Youghal, Monday1 evening
My dear Emma
I see yourself is the only person I can depend on for a return to my epistles I must confess that tho’ you are not generous you are just in your epistolary affairs. You always send me one for one. I thought I could extract something more from you, but I find that impossible, so I must only make myself as good a fellow as you and write letter for letter with you. I dont forget the quizzing (as Frazer2 used to say) you gave me in your last letter about the keenness of my appetite, oh my girl if you were out in Gurtnagopple3 with me you would never have need of Camomile flowers.4 I think if I met a child out there with a cold potato in his hand I would act my father’s part and become a robber of the innocent. To tell the plain candid truth my appetite is something off the common. Evans and Tidmarsh swear that I must pay two thirds of the mess, as I am able to eat twice as much as either of them. However one comfort is that I am able to beat them both, so that if ever they become headstrong I’ll thrash them into obedience.
I am just after exhausting my purse in purchasing a suit of clothes from head to foot. Tidmarsh counted 13 patches!!! on the trousers that I wore yesterday (Sunday!!) and yet strange to say notwithstanding all this there was something aristocratic in it, it was a perfect specimen of the relics of auld decency.
Tell me Emma is there anything amiss in Bagnalstown? I wrote two letters there and received no answer to neither. I believe Mrs Payne has not heard from them this good while. I am afraid something is the matter or Maria would have answered my letters. Tom Payne has an increase of 4d a day lately he has now 10 shillings a week. Mrs Payne is worth £70 a year at present, but I think if she had twice as much she would contrive to spend it without being comfortable.
Poor Wm Wright is on his way to America now, he wrote to me from Liverpool.5 He appears to be greatly attached to his young wife. When I was in the country I lodged in the same house that Francis Heydon6 lodged in two months before, they appeared to like Frank exceedingly as whenever his name was mentioned they were loud in their praise of him. Evans was out with me to day making my bargains.7 I’m twice as good a hand as he is at cutting them down, he was surprised at the brass of face8 that I exhibited. Among other articles I bought a couple pair of soles, it would not be easy to deceive me in them. John Murphy9 when purchasing from myself was never half so great a shuffler10 as I am. I think if I was dealing with my father he’d turn me out of the shop.
Give my love to my mother, ask her if she did pay my father the 2d for which he billed me, if not I’ll take out a process and get Woodhouse11 to serve it on her for my 11½d. I sincerely hope however that she’ll see that it’s her own interest to pay the required sum.
Do you read anything now Emma? I hope you have not paid it by, you will find it of infinite service to you. I have read a good deal myself since I came to Youghal.
Send me every little bit of news you can collect, how Mr and Mrs McGee are, how my uncle Caleb’s family are. Send me word how the plan I sent Bill12 answer. I saw a caution from him in the Carlow Sentinel13 respecting some affairs between him and James Treacy. How is my uncle Ned14
My father owes me a letter, tell him to write to me
Good night | I remain Your affectionate brother | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/10/3213
LT Transcript Only
Monday: LT gives postmark as ‘March, 16th, 1841’.
Frazer: not identified.
Gurtnagopple: ‘field of horses’ – probably reference to Tyndall’s description in his previous letter to Emma – letter 0043 – of his visit to the Parish of Killeagh.
Camomile flowers: to treat indigestion.
he wrote to me from Liverpool: see letter 0046.
Francis Heydon: Francis Heydon was from Leighlin Bridge and one of Edward Heydon’s sons. Unlike his brother William he appears not to have worked for the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.
my bargains: purchase of the new suit.
brass of face: audacity.
John Murphy: not identified.
shuffler: OED defines shuffler as ‘One who acts in a shifty or evasive manner; a slippery, shifty person’; but Tyndall probably meant someone who strikes a hard bargain.
Woodhouse: not identified.
the plan I sent Bill: see letter 0045.
a caution from him in the Carlow Sentinel: William Tyndall warned the public not to accept any bills from James Treacy, who was insolvent (CS, 6 March 1841, p. [1]).
my uncle Ned: Edward Styles.
Please cite as “Tyndall0050,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0050