From A. R. Wallace 24 November 1870
Holly House, Barking.E.
Novr. 24th. 1870
Dear Darwin
Your letter gave me very great pleasure. We still agree I am sure on nineteen points out of twenty, and on the twentieth I am not unconvinceable.1 But then I must be convinced by facts & arguments, not by high-handed ridicule such as Claparèdes.2
I hope you see the difference between such criticisms as his, & that in the last number of the N. American Review, where my last chapter is really criticised, point by point;3—& though I think some of it very weak I admit that some is very strong, & almost converts me from the error of my ways.
As to your new book I am sure it will not make me think less highly of you than I do, unless you do, what you have never done yet,—ignore facts & arguments that go against you.
I am doing nothing just now but writing articles and putting down anti-Darwinians, being dreadfully ridden upon by a horrid old-man-of-the-sea, who has agreed to let me have the piece of land I have set my heart on,4 & which I have been trying to get of him since last February, but who will not answer letters, will not sign an agreement, & keeps me week after week in anxiety though I have accepted his own terms unconditionally, one of which is that I pay rent from last Michaelmas! And now the finest weather for planting is going by. It is a bit of wilderness that can be made into a splendid imitation of a Welsh valley in little, & will enable me to gather round me all the beauties of the temperate flora which I so much admire,5—or I would not put up with the old fellow’s ways. The fixing on a residence for the rest of your life is an important event, and I am not likely to be in a very settled frame of mind for some time.
I am answering A. Murray’s Geog Dist of Coleoptera for my Ent. Soc Pres. Address,6 and am printing a 2nd. Edition of my ‘Essays’ with a few notes and additions.7
Very glad to see (by your writing yourself) that you are better, & with kind regards to all your family
Believe me Dear Darwin | yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace
My wife8 is suffering from face-neuralgia, otherwise we are pretty well.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Claparède, Edouard. 1870. Remarques à propos de l’ouvrage de M. Alfred Russel Wallace sur la théorie de la sélection naturelle. Archives des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles n.s. 38: 160–89.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Descent: The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1871.
Raby, Peter. 2001. Alfred Russel Wallace: a life. London: Chatto & Windus.
Slotten, Ross A. 2004. The heretic in Darwin’s court; the life of Alfred Russel Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wright, Chauncey. 1870. [Review of Contributions to the theory of natural selection, by Alfred Russel Wallace, 1870.] North American Review 111: 282–311.
Summary
On a good criticism of ARW’s views [North Am. Rev. (1870)].
Problems of establishing a permanent residence.
His Presidential Address for Entomological Society will answer A. Murray on geographical distribution of Coleoptera.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-7382
- From
- Alfred Russel Wallace
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Barking
- Source of text
- DAR 106: B94–5
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7382,” accessed on 20 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-7382.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 18
