[in unknown hand] 8
Parkstone, Dorset.
June 9th. 1892
My dear Violet1
Your account of The Dell2 was very interesting and I quite understand all about it. No doubt Mr. Hughes put up that grand vinery as a business matter because he could so easyily sell the grapes at all his London & Country wine-shops. I think I mentioned to him what a splendid wall it would be for a vinery. The Pulham rocks, & dripping well must [2] be great improvements. I do not remember Mrs. Hughes having written to me. If I had received her letter I should certainly have replied to it, & I hope you told her so.
I finished my Exn papers3 (1120) last Tuesday. They were rather stiff and no real good ones from our point of view!
The following are samples of a few I have kept.
Q.8. What is sidereal and what is mean time?
Ansr Mean time is that time when all the years have elapsed we count up all the numbers of days and divide by the number of weeks.
[3] Q.3 The cause of the glow seen above volcanoes during an eruption at night.
Ans. The glow seen about it at night is the moon shining on the particles of snow and making them glow.
————————————————————————————————————
I hope your biology and botany answers were more brilliant than these, even if less amusing. How do you think you got on? With such [illeg.] an excellent teacher as you have had you ought to have got 80 or 90 marks — and 65 is enough to get a first class. If All the questions are correctly answered you get 100.
Aunt Bessie4 is coming tomorrow & I suppose we shall then go a few excursions,— but the heat has knocked Ma5 up.
The Land Natn [Nationalisation]. Meeting is on the 23rd. and I have now to write my Address6 which is going [4] to be on Herbert Spencer’s7 new book "Justice"8 — in which he gives up L. Natn. — and the german book "Freeland".
The garden looks very nice now, as all the Irises are out & the roses coming. Mr. Marshall tells me you had Nutwood gooseberry tart, & I suppose you took home lots of flowers.
Give my kind remembrances to Miss Macdonald, & believe me
Your affectionate Papa | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]
Everybody has been rushing in to see the medals!9
The Dell, Grays, was the first and only surviving house built by Wallace himself. The family lived there from 25 March 1872 to 25 June/23 July 1876.
(Lester 2014)
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP229.229)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP229,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on