Ɛpsilon

WCP7233

Letter (WCP7233.8429)

[1]

Holly House, Barking E.1

August 3rd. 1870

Dear Mrs. Mitten

I went yesterday to Margate, Broadstairs, & Ramsgate and succeeded in getting lodgings at Broadstairs, the prettiest situation in the town looking down on the cliffs and the beach closer in front.

We go on Saturday & shall be very glad if you will join us with one of the girls for a week if you can manage with one good sized bed. When you [2] return the other two can take your place.

We go from here by sail & steamboat, but it will I think be more convenient for you to go from Victoria Station by the cheap fast train & meet us at Broadstairs, as we shall be very busy Saturday morning getting ready to have the house shut up.

If you come by the mid day third class train to Victoria station, you will have an hours rest there in the Waiting Room & can take [3] your dinner, & then start at 3.10 reaching Broadstairs at 5.30 to tea, where I will meet you at the Station. The fare is only 4s. third class 7s/6d 1st. class.

There are beautiful sands for the children to play on close in front of the house & we can see them from the balcony. Last Saturday to Monday we spent at Sergeant Cox's2 Country House at Mill Hill, a perfect paradise of a place with woods, lawns, shrubs, flowers & glorious views over seven [4] counties. Mr. & Mrs. Crookes3 & Mrs Edmunds4 were there, but poor Annie5 got an attack of diarrhoea, but is better now.

Please write by return to say if we may expect you.

Yours very affectionately | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

Bring a new book or two if you can as it may be wet.

6My dear Mamma

I hope you will be able to come and spend a week with us as you promised you would when you were here, if you do not it will be a great shame. We thought as Papa7 is so busy just now, you could come & bring Flora8 for a week and then when you went Rose9 and Bessie10 could come. I hope you will be able to manage it [5]11 We are none of us very well and shall be glad of a change. Bertie12 does nothing but talk of going to the seaside.

Annie [signature]

1
ARW rented Holly House, Tanner Street, Barking from 22 March 1870 to 25 March 1872.
2

Cox, Edward William (1809-1879). British lawyer, entrepreneur and publisher. Co-founder of the Psychological Society for Great Britain in 1875.

His country house was Moat Mount. Cocks, R. 2009. Cox, Edward William (1809-1879). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

<https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6522> [accessed 24 Jan. 2022].

3
Crookes, William (1832-1919). British chemist, physicist, science journalist, and spiritualist.
4
Possibly the wife of Edmunds, James (1832-1911). British physician and surgeon.
5
Wallace (née Mitten), Annie (1846-1914). British. Wife of ARW; daughter of William Mitten.
6
The text that runs from this point is written by Annie, ARW's wife.
7
Mitten, William (1819-1906). Father-in-law of ARW; chemist and authority on bryophytes.
8
Mitten, Flora (1850-1941). Sister-in-law of ARW; daughter of William Mitten.
9
Mitten, Rose Elizabeth (c. 1848- ). Daughter of William Mitten; Sister-in-law of ARW.
10
Mitten, Bessie Jordan (1854-1936). Daughter of William Mitten; Sister-in-law of ARW.
11
The text which runs from this point to the end of the letter is written vertically up the lower left half of the page.
12

Wallace, Herbert Spencer ("Bertie") (1867-1874). Son of ARW.

.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP7233.8429)]

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

Revision history

Transcribed by Ghosh, Susan [2022-07-18]

Please cite as “WCP7233,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP7233