IN 1878 WALLACE PUBLISHED with Macmillan a scientific ode to the living world: “Tropical Nature” and Other Essays. It anticipates a concern for the environment that would not fully emerge until the twentieth century. No one in English science at the time—and certainly no one of Wallace’s stature—showed much interest in the ecological consequences of human encroachment on the natural world. Tropical Nature is the spiritual forerunner of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which was written some eighty years later, long after Tropical Nature had vanished into obscurity and a prophet from an earlier generation had been forgotten. Its main thrust, however, was to provide a detailed response to Darwin’s theory of the origin and purpose of coloration in the higher animals. If Wallace’s message about the destruction of the environment was lost, it was because he distracted his critics with other issues—in particular, his endless battle with Darwin over the importance of sexual selection.
Wallace began his study with a description of the distinctive climatic, floral, and faunal characteristics of the tropics. He called attention to the wanton clearing of virgin forests. Plant life and the climate were intimately related. In tropical and even in temperate countries, the rains were periodic and often torrential; when forests were cleared, the heavy rainfall quickly stripped off the topsoil, destroying in a few years the fertility that had been built up over centuries. Without plants, every particle of moisture in the subsoil evaporated in the intense heat of the sun. This process of desiccation interacted with the climate to produce long droughts relieved only by sudden and violent storms. Further cultivation thus was impossible. He noted that wide tracts of fertile land in southern Europe had been devastated in just this way. “Knowingly to produce such disastrous results would be a far more serious offence than any destruction of property which human labour has produced and can replace,” Wallace wrote. “Yet we ignorantly allow such extensive clearings for coffee cultivation in India and Ceylon, as to cause the destruction of much fertile soil which generations cannot replace, and which will surely, if not checked in time, lead to the deterioration of the climate and the permanent impoverishment of the country.”1
He then described in greater detail this fragile world threatened by humanity’s ill-considered actions. The abundance of animal life in the tropics had nothing to do with the sun’s light and heat, but with the uniformity and permanence of terrestrial conditions. Successive glacial periods had devastated temperate zones, whereas the equatorial regions remained relatively stable. The vicissitudes of climate imposed limits on variation, weeding out any form or color injurious to an animal, but such disadvantages were not experienced in the tropics, where the struggle for existence was always less severe. In the tropics, food was plentiful, shelter was easily obtained, geologic change was uncommon, and natural selection kept the “teeming mass of organisms” in harmonious balance. “The equatorial regions are then, as regards their past and present life history, a more ancient world than that represented by the temperate zones, a world in which the laws which have governed the progressive development of life have operated with comparatively little check for countless ages, and have resulted in those infinitely varied and beautiful forms … which delight and astonish us in the animal productions of all tropical countries.”2
The second part of his book consisted of an elaboration of his theory of coloration. Color, he insisted, had a purpose in nature; it was its absence, not its presence, that required explanation. Like the abundance of wildlife, color had nothing to do with the direct action of sunlight; contrary to the popular notion, brilliantly colored birds, insects, and flowers were no more numerous in tropical than in temperate regions.3 Wallace defined four classes of colors in animals: protective (mimicry being a subclass), warning, sexual, and typical (that is, species-specific). Every day, new cases of protective coloring were being discovered—though one could “hardly tell by the mere inspection of an animal whether its colours are protective or not.”4 While dwelling on the nature of color, Wallace digressed to discuss the wave theory of light, the structure of the retina, and the retina’s ability to perceive colors. Colors resulted from the underlying molecular structure of an object as well as chemical changes. Heat alone could bring about a color change. Pigmental colors varied according to their position in the integument: epidermal colors were deep and rich and tended not to fade after death; hypo-dermal colors were lighter, more vivid, and faded quickly. Like any trait, color varied and occasionally appeared where it had been absent. Natural selection eliminated tints that were injurious to a species and preserved and intensified those that were useful.5
Darwin, Wallace said, attributed almost all colors in birds and insects to sexual selection. The difference in coloration between the sexes of a species resulted from the transmission of color variations either to one sex only or to both sexes by some unknown laws. Wallace continued to believe that the primary cause of such sexual dimorphism was the need for protection. Bright colors were somehow suppressed in many female birds to make them inconspicuous while nesting. The “greater vigor” and “higher vitality” of the male led to his more vivid coloration. As evidence of the influence of vigor and vitality, he cited the dull coat of ill health and the glossy coat of well-being. The deepest intensity of color occurred in the breeding season, when “vitality was at a maximum.” The most vigorous and energetic male was more successful in siring offspring; hence natural selection would preserve or intensify color if color depended on or correlated with vigor. He reasoned that if variations in color could be traced to chemical or structural differences in the integument, then abnormal developments of hair, horns, scales, feathers, and other useless ornaments could just as easily be traced to the effects of increased vigor on different parts of the integument.6
Wallace disagreed with Darwin about the function of recognition colors. Recognition colors helped the sexes distinguish themselves from closely allied species and also guided the young to their parents. The white tail of the rabbit, which Darwin found useful only to the sportsman, was to Wallace a signal to the young to escape danger. The zebra’s stripes, which Darwin regarded as useless on the open African plains, alerted a straggler to the location of the herd or camouflaged the animal when foraging or resting in the bush. “Until the habits of the zebra have been observed with special reference to these points,” Wallace wrote, “it is surely somewhat hasty to declare that stripes ‘cannot afford any protection.’”7
While admitting that females exerted a choice, Wallace insisted that it had not been proved that color determined their choice; when a male displayed to a female, it might well be his persistence and energy rather than his beauty that won the day. Wallace could even explain the unwieldy headgear on some insects as arising from natural selection: “The long, pointed or forked horns [of beetles], often divergent, or movable with the head, would render it very difficult for … birds to swallow such insects and would therefore be an efficient protection.”8 But it was the study of Darwin’s case of the Argus pheasant that had caused Wallace to lose faith in the importance of sexual selection in birds and insects. He found it “absolutely incredible” that the long series of gradations—from simple daubs of color to the perfect ball-in-socket pattern in the sumptuous tail feathers of the males of the present-day species—could be traced to the preferences of tens of thousands of female birds over thousands of generations. Although he had no solution, he suggested that the answer might be found in unknown laws of physics or chemistry. He did, however, offer an explanation for the elaborate crests and other erectile feathers on male birds. These ornaments served to frighten away enemies rather than attract females, since they were displayed when the bird was angry or preparing for combat. The most pugnacious and defiant male would survive and pass his traits to his offspring. If sexual selection played any role in the natural world, it was that the most aggressive and vigorous males, which also happened to be the most ornamented, exerted the choice. “Natural selection, and what may be termed male selection,” Wallace wrote, “will tend to give them the advantage in the struggle for existence; and thus the fullest plumage and the finest colors will be transmitted, and tend to advance in each succeeding generation.”9 Natural selection, an “admitted vera causa,” explained it all.
