Alfred Russel Wallace 



Daily Post and Mercury. The reviewer devotes over three 

 columns almost wholly to the fads — as to all of which he 

 evidently knows absolutely nothing, but he is cocksure that 

 I am always wrong ! . . . — Yours very sincerely, 



Alfred R. Wallace. 



He always thought that he was deficient in the gift of 

 humour : " I am," he wrote to Mr. J. W. Marshall (May 

 6, 1905), " still grinding away at my autobiography. Have 

 got to my American lecture tour, and hope to finish by 

 about Sept. but have such lots of interruptions. I am 

 just reading Huxley's Life. Some of his letters are in- 

 imitable, but the whole is rather monotonous. I find there 

 is a good deal of variety in my life if I had but the gift of 

 humour ! Alas ! I could not make a joke to save my life. 

 But I find it very interesting." " Unless somebody," he 

 wrote to Miss Evans, " can make me laugh just before 

 the critical moment I always have a horrid expression in 

 photographs." Yet another observant friend remarked that 

 ^' he had a keen sense of humour. It was always his 

 boyish joyous exuberance which touched me. He never 

 grew old. When I had sat with him an hour he was a 

 young man, lie became transfigured to me." . . . *' The last 

 time I saw Dr. Wallace," writes Prof. T. D. A. Cockerell 

 of Colorado, '' was immediately after the Darwin Celebra- 

 tion at Cambridge in 1909. I was the first to give him the 

 details concerning it, and vividly remember how interested 

 he was, and how heartily he laughed over some of the funny 

 incidents, which may not as yet be told in print. One of 

 his most prominent characteristics was his keen sense of 

 humour, and his enjoyment of a good story." In the sum- 

 mer of 1885 he spent a holiday with Prof. Meldola at Lyme 

 Regis. " After our ramble," said the Professor, " we used 

 to spend the evenings indoors, I reading aloud the ' Ingoldsby 

 Legends,' which Wallace richly enjoyed. His humour was 



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