Ɛpsilon

WCP2909

Letter (WCP2909.2799)

[1]1

ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN.

7 Kensington Park Gardens, W.

[Oct 1908]2

My dear Dr. Wallace,

We are making arrangements for the Friday evening lectures at the Royal Institution before Easter, and it is the general wish that in some way or other you should be identified with our approaching session, commencing as it will the Jubilee year of the Origin of Species.3,4

Our session opens on Friday 22nd of Jan. and we want you to inaugurate it by giving a lecture appropriate to the subject.

I know I am asking a great thing, but this is a unique occasion, and we will take all possible trouble off your hands. If you will put the lecture together we will have it set up in type, and if, as is not unlikely, you feel that the labour of delivering it will be more than you wish to incur, I as secretary would read it, you sitting on a chair near me. Or if you [2] felt equal to the exertion you could deliver the opening sentence or sentences, and I would take up the reading, handing back to you the MS.5 for you to give the concluding sentences. This we could arrange at the time.

What we all are very anxious for is to have the Jubilee year inaugurated by yourself at our lecture table, and to have the pleasure and privilege of seeing you and hearing you speak, if only a few words, on the epoch-making generalisation which you and Darwin share so worthily between you.

Believe me to remain | very truly yours | William Crookes6 [signature] | (Hon. Sec. R. I.)

1
In ARW’s handwriting, "Accepted Provisionally".
3
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882). British naturalist, geologist and author, notably of On the Origin of Species (1859).
4
Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray.
5
Wallace, A. R. 1909. The world of life: as visualised and interpreted by Darwinism. Fortnightly Review (n.s.) 85 (507): 411-434. [Revision of a lecture a portion of which was delivered at the Royal Institution on 22 Jan. 1909].
6
Crookes, William (1832-1919). British chemist, physicist, science journalist, and spiritualist. Secretary of the Royal Institution.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP2909.2799)]

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

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2015-03-12] Transcription checked by Benny, Ruth [2015-03-12] Transcription checked by Sherwood, Danni [2020-08-10] Transcription checked by Chua, Christine [2026-04-18]

Please cite as “WCP2909,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP2909