World of Wallace: Alfred Russel Wallace and his Life in the Field, Hertford Museum
This exhibition may be small but it cleverly condenses the eventful life of Victorian naturalist and explorer Alfred Wallace, writes Yasmin Khan
How does an independent county town museum manage to stay relevant to its community within a global context? In this case, it is through highlighting the accomplishments of a local hero – Alfred Russel Wallace.
This year is the centenary of the death of the renowned Victorian naturalist and explorer, so Hertford Museum has fittingly put together a biographical exhibition that incorporates his passions, aspirations and ultimate successes while simultaneously extracting from his memoirs the unforeseen losses he suffered along the way.
Wallace was born in Wales but was educated in Hertford during his impressionable early years. The location would prove to be a character-building environment that would shape his appetite for daring adventures in later life.
Hertford is where Wallace acknowledged he “first obtained a rudimentary acquaintance with my fellow creatures and with nature”.
His free time was spent exploring the countryside, gravel pits and streams of the local area, which, as he recalled, “was in many ways more educational than the time I spent at school”.
The exhibition itself is about the size of an average living room although this proves to be no barrier to providing a comprehensive overview of Wallace’s life and work.
Somehow the space is generously stuffed with a wealth of absorbing episodes from his exploits that puts into perspective the selected array of striking natural history specimens.
The sequence of displays is more coherent when encountered in conventional chronological order so, after some trial and error on my part, my eventual route through the exhibition is steadfastly anti-clockwise from the entrance (though there is no signage to suggest this).
Tenacity
Wallace was not a man of great wealth but luckily a Victorian vogue for taxidermy funded his expeditions.
After the Great Exhibition of 1851, the demand for taxidermy soared, changing the way people encountered the previously unseen natural world around them.
Wallace brought home a multitude of newly discovered skinned and preserved exotic birds and animals ready to be stuffed and mounted for display.
Gorgeous exhibits include glass domes filled with brightly coloured tropical birds. My star of the show is a flamingo-encased oval fire screen that would have satiated the Victorian “more is more” ethos of interior decor.
But a sizeable chunk of the collection that Wallace amassed overseas would never reach its intended destination. On his return voyage after two years spent in Brazil his ship caught fire and the cargo sunk.
Wallace was only able to salvage onto the lifeboat a tin box containing notes and drawings of fish. He returned to England penniless and had to start all over again.
Wallace endured other misfortunes. We learn that he had previously invited his younger brother, Herbert, to join him in the Amazon. But Herbert wasn’t as enthusiastic as Wallace and left after a year. Shortly afterwards Herbert contracted yellow fever and subsequently died.
Wallace did not discover this news for months.
Wallace put his own health in repeated jeopardy. He contracted malaria during his expedition to the Maluku Islands and, much to his frustration, was encumbered by an ankle injury during his first visit to New Guinea.
Yet Wallace’s tenacity did not waver. He continued trekking huge distances across south-east Asia, mapping previously uncharted parts of the world to discover and accumulate a multitude of new species and animals, leading to him becoming the world authority on the flora and fauna of Indonesia and the Malay Archipelago.
The exhibition successfully condenses an eventful life into digestible and memorable bite-size chunks. There are even a few exhibits designed for little ones, including a cartoon mock-up of Where’s Wallace?
The isolated quotes on Wallace’s views on beetles mixed with eugenics, slavery and the women’s movement are a thoughtful addition, even if they are slightly decontextualised.
I am a lapsed biologist, so it is refreshing to notice that the more scientific aspects of content do not overshadow the essence of the exhibition but are neatly woven into an overall narrative.
Natural selection
Wallace pioneered the theory of natural selection at the same time Charles Darwin was developing his theory of evolution. They became good friends through Wallace’s long-time comrade, Henry Walter Bates, and championed each other’s work while working independently.
Darwin and Wallace succeeded in articulating a well-argued and detailed proposal on the idea of natural selection. Their theories were first presented to the Linnean Society by their peers Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker in 1858. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species swiftly followed the next year.
In tandem, Wallace published his paper On the Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago, which outlines one of his most important discoveries – an imaginary line running through Indonesia between Bali to Lombok and Borneo to Sulawesi, known as the “Wallace Line”, which separates the distribution of species between Asia and Australia.
