by Peter Raby
As Wallace’s travels extended through 1861, the idea of bringing live birds of paradise back to England assumed greater significance. His motives were partly personal, a stubborn attempt to erase the memory of the live collection from the Amazon that had disappeared overboard or perished by fire, and partly economic. He never lost sight of the fact that this arduous eight-year expedition should provide, in addition to intellectual capital, financial security for the rest of his life. But the birds of paradise meant much more to him than that. They were the vital, stunning proof of the beauty of the natural world, dazzling examples of geographical biodiversity and of the wonders produced by natural selection, his own corollary, perhaps, to Darwin’s Galapagos finches. They became a kind of validation for his work, both as a collector, an observing naturalist, and a theorist.
Wallace reached Sumatra in November 1861, on the final phase of his collecting, when he learned shortly before Christmas that there were two lesser birds of paradise for sale in Singapore. His narrative in My Life makes no mention of any commission or financial arrangement, but rather gives the impression that the business was almost coincidental: ‘While waiting at Singapore for the steamer to take me home I purchased two living specimens of the smaller bird of paradise.’50 In fact, the prospect of a free passage home was quite enough to persuade him to cut short his stay in Sumatra, where the rainy season was hampering his activities, and begin negotiations. His siamang attracted a great deal of attention in Singapore, where nobody had apparently ever seen one alive before. It was duly dispatched via the Cape, but failed to survive the long voyage. (Curiously, Wallace comments in The Malay Archipelago that ‘it died just before he started’.)
The two birds of paradise, though, fared better, and Wallace went to enormous trouble to ensure their survival. He bought them on 6 February 1862, for $400 (£92), beating the agent down from the asking price of $500 for the pair, and two weeks later set off via Galle for Bombay, where a stopover allowed him time to lay in a stock of fruit, principally bananas, for the birds. They ate a great many cockroaches, and from Bombay to the Red Sea he swept up a fresh daily supply into a biscuit tin in the ship’s storeroom.51 A further stop at Malta was an opportunity to buy melons, and he also found an ‘unlimited’ cockroach source in a baker’s. At each stopover he fired off letters and telegrams. He was particularly anxious about the cold weather, and wanted to hand the birds over as soon as possible: could a keeper come out to meet him at Marseilles, or even Avignon, he enquired of Stevens. From Malta he cabled Sclater: ‘The two garadise bards [sic] have arrived here in perfect health. I wait your instruction.’52 No instruction came. Wallace took the next boat to Marseilles, and sent another telegram. This, too, was ignored, and he set off for Paris, with the birds travelling as baggage. A night in Paris followed, and finally Wallace was back in England, almost eight years since his departure. He wrote at once to Sclater from the Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone, expanding on the trouble – and expense – he had taken to preserve the birds – he had accompanied them all night in the baggage train across the desert to Cairo, and he had had trouble to get them well cleaned – ‘they make an immense deal of dirt’. He advised Sclater to organise a supply of cockroaches, and stated firmly that he expected to be met at London Bridge the following noon – 1 April – with a keeper and a van. (He was.) Their side plumes, he concluded, were about half grown – hardly visible when he left Singapore, they grew rapidly as far as Suez, when the cold seemed to check them. ‘Another year with a genial temperature, flying room, foliage, & abundance of food, I hope they will be glorious.’53
Sclater absorbed all these demands graciously. The Maltese arrival was heralded in The Times:
The Zoological Society of London are daily expecting a new and brilliant addition to their collection … But one previous instance is known of a Paradise Bird having been brought alive to Europe. This individual was the property of the late Princess Augusta, and died at Windsor about forty years ago.54
Meanwhile the Council approved a sum of £20 for ‘the reception of these birds’, and the society’s smith, painter and carpenter were set to work to adapt a large galvanised-iron-wire cage in the former small animal room, whose temperature was now recorded daily. The pair formed an expensive acquisition. Wallace received in all £307 9s: £150 for the birds – making £58 profit on the deal; his fare – £137 3s; and £20 6s for ‘sundry expenses’, such as the cost of making cages for the different stages of the journey. After a few months, the two young male birds were transferred to a ‘more airy situation’ in the new aviary, where they occupied the compartment nearest to the main entrance gate, and so formed most visitors’ introduction to the zoo’s treasures. Accompanied by a text beginning ‘Mr A. R. Wallace, the well-known traveller and naturalist’, the Illustrated London News featured them prominently on 12 April.55 Wallace was home at last in triumph, accompanied by two living, glorious symbols to mark the ‘central and controlling incident’ of his life.
