A local lecture and Wallace's radical social views

Full transcription

Parkstone, Dorset.
Octr. 8th. 1893

My dear Violet,

I am sure I wrote you in reply to yours to me, & I only wanted to know how you got on, because, after the mere announcement that you had 17 kids this time, your next letter ignored them altogether, & we knew nothing of how you got on with them or what help you had &c. &c. &c! Now we are a little more posted up, but still you do not say if you have an assistant from the School, which I understand you were to have.

[written vertically on the left hand side of the page]
Let us know what Hughes says "Infants Mistress" comes here.

As to dollars, one equals 4s./2 =50 pence. Therefore 1.80 = 90d = 7s./6dpage 2]A simple sum for your cleverest pupils! In a few days I will send you a bag of potting stuff for the ferns, but at present everything is soaking and I have just got some bulbs which require my attention.

After a great deal of asking from Mr. Kelly I gave my lecture on "The Colours of Animals" to the Parkstone Institute on Thursday. They had a pretty fair lecture& it all went off very well. The Vicar preached a little at starting of course. On Wednesday we went to Canon Usherwood's to tea & your friend Miss King was there. I should not think you need be much afraid of her. Yesterday we had a lot to tea & she came with Mrs. Usherwood, the Pocock girls, & Mrs Brindley & one of the Miss B's.

The Miss Horns have moved to a smaller new house up the same road, & that is I think all the Parkstone news. The green pods are as green &as milky as ever. I cut one open & it was just the same as the one you had, & I have cut one off & laid it to dry. Perhaps it may ripen that way. There are a few left on which shall hang till 'Xmas when perhaps they may be ripe. The "Nineteenth Century" has not printed my Sunday article yet! I think I must stir up the Editor as he may have forgotten it. I should like to write about the Coal-strike & other things of that sort, but I am too radical for the big fashionable Reviews, &they won't have such things. I am just finishing two big articles on the Glacial Lake question which I think I have settled!
           Your affectionate Pa
[signed]       Alfred R. Wallace

Go back

Print version

Toolbox

Contact us

For enquiries about the Wallace Collection please email the library

Search this collection

Wallace Letters Online

Letter to Alfred Russel Wallace from the Royal Society, about his Darwin Medal award

View high resolution scans and transcripts of Alfred Russel Wallace's correspondence, including all surviving letters between him and Charles Darwin.

Explore Wallace's correspondence