Evolutionary biology
By the time Wallace died in 1913 at the age of 93, scientists had accepted evolution as a reality, spawning the modern discipline of evolutionary biology as we now know it today. It is worth adding that previous scholars had documented similar thinking in this area.
Patrick Matthew, a Scottish farmer and landowner, wrote about natural selection as a mechanism for evolution in 1831. Further back in the 9th century, Al-Jahiz, an East African writer based in Baghdad, had described specific adaptive characteristics in his Book of Animals.
The exhibition did leave me wanting more. I was stirred to follow up on certain aspects of Wallace’s life that are mentioned in passing at the museum.
For instance, Wallace took the scientific world by surprise when he became a spiritualist, believing that natural selection could not account for the higher qualities evident in humans.
There doesn’t seem to be a consensus as to the reasons why he did this. Perhaps some things about Wallace will forever be a mystery.
Yasmin Khan is an independent cultural adviser who has worked at the British Library and the Science Museum
One of the most exciting aspects of the project for us was bringing together, we believe for the first time, so many specimens and objects associated with Alfred Russel Wallace held by museums, individuals and institutions around the country.
The objects range from the strikingly colourful birds of paradise loaned by the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge to a spotted kiwi from New Zealand (right) and the almost alien-like forms and textures of palm samples from Brazil loaned by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
These artefacts really illustrate Wallace’s diversity of interests and looking at them makes it easy to see how the enthusiasm they excited in Wallace allowed him to overcome so much hardship in the pursuit of understanding the world around him.
Complementing these amazing objects are some pretty wonderful specimens from Hertford Museum’s own collections. These are all examples of creatures Wallace would have encountered in the field or ostentatious taxidermy displays, the demand for which allowed Wallace to make a living by sending specimens home.
Generous project funding from Arts Council England allowed us to conserve several rare specimens that were at real risk of total disintegration. These wonders of the Victorian world are now accessible for the enjoyment of visitors to Hertford Museum and host museums as the exhibition tours over the next couple of years.
Even more importantly, they now have an excellent chance of being enjoyed by many generations to come.
Sara Taylor is the curator at Hertford Museum
This year is the centenary of the death of the renowned Victorian naturalist and explorer, so Hertford Museum has fittingly put together a biographical exhibition that incorporates his passions, aspirations and ultimate successes while simultaneously extracting from his memoirs the unforeseen losses he suffered along the way.
Wallace was born in Wales but was educated in Hertford during his impressionable early years. The location would prove to be a character-building environment that would shape his appetite for daring adventures in later life.
Hertford is where Wallace acknowledged he “first obtained a rudimentary acquaintance with my fellow creatures and with nature”.
His free time was spent exploring the countryside, gravel pits and streams of the local area, which, as he recalled, “was in many ways more educational than the time I spent at school”.
The exhibition itself is about the size of an average living room although this proves to be no barrier to providing a comprehensive overview of Wallace’s life and work.
Somehow the space is generously stuffed with a wealth of absorbing episodes from his exploits that puts into perspective the selected array of striking natural history specimens.
The sequence of displays is more coherent when encountered in conventional chronological order so, after some trial and error on my part, my eventual route through the exhibition is steadfastly anti-clockwise from the entrance (though there is no signage to suggest this).
Tenacity
Wallace was not a man of great wealth but luckily a Victorian vogue for taxidermy funded his expeditions.
After the Great Exhibition of 1851, the demand for taxidermy soared, changing the way people encountered the previously unseen natural world around them.
Wallace brought home a multitude of newly discovered skinned and preserved exotic birds and animals ready to be stuffed and mounted for display.
Gorgeous exhibits include glass domes filled with brightly coloured tropical birds. My star of the show is a flamingo-encased oval fire screen that would have satiated the Victorian “more is more” ethos of interior decor.
But a sizeable chunk of the collection that Wallace amassed overseas would never reach its intended destination. On his return voyage after two years spent in Brazil his ship caught fire and the cargo sunk.
Wallace was only able to salvage onto the lifeboat a tin box containing notes and drawings of fish. He returned to England penniless and had to start all over again.
Wallace endured other misfortunes. We learn that he had previously invited his younger brother, Herbert, to join him in the Amazon. But Herbert wasn’t as enthusiastic as Wallace and left after a year. Shortly afterwards Herbert contracted yellow fever and subsequently died.
