988. Canadian Economic History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 307-309).

Editorial information

Status: Edited (but not proofed) transcription [Letter (WCP1295.1074)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by McCombie, Arleen [2012-02-16] Transcription checked by Beros, Matt [2019-12-20]

Please cite as “WCP1295,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP1295