12 Alfred Russel Wallace – In Singapore and Borneo
Alfred Russel Wallace arrived in London in October 1852. After losing his personal
collection of specimens in the sinking of the Helen, his only clothing was ‘a suit of the
thinnest calico’. Fortunately he was met by his agent Samuel Stevens who provided
him with some warm clothes and some ready cash. Fortunately too, Stevens had
insured Wallace’s returning collection for £200, a sum which helped support Wallace
and his family while he tried to recover from the loss of his Amazon collection:
I have lost a number of sketches, drawings, notes and observations on natural history,
besides the three most interesting years of my journal, the whole of which, unlike any
pecuniary loss, can never be replaced; so you will see that I have some need of philosophic
resignation to bear my fate with patience and equanimity ... and to occupy myself with the
state of things which actually existed.Perhaps Wallace could earn some money by writing a book? The small tin box
which he had randomly saved from the wreck contained a set of pencil drawings of
all the species of palms in the Amazon, together with his notes as to their distribution
and uses. He spent the first half of 1853 writing Palm Trees of the Amazon and Their
Uses, which was published with a print run of 250 copies and sold with only limited
success. He would have to make money from his next book, A Narrative of Travels on
the Amazon and Rio Negro, with an Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations
on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley, which had a print
run of 750 copies yet a decade later only 500 copies had been sold. Even today it is
a lively travel account, a wonderful read, and a remarkable achievement considering
he had lost most of his notes, journals and collections. Unlike Humboldt and Darwin,
Wallace was not going to make a living from his writing.
126http://www.ebook3000.com