One of the many things I collect is any memorabilia associated with the two 'founding fathers' of modern evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Whilst items bearing Darwin's likeness, such as fridge magnets, key-ring fobs, figurines, old cigarette cards, postage stamps and even sugar packets, are relatively common, it is much, much more difficult to find any 'tat' emblazoned with Wallace phizog. In fact the only things I have discovered in the last 15 years are: an experimental Poole pottery medallion made by Wallace's son soon after his father's death (which was never commercially available anyway), two postage stamps (the UK, and the Democratic Republic of São Tomé & Príncipe), a laser etched Christmas tree decoration, a "Zombified Alfred Russel Wallace Wants To Eat Your Brain" hand painted necklace from Etsy (I kid you not), and an attractive sterling silver medallion produced by the Birmingham Mint in 1976.
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| Front of the booklet | First page of the booklet |
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| Close-up of the front of the medal | Close-up of the back of the medal |
The silver medallion was produced as part of a set of 24 called "Discovery in Silver", which commemorated the world's greatest explorers - people like Christopher Columbus, Captain Cooke etc. Each medal came 'embedded' into the cover of a 12 page booklet about the explorer in question. For a long time I thought that the Mint had made an unfortunate mistake and used an image of Wallace's friend and travelling companion in the Amazon, Henry Walter Bates, on the medal rather than Wallace, because it looked very similar to the engraving of Bates in the frontispiece of his book The Naturalist on the River Amazons. However, after studying it more carefully and doing some research, I now believe it IS actually Wallace, or at least a Wallace-Bates hybrid. This is what I found:
The image used on the medallion originates from a drawing used for the frontispiece and dust-jacket of Darwin's Moon, a biography of Wallace written by Amabel Williams-Ellis, published in 1966. Williams-Ellis says on page 46 "The picture used here as a frontispiece...also forms the frontispiece to Bates's one [own?] book, and, although Bates does not say so, it is clear that the tall spectacled figure in the foreground can only be Alfred Wallace." She goes on to say "...it is clearly an excellent likeness of Wallace when dressed for the rainforests." So what's wrong with this you might ask? Well, the problem is that there is absolutely no evidence that the illustration in Bates's book is Wallace, and it is puzzling why Williams-Ellis thought it was him. Perhaps she believed that only Wallace wore glasses, but Bates did as well (e.g. see http://www.oceansbridge.com/paintings/artists/recently-added/july2008/big/Henry-Walter-Bates-xx-Charles-Sims.JPG). Two good reasons why it must actually be Bates are that: 1) when Bates recounts being mobbed by curl-crested toucans [aracaris] in his book he doesn't mention that Wallace was there, and in Wallace's book Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro there is no mention of this dramatic incident; 2) Bates had a moustache, whereas Wallace never had a 'stand alone' moustache.
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| Dust jacket of Williams-Ellis's book. | Frontispiece from Bates's book. Public domain. |
There is, however, a curious twist to this tale. If you compare the illustrations in Bates's and Williams-Ellis's books they are clearly rather different: the person depicted in Bates's frontispiece has a moustache and a checked shirt, whereas in Williams-Ellis's book he lacks a moustache, has a plain shirt, and has a scarf or cravat around his neck. The person depicted in Bates's book is almost certainly Bates as I have already argued, but the illustration in Williams-Ellis's book looks uncannily like a well known photo of Wallace aged 24, the year before he left for the Amazon (note the cravat, lack of moustache, wider mouth and more pronounced lower lip). So it seems likely that the artist who drew the illustration for Williams-Ellis's book based it on the one from Bates's book but modified the person in it to better resemble Wallace. This illustration was then used 10 years later for the Birmingham Mint medallion!
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| Wallace in 1847. Copyright of scan: A. R. Wallace Memorial Fund & G. W. Beccaloni. |
I can't help mentioning a true case of mistaken identity involving Darwin and Wallace: in 2004 Barnes & Noble published The Autobiography of Charles Darwin but printed a photo of Wallace on the cover instead! When someone noticed the error the book was quickly withdrawn from sale and presumable destroyed. I am delighted that I managed to get a copy!
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| Cover of The Autobiography of Charles Darwin! |
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