Wallace did not discover this news for months.
Wallace put his own health in repeated jeopardy. He contracted malaria during his expedition to the Maluku Islands and, much to his frustration, was encumbered by an ankle injury during his first visit to New Guinea.
Yet Wallace’s tenacity did not waver. He continued trekking huge distances across south-east Asia, mapping previously uncharted parts of the world to discover and accumulate a multitude of new species and animals, leading to him becoming the world authority on the flora and fauna of Indonesia and the Malay Archipelago.
The exhibition successfully condenses an eventful life into digestible and memorable bite-size chunks. There are even a few exhibits designed for little ones, including a cartoon mock-up of Where’s Wallace?
The isolated quotes on Wallace’s views on beetles mixed with eugenics, slavery and the women’s movement are a thoughtful addition, even if they are slightly decontextualised.
I am a lapsed biologist, so it is refreshing to notice that the more scientific aspects of content do not overshadow the essence of the exhibition but are neatly woven into an overall narrative.
Natural selection
Wallace pioneered the theory of natural selection at the same time Charles Darwin was developing his theory of evolution. They became good friends through Wallace’s long-time comrade, Henry Walter Bates, and championed each other’s work while working independently.
Darwin and Wallace succeeded in articulating a well-argued and detailed proposal on the idea of natural selection. Their theories were first presented to the Linnean Society by their peers Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker in 1858. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species swiftly followed the next year.
In tandem, Wallace published his paper On the Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago, which outlines one of his most important discoveries – an imaginary line running through Indonesia between Bali to Lombok and Borneo to Sulawesi, known as the “Wallace Line”, which separates the distribution of species between Asia and Australia.
Evolutionary biology
By the time Wallace died in 1913 at the age of 93, scientists had accepted evolution as a reality, spawning the modern discipline of evolutionary biology as we now know it today. It is worth adding that previous scholars had documented similar thinking in this area.
Patrick Matthew, a Scottish farmer and landowner, wrote about natural selection as a mechanism for evolution in 1831. Further back in the 9th century, Al-Jahiz, an East African writer based in Baghdad, had described specific adaptive characteristics in his Book of Animals.
The exhibition did leave me wanting more. I was stirred to follow up on certain aspects of Wallace’s life that are mentioned in passing at the museum.
For instance, Wallace took the scientific world by surprise when he became a spiritualist, believing that natural selection could not account for the higher qualities evident in humans.
There doesn’t seem to be a consensus as to the reasons why he did this. Perhaps some things about Wallace will forever be a mystery.
Yasmin Khan is an independent cultural adviser who has worked at the British Library and the Science Museum
Focus on... Collections
One of the most exciting aspects of the project for us was bringing together, we believe for the first time, so many specimens and objects associated with Alfred Russel Wallace held by museums, individuals and institutions around the country.
The objects range from the strikingly colourful birds of paradise loaned by the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge to a spotted kiwi from New Zealand (right) and the almost alien-like forms and textures of palm samples from Brazil loaned by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
These artefacts really illustrate Wallace’s diversity of interests and looking at them makes it easy to see how the enthusiasm they excited in Wallace allowed him to overcome so much hardship in the pursuit of understanding the world around him.
Complementing these amazing objects are some pretty wonderful specimens from Hertford Museum’s own collections. These are all examples of creatures Wallace would have encountered in the field or ostentatious taxidermy displays, the demand for which allowed Wallace to make a living by sending specimens home.
Generous project funding from Arts Council England allowed us to conserve several rare specimens that were at real risk of total disintegration. These wonders of the Victorian world are now accessible for the enjoyment of visitors to Hertford Museum and host museums as the exhibition tours over the next couple of years.
Even more importantly, they now have an excellent chance of being enjoyed by many generations to come.
Sara Taylor is the curator at Hertford Museum
Project data
- Cost £20,000
- Funder Arts Council England
- Exhibition production and design Hertford Museum staff and volunteers
- Curator Sara Taylor
- Panel design M Star
- Illustrator Joanna Scott
- Interactive production Aivaf
- Exhibition ends 22 February
- The World of Wallace exhibition will tour to venues that include Tolson Museum, Huddersfield, and the Octavia Hills Birthplace Museum, Wisbech