WCP42

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

Feb[ruar]^y 16th. 1902

My dear Will

There is not much to report this week. Four labourers have been at work since Tuesday digging all the time at the foundations & cellars, and not yet finished! The footings of all the outer walls have to be 2 feet ^{6 in.} wide, and to go about 2 feet below the floors, so that alone causes an immense deal of stuff to be dug out some of which has to be filled up again. We have now 3 huge heaps of stuff dug out most of it a ^yellow flaky clay, and each ^heap looking bigger then the whole excavation. But about Tuesday or Wednesday Percy Curtis proposeds to begin putting into the footings & floor of the front cellar in concrete while 2 men are going on excavating. On Thursday when [2] I went over he asked if I wanted to get rid of the biggest clay heap — which I had just been groaning about — when he said he had made a good bargain for me. A gentleman who has just built a house near the Golf Links has nothing but peat and very dry gravel and wants clay to make the land grow vegetables & fruit, so he came & looked at our clay heap & said he would take it all in exchange for gravel, each carting his own up — that is I digging out & carting the gravel, while the same carts take back a load of clay at his expense. I was quite pleased at this & thought it was all settled, but yesterday Percy said it was all off, as some he had been telling the owner, a Mr. Willis I think, that his gravel was worth much more than the clay, & when Percy went up on Friday to see where [3] it was to be dug etc he must was told that we could only have it if I paid for the carting back to his ground of the clay! This would cost me, at least 6d or 8d a yard to dig out the gravel 1/- to cart it up, and another shilling ^to cart the clay back, making 2/6 or 2/8 a yard for rough gravel.

As I believe he wants the clay at once, and cannot really get it cheaper elsewhere, I have just written him, pointing out that he has been misinformed as to the value of his gravel, and offering him to take away the top peaty soil & white-stone gravel, which is about one or two feet thick, in exchange for the clay, load for load, thus leaving the better yellow gravel exposed, for him to sell if he can. If he refuses this I shall [4] probably buy more gravel from L[or]^d Wimborne @ 8d a yard, and cash my superfluous clay to make a bank close against the hedge at the bottom of the East Wood.

But if he is not foolish he will accept my offer which is a perfectly fair one.

The plans have been sent on to Mr. Barnes & have been passed by the District Council, so now we can I suppose go on as quick as we like, & as ^{fast as} we can get bricks & other materials.

These little difficulties cause a good deal of worry, & till things go straight I cannot feel able to get on with the final chapters of my new Ed[ition]. of Wond[erful]^l Cent[ur].^y which I much want to get out of hand.

The W[onderful]. C[entury]. Reader is adopted by the Lond[on]. School Board, so I hope that will make it sell to other school-boards & schools.

Your affectionate Pa | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]