Edward Percival Wright, in a review for Nature, complimented Wallace for writing “a most interesting volume on the peculiarities of tropical life.” Wallace’s theory of color, which Wright called a “molecular” theory, was for him the most important part of the book. Since it opposed Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, Tropical Nature could not fail to attract the attention of anyone interested in the subject. “Doubtless this theory will give rise to much controversy,” Wright concluded. “And in the course of this, no doubt, many important facts will be elucidated.”10 Darwin, however, would not give an inch. He found the terms “vigor,” “activity,” and “vitality” as incredible as Wallace had found his ideas on sexual selection. “I could say a good deal in opposition to you,” Darwin responded, “but my arguments would have no weight in your eyes, and I do not intend to write for the public anything on this or any other difficult subject.”11 Not long afterward, a thirty-year-old philosophical biologist named Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (better known as Grant Allen) sent Darwin and Wallace a copy of his own book, The Colour Sense, which adopted sexual selection as a vera causa of evolutionary change. Wallace praised the book’s overall quality but disagreed with its conclusions. Darwin, of course, was pleased. “I have no fear about [sexual selection’s] ultimate fate,” he told Allen. “Wallace’s explanation of, for instance, the display of a Peacock seems to me mere empty words.... For years I have quite doubted his scientific judgment, though admiring greatly his ingenuity and originality.”12
For the third time in two years, the Wallaces moved, this time to the village of Croydon, fifteen miles north of Dorking and closer to London. The reason Wallace gave for the move was that Croydon had a more pleasant climate and better schools, but in reality he was reliving the gypsy life of his childhood, when his family moved from place to place to reduce expenses. Having nearly drained his savings, he remained solvent with earnings from his writings for a variety of publications. But unless he secured a steady source of income, he would continue to totter toward bankruptcy.13 Despairing over his finances, he solicited help from Alexander Macmillan, who had rescued him in the past. “I am exceedingly anxious to obtain some regular literary employment that will bring me in a fixed income however moderate, having had a series of losses and misfortunes that render it very hard for me to get on,” Wallace confessed to Macmillan in July 1878. He proposed an assistant editorship for Nature if Joseph Norman Lockyer could use the help and Macmillan could afford the extra salary.14
Before Macmillan had a chance to reply, Wallace learned of an opening for a superintendent at Epping Forest, the last remaining wilderness area in the vicinity of London. Convinced that he was the best candidate for the job, he withdrew his request to Macmillan and directed his energy to procuring a position that he believed was more suited to his talents. The man he appealed to was Joseph Hooker, to whom he sent a petition for signature. “You will understand how unpleasant it is for me to have to lay before you so egotistical [a thing] as the accompanying paper,” Wallace wrote, “but you are no doubt well aware that it must be pretty strongly worded if it is to have any effect.”15 Hooker complied, and Wallace circulated the petition among other friends and acquaintances. In September he contacted Darwin, whose fame he felt would certainly improve his chances of obtaining the job.16 “I return the paper signed,” Darwin replied, “and most heartily wish that you may be successful, not only for your own sake, but for that of Natural Science, as you would then have more time for new researches.”17
Wallace attacked his new project in his overly zealous way, mapping out a vision of Epping Forest that differed from that of the politicians, who could not have cared less about its improvement. The members of the government’s search committee saw the forest as the site of excursions, picnics, and dinners for politicians at public expense. Hearing rumors that he planned to turn Epping Forest into a “Kew Garden,” Wallace dashed off an article for the Fortnightly Review to clarify his position and outline his plan to restore the forest to its original pristine state.18 One hot summer day—too hot for the black overcoat he usually wore when he went outdoors—he visited the forest with Annie, Will, and Violet, promising all sorts of delights if they moved nearby. He tried to interest nine-year-old Violet and seven-year-old Will in the uncommon plants he discovered, but they were too hot and uncomfortable to pay attention. After checking the ordnance map he invariably brought along on his hikes, he led them to a stream and delighted the children by showing them how to use a long piece of black rubber tubing as a straw to quench their thirst, while Annie, who worried about the quality of the water, looked on in some distress.19
As usual, the selection committee dragged its feet in making a decision. A year passed before Wallace was asked to attend a subcommittee interview as one of twelve candidates for the position. In the end, he was rejected in favor of a landscape gardener.20 Once again, his hopes had been dashed. Darwin wrote to express his condolences.
Wallace now considered applying for some post at a college of science in Birmingham, perhaps as registrar, curator, or librarian—anything.21 But he seems to have given up before even applying. Aged fifty-five, too old and too controversial, with no marketable skills or university degree, he could not find regular employment. England in 1879 appeared to have no use for a famous explorer-naturalist-spiritualist.
No one outside the immediate family comprehended the true nature of Wallace’s financial woes except Arabella Buckley. Without consulting Wallace, she turned to Darwin, suggesting that he and Hooker, being men of influence, find Wallace a modest post in which his expertise in natural history could be utilized and which would provide him with financial security.22 Moved by Buckley’s request, Darwin promised to do his best. It had already occurred to him to seek a government pension for Wallace; he told Buckley that he would write to Hooker for his opinion, which he did.23 Hooker replied at once, unleashing a torrent of words that took Darwin by surprise:
Wallace has lost caste considerably, not only by his adhesion to Spiritualism, but by the fact of his having deliberately and against the whole voice of the committee of his section of the British Association, brought about a discussion on Spiritualism at one of its sectional meetings. That he is said to have done in an underhanded manner, and I well remember the indignation it gave rise to in the B. A. Council.... Then there is the matter of his taking up the Lunatics’ bet about the sphericity of the earth, and pocketing the money.
In good conscience, therefore, Hooker could not solicit his friends to sign a petition on behalf of a man who had sullied the scientific profession. And even if he did support such a petition, he thought that it was the duty of scientific men to let those in the government know that Wallace was a leading spiritualist. If they did not, he warned, they would find themselves in an embarrassing position once the government learned the truth. Although he claimed to have no special “animus” toward Wallace, his letter was full of hostility. He was not moved by Wallace’s alleged desperation, noting that “after all Wallace’s claim is not that he is in need, so much as that he can’t find employment.”24 Darwin replied that spiritualism and the lunatics’ bet had never crossed his mind. He had thought only of Wallace’s distress and his service to natural history. He thanked Hooker for his insights and gave Buckley the bad news. Buckley was disappointed but philosophical. She had always felt, she told Darwin, that Wallace’s “want of earthly caution” would return to haunt him.25
While others argued his merits, Wallace was hard at work on another book on his favorite subject of geographic distribution. The main impetus for writing it was his desire to improve his scientific position, which was “continually” misunderstood. He also eyed the literary marketplace, informing Darwin in a letter dated January 1880 that he hoped to write something more accessible, popular—and profitable.26 Wallace had not communicated directly with Darwin for more than a year, though they lived closer to each other than ever, Croydon being less than ten miles from the village of Downe. Between September 1878 and January 1880, they had not exchanged a single letter. Toward the end of his life, when he reflected on this period, Wallace attributed the silence to the fact that Darwin was working on subjects that he knew nothing about, implying that Darwin contacted people only when he needed data.27 But Wallace made no overtures himself. The two men were worlds apart on certain issues. Wallace, a pariah, was a man best left alone to brood in isolation. Buckley would not have had to reveal the contents of Hooker’s letter to apprise him of his status in scientific circles.
