From Maria Payne   Feb 19th.

My dear John

After a long and provoking silence I will own on my side I am again going to trespass on your attention I am sure you will credit me when I tell you that you are still dear to me and that nothing gives me more real pleasure than your sweetly romantic letters they breathe the very language that I love pray my dear John have you written many Valentines1 this time I know your talents in that way are of the first order. I am quite sure you are not heartwhole2 all this time in the South such a gay and gallant Lothario3 was never intended to blush unseen like the desert rose.4 Come now make me your confidant as I have no secrets of my own to keep I shall be the more capable of keeping anothers. There is nothing in the shape of news here everything going on as usual. When may we expect the pleasure of a visit from you in the County Carlow, it is a long delayed and I assure you anxiously looked for honour and you know how hope deferred maketh the heart sick.5 Emma6 requests me to present her love and compliments to you

Adieu my dear John | Your sincere friend | Maria Payne.

RI MS JT/1/11/3841

LT Transcript Only

1

Valentines: Although of pagan origin, St Valentine’s Day, 14 February, was declared a Christian feast in 486 AD. By the middle of the eighteenth century the day was marked by sending love notes or poems or, by the time this letter was written, printed notes decorated with lace could be purchased. With the introduction of the penny post in 1840 (and thus the reduction in postal charges) the sending of Valentines gained popularity.

2

heartwhole: not emotionally attached; not in love (OED).

3

a gay and gallant Lothario: Lothario was character in Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605/15) and later in Nicholas Rowe’s play ‘The Fair Penitent’ (1703) who was a persistent and successful womanizer.

4

blush unseen like the desert rose: adaptation of the line ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, | And waste its sweetness on the desert air’, from T. Gray, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751), 70.

5

hope deferred maketh the heart sick: Proverbs 13:12.

6

Emma: probably Tyndall’s cousin Emma, daughter of Caleb Tyndall.

Please cite as “Tyndall0042,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0042