9 The Return of the Wanderer
WALLACE INEVITABLY SPECULATED about his reception in London scientific circles. The first mark of recognition was his election as a Fellow of the Zoological Society, a resolution passed on 19 March 1862 when Sclater reported to the Council that the birds of paradise had reached Malta. Equally gratifying was the news that, ‘in consequence of the eminent services rendered to zoological science’, his ‘admission fee and composition’ would be remitted.1 Wallace duly wrote a formal acknowledgement to the Council, and began to attend the fortnightly scientific meetings on a regular basis. This was a significant step upwards, and outwards, from the more specialised interests of the Entomological Society, the beetle- and butterfly-fanciers who, at their worst, might be ranked (according to Bates) with collectors of postage stamps and crockery.2 Thanks to Sclater, Wallace had already been elected a Member of the British Ornithologists Union. He was, naturally, welcome as a visitor at the Linnean. Now, at the Zoological, where the birds of paradise were soon attracting distinguished visitors such as the Duke of Argyll, his circle widened. Regulars at the meetings included John Gray, from the British Museum, and John Gould, taxidermist and illustrator, who had jointly made the proposal about remission of fees; Sclater, as Secretary; Samuel Stevens, his agent; T. H. Huxley; Alfred Newton, from Cambridge; St George Mivart; the ornithologist the Reverend H. B. Tristram; William Henry Flower; George Busk; and his old Amazon companion Bates, finally returned from South America. On 13 May, Wallace attended his first meeting as a fellow. On 27 May, with Huxley in the chair, he gave an account of his expeditions in search of paradise birds. On 10 and 24 June he exhibited ‘rare and new birds’.3
He was, though, far from well in these first weeks, a legacy of his debilitating travels, and he spent long periods resting in his room. With great regret, he had to decline, for the present, Darwin’s immediate invitation to visit him at Downe, because he was being ‘doctored a little’. In mid-May, he was cooped up for ten days with a disagreeable ‘though far from dangerous’ crop of boils. (Darwin’s invitation arrived on 7 April and Wallace, in declining, sent Darwin a wild honeycomb from Timor, still full of honey.) At least the enforced leisure gave him plenty of thinking and reading time. He had a great deal to catch up on. There were new publications, such as a presentation copy of Darwin’s book on orchids; and he wished to familiarise himself with the full range of reactions to the Origin: ‘It seems to me that you have assisted those who want to criticise you,’ he pointed out to Darwin, ‘by your overstating the difficulties & objections – Several of them quote your own words as the strongest arguments against you.’4 Was it credible that Richard Owen had written the anonymous article in the Quarterly, which spoke so much of Owen as a great authority and a profound philosopher? (The writer was, in fact, Samuel Wilberforce, though Owen was perfectly capable of favourable self-reference: Wallace was a novice in the finer points of intellectual controversy.) Darwin was understandably interested to know what Wallace planned to write: ‘How puzzled you must b
e to know what to begin at,’ he enquired politely.5
Wallace suffered an inevitable sense of anti-climax and frustration as he resumed his share of family responsibilities, far easier to exercise in the form of well-meant advice delivered at a safe distance. The years of independence and self-sufficiency were over. However exhausting and time-consuming his life might have been at times in the Archipelago, at least it was largely under his control. Now he moved in to his sister’s and brother-in-law’s house in Westbourne Grove Terrace, Paddington, where Sims had set up his photographic business in partnership with his brother Edward in 1860, after moving from St Mark’s Terrace, Regent’s Park. There, in a large empty room at the top of the house, Wallace began to unpack the boxes and cases that Stevens had held in store for him, the rich residue of his eight years’ collecting which he had reserved for his own study and delight. Three thousand bird skins, he estimated, covering about a