An article by Wallace entitled “The Origin of Species and Genera,” published in the January 1880 issue of the periodical Nineteenth Century, prompted Darwin to warm up the cold peace. “You must allow me to express my lively admiration of your paper. … You certainly are a master in the difficult art of clear exposition,” Darwin wrote. He agreed with “almost everything … excepting the last short sentence.”28 Wallace had concluded his article with the following observation:
I have … attempted to show that the causes which have produced the separate species of one genus, of one family, or perhaps of one order from a common ancestor, are not necessarily the same as those which have produced the separate orders, classes, and subkingdoms from more remote common ancestors. That all have been alike produced by “descent with modification” from a few primitive types the whole body of evidence clearly indicates; but while individual variation with natural selection is proved to be adequate for the production of the former, we have no proof and hardly any evidence that it is adequate to initiate those important divergences of type which characterise the latter.
In his letter Darwin did not elaborate on their differing views. Twenty years later, Darwin’s son Francis asked Wallace if he truly held the opinion expressed in the final paragraph of his essay. Wallace did indeed hold this opinion, he told Francis, but the stress must be placed on the word “proof.” He said that Darwin, too, had maintained that there was no proof that the several great classes or kingdoms were descended from a common ancestor. Wallace, on the contrary, maintained that they were. Whether one could attribute to the action of natural selection the evolution of the different classes and kingdoms from a few primordial types was another question. “I do not say [it was] not sufficient,” Wallace told Francis. “I merely urge that there is a difference between proof and probability.”29
Wallace replied to Darwin’s letter with a touch of sarcasm: “It is a great pleasure to receive a letter from you sometimes, especially when we do not differ very much.” He moved on to the more congenial subject of his upcoming book, briefly outlining its contents. This book would be his last, he said, as he preferred to find some “easy” occupation for his declining years, one not too confining or involving much desk work. “You see I had some reason for writing to you; but do not trouble to write again unless you have something to communicate,” he advised. Darwin would not bother him again for another ten months.30
In early fall 1880, Wallace published—again with Macmillan—Island Life, a sequel to The Geographical Distribution of Animals. In his newest book, he applied scientific principles to the special case of islands. He had selected islands for study for two reasons: first, they were restricted areas with well-defined boundaries whose geographic and biological limits conveniently coincided; and, second, they were laboratories for the evolution of species. He wrote his book for a general audience that could more easily comprehend the laws governing island biogeography than the more complex laws regulating the larger and less well defined faunal boundaries of continental landmasses.31 Including geologic, paleontological, astronomical, meteorological, and other physical phenomena in the purview of evolutionary theory, he suggested how organisms were dispersed, underwent modification, and came to occupy their present island habitats. Presenting copious data, he demonstrated that the fragmentary groups and isolated forms found on islands were the relics of once widespread species, which had been preserved in a few localities where the physical conditions were conducive to their survival and the intensity of inter- and intraspecific competition had diminished significantly in comparison with the competition they faced on continents. It had taken him three years to complete the book. To fill in gaps in his knowledge, he had read extensively and corresponded with experts in the field. He even quoted his father-in-law, William Mitten, who alerted him to the curious affinity of Andean and British mosses.32 Although he had a clear plan in mind, he depended on inspiration to answer some of the special questions about plant and animal distribution. For example, he tackled the great problem of climate, hitting on what he considered a “true solution” of its cause only midway through. “Like most of my other theories,” Wallace confessed to his friend Raphael Meldola, a chemist with an interest in protective coloration, “it came upon me while writing, for when I began my book I had no notion of how to treat it.”33 Island Life delighted Darwin. It was almost as if the old Wallace had returned to the fold. “I have now read your book, and it has deeply interested me,” he wrote to Wallace in November. “It is quite excellent, and seems to me the best book which you have ever published; but this may be merely because I have read it last.” Tropical Nature may have wearied him, but Island Life did not. He sent seven pages of notes along with his letter, many critical, citing facts collected and kept in his files. Among other elements in the book that were “rather too speculative for my old noddle,” he disagreed with Wallace’s argument about the dispersal of seeds and spores from one mountain range to another or across other great distances, arguing that “I do not believe that there is at present any evidence of their being thus carried more than a few miles.”34
Wallace rarely yielded on any issue, and he did not yield on this one. He had new evidence that seeds could be carried great distances. He cited an article in Nature in which a botanist from Kew had described a number of alpine plants of Madagascar that were identical to several species flourishing on the mountains of Abyssinia, Cameroon, and other African regions. “[These] alpine plants could hardly have migrated over tropical forest lands,” Wallace argued, “while it is very probable that if they had been isolated at so remote a period, exposed to such distinct climatal and organic environments as in Madagascar and Abyssinia, they would have in both places retained their specific characters unchanged. The presumption is, therefore, that they are comparatively recent migrants, and if so must have passed across the sea from mountain to mountain.”35 Darwin replied that Madagascar had once extended far south during the glacial period, which allowed it to be “peopled” with African continental species through the agency of birds and sea currents. “How lamentable it is,” he wrote, “that two men should take such widely different views, with the same facts before them; but this seems to be almost regularly our case, and much do I regret it.”36
Wallace’s book garnered a slew of admiring reviews and letters. Archibald Geikie, one of the foremost geologists of his day, wrote in his review that Wallace “deserves the thanks alike of geologists and of biologists for a treatise, the appearance of which marks another epoch in the history of the doctrine of Evolution.”37 Hooker was also impressed. He told Wallace that Island Life was a first-rate book that brushed aside “more cobwebs” than any other book on the subject. To Darwin, he wrote (alluding to Darwin’s recent book The Power of Movement in Plants), “I am only two-thirds through Wallace and it is splendid. … [T]hat such a man should be a Spiritualist is more wonderful than all the movements of all the plants.”38
Island Life rekindled Darwin’s efforts to get Wallace a civil pension. Changing tactics, he bypassed Hooker and enlisted Thomas Huxley’s services instead. A compassionate man who had forgiven Wallace for his peccadillos long ago, Huxley accepted his mission “like a true knight.”39 He asked Darwin to draw up a full and condensed statement of Wallace’s claims. Once he had that in hand, he would approach Hooker himself and two or three others. Darwin then wrote to Buckley, requesting her to supply him with any hints or advice about Wallace’s present circumstances, adding, “I do most earnestly hope that we may succeed.”40
