WCP7134

[1]

Pen y bryn, St. Peter's R^d., Croyden

Jan^y. 23rd. 1881

Dear Mr. Mongredien

Many thanks for your congratulations. Since you wrote I see the Queen has approved, so now it is safe which it was not quite before as Gladstone¹ might have died suddenly or the ministry gone out.

I am going to make one more trial — I hope the last in this sphere — of making a garden, having got a very small, but pretty piece of ground at Godalming, where I am having a very small cottage built, & hope [2] to get around me some of the choicest beauties of the vegetable kingdom.

It is a sandy soil, on a hill yet sheltered by trees &c: and with pretty distant deeps. The ground was a dense thicket of hazel with a few oaks & elms when I got it, so that I have been able to preserve some wild bits, and a nice spreading young oak for the lawn. How I long to have a pick of the "stock-ground" at Heatherside now,² to stock my garden with choice shrubs! I shall have a few of these, but go in chiefly for creepers & choice perennials especially lilies & bog and alpine plants. [3]

My "Island Life"³ is selling pretty well, but I am now turning to politics & especially to a great attack on unrestricted Private Property in Land. I do not know whether you saw my article on the "Nationalisation of the Land" in the Nov. Contemporary Rev[iew].⁴

It has attracted much attention among extreme radicals & I hope to follow it up by a pamphlet showing the numerous & widespread evils of Landlordism as distinguished from Occupying ownership.

With best wishes to yourself and family | Believe me | Yours faithfully | Alfred R Wallace [signature]