From John Chadwick   June 26th 1842.

Kinsale | June 26th 1842.

My much esteemed and very reverend Tyndall

I received your bagatelle¹ (I need hardly say only for fashion sake) with a degree of pleasure bordering on rapture indeed the expectant ardour of a nymph in girlhood’s rosy joy when looking forth from her bower for the individual with the bags who bears her first clandestine billet-doux² on the wings of a lazy letter carrier could never be equal to mine when I saw our Mercury³ come into my establishment and hand me an epistolary morsel directed in your peculiarly neat hand to my unworthy self though, apropos, bloody end to any one who would so style me except my own pen in its meek humility. I tore it open though it was worthy of a better fate than disembowelling, nevertheless with all the gusto of a medical tyro I performed the Cesarean operation⁴ and devoured the contents with all the ferocity of an ogre, though the contents related to nothing but a hot journey and an episode about an old faggot of a woman who has dared to usurp a den where sappers held their orgies,⁵ for which crime she deserve to be tried by a packed jury of parallel rulers and sentenced to have six inch traces pricked off on her buttocks until they were as tattooed as a New Zealander’s frontispiece.⁶ Yet still even if you had penned a letter to me full of nothing at all, it wont have brought up old recollections from the gulfs of memory bearing an instant impress to the heart and recalling past scenes when we dived into the same dish of sprats and were co-partners on a featherbed. I have been long expecting a letter from you, indeed I was almost guilty of thinking you had forgotten me, but the receipt of yours broke like a beam of sunshine upon the cloudy sameness of my Kinsale existence, warming and irradiating it for the time. Indeed it is gratifying to one who has retired from the busy world like me to find that at least one old associate holds me in a snug place in his memory – all I want here to make me quite content (I will not say happy for that is not of earth saith the preacher),⁷ is the companionship of a congenial spirit like yours. That is all the loss I sustained in leaving the survey⁸ it is a pity that you could not find some line of life that would be parallel to mine, but the paths of life in Kinsale are all too lowly for a soaring spirit like yours, and the tide in the affairs of men spoken of by our immortal bard,⁹ ramifies itself into a number of petty channels in this town which, were they collected into one tideway, would be but sufficient to keep one poor devil afloat. Nevertheless, to continue the figure, if you would venture in my bark for a season and favour me with your promised visit, you would be welcome to remain while there was a grain of meal in the kist,¹⁰ that is if you would promise to be provident and not oblige me to tell you that the ‘hough’s in the pot’ as the border raider’s wives were wont to say when there was nothing left of the cow but the shinbone, as a signal for them to make a fresh haul.¹¹ I cannot say when I may go to Cork I was planning to go to Liverpool in July, but fear I cannot leave this to go such a distance. Write to me and let me know where you intend to reside in Cork also when you can come down to me. Write soon – The Survey officials are now reduced to a select few. I suppose you have not many companions. I may surprise you with a visit ere long but could not name the time. All friends here are well. Mrs C.¹² desires to be mentioned to you as also Miss Donaclifte. My young un is growing long and round and shouts as hard for her meals as if she was 4 years old instead of 4 months,¹³ she is a remarkable little baste.¹⁴ Everything goes on here in the same monotonous manner, for Kinsale is as unchangeable as the laws of the Sweedes and Prussians.¹⁵ Remember me to the companions of my former devilments, that is to such of them as remain on the green isle. I hope that you will carve ‘forget me not’ on my ci-devant¹⁶ table and stool before they go across the seas. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than to hear of Tom Foy’s promotion.¹⁷ If I go to Liverpool I will have an opportunity of seeing some old messmates there. I must now conclude wishing you lots of prosperity and heaps of happiness and remain

your steadfast crony that was | John Chadwick | Adieu

I hope that craw fish¹⁸ of a Sinnett behaves decent to you I hear he is the only one of the lords anointed left among you.

RI MS JT 1/11/3495

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