At this point, Buckley revealed to Darwin that Wallace was now fully aware of the scheme to help him. Wallace hesitated at first, not considering himself worthy of such an honor, but when she reminded him that two other prominent scientists, James Joule and Michael Faraday, had received civil pensions, he told her: “I confess it would be a very great relief to me and if such men as Darwin and Huxley think I may accept, [I] suppose I may.” Buckley composed a terse account of Wallace’s economic misfortunes. He was dependent primarily on his writings, she said, which were not very lucrative, “in an inverse ratio to their true value.” She listed three major accomplishments: his extensive collections from the Malay Archipelago, his contributions to the theory of natural selection, and “above all” his application of the theory to the geographic distribution of animals. (Darwin added a fourth: the mechanisms of coloration in animals.) Buckley suggested contacting George Douglas Campbell, the eighth duke of Argyll, who served in William Gladstone’s cabinet. The duke, an amateur geologist of some note, was not one of Darwin’s favorite people, in part because of his strong public resistance to the theory of natural selection and other “unphilosophical” views. These reservations aside, Darwin wondered about the propriety of asking a cabinet minister to sign a petition to the prime minister. It was decided that Campbell would act as intermediary.41
One morning, Darwin composed a long and full statement about Wallace, polishing and elaborating on Buckley’s notes, and dispatched it to Huxley for emendations, remarking that “I hardly ever wished for anything more than I do for the success of our efforts.” Huxley was able to coax Hooker into cooperating by dispelling one of his “grave” objections: the bet with John Hampden. He insisted that Wallace had not pocketed the money but had given it away to charity. It seems that Huxley confabulated this story to mollify Hooker, since Wallace had had no money to give away except what he paid to his lawyers. The other objection, the belief in spiritualism, was no longer sufficient in Huxley’s (or Darwin’s) mind to diminish Wallace’s “claim on the gratitude” of his country. Since Wallace already had made his heretical views public, Hooker suggested that they were free to inform the prime minister of the heresy while emphasizing that in the view of his fellow scientists it did not invalidate his right to a pension.42 Darwin was pleased with Hooker’s change of heart and congratulated Huxley on his wonderful management of the affair. “I cannot see that there is the least necessity to call any Minister’s attention to Spiritualism,” Darwin concluded, “or to repeat (what you said) to Gladstone—that Spiritualism is not worse than the prevailing superstitions of this country!”43
For two months, the “Wallace affair” obsessed Darwin, leaving him little time and energy for anything else, according to his daughter Henrietta.44 When he finally heard from the duke, who reported that he had written to Gladstone to express his “high” approval for the pension, Darwin was jubilant. The price he had to pay, however, was a social call. “The Duke wants to come to Down,” Darwin complained to his son Francis. “The Lord have mercy on me—but I shall write and offer to call on him when next in London.”45
The memorandum composed by Darwin and Huxley was passed around the scientific community. For a month, it languished in Henry Bates’s hands without further action, until an anxious Darwin contacted him. Greatly disappointed at the delay, he feared that the prime minister would soon be too busy with the new session of Parliament to deal with this private concern.46 That day, Bates forwarded it to Huxley, and on January 5, 1881, it was presented to Gladstone, who approved it within two days, announcing that he had done so in a personal letter to Darwin. Darwin exclaimed to his wife, “Hurrah, hurrah! … Was it not extraordinarily kind in Mr. Gladstone to write himself?... The Duke of Argyll’s private note to Mr. Gladstone seems to have done good service.”47
Darwin reported the full details to Wallace on the day of Gladstone’s announcement. He wished to spread the credit among many other people, especially Huxley and Buckley, and he quoted Gladstone’s note: “I lose no time in apprising you that although the Fund is moderate and at present poor, I shall recommend Mr. Wallace for a pension of 200 pounds a year.” In his usual meticulous manner, Darwin promised to keep the note on file in case Gladstone’s government fell and the next government reneged on the agreement. “I hope that it will give you some satisfaction,” he informed Wallace, “to see that not only every scientific man to whom I applied, but that also our Government appreciated your lifelong scientific labour.” Wallace was grateful, responding that news of the pension was a “very joyous surprise,” coming as it did on the day before his fifty-eighth birthday. “As I am assured both by Miss Buckley and by Prof. Huxley that it is to you that I owe in the first place this great kindness, and that you have also taken an immense amount of trouble to bring it to so successful issue, I must again return you my best thanks, and assure you that there is no one living to whose kindness in such a matter I could feel myself indebted with so much pleasure and satisfaction.”48
It has been suggested that Darwin’s efforts to secure Wallace a pension were an act of expiation for his behavior in what one commentator has characterized as “the sordid conspiracy and cover-up surrounding his obsession with priority.”49 If so, no one appears to have harbored this perception at the time. Hooker, one of the alleged conspirators, evidently felt no guilt or remorse. Nor does anything in Darwin’s extensive correspondence support this view. What seems more likely is that Darwin was glad to do a favor for a man who had sacrificed his self-interest on Darwin’s behalf in the name of science. Obtaining a lifetime pension for Wallace was small repayment for his extraordinary generosity. If Darwin felt any guilt, it was for his privileged position and cloistered life as a near-invalid. At the conclusion of the manuscript of his Autobiography, he added—but did not publish—the following remark: “I feel not remorse from having committed any great sin, but have often and often regretted that I have not done more direct good to my fellow creatures.”50
Although the annual sum of £200 was not considerable, its regularity alleviated much of Wallace’s anxiety and stress. Supplemented by the income from his writings, the pension allowed Wallace to hope that he could live in modest comfort for the rest of his life and continue to devote himself to those causes calculated to do “direct good to [his] fellow creatures.”
Not long after obtaining the civil pension, Wallace built a small house in the village of Godalming, more than thirty miles southwest of central London, and the family moved once again in the early summer of 1881. He had been partly induced to move there, he later wrote, to be near his old friend Charles Hayward, who had owned the bookshop in Neath and had introduced the young Wallace to the scientific literature. Wallace and Hayward had remained in touch over the years. Hayward had moved to Godalming after the death of his wife and lived with a nephew, an architect whose children were about the same age as Violet and Will. At the age of seventy-two, Hayward had taken up the new hobby of painting in watercolors, creating his own pigments from natural products and producing what Wallace judged to be “a number of bold and effective landscapes.” Perhaps more important to Wallace than its charming rural scenery was the fact that Godalming had an excellent school for his two children. Nutwood Cottage, as he called his new home, was located on half an acre of land ideally suited for a good working garden. He added a small greenhouse and cultivated more than a thousand species of plants, most of which he acquired free from Kew Gardens. But if his peers hoped that Wallace would henceforth concentrate on scientific endeavors, they were to be disappointed. He now applied himself to more pressing issues. While Darwin had been preoccupied with securing Wallace’s future, Wallace had already embarked on a project that had nothing to do with either his science or his personal finances: the land question.
