WCP5762

[1] [p. 224]

Broadstone, Dorset. April 17, 1904.

Dear Mrs. Fisher,¹ — Thanks for your remarks on what an autobiography ought to be. But I am afraid I shall fall dreadfully short. I seem to remember nothing but ordinary facts and incidents of no interest to anyone but my own family. I do not feel myself that anything has much influenced my character or abilities, such as they are. Lots of things have given me opportunities, and those I can state. Also other things have directed me into certain lines, but I can’t dilate on these; and really, with the exception of Darwin and Sir Charles Lyell, I [2] have come into close relations with hardly any eminent men. All my doings and surroundings have been commonplace!

I am now just reading a charming and ideal bit of autobiography — Robert Dale Owen’s "Threading my Way." If you have not read it, do get it (published by Trübner and Co. in 1874). It is delightful. So simple and natural throughout. But his father was one of the most wonderful men of the nineteenth century — Robert Owen of New Lanark — and this book gives the true history of his great success. Then R. D. Owen met Clarkson and heard from his own lips how he worked to abolish the slave trade.

Then he had part of his education at Hofwyl under Fellenberg, an experiment in education and self-government wonderfully original and successful. He afterwards Worked at "New Harmony" with his father, and met during his life almost all the most remarkable people in England and America.

This book only contains the first twenty-seven years of his life and I am afraid he never completed it. Such a book makes me despair! — Yours very sincerely, ALFRED R. WALLACE.