WCP3772

Letter (WCP3772.3685)

[1]1

SCIENCE AND ART DEPARTMENT SOUTH KENSINGTON2

January 8th 1881

My dear Darwin3

I congratulate you heartily on the success of your undertaking4 — for yours it is totally & entirely —

Gladstone's5 note6 [2] is very good & much to his credit.

It convinces me that if my first inspiration had been followed out it would have been successful — But perhaps it is as well [3]7that the actual plan was adopted. There would have been no restraining your ferocious spirit of domination hereafter if you had found a Prime Minister obeying your orders!

I hear that the [4] "Butler"8 has been throwing the dirty water in his pantry about again —

Of course he is quite mad at being ignored — and the best thing that can happen is that he should get madder[.]

Do you recollect what Goethe9 wrote about a man who attacked him in this way?

I forget the first two lines but the last two run

"Hat doch der Wallrisch seine Laus Muss auch die meine haben"10

Ever yours | THH.11 [signature]

1
The page bears the stamp of the Imperial College Huxley Collection and is numbered 203 and annotated with the date Jan[uary] 8 1881.
2
Although the letter bears no address, an embossed crest with the lettering "SCIENCE AND ART DEPARTMENT SOUTH KENSINGTON" appears here; the author was Professor of Natural History at the Royal School of Mines, South Kensington, later part of Imperial College London.
3
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882). English naturalist and geologist, originator with ARW of the theory of evolution by natural selection and author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
4
Darwin had petitioned Gladstone for a memorial to ARW with respect to his services to science, aided by Huxley (see WCP1988 letter from Darwin to ARW 7 January 1881). Gladstone recommended a pension for ARW of £200 per annum.
5
Gladstone, William Ewart (1809-1898). British Liberal politician who served as Prime Minister on four separate occasions between 1868 and 1894.
6
The memorial for ARW was sent to Gladstone (see Endnote 5) on January 5th 1881 and Darwin received a reply from him on January 7th, recommending the pension.
7
The page is numbered 204 in pencil in the top RH corner.
8
Butler, Samuel (1835-1902). English author, literary historian and critic, also known for substantive studies of evolutionary thought. He accepted evolution but rejected Darwin’s theory of natural selection. In his book Evolution, Old and New (1879) he accused Darwin of borrowing heavily from Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, whilst playing down these influences and giving them little credit. This would have invited derision from Huxley, a strong supporter of Darwinism. In response to this criticism, Darwin prefaced the third edition (1861) of On the Origin of Species with an essay "An Historical Sketch of the Recent Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species" and by the sixth edition (1872) the title of the essay further emphasised the temporal relationship of his work to that of earlier authors, adding "Previously to the Publication of the First Edition of this Work" (which was in 1859). Butler’s attacks were repeated with renewed vigour when he published Unconscious Memory later in 1880, alleging that he made a false statement in his preface to the Life of Erasmus Darwin.
9
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (von) (1749-1832). German writer and statesman.
10
"After all, the whale has its louse, so I must also have mine" (German; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in ‘Pseudo-Wanderer’; see, for example, Goethe 1845, 1: 138). These lines from Goethe, as well as the valediction and signature at the end of the letter are written across the top of the first page.
11
Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895). English biologist (comparative anatomist), philosopher and advocate of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP3772.3685)]

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

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Please cite as “WCP3772,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3772