Wallace’s concern for social injustice had intensified with age. As a young land surveyor, he had not been goaded into action by the inequitable distribution of land that he witnessed firsthand, though he sympathized with the plight of the landless majority. When he returned from the Amazon, he read Herbert Spencer’s Social Statics, published in 1851, which, among other issues, addressed the subject of political and social reform in relation to the use of the land. This book inspired him to mobilize some of his friends to discuss the implications of Spencer’s analysis, but no one was interested in gathering for the weekly meetings he proposed. Fifteen years later, in 1869, his indictment of contemporary English society in the epilogue of The Malay Archipelago attracted the attention of John Stuart Mill, who asked Wallace to serve as a member of the general committee of his proposed Land Tenure Reform Association, an invitation Wallace accepted. Unfortunately, it dissolved shortly after Mill’s death in 1873.51
Although Wallace intermittently ruminated about the land problem for the remainder of the decade, between 1871 and 1879 he wrote only a handful of articles on social and political issues. Nevertheless, as the decade progressed he became embittered with English justice and its labyrinthine legal system, in part because of his own unfortunate experiences with it. His profound ignorance of the conduct of domestic and international business led him to the brink of financial ruin, providing him with a firsthand example of the vulnerability of ordinary citizens to the predations of ruthless speculators, and his ostracism by the orthodox scientific community exemplified the intolerance of the majority toward minority views. By 1879, he doubtless felt besieged on all sides. After a period of isolation, contemplation, and research, he projected his frustrations outward. In 1879 he set out to attack those institutions and policies responsible for the miseries of the common man—and his own. Thus began the next phase of his life: a foray into the world of politics, not as a politician but as a philosopher acting behind the scenes to effect a change in social policy. His energies—directed first toward evolutionary biology and then toward spiritualism—now found a practical application in the political sphere.
Wallace’s political debut was marked by an examination of the question of free trade. It was a subject that had piqued his interest a number of years earlier during his brief friendship with Augustus Mongredien, who had written a book on free trade. What now provoked Wallace was a recent book entitled Free Trade and Protection, by Henry Fawcett, a professor of political economy at Cambridge, whose arguments astonished and offended him. Wallace believed that England’s trade policy was antiquated because it was based on fifty-year-old assumptions and tailored to a world then dominated by English manufacturers. For more than a generation, England had thrown open its doors to the world, importing food and other goods from all nations without imposing import taxes. By the 1870s, other countries were producing similar commodities and challenging England’s hegemony in international trade. Many of these countries taxed British imports while subsidizing and exporting their own goods, which resulted in an imbalance of trade in favor of the foreign competitor at the expense of English manufacturers and the English working classes. These competitors enjoyed a virtual monopoly in their own countries, profiting on goods sold at home and underselling the surplus to the open markets of England. English manufacturers watched their profits plummet, while English workers were forced into unemployment. Fawcett advocated imposing tariffs in order to take revenge and make the people of these nations suffer too. He singled out France and the United States, whose policies inflicted loss and inconvenience on the English peoples. Such an argument, Wallace said, was unworthy of a man of Fawcett’s high reputation. In an article published in the April 1879 issue of Nineteenth Century (later collected in a book of his essays), Wallace wrote: “The desire of our manufacturers and workmen to enjoy the legitimate benefits of free trade and to be guarded against the injury admitted to be done to them by the arbitrary and uncertain departures from its principle by other nations is a very different thing from ‘retaliation’ or a revengeful wish to make others suffer.” Wallace proposed the simpler, more equitable solution of reciprocity—that is, the imposition of the same import duty on articles from protectionist countries as was imposed on identical exports from Britain, thereby restoring the balance of trade: “[The] great thing is, that we shall obtain stability. Our capitalists and workmen will alike feel that foreign protectionist governments can no longer play upon our industries as they please, for their own benefit.”52 Wallace’s theme was justice for the working class, the backbone of English manufacturing.
The reply to his article was swift and caustic. The respondent, Robert Lowe, the first viscount Sherbrooke, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer under William Gladstone from 1868 to 1874, was famed for his irascibility; he lambasted Wallace as a political naïf who had stepped too far beyond the boundaries of his scientific work. Wallace’s proposal was protectionism in sheep’s clothing and contained nothing commendable. He reserved his most conclusive objection to the very last, “an objection which appears to me so complete and absolute that I am convinced, had it occurred to Mr. Wallace, the article we are considering would never have been written.” Wallace’s retaliatory measures, he said, were in effect an admission of weakness where there was none. Only the weak imposed protective duties; a superior commodity did not require protection. Lowe concluded that “protective duties may be a sword in the hand of the weak; they can never be a weapon of offence in the hands of the strong.”
Lowe’s “very forcible, not to say violent and contemptuous article” did not intimidate Wallace, who was unimpressed by his aristocratic assailant’s “gutter tactic, … usually exercised in the House of Commons,” of flatly denying facts that a previous speaker had presented as undisputed. “Amused and disgusted,” he responded in the July issue of Nineteenth Century. “The fact that such protected goods are imported into this country, and do compete successfully with our own, must surely be known to Mr. Lowe,” Wallace wrote in “A Few Words in Reply to Mr. Lowe,” “and I am afraid the most charitable view we can take is, that this article was written with some of that want of consideration which he so confidently alleges against myself.” Lowe’s privileged status, Wallace implied, made him insensitive to the true consequences of a regressive policy that had been established in a different era under different circumstances, when the cheapness of English goods guaranteed English prosperity and when no other nation, it was believed, could or would compete successfully with England. While a large segment of the English population in the 1870s suffered as a result of the importation of cheap goods, the wealthier minority benefited because they did not lose their jobs as a result of an imbalance in free trade and were free to buy whatever they wanted. “Mr. Lowe’s arguments and sarcasms may pass for what they are worth,” Wallace concluded.53
The eruption of unrest in Ireland in 1879 and 1880 over the tyranny of Protestant landlords inspired Wallace to articulate his latest views on the land question. Wallace objected to a proposed government buyout of the landlords and the conversion of their tenants into “peasant-proprietors” who would repay the mortgage of the land over thirty-five years. This policy, Wallace believed, would only create another privileged class, while the rest of the Irish remained disinherited from their native soil.54 In a November 1880 article in the Contemporary Review, he proposed that the land gradually revert to the state, from which tenants could then rent it. To make the transition as palatable as possible, he said, the state could assess the value of the land in two ways: according to its inherent value as determined by “nature and society,” and its value as a result of improvements made on it by the owner and his predecessors.55 The proposal was audacious, especially given Darwin’s attempt to obtain for Wallace a civil pension from the Gladstone government. Like most members of the upper classes, Gladstone believed not only that landlords were a part of the natural rural order but also that no solution to the land question was possible without their active participation. Gladstone had initiated his own version of land reform in 1870 during his first administration—a half measure intended to mollify both proponents and opponents.56