thousand species, and perhaps twenty thousand beetles and butterflies of seven thousand species, together with land-shells, and a miscellaneous selection of mammals. As a personal living memento of the East, he had brought with him a small lory which had survived the journey, unlike the siamang, and showed great affection for Thomas Sims. Wallace concentrated, first, on arranging and annotating these collections, and on formulating papers drawn from them for the Zoological and Linnean Societies. He also began to focus his mind on anthropological subjects, and on applications of the theory of natural selection. He was certainly busy. But he did not tackle either of the major writing projects that might have seemed more immediately pressing now that he had comparative leisure and access to libraries: his own ‘big book’ of theory – bio-geographical distribution, rather than his original project, which had been trumped by Darwin – or a book about his travels in the Archipelago, the most obvious way to capitalise on his journey and secure his popular reputation. As early as 1859, Darwin had been encouraging Wallace along such lines, asking when he would be returning with his ‘magnificent collection & still grander mental materials’ – something Darwin could be quite relaxed about, with his own book printed and on the verge of publication – a ‘small volume of about 500 pages or so’, as he described it ingenuously to Wallace in an earlier letter. If the prospect of matching such an output might have appeared daunting to Wallace far away in the Moluccas, Darwin also added practical advice: ‘You will be puzzled how to publish. The Royal Soc. fund will be worth your consideration.’6
Wallace claimed later that he deliberately put off writing up his Malaysian travels, until he could ‘embody in it all the more generally interesting results derived from the detailed study of certain portions of my collections’.7 But this idealised image of the dedicated scientific traveller, able to concentrate at last on the fruits of his labours, ignores the amount of time he had to spend both on his own business affairs and, more demandingly, on those of Thomas, Fanny and his mother. The family’s luck with money had not improved, and Wallace was the only one with capital, which Stevens had invested for him in railway stocks. Wallace estimated his own annual living expenses at £200, of which he might hope to meet perhaps half from his existing investments. The cheque from the Zoological Society boosted his current balance. But the business side of his travels was far from complete. He had to negotiate the sale, sometimes through Stevens and occasionally freelance, of his most recent collections, which were still arriving by the slow Cape route, along with Charles Allen’s consignments, a process that continued for several years. (On 4 June 1864, for example, he sold some 1,500 specimens of butterflies to William Hewitson for £150.) Wallace had also financed, with his Singapore mining friend Geach, a small collecting expedition to Penang, and proposed investing another £300 in a similar venture to New Guinea, to be undertaken by his Australian cousins.8 All this took time, and energy.
Wallace might have been well on his way to financial independence, had he not agreed to subsidise his brother-in-law’s photographic business – worse, to take an active part in its expansion and promotion, treating it as part of his investment programme. In 1864 he spent over £500 on the business, with items ranging from postage stamps for circulars and brass ornamental moulding for frames, to cheques for £50 either for Fanny or for the firm.9 (He later confessed to his brother John that he had lost £700 in the business.) He was paying the Sims’ rent, settling debts, and lending money to his mother. It was not the idyllic homecoming he had outlined in his letters to Silk, where he conjured up his ‘hopes for a happy future in Old England, where I may live in solitude and seclusion except from a few close friends’. ‘You cannot perhaps imagine how I have come to love solitude,’ he had added then. ‘I seldom have a visitor but what I wish him away in an hour.’10 Now, back in the crowded muddle of London, he renewed old acquaintances, and began to extend his scientific friendships and contacts.
