My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

250 MY LIFEcase, with none of the reserve or somewhat rigiddecorum of the majority of our clergy.Mivart was a very severe and often an unfair criticof Darwin, and I never concealed my opinion that hewas not justified in going so far as he did. I alsocriticized some of his own writings, but he took itall very good-naturedly, and we always remainedexcellent friends. Besides natural history we hadother tastes in common. He enjoyed country life,and for some time had a small country house in thewilds of Sussex, about midway between Forest Rowand Hayward's Heath, where we sometimes spent afew days. He was also greatly interested in psychicalresearch and spiritualistic phenomena ; but this Ishall refer toagain when I come to my own experiencesand inquiries on this intensely interestingsubject.About a year or two after I had returned home,Sir James Brooke had also returned to England, andhad retired to a small estate at the foot of Dartmoor,where he lived in a comfortable cottage-farmhouseamid the wild scenery in which he delighted, I hadmet him once or twice in London, and, I think in thesummer of 1863 or 1864, he invited me to spend aweek with him in Devonshire, to meet his formerprivate secretary and my old friend in Sarawak, Mr.(now Sir Spencer) St. John. We had a very pleasanttime, strolling about the district or taking rides overDartmoor ;while at meals we had old-time events totalk over, with discussions of all kinds of political andsocial problems in the evening. At the same timeLady Burdett-Coutts, with her friend Mrs. Brown,were staying near, and often drove over and took usall for some more distant excursions.This meeting and my friendship with Sir James