Although Wallace’s opinion apparently did not influence Gladstone’s decision to award him the civil pension, his article created a stir among proponents of land reform. Spearheaded by a political activist named A.C. Swinton, several meetings were held to discuss a definite program, which led to the formation of the Land Nationalisation Society in early 1881, with headquarters in London at 57 Charing Cross.57 Wallace was elected its first president, a position he would hold until the end of his life. It is unclear if he was compensated for his work, but he felt so strongly about this cause that he doubtless would have accepted the post without remuneration. Underscoring his commitment to the issue of social equity, he later took as his motto Fiat justitia, ruat coelum (If Justice be done, the heavens will fall; that is, the impossible will happen).58 He and his small circle of land reformers quickly issued a mission statement identifying three goals: (1) to affirm that the state holds land in trust for each generation, (2) to restore to all people their natural right to use and enjoy their native land, and (3) to obtain revenue from the land for the benefit of the nation as a whole. The society would supply lecturers to anyone willing to support their cause. Because the founding members were impecunious, they made a special appeal to all those who realized that “the gigantic and perilous pauperism and demoralisation of the nation are mainly due to the existing land system.”59 One person Wallace solicited for support was Herbert Spencer, who wrote back to express his general sympathy for the society but declined to join. He recommended first directing the public’s attention to “the abstract inequity of the present condition of things” and to a law that already existed and tacitly denied absolute private ownership, leaving the state the right and power to repossess the land for a number of reasons after duly compensating the owner. He feared that the government would object to a premature proposal of a specific scheme without wider public support.60
Although he was disappointed by Spencer’s refusal to join, Wallace accepted his advice and composed a handbook to introduce the land question to a larger audience. As usual, he read everything he could find on the issue, including voluminous reports on agriculture, Irish famines, and other relevant material collected by the government. His investigations only increased his disgust with the social injustice at the heart of the land monopoly in Great Britain. Land, he felt, was as much a basic right as food, clothing, and shelter. It was also every person’s natural heritage, like air and water. Yet in the late nineteenth century, a handful of the population held the majority of land in Great Britain, wielding enormous power over the lives of everyone else. Wallace uncovered numerous facts, many of which were unfamiliar to the general public. For example, 536 peers owned 15 million acres, or 20 percent of the British Isles, and extracted £18 million a year in rent “without lifting a finger.” Taxes from tenants amounted to £44 million a year, while the peers, through their influence on legislation, contributed less than 1 percent of their general share of revenue from the lands they owned. Land monopoly necessitated the importation of enormous quantities of food from foreign countries—commodities that easily could have been produced at home if England’s landowners played fair. Instead, despotic landlords taxed tenant farmers to such a degree that farming was neither safe nor profitable. There was not one aspect of English life, Wallace believed, that the monopolization of land did not touch. Every social, economic, or political problem could be traced back to the land question—including the depression of trade, widespread poverty, starvation wages, unemployment, homelessness, urban overcrowding, and even drunkenness, immorality, and crime. It was a great web ensnaring everything. Without land reform, Wallace felt, England could not hope to become a just society.61
Not long after the formation of the Land Nationalisation Society, Wallace read American economist Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, which he called “the most startling and original book” of the past twenty years.62 One chapter in particular caught his attention. George had subverted the Malthusian doctrine that population growth would outstrip the food supply and lead to a reduction in wages and greater poverty. The injustice of society, George asserted, not the limits of nature, caused destitution and misery. Under the right social conditions population growth ought to increase the collective power of people to provide for one another, not diminish it. Furthermore, overproduction, as other social theorists claimed, had nothing to do with the phenomenon of the impoverishment of the working classes. The fundamental cause, he said, was that people were shut off from the land, which was the main source of wealth in any society. And the only way to redress this wrong was to return the land to the people, who would rent it from the state. He also proposed a single tax on that rent to simplify the burdensome tax system that plagued both the old European societies and the newer American one: all taxes on labor, industry, and trade that impeded their free development should be abolished. Progress and Poverty stirred the collective imagination of the English public and became a best-seller in 1882.63 A hero in the Wallace mold, George had left school at the age of thirteen and voyaged around the world, working as a cabin boy for three years before disembarking in San Francisco and entering the printing business. As he watched a small number of men amass great fortunes while many others became paupers, he felt great compassion for the working people. He emphasized the paradox of American society: that increased wealth led to greater, not lesser, poverty. Wallace was pleased by the remarkable similarity in their views, having identified the same root problem. George’s message harmonized with Wallace’s own Utopian vision of a better world.
Wallace tried to whip up support for the Land Nationalisation Society among his friends. Arabella Buckley was one of his sounding boards; Darwin, another. Wallace recommended George’s book to Darwin, noting the elaborate discussion of Malthus, “to [whom] you and I have acknowledged ourselves indebted.” Darwin agreed that “something ought to be done” about land reform but did not share Wallace’s affinity for books on political economy, which twisted his brain more than it was already twisted. Fearing the distraction of yet another nonscientific obsession, Darwin lamented, “I hope you will [not] turn renegade to natural history; but I suppose that politics are very tempting.”64
After Wallace completed his handbook on land reform in November 1881, calling it Land Nationalisation; Its Necessity and Its Aims; Being a Comparison of the System of Landlord and Tenant with that of Occupying in their Influence on the Well-being of the People, he approached Alexander Macmillan with the idea of publication. Since this was his first attempt to publish a nonscientific work, he mustered all his marketing skills. One of his earlier essays on the subject, he told Macmillan, had won a number of important converts to the cause, who had underwritten the preliminary expenses of his nascent organization. To make the book easy to buy, he asked for a cheap paperback edition, all but promising to arrange for the acquisition of a thousand copies for distribution to working-class people. He considered the book to be the most important he had ever written; never before had anyone seen the facts he was about to bring forth. The publication of the book was urgent, and he expected a brisk sale.65
Wallace dedicated his book to the workingmen of England in the hope that revealing to them the chief cause of their misery would promote the radical reform necessary to give them a share of the wealth they had created for the privileged few. As he stated in the preface, his object was to teach the landless classes the nature of their rights and the way to gain those rights; it was thus a handbook of sorts, not an academic treatise. Unlike Marxists, he did not seek to overthrow the present system of government, nor did he expect the working class to seize power; he asked for justice for the mass of humanity. Without dwelling on the historical basis of land monopoly, he pointed to the fundamental error in the British social system, “the leading idea which has governed all social and industrial legislation for the last fifty years: that whatever favours and assists the production of wealth and the accumulation of capital by individuals, necessarily advances the well-being of the whole community.” Wallace sympathized with the landlords and clearly understood that the loss of their hereditary entitlements would lead to the loss of their primary source of wealth. But he kept the common good uppermost in his vision of a just society. He also addressed the concerns of men like Spencer by proposing safeguards against the abuses of the state during the transition period.66
