THE GRAVE OF ALFRED RUSSEL AND ANNIE WALLACE
Soon after Wallace's death a Committee was formed (with Prof. Poulton as Chairman and Prof. Meldola as Treasurer) to erect a memorial, and the following petition was sent to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey:
We, the undersigned, earnestly desiring a suitable national memorial to the late Alfred Russel Wallace, and believing that no position would be so appropriate as Westminster Abbey, the burial-place of his illustrious fellow-worker Charles Darwin, petition the Right Reverend the Dean and Chapter for permission to place a medallion in Westminster Abbey. We further guarantee, if the medallion be accepted, to pay the Abbey fees of £200.
ARCH. GEIKIE
WILLIAM CROOKES
A.B. KEMPE
E. RAY LANKESTER
D.H. SCOTT
D. PRAIN
A.E. SHIPLEY
RAPHAEL MELDOLA
P.A. MACMAHON
JOHN W. JUDD
OLIVER J. LODGE
E.B. POULTON
A. STRAHAN
H.H. TURNER
J. LARMOR
W. RAMSAY
SILVANUS P. THOMPSON
JOHN PERRY
JAMES MARCHANT (Hon. Sec.)
To which the Dean replied:
The Deanery, Westminster, S.W. December 2, 1913.
Dear Mr. Marchant,—I have pleasure in informing you that I presented your petition at our Chapter meeting this morning, and a glad and unanimous assent was accorded to it.
I should be glad later on to be informed as to the artist you are employing; and probably it would be as well for him and you and some members of the Royal Society to meet me and the Chapter and confer together upon the most suitable and artistic arrangement or rearrangement of the medallions of the great men of science of the nineteenth century.
Nothing could have been more satisfactory or impressive than the document with which you furnished me this morning. I hope to get it specially framed.—Yours sincerely,
HERBERT E. RYLE.
Mr. Bruce-Joy, who had made an excellent medallion of Dr. Wallace during his lifetime, accepted the commission to fashion the medallion for Westminster Abbey, and it was unveiled, by a happy but undesigned coincidence, on All Souls' Day, November 1 1915, together with medallions to the memory of Sir Joseph Hooker and Lord Lister. In the course of his sermon, the Dean said—and with these words we may well conclude this book:
"To-day there are uncovered to the public view, in the North Aisle of the Choir, three memorials to men who, I believe, will always be ranked among the most eminent scientists of the last century. They passed away, one in 1911, one in 1912, and one in 1913. They were all men of singularly modest character. As is so often observable in true greatness, there was in them an entire absence of that vanity and self-advertisement which are not infrequent with smaller minds. It is the little men who push themselves into prominence through dread of being overlooked. [pg 255] It is the great men who work for the work's sake without regard to recognition, and who, as we might say, achieve greatness in spite of themselves.
THE WALLACE AND DARWIN MEDALLIONS IN THE NORTH AISLE OF THE CHOIR OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY