Early Years 



as pupil teacher in return for the lessons received. This 

 arrangement, while acceptable on the one hand, caused 

 him actual mental and physical pain on the other, as it 

 increased his consciousness of the disabilities under which 

 he laboured in contrast with most of the other boys of his 

 own age. 



At the age of 14 Wallace was taken away from school, 

 and until something could be definitely decided about his 

 future — as up to the present he had no particular bent in 

 any one direction — he was sent to London to live with his 

 brother John, who was then working for a master builder 

 in the vicinity of Tottenham Court Road. This was in 

 January, 1837, and it was during the following summer 

 that he joined his other brother, William, at Barton-on- 

 the-Clay, Bedfordshire, and began land surveying. In the 

 meantime, while in London, he had been brought very closely 

 into contact with the economics and ethics of Robert Owen, 

 the well-known Socialist ; and although very young in years 

 he was so deeply impressed with the reasonableness and 

 practical outcome of these theories that, though consider- 

 ably modified as time went on, they formed the foundation 

 for his own writings on Socialism and allied subjects in 

 after years. 



As one of our aims in this section is to suggest an out- 

 line of the contrasting influences governing the early lives 

 of Wallace and Darwin, it is interesting to note that at 

 the ages of 14 and 16 respectively, and immediately on 

 leaving school, they came under the first definite mental 

 influence which was to shape their future thought and 

 action. Yet how totally different from Wallace's trials 

 as a pupil teacher was the removal of Darwin from Dr. 

 Butler's school at Shrewsbury because '^ he was doing no 

 good'' there, and his father thought it was 'Hime he 

 settled down to his medical study in Edinburgh," never 



15 