Although Macmillan agreed to publish Land Nationalisation, threats to the publisher compelled Wallace to switch to a new publishing house (Trübner). Wallace had vividly recounted the central role of a man involved in the infamous Sutherland evictions in Scotland, which began in 1807 and continued for some fourteen years. The man’s sons were angered by Wallace’s inflammatory report. He removed the name of the perpetrator but refused to omit the episode. According to his account, the marquis of Stafford, an English landowner, had purchased an estate of seven hundred thousand acres populated by fifteen thousand herdsmen and small farmers, who, in the course of a few years, were ordered to vacate their homes. Some relocated to the coast, where they were given small plots of land; others moved to Canada. In their place, Stafford and his agents brought in thirty-nine sheep farmers and their shepherds. Although the public believed that the process of relocation had been gentle and humane, one of the former tenants published an exposé in 1856 that cast an entirely different light. During their removal, he wrote, families suffered terribly. Most people were forced to sleep outside as they literally dismantled their homes, and some died from exposure or exhaustion. Crops were ruined through neglect. At first, people were allowed to move out at their own pace. But then the pace of relocation accelerated, and the evictions became more brutal. Houses were demolished with furnishings and personal items still inside. Crops were deliberately destroyed. Unknown numbers of people perished. Moreover, the new home sites were often worthless patches of moor or bog unsuitable for cultivation. Only the treatment of the Irish, Wallace declared, surpassed the brutality of the Sutherland evictions.67
In late 1881, Henry George came to Great Britain, stopping first in Dublin. From Dublin, he sent a letter to Wallace describing his initial impressions of English rule in Ireland. He had not intended to speak publicly on the issue of land reform before arriving in England itself, he wrote, but he could not keep silent about the “degrading tyranny now rampant.” After making inflammatory statements in a public lecture about the British government, he was arrested and then released after a brief detention. In London, George spoke at several of the meetings of the Land Nationalisation Society, where he and Wallace became formally acquainted. Unlike Wallace, George was an accomplished public speaker, delivering his lectures in a slow, deliberate manner and underscoring his message with dramatic pauses. His lecture tour augmented the sale of his book, which by 1882 approached a hundred thousand copies in the United States and Britain. Land Nationalisation eventually went through five editions and, according to Wallace, had a large circulation, but its sales paled in comparison with those of Poverty and Progress. It is not clear why Wallace’s book failed to create an equivalent stir, since it differed little from George’s book. Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb has suggested that what differentiated George from Wallace was the specific mechanism—the single-tax scheme—that George proposed for carrying out nationalization, “much as the distinction and fame of Darwin and … Wallace came not from the theory of evolution as such but from the particular mechanism that explained the process of evolution.”68 But there may have been other reasons. Perhaps Wallace’s style was too didactic. He did not mince words; he was clear and direct. George, abstract and idealistic, knew how to tug at the reader’s heartstrings. George was also younger and more charismatic, and he loved the podium as an actor loves the stage. Wallace, shy and uncomfortable in large social forums, was undoubtedly less effective in communicating his message. But Americans also possessed a certain mystique. Epidemic delusions, whether spiritual or socialist, swept from west to east across the Atlantic. If Wallace’s book had appeared first, it might have been more successful. The fact remains that George’s book, not Wallace’s, influenced the younger generation of English intellectuals and work-ingpeople.69 Second-tier status never bothered Wallace, however. Dedicated to his cause, he took to the road with his fellow reformers in the Land Nationalisation Society, invading the towns and villages of England in yellow vans and preaching to anyone interested in their humanitarian message. By the mid-1890s, the society had sponsored more than three hundred “van meetings” and nearly five hundred lectures since its inception, modestly affecting public opinion while failing to achieve radical social change.70
Wallace had not altogether abandoned his science. During this period, he continued to publish reviews, articles, and letters in Nature. Some of them clarified and defended his theories on geographic distribution. He carried on a lively argument with his good friend Raphael Meldola on the coloration of arctic animals. In July 1881, he proposed a highly original theory of the origin of language in a review of Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilisation, a new book by Edward Burnett Tylor. Wallace was especially critical of Tylor’s remarks on the origin of human languages. Tylor doubted the sufficiency of the theory that emotional, imitative, and suggestive sounds were the basis on which all languages were founded. Language, he noted, is always growing, and new words are continually made “by choosing fit and proper sounds.” Words once emotional or imitative had been modified to a great degree, concealing their original and less abstract characteristics. Yet Tylor still concluded that it would be “unscientific” to accept this theory of the origin of language because “other causes”—which he did not enumerate—may have had a greater impact. However, it seemed to Wallace that the imitative and emotional origin of language was “demonstrated by a body of facts almost as extensive and complete as that which demonstrates the origin of species by natural selection, and that the ‘other causes’ are in both cases exceptional and subordinate.” He then proceeded to call attention to the wide and far-reaching character of imitative words, demonstrating the degree to which the force, expressiveness, and beauty of human languages depend on them. He gave examples of a number of onomatopoeic English words to prove his point. We see a splash; cold makes us shiver, we hear a knock; we feel a stumble: “How clearly do such words as slide, glide, and wave imply slow and continuous motion, the movement of the lips while pronouncing the latter word being a perfect double undulation. How curiously do the tongue and palate seem to be pulled apart from each other while pronouncing the words glue and sticky.” Even in the motion of the breath, one could detect meaning. The words “in,” “out,” “up,” “down,” “elevate,” and “depress” were all “pronounced with an inspiration and expiration respectively, the former being necessarily accompanied with a raising, the latter with a depression, of the head.” We pronounce “come” with a closure and contraction of the lips during inspiration, and “go” with open and protruding lips during expiration: “When we name the mouth or lips we use labials; for tooth and tongue, dentals; for the nose and things relating to it, nasal sounds; and this peculiarity is remarkably constant in most languages, civilised and savage.” Wallace noted that many savages pointed with the lips as we did with the finger.
As Wallace later boasted, he “enormously” extended the principle of onomatopoeia in the origin of vocal language.71 In this, as in many other instances, his ingenuity astonished his contemporaries. Hyde Clarke, a noted English anthropologist, recognized a new avenue of study: “Indeed what Mr. Wallace gives us is very little, but when it comes to be applied it acquires the highest importance.” He carried Wallace’s idea into the realm of psychology, symbology, and mythology—to the intimate connection between sign languages and speech languages, noting that the latter evolved from but did not completely eradicate the former. “I have derived particular advantage from Mr. Wallace in being enabled to understand my own work,” he confessed. In 1895 Wallace expanded his review into a longer article. After reading this article, William Gladstone, in his other guise as classical scholar, informed Wallace that there were many thousands of illustrations of Wallace’s ideas in the Iliad and the Odyssey.72
Many such gems are buried in the reviews that Wallace churned out to earn a few extra shillings. With the fecundity of a Mozart, he created little masterpieces in minor art forms. He rarely produced hackwork and could not write unless inspired—and there was nothing more inspiring than the nature of the human species, a problem that kept him awake at night and stimulated his imagination. During his travels, he had amassed extensive vocabularies, notes, and artifacts with the apparent intention of preparing a full anthropological treatment of Homo sapiens in the tradition of ethnologists James Cowles Prichard and William Lawrence, but his materials from Brazil had been destroyed as a result of the fire aboard the Helen. He had greater success in the Far East. In an appendix of The Malay Archipelago, he provided a list of 117 words in 33 distinct languages. But he never got around to writing a treatise on the subject of the human species, either because other projects distracted him from this monumental task or because others—Darwin, Huxley, Sir Charles Lyell, and John Lubbock—covered the same ground. Instead, his novel ideas crop up in letters to colleagues and in a number of shorter essays. His anthropological theories are not appreciated today in part because they appeared in a variety of publications over a period of decades, just as his early writings on evolution had appeared piecemeal in obscure journals read only by a specialized audience.
