Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 332 pages of information about Alfred Russel Wallace.

Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 332 pages of information about Alfred Russel 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 inimitable, 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, he became transfigured to me.” ...  “The last time I saw Dr. Wallace,” writes Prof.  T.D.A.  Cockerell of Colorado, “was immediately after the Darwin Celebration 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 summer 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 a delightful characteristic.  ‘The inimitable puns of T. Hood were,’ he said, ’the delight of my youth, as is the more recondite and fantastic humour of Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll in my old age.’”

* * * * *

Wallace loved to give time and trouble in aiding young men to start in life, especially if they were endeavouring to become naturalists.  He sent them letters of advice, helped them in the choice of the right country to visit, and gave them minute practical instructions how to live healthily and to maintain themselves.  He put their needs before other and more fortunate scientific workers and besought assistance for them.

“The central secret of his personal magnetism lay in his wide and unselfish sympathy,” writes Prof.  Poulton.[66] “It might be thought by those who did not know Wallace that the noble generosity which will always stand as an example before the world was something special—­called forth by the illustrious man with whom he was brought in contact.  This would be a great mistake.  Wallace’s attitude was characteristic, and characteristic to the end of his life.

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Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.