Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 | Page 7

his hobbies, and also by the
fact that the family was always more or less in straitened circumstances,
so that the children were taught to make themselves useful in various
ways in order to assist their mother in the home.
As he grew from childhood into youth, Alfred Wallace's extreme
sensitiveness developed to an almost painful degree. He grew rapidly,
and his unusual height made him still more shy when forced to occupy
any prominent position amongst boys of his own age. During the latter
part of his time at Hertford Grammar School his father was unable to
pay the usual fees, and it was agreed that Alfred should act as pupil
teacher in return for the lessons received. This arrangement, while
acceptable on the one hand, caused him actual mental and physical pain
on the other, as it increased his consciousness of the disabilities under
which he laboured in contrast with most of the other boys of his own
age.
At the age of 14 Wallace was taken away from school, and until
something could be definitely decided about his future--as up to the
present he had no particular bent in any one direction--he was sent to

London to live with his brother John, who was then working for a
master builder in the vicinity of Tottenham Court Road. This was in
January, 1837, and it was during the following summer that he joined
his other brother, William, at Barton-on-the-Clay, Bedfordshire, and
began land surveying. In the meantime, while in London, he had been
brought very closely into contact with the economics and ethics of
Robert Owen, the well-known Socialist; and although very young in
years he was so deeply impressed with the reasonableness and practical
outcome of these theories that, though considerably modified as time
went on, they formed the foundation for his own writings on Socialism
and allied subjects in after years.
As one of our aims in this section is to suggest an outline of the
contrasting influences governing the early lives of Wallace and Darwin,
it is interesting to note that at the ages of 14 and 16 respectively, and
immediately on leaving school, they came under the first definite
mental influence which was to shape their future thought and action.
Yet how totally different from Wallace's trials as a pupil teacher was
the removal of Darwin from Dr. Butler's school at Shrewsbury because
"he was doing no good" there, and his father thought it was "time he
settled down to his medical study in Edinburgh," never heeding the fact
that his son had already one passion in life, apart from "shooting, dogs,
and rat-catching," which stood a very good chance of saving him from
becoming the disgrace to the family that his good father feared. So that
while Wallace was imbibing his first lessons in Socialism at 14 years of
age, Darwin at 16 found himself merely enduring, with a feeling of
disgust, Dr. Duncan's lectures, which were "something fearful to
remember," on materia medica at eight o'clock on a winter's morning,
and, worse still, Dr. Munro's lectures on human anatomy, which were
"as dull as he was himself." Yet he always deeply regretted not having
been urged to practise dissection, because of the invaluable aid it would
have been to him as a naturalist.
By mental instinct, however, Darwin soon found himself studying
marine zoology and other branches of natural science. This was in a
large measure due to his intimacy with Dr. Grant, who, in a later article
on Flustra, made some allusion to a paper read by Darwin before the

Linnean Society on a small discovery which he had made by the aid of
a "wretched microscope" to the effect that the so-called ova of Flustra
were really larvæ and had the power of independent action by means of
cilia.
During his second year in Edinburgh he attended Jameson's lectures on
geology and zoology, but found them so "incredibly dull" that he
determined never to study the science.
Then came the final move which, all unknowingly, was to lead Darwin
into the pursuit of a science which up to that time had only been a
hobby and not in any sense the serious profession of his life. But again
how wide the difference between his change from Edinburgh to
Cambridge, and that of Wallace from a month's association with a
working-class Socialistic community in London to land surveying
under the simplest rural conditions prevalent amongst the respectable
labouring farmers of Bedfordshire--Darwin to the culture and privileges
of a great University with the object of becoming a clergyman, and
Wallace taking the first road that offered towards earning a living, with
no thought as to the ultimate outcome of this life in the open and the
systematic observation of soils and land formation.
But