Darwin sent his last letter to Wallace in July 1881. He expressed a weariness of life that Wallace probably ignored, since matters of health were common in letters from Darwin. But this time Darwin was speaking the truth. Over the next several months, his health declined. In March 1882, he suffered chest pains and developed an irregular pulse following even the slightest physical effort, which prevented him from taking his favorite stroll along the Sand-walk. Even at rest, he felt exhausted and faint. When he realized that he would never work again, he fell into a deep depression. His personal physician, whose office was in London, could make house calls only on rare occasions. Huxley wanted Darwin to move to London, but Darwin preferred to stay at Down. In the middle of the night on April 18, he developed severe nausea and “a distressing sense of weakness.” Several times he lost consciousness. He remained in a state of anxiety until fifteen minutes before his death, which occurred at 4:00 P.M. on April 19, the result of complications related to heart disease.73
Darwin had expressed a wish to be buried at Down, but William Spottiswoode, president of the Royal Society, and a number of government dignitaries, including twenty members of Parliament, persuaded Darwin’s family to have him buried in Westminster Abbey alongside other illustrious Englishmen; his crypt was placed only a few feet away from that of Sir Isaac Newton. In granting permission for the placement of the crypt, the dean of Westminster, the Reverend George Granville Bradley, had elected to ignore Darwin’s agnosticism. The funeral service began precisely at noon on April 26. It was an imposing gathering, Francis Galton observed in a letter to his sister Emma later that day. The whole “family” of scientific men filled the pews. Meanwhile, the Darwin family had selected ten men as pallbearers, among them the duke of Argyll, who as a cabinet minister and man of science represented the government. The duke and Wallace brought up the rear—Wallace having been asked by George Darwin (at the prompting of Huxley) only at the last minute, which narrowly averted a serious faux pas. Spottiswoode, Lubbock, Huxley, and Hooker, representing English science, also helped carry the casket. Several cabinet ministers paid their final respects. Gladstone and the queen did not. “Thus all shades of opinion and station were merged,” Galton wryly noted. Except for the tallest pallbearers, the solemn procession up the nave to the chancel was invisible to most of the congregation and sank out of sight in “a trough of crowded humanity.” A hymn specially composed for the occasion included some lines from Proverbs: “Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding...” (3:13). The rest of the service seemed perfunctory to Gal-ton, like a graduation ceremony.74
Huxley wrote the most famous eulogy, in which he declared in his characteristically histrionic style that Darwin had “found a great truth, trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and ridiculed by all the world; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his own efforts, irrefragably established in science, inseparably incorporated with the common thoughts of men, and only hated and feared by those who would revile him but dare not.”75 Wallace’s, written a year later for the Century Magazine and reprinted in the 1895 edition of Tropical Nature, was equally moving. “However much our knowledge of nature may advance in the future,” Wallace predicted, “it will certainly be by following in the pathways he has made clear for us; and for long years to come the name of Darwin will stand for the typical example of what the student of nature ought to be. And if we glance back over the whole domain of science, we shall find none to stand beside him as equals.”
Two months after Darwin’s death, on June 29, Trinity College, University of Dublin, awarded Wallace the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws based on the recommendation of the Reverend Samuel Haughton, the senior lecturer in geology. Haughton had long ago forgiven Wallace for his spirited rebuttal of his article on beehives. Even a heated argument about geologic climates carried on between Wallace and Haughton in several issues of Nature in late 1880 and early 1881 had done nothing to lessen Haughton’s estimation of him.76 Wallace, who had an aversion to ceremonies, nevertheless accepted the honor. He later recalled that a short but “flattering Latin speech” by the public orator introduced him as “the friendly rival of Darwin”; it continued: “Equally familiar to both are the different species and varieties of animals. Darwin, indeed, was the first to pluck the golden laurel-branch. Yet through this did Wallace suffer no eclipse; for as Virgil sang—’One branch removed, another was to hand: Another, bright and golden as the first.’” Before leaving Dublin, Wallace had breakfast with Haughton and other members of a committee from the Zoological Gardens, whose “instructive and witty” conversation he enjoyed. “The brilliant midsummer morning, the cosy room and friendly party assembled rendered this one of the many pleasant recollections of my life,” he wrote in his autobiography.77 The award was an important step in Wallace’s scientific rehabilitation, and he seemed grateful for the recognition.
Throughout these difficult decades, Wallace had rarely been ill. Now and then he suffered from bouts of malaria, but otherwise he enjoyed unusually good health. The assault on his reputation, his indefatigable efforts to defend himself and promote his causes, and his unquenchable thirst for knowledge preserved rather than sapped his youthful vigor. In late 1883, however, he developed a strange and apparently painful affliction of his eyes, which he attributed to long hours of reading and writing at night with a poor light source. An eye specialist diagnosed an “inflammatory process of the retina” due to eyestrain and advised confinement to a darkened room for several weeks and no reading or writing for several months. Wallace was told that with care his eyes would be as strong as ever in two or three years, and he was forbidden from doing any literary work. He appears to have followed the doctor’s orders almost to the letter, though two short essays, “The Morality of Interest—The Tyranny of Capital” for the Christian Socialist and “How to Experiment in Land Nationalisation” for the Land Nationalisation Society, managed to escape someone’s watchful notice. Otherwise, 1884 was a “lost year,” a period of time that he called a “tremendous trial” and of which he recorded nothing in his autobiography except a few terse sentences.78
By early 1885, Wallace had recovered sufficiently to resume his intellectual pursuits. One of the first things he did was to enter a competition for the best paper proposing remedies for the depression of trade, which continued to afflict the industrialized world. His essay did not win the £100 prize—it was far too radical—but the judges were sufficiently impressed to ask him whether he would allow them to publish the first part of the essay and leave out the part with which they disagreed. Indignantly, Wallace declined the offer and talked Macmillan into publishing an expanded version. He called his book Bad Times. Its unwieldy subtitle—An Essay on the Present Depression of Trade, Tracing It to Its Sources in Enormous Foreign Loans, Excessive War Expenditure, the Increase of Speculation and of Millionaires, and the Depopulation of the Rural Districts; With Suggested Remedies—was a compendium of what he considered the root causes of the depression: loans to undeserving despots, rampant militarism, the rapid rise of millionaires at the expense of the working poor, and mass migration to the cities as a result of the inequitable distribution of land. England and Europe had become enormous casinos managed by ruthless speculators protected by unjust laws, who bilked the credulous and ignorant multitude of their life savings.
Bad Times was darker and more pessimistic than Land Nationalisation. Wallace questioned the morality of European society and condemned capitalism—even European civilization itself—as an utter failure. He proposed four simple solutions: (1) England ought not to lend money to foreign despots, since its commercial prosperity rested on the well-being of its trading partners, not the wealth of tyrants; (2) the working class should be enfranchised and educated to vote for representatives who authorized military expenditures solely for defense; (3) a graduated income tax should be instituted to limit the fortunes of millionaires and their heirs and to redistribute wealth for the public good; and, most important, (4) land reform should be imposed to prevent rural flight. Wallace concluded: “It is … by applying the teachings of a higher morality to our commerce and manufactures, to our laws and customs, and to our dealings with all other nationalities, that we shall find the only effective and permanent remedy for Depression of Trade.”79 Except for one or two positive reviews, Bad Times was both a critical and a commercial failure. Macmillan returned a hundred unsold copies to him, which he distributed to his friends.80
Undaunted by the lack of enthusiasm in his own country, Wallace—now aged sixty-three and at a time of life when his colleagues were winding down their careers—prepared for an ambitious lecture tour of the United States.
