Alfred Russel Wallace – The Early Yearsregular stream of books passed through the household which his father would read aloud
to the children. Alfred spent every wet Saturday afternoon in the library, squatting in
a corner and reading voraciously. His religious upbringing was conventional Church
of England, twice to church on Sundays, and readings from the Bible at home. This
was the period in his life when he felt something of a religious fervour but he later
wrote that ‘as there was no sufficient basis of intelligible fact or connected reasoning
to satisfy my intellect, the feeling soon left me, and has never returned’.
By the time Wallace reached twelve his father could no longer afford to pay his
school fees. Many children of his class and age left school at this time to become a
trade apprentice. His eldest brother was an apprentice surveyor and another brother
was an apprentice carpenter. Since Alfred was clever for his age, his father arranged
with the headmaster that in lieu of fees he could stay at school and help in teaching
the younger children. Wallace describes his shy, sensitive and self-conscious young
self during this difficult time:
While continuing my regular classes in Latin and Algebra, I took the younger boys in
reading and dictation, arithmetic and writing. Although I had no objection whatever to the
work itself, the anomalous position it gave me in the school ... subjected me to painful
insinuations and annoying remarks. I was especially sensitive to what all boys dislike –
being placed in any exceptional position, or having to do anything different from other boys.
Every time I entered the school room I felt ashamed.Unlike Charles Darwin who was born into a wealthy family and had the advantage
of an education at Cambridge, Alfred Russel Wallace left school at the age of fourteen,
about the same time as Darwin returned to England after the voyage of the Beagle.
Later that year Alfred began working as an assistant for his elder brother William in
surveying a country parish in Bedfordshire. The young Alfred loved being out of the
schoolroom and outside in the country. The surveying work included mapping and
calculating areas using trigonometry and he was happy to find a practical application
to the mathematics he had learned at school:
I carried a flag or measuring-rod and stuck in pegs or cut triangular holes in the grass where
required to form marks for future reference. We carried bill-hooks for cutting rods and pegs,
as well as for clearing away branches that obstructed the view ... We started work after
an early breakfast, and usually took with us a good supply of bread-and-cheese and a half
gallon of beer, and about one o’clock sat down under the shelter of a hedge to enjoy our
lunch.101