From William Ginty   Friday. (May 19th, 1842)

Friday.

My dear Tyndall,

I got a read of your eight days composition1 yesterday and in reply I must say it was all that I wished for – or expected it to be, a lively narrative of incidents of travel particularly romantic and ludicrous. What a shocking specimen of Human Depravity that coachman was! How very admirable your perfect composure and resignation to the will of the Omnipotent must have been to eye of a fellow traveller during the impending thunder-storm. (And your left arm – what a narrow escape indeed – really I wonder it was not dissolved!) You will pardon me when I say that I cannot help smiling at the extremities to which you tourists are sometimes driven. I cannot imagine how ever you brought yourself or had nerve enough to buy a pennyworth of that barbarous bread (Lord, how I should like to see a little of it through a microscope) And then you had to eat it! Oh shocking! I would not be surprised if you were laid up with a surfeit now that you have time to consider on the horrid deed. How very much your dear C- - -t- - -a2 would be affected did she but know the dangers to which you were exposed Poor dear girl she would at all events be very uneasy until your return. Let me congratulate you on the happiness which awaits your arrival. Just fancy yourself some Sunday evening about the 10th of June next standing before the door of Put. St. Chapel3 with your arms gracefully entwined round that fatal lamp-post and exclaiming with all the fervency and ardour of an enthusiastic lover

‘Here’s the post she loved so much

Where I was often planted’!!!

fancy with what delight you will hear the theme of the sacred preacher dying into echoes

‘By Beauty mellowed o’er the pavement sweep’

fancy the creaking of the door bursting on your ravished ears as it opens to emit the fair form of your charmer – fancy – oh! happiness unparalleled – pleasure indescribable joy unutterable – the grasp of that silk gloved hand and the – the – the cool ‘How d’ye do’. ‘Happy to see you’ – ‘Quite well I hope’

‘The just reward of so much love’

‘But let that pass’ -----

Yes! ‘This survey is a failure’

List4 ye Tyndall now to me

Quondam5 mess-mate – no repealer6

I’ll reveal myself to thee

First there is our embarkation

On the 20th of May

Then we leave our native nation

Friends and country – far away

Then again the Progress Journals7

Of which no tidings yet are come

The devil sweep his hotest funnells.

With the man who stopt the fun.

The Tuesday previous to our sailing

Dunn8 and Foy and some few more

Will sail for Dublin, without failing,

T’enlist in Larcoms fire-proof core9

‘Professor’,10 ‘Phil’,11 Oneill and others

Amongst which are Doig and son12

(How cruel ’tis to sunder brothers)

These must go with chains13 to run

But ah, the worst now follows after,

Which makes their misery more intense

Surely ’tis a sad disaster

These must work for eighteen pence

This cursed order – damn its writer!

Came from England t’other day

By the way of healing plaster

To expectants of more pay.

Enough of this – The following gents will be your colleagues on and after the 10th of June. – Sinnett, Foy Scally,14 Holland,15 Latimer, McGowan,16 Eivers, Bloomfield, Wm. Hunter, Davy Doig !!! One of the Todd’s17 and all the D.O.18 chaps. Evans is beginning to look sea-sick already. Poor little devil he wont be the weight of a lark when he lands. Nothing will do Tid19 but a dog – blow’d if I wont ship him out for the Isle of Man as I go by. We finished the job and got the R.M.D.20 I will write again as soon as I get settled among the John Bulls21 once more. Jack and Jim22 and I and Dick H.23 and Kelly24 are qualified as plotters and tolerable draughtsmen. That saves our bacon. Did you take the rust off your chain yet. We have not yet heard our destination. I perfectly agree with you with regard to Carroll. Before I read your comment I had formed that opinion, if I dont mistake he was drunk while writing it the similies that he used in the description of his dress &c smells very much of the effusion of a ‘Whiskified soul’. I rather think that our few bobs25 is like McNab’s Church of Rome26 ‘They are gone to the bats and to the moles’27 – he will be certainly a grace to a Reading Desk. I should not wonder if he would sometimes fall asleep and wake shouting ‘What’s Trumps’.

If there are extremes in human wretchedness and if the unfortunate afflicted is to be pitied – Mrs Payne is. She is lying on a sick bed with none to attend to her most trivial wants but her unfortunate starving children. She seems to be a playtoy in – the hands of the demon of misery – a poor afflicted stranger without I may say a friend to even enquire after her. Giblin28 is in hospital and what will it be after the 20th. The miserable pittance which Joe29 sends or is able to send her is not near enough to sustain nature even in health. Heavens Tyndall has this woman no friends – is she altogether an outcast from humanity and the human. There was some talk in the office this morning of doing something for her but I am afraid it will be a failure. Survey men are not very purse-proud previous to a long journey. I really pity her from my soul, but that does her no good. She was foolish that she did not go home long ago.

