He was interested in literary puzzles and humorous stories, and he preserved in an old scrap-book any that appealed to him.  He would sometimes read some of them on festive occasions, or when we had children’s parties, and sometimes he laughed so heartily himself that he could not go on reading.

In reviewing the years during which Dr. Wallace lived at Broadstone, the last decade, when he was between eighty and ninety years of age, this period seems to have been one of the most eventful, and as full of work and mental activity as any previous period.  He never tired of his garden, in which he succeeded in growing a number of rare and curious shrubs and plants.  Our mother shared his delight and interest in the garden, and knew a great deal about flowers.  She had an excellent memory for their botanical names, and he often asked her the name of some plant which he was pointing out to a friend and which for the moment he had forgotten.  She was very fond of roses and of primroses, and there was a fine display of these flowers at “Old Orchard.”  She was successful in “budding” and in hybridising roses, and produced several beautiful varieties.  She was proficient in raising seeds, and he sometimes placed some which he received from abroad in her charge.

When he first came to live at Broadstone he frequently took short walks to the post or to the bank, and sometimes went by train to Poole on business, but he gradually went out less and less, till in the last few years he seldom went outside the garden, but strolled about looking at the flowers or supervising the construction of a new bed or rockery.  During his last years his gardener wheeled him about the garden in a bath-chair when he did not feel strong enough to walk all the time.

In 1913, after his last two small books were written, he did no more writing except correspondence.  This he attended to himself, except on one or two occasions when he was not very well or felt tired, when he asked one of us to answer a few letters for him.  He took great interest in a small cottage which had recently been acquired on the Purbeck Hills near the sea, and in September, much against our wishes, he went there for two nights, taking the gardener to look after him.  Luckily the weather was fine, and the change and excitement seemed to do him good, and during the next month he was very bright and cheerful, though, as some of his letters to his old friend Dr. Richard Norris and to Dr. Littledale show, he had been becoming increasingly weak.

* * * * *

TO MISS NORRIS

Old Orchard, Broadstone, Dorset.  December 10, 1912.