Ɛpsilon

WCP6407

Letter (WCP6407.7406)

[1]1

84, FELLOWS ROAD,

HAMPSTEAD, N.W.

June 25th 1913

Dear Mr Wallace2 —

I was out of town last week and so unable to reply promptly to your note and to acknowledge the receipt of Miss Casey’s3 book. I have got considerable new information from it for which I am grateful to her and to you. I am posting with this the book by John Burroughs4 "Time and Change"5 which I feel sure she will enjoy.

May I take this opportunity of returning the most cordial and sincere thanks of Mr Warren6 and myself for your hospitality to us. It was a memorable day to both of us. Three days will always stand out in my memory from all others; one afternoon with Tennyson7, an evening with Browning8 and the afternoon with your father. The meeting with Dr. Wallace will always seem the more living and vital of the three because I am more [2] deeply and personally interested in the things he has studied and written about. There were, naturally, many things I wanted to ask questions about but felt I had no right to occupy so much of his time as I did. The most important theme we touched upon was, for me, that of variation as applied to vast numbers in a species. Having in mind what Dr. Wallace has said about those who have not reported him correctly I have thought that perhaps he would be good enough to write a few lines, in answer to the inclosed [sic] question9, which I might quote in my lecture. I should then be sure of conveying his exact thought.

Some one has said that the best way of treating a kindness is to accept it and pass it on. That is all I fear that I can promise in return for the stimulus to fuller life and activity that I have received from your father.

Very truly yours | J Leon Williams10 [signature]

1
The page is numbered [WP16/1/69] in pencil in the top RH corner. [old ref[?] WP2/1/41] is written in pencil in the bottom LH corner of the page.
2
Wallace, William Greenell (1871-1951) Electrical engineer, second son and third child of ARW.
3
Possibly Comerford-Casey, Olive Bourcicault (1875-?) or Comerford-Casey, Alvina Bertram ("Bertie") (1877-?) daughters of the Reverend George Edwards Comerford-Casey (1846-1912), Anglican priest, teacher, botanist and author, who died in Parkstone, Dorset.
4
Burroughs, John (1837-1921) American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the U.S. conservation movement.
5
Burroughs, J. (1912) Time And Change Boston & New York, Houghton Mifflin Company.
6
Possibly Warren, Edward Royal (1860-1942) American naturalist and engineer. His first book Mammals of Colorado was published in 1910, (the second The Beaver: Its Work and Its Ways in 1927).
7
Tennyson, Alfred, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809-1892) Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland 1850-1892.
8
Browning, Robert (1812-1889) English poet and playwright, one of the foremost Victorian poets.
9
The enclosure has been lost, but we know from George Wood Clapp's 1925 book The Life and Work of James Leon Williams that his question to ARW was whether "in his opinion, the appearance of humanity could ever have depended on the survival and variation of a single pair of ancestors." For ARW’s reply see WCP627.
10
Williams, James Leon (1852-1932) American prosthodontist and pioneer dental histologist. He also practiced dentistry in London and was one of the founders of the International Association for Dental Research.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP6407.7406)]

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 “WCP6407,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP6407