I’m glad to hear Murray is better, if he was here he would surely have to go chain30 in England for 9 bobs31 a week. I suppose you will write again before we embark. Give my kindest remembrances to your sister Emma (I forgot you have but one) but I suppose she completely forgets even my name

Yours ever faithfully | William Ginty

David Bates is to meet us in Liverpool I told him to look out for the Ocean bound from Cork32 with a load of pigs and sappers clerks!!!

I hear the city of Hamburgh is completely burnt thro’ accident33 attended with a great loss of life and property.

Friday evening

Dear Tyndall I’ll just open this to let you know something more about Mrs Payne. Sinnet came up to our room to day and asked for Payne’s address and says ‘I’ll write to him to day and if they dont send their mother some money to take her home or keep her from starvation I’ll lug the whole before Major Waters’

What she will do I dont know. She must go into the Poor House or starve34 and that immediately

Yours &c. | Ginty.

RI MS JT 1/11/3578

LT Transcript Only

your eight days composition: letter missing.

C- - -t- - -a: Christina Tidmarsh.

Put. St. Chapel: Ginty’s abbreviation does not correspond to any street names in Cork at this time. He may have meant Princes Street, where there were two Protestant chapels (Slater’s).

List: listen (OED).

Quondam: former holder of an office or position (OED).

no repealer: opposed to the Repeal Association, which campaigned for the repeal of the Act of Union and restoration of the Irish Parliament.

Progress Journals: presumably the ‘Journal of Progress and Weekly Report’; see letter 0038, n. 3.

Dunn: John Dunne, a civil assistant who worked in the 4th Division, C District of the Irish Ordnance Survey. He had joined the Survey in May 1838, and was removed to Dublin in May 1842, after which he no longer appears in the records (NAI OS/1/17–19).

Larcoms fire-proof core: Thomas Aiskew Larcom (1801–79) was a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers who joined the Irish Survey in 1826. Two years later, Colonel Thomas Colby appointed Larcom as his assistant in the central organization of the survey at Mountjoy House, Phoenix Park, Dublin, where Colby, in 1825, had constructed a fireproof store for maps and documents.

‘Professor’: not identified.

‘Phil’: possibly Phillip Evans.

Doig and son: David Doig, Snr and David Doig, Jnr, both civil assistants in the 4th Division, C District of the Irish Survey. Doig, Jnr had joined the Survey in June 1837, and was the higher paid of the two. His father joined the Survey in January 1839. They were transferred to England in, respectively, May (Snr) and August (Jnr) 1842 (NAI OS/1/18–19).

chains: surveying chains of 66 feet in length; see n. 30.

Scally: Alexander Scally, a civil assistant who joined the Irish Survey in December 1827 and worked in the 1st Division, C District (NAI OS/1/16–19).

Holland: John Holland, a civil assistant in the 1st Division, C District. He joined the Irish Survey in September 1836, and was transferred to England in August 1842 (NAI OS/1/17–19).

McGowan: John McGowan, a civil assistant who worked in the 4th and 5th Divisions, C District. He joined the Irish Survey in November 1835, and was transferred to England in August 1842 (NAI OS/1/17–19).

Todd: possibly John Todd; see letter 0115, n. 11.

D.O.: District Office.

Tid: John Tidmarsh.

R.M.D.: not identified.

John Bulls: the English. John Bull, who was created by John Arbuthnot in the pamphlet Law is a Bottomless Pit (1712), was an archetype of the bluff, freeborn Englishman.

Jack and Jim: John Tidmarsh and Phillip Evans.

Dick H.: Richard Hunter.

Kelly: probably George Kelly, a civil assistant in the 4th Division, C District. He joined the Irish Survey at the beginning of 1838, and was transferred to England in May 1842 (NAI OS/1/16–19).

bobs: bunches or clusters of leaves, flowers or fruit (OED); Ginty seems to be using it figuratively to describe his and Tyndall’s collections of poetry.

McNab’s Church of Rome: not identified.

‘They are gone to the bats and to the moles’: adaptation of Isaiah 2:20.

Giblin: possibly John Giblin, a civil assistant in the 5th Division, C District. He joined the Division in c. June 1840, but at a rate of pay (1s. 8d.) that suggests he may have been on the Irish Survey before and was returning. He was transferred to the English Survey on 5 August 1842 (NAI OS/1/17–19).

Joe: Joseph Payne.

chain: the method of land surveying in which linear measurements of distance are made using a chain of 66 feet in length, with the area to be surveyed divided into an outline and the framework comprising triangles.

bobs: shillings.

Ocean bound from Cork: PS Ocean, a paddle steamer built for the St George Steam Packet Company and launched in 1836.

the city of Hamburgh is completely burnt thro’ accident: Between 4 and 8 May 1842 about a quarter of the old city of Hamburg was destroyed by fire, with 51 people killed and the town hall and three churches destroyed. The conflagration started when a small fire in the Slödings market reached a warehouse containing spirits.

She must go into the Poor House or starve: The Irish Poor Law Act of 1838 established a workhouse in each Poor Law Union on a similar basis to the new Poor Law introduced in England in 1834, with the exception that in Ireland no out-relief was available in any form.

Please cite as “Tyndall0143,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 29 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0143