His oldest friend, George Silk, lived in Kensington. Wallace saw him frequently, and was introduced to several of Silk’s circle, such as Archdeacon Sinclair, the Vicar of St Mary Abbott’s, Kensington. He eagerly took up chess again, and, through Silk, was invited to take part in the chess club organised by Lewis Leslie, an auctioneer who lived in Campden Hill, Kensington. But it was an entirely new network of scientific friends that added a fresh dimension to Wallace’s life. Although he never wholly overcame his shyness, and had little to offer in the way of small talk, his achievements, and the recognition of men such as Darwin, Hooker, Lyell and Huxley, gave him confidence. Huxley was among the first to invite him home, and the friendliness of the children, and Mrs Huxley’s welcome, the ‘whole domestic tone of the house’, put him at his ease – although Wallace admitted that he never got over ‘a feeling of awe and inferiority’ when discussing with Huxley ‘any problem in evolution or allied subjects’, in spite of being two years older.11 He attributed this sense of inferiority to Huxley’s complete mastery of anatomy and physiology, areas where he himself had to rely on second-hand facts and arguments. He felt, curiously, rather more comfortable with the patrician Sir Charles Lyell, although Lady Lyell, as he learned later from Lyell’s secretary, Arabella Buckley, thought poorly of his social gaucheness on first acquaintance.12 Lyell, too, though undoubtedly gracious and well disposed, could be distinctly patronising. Bates remembered being accosted by Lyell one afternoon near the seal pond in the Zoological Gardens. ‘He was wriggling about in his usual way, with spy-glass raised by fits and starts to the eye, and began: “Mr Wallace, I believe – ah—” “My name’s Bates.” “Oh, I beg pardon, I always confound you two.”’ As Bates commented dryly, ‘His memory must be very bad, for we have often met, and I was once his guest at the Geological Club dinner …’13 There was little physical resemblance between the two collectors, but Lyell might well have thought of them both as belonging to a different variety, if not species, of scientist.
Bates was an old friend, with whom Wallace had shared those early months in the Amazon before they went their separate ways, and with whom he had maintained a regular, if long-distance, correspondence. Bates’s field was narrower than that of Wallace, but his mastery self-evident. His brilliant paper on mimicry was read before the Linnean Society in November 1861. Wallace and Bates resumed their friendship, and their discussions, going together to call on Herbert Spencer.14 ‘Our thoughts were full of the great unsolved problem of the origin of life,’ Wallace recalled, adding, enthusiastically if rather optimistically, ‘and we looked to Spencer as the one man living who could give us some clue to it.’ They went, too, to Oxford together, to visit John Westwood and George Rolleston. Westwood, a former President of the Entomological Society, was now Hope Professor of Zoology and Rolleston, Huxley’s protégé, Linacre Professor of Anatomy.15 Walking round the Natural History Museum with Westwood, he could view the site of the 1860 arguments between Owen and Huxley, and the spat between Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce.
By the time Wallace returned from the East, Bates had already made a highly favourable impression on Darwin, both by his powers of detailed obser
vation and argument, and as a man; and Darwin may have imagined Wallace to be somewhat similar. Bates, he informed Asa Gray in commending the paper on mimicry, ‘is a man of lowly origin, of great force of character, & wonderfully self-educated …’16 ‘What a pity that this man shd. have to work for his daily bread & have only 1 or 2 hours for science,’ he exclaimed to Hooker.17 At last, Darwin had met someone who knew Wallace intimately. Bates spoke ‘with admiration’ of Wallace’s talents, energy and knowledge, he reported. Bates even forwarded one of Wallace’s 1861 letters to Darwin. ‘He rates me much too highly & himself much too lowly,’ commented Darwin in reply. ‘But what strikes me most about Mr Wallace is the absence of jealousy towards me: he must have a really good honest & noble disposition. A far higher merit than mere intellect.’18
Later in the summer of 1862, the mystery was solved, when Wallace stayed at Downe. If there was any hint of strain in Darwin’s attitude, it completely passed Wallace by. This was the kind of visit Wallace especially enjoyed, where he was able to relax, in a family rather than a society context, and talk at leisure, pacing slowly down the sand walk with his benevolent host. The image of the great naturalist and scientific thinker cocooned in his comfortable house and grounds made a vivid impression. This was a model for the kind of life he would ideally like to construct for himself. The two men competed happily in exchanging enquiries about each other’s health for the rest of the year, always safe ground with Darwin. Could Darwin send him a copy of the third edition of Origin, Wallace enquired from Devon, where he had gone in August in an attempt to shake off a bad cough, and where he hoped to ‘lay in a stock of health’ to enable him to stick at work on his collections during the winter, which he dreaded.19 He was staying with his old Neath friend, the Quaker bookseller Charles Hayward, who had bought a farm there. (Another Devon bolt-hole for a few years was Burrator, Rajah Brooke’s austere cottage near Plymouth.) The Origin was waiting for him when he returned to London in September, and for the first time he was able to read Darwin’s introductory historical sketch, which had now been added to the English edition. Darwin in this refers to Wallace more frequently and expansively than in the Introduction itself, though the overall impact of the sketch serves to deflect attention from any question of priority.
