Ɛpsilon

WCP4555

Letter (WCP4555.4862)

[1]

Broadstone, Wimborne

Novr. 4th. 1905

My dear Meldola1

I send you on separate sheet a few words of congratulation on your Club Jubilee. But alas! I couldn’t squeeze out a single "Goke"! so you must accept the wish for the "happy thought"!

I too, often recall our week at Lyme Regis with great pleasure. We have never been there since! Also the charms of Waggoner’s Wells, but neither name occurs in the book.2 In fact, if I had chronicled such matters at any length I should have wanted 4 vols instead of two, & made [2] it quite unreadable.

Although my book gets too much praise there are a good many not unreasonable grumbles at its inordinate length. That was partly due to by my beginning it under the f impression that I should not have enough to fill one good sized volume, and so I went on in the same way putting almost everything in that seemed suitable, intending that it should be severely cut down before printing. Mr Arthur Waugh,3 the Managing Director [3] of Chapman & Hall, undertook to read the MSS. and I begged him to suggest any omissions he liked even to whole chapters. But he only suggested the omission of a few pages in one chapter, and a few sentences in another, so I consider the responsibility rests on him!

Yesterday I got a notice in a paper called "Reviews"4 with a very fine hit. After saying that the book is "terribly spun out", that there are many "weary pages", and that it is so "well arranged" that it is "easy to skip" — he says — "For on many subjects Mr. Wallace is an antibody. He is anti-vaccination, [4] anti-state endowment of education, anti-land-laws, and so on. To compensate, he is pro-spiritualism, and pro-phrenology, so that he carries a cargo, about as large a dead weight of fancies and fallacies as it is possible to float withal".

"Anti-body" is good! and the whole par. is neat and refreshing. And then he goes on and praises my biological & travel books as much as any of them!

The "Saturday Review"5 article was very good — critical, but quite fair.

The few recollections of Huxley,6 Herbert Spencer,7 Mivart,8 Sir C. Lyell9 &c. are what seem to interest most readers, or, at all events, most reviewers.

With best wishes & kind remembrances to your wife,10

Believe me| yours very truly| Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

1
Meldola, Raphael (1849-1915). British chemist and entomologist.
2
Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. Two volumes.
3
Waugh, Arthur (1866-1943). British English author, literary critic and publisher. Managing director of Chapman and Hall.
4
Anon. 1905. [Review of My Life]. A Story of Evolution. The British Medical Journal 2 (28 October), pp. 1119-1120.
5
Anon. 1905. [Review of My Life]. Wallace the wise man. The Saturday Review (21 October), pp. 526-527.
6
Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895). British biologist and author, known as "Darwin's Bulldog".
7
Spencer, Herbert (1820-1903). British philosopher, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist.
8
Mivart, St. George Jackson (1827-1900). British physician, zoologist and Roman Catholic polemicist.
9
Lyell, Charles (1797-1875). British geologist and author, notably of the influential Principles of Geology (1830-1833). President of the Geological Society of London, 1835-37 and 1849-51.
10
Meldola (née Davis), Ella Frederica (1863-1932). Wife of Raphael Meldola.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP4555.4862)]

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

Revision history

Transcribed by Lord, Annette [2012-07-23] Transcription checked by Catchpole, Caroline [2013-01-15] Transcription checked by Chua, Christine [2026-04-18]

Published letter (WCP4555.5715)

[1]1[p. 125]

Broadstone, Wimborne,

Nov. 4th, 1905.

My dear Meldola,

It seems only the other day that you started the "Essex"—or, rather, I think the Epping Forest—Field Club, and now you are celebrating its Jubilee of 25 years.

I heartily congratulate you and Mr. Cole on the great success of your work. I look back upon my few rambles with the Club in its early days with great pleasure, while the "fungus forays" were as delightful as they were instructive. I only regret that distance and other occupations have for so many years debarred me from the pleasure of attending your meetings and excursions.1

With my very best wishes for the success of the Club and for the prolongation of its life into the remotest conceivable futurity,

Believe me, yours very sincerely,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

1 In his recently-published Autobiography (vol. ii., p. 106) Mr. Wallace says: – “Shortly before I left England (1886) I gave the lecture on “Darwinism” to the Essex Filed Club, in order to see how my diagrams of variation struck an intelligent audience, and was fairly satified with the result.”

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Published letter (WCP4555.5715)]

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

Revision history

Transcribed by Smith, Charles Hyde [2013-03-11] Transcription checked by Catchpole, Caroline [2013-03-11] Transcription checked by Chua, Christine [2026-04-18]

Please cite as “WCP4555,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP4555