110 Pitt Street | Saturday evening Feb. 5th 1843.1
My dear Jack
This pencil production of yours2 is ultra-astonishing. What has driven such a notion into that head of yours. Why man, ‘I never blamed you, never!’ Surely you could not infer such from my last letter3 – but I can guess Sinnett has ‘come Paddy over you’.4 I also sent a letter to him, in answer to which he said Miss E.5 had got the paper and was half crazy and that he thought all the water in the Lune6 would not clear me, and advised me to write to Miss E. Since that I have sent him a congratulatory letter with one enclosed for her –
I took his advice you see. Not to rectify her opinions nor to appease her anger but, in good truth, I did not wish her to imagine that I thought so much about her as to lavish such encomiums7 on her beauty. Enclosed I send you a P.S., of Sinnett’s,8 you had better read it before you go further, as it will throw a light on what here follows. (Read it)
Here follows the answer which I sent to this as well as I can recollect it – it will shew you that I have said nothing to Sinnett that could lead him to think I was offended with you I have no vengeance to wreak on Tyndall. No! No! Vengeance for what? Is it for praising my late inamorata?9 Why man I have done so myself until my vocabulary of love plaudits were drained to the very bottom. (But in good truth I can’t see what there is in it that discomposes that quondam10 charmer of mine so very much. I only wish some fair one would devote so much of her time in praise of my charms – but people’s tastes differ, and I’m only sorry Jack Tyndall has wasted so much of his ‘sweetness on the desert air’.11 Yes boy’o!!! – by heavens I’m sorry that that genuine worth which marked it has not received that admiration which is its just reward.
I wrote to her telling her that I was not the author – that I was sorry any friend of mine had annoyed her, but that I could confidently and positively say that it was not done with that intention – That it was merely in jest – jests of such kind being a common occurrence amongst us ‘wild Irish men’, that I could see nothing in it to offend, and that I thought there were many young ladies in these kingdoms who would likely go half-distracted with joy if such an exquisitely beautiful and gallant piece was sacrificed at the shrine of their beauty and concluded hoping that she would attribute it to no other motive than that of an Irishman holding forth in the exuberance of his nationality!!! Now it only remains for me to say on this subject that I regret you have for an instant imagined that I was displeased at-all with ‘the transaction’. No boy O! if I had you here I would give you a hearty shake of an Irish fist for managing the affair so completely. But read this which I extract from the ‘Mercury’ of yesterday12 (we get the paper regularly)
‘same day (Monday last ) at Kirkby Lonsdale Wm. H. Owen Esq.13 Solicitor of Gorey14 Ireland. To Mary only daughter of the late Capt. Edwards15 of Liverpool’.
Wonders will never cease! I hope it is true16 – yet fear she is now codded17 in downright earnest – it must mean her – her father was a Captain I have heard, and I recollect her asking me if I knew where Gorey was! Sinnett’s silence on the matter leads me to imagine it a cod, as he wrote on Tuesday evening, and I’m very certain it would be no easy matter to get ‘spliced’ in Kirkby without every little dog in the town knowing it, and again I wonder any fellow would be such a cod as to pay for the insertion of the announcement – if this is a jest I protest the jester is a cruel one.
Read again (Wonders, it seems, are only beginning)
‘To Correspondents’ ‘Ordnance Survey – Would Veritas18 favour us with a call? The subject requires great discretion’.
By the powers Tyndall – the moon of survey agitation is about to burst through the clouds which have long shrouded her — God speed thee ‘Veritas’! thy name and motto is a good one and you need never make it blush to make the mean R.E. monopolists19 tremble for their public security. Hurrah! Hurrah! 3 cheers for Veritas – glory to him. May the sun of prosperity cast her brightest rays even on the ould stump that scrapes the first line of it!!!
Next Friday’s paper will probably contain it.20 You shall have it But i’ faith, father John, who knows but you and Veritas are in the singular No.21 – if so – More power boy O! As you are not here to ‘favour them with a call’, if you commission me I’ll go, aye even if they had a ‘Board of Survey’ assembled to mark my presence. and if this wont do, blessed if I wont give discharge the second in the character of VENGEANCE. my motto: ‘I speak as unto wise men, judge ye what I say’.22 Holy poker how I’d wollop em. I’d make old Tom knock t’other hand off23 thumping the table with rage. I’d make deaf Harry24 hear the postman’s bugle in Liverpool as he sat conning over it in Preston. I’d make W.G.H.,25 dance a quadrille to the air of ‘devil take hindmost’26 as he ran with the paper in his fist from here to the Mercury office. Aye I’d make the whole confraternity run as so many devils would run from Father Tom McGuire with a bucket of Holy Water on his head. I’d - - - - do the devil and all!!!
Liverpool is teeming with illustrious country men of ours at present. O’Connell, McNeill, Caughy, Fielding, Old Nangle (from Achill) and Nolan!!!27 The writing of this alone prevents me from hearing the 2nd last this evening gratis in the Music Hall. Dan said a few nights ago, at a great ‘free trade banquet’,28 that no greater insult could be offered him than to class him and McNeill as countrymen – he says he has made Liverpool the hot bed of Bigotry and that if he thought there was a more bigotted place in the world he would go visit it as a ‘National curiosity’!!! McNeill is nearly worshiped by the Protestants – you should go at least 1½ hour before service time to get a seat in his church.29
I asked Hamley for a recommendation30 yesterday – but to no purpose – faith I astonished him with talk on my past grievances and future prospects on the O.S.31
I came here very much prejudiced against Mr Kennedy32 but indeed I like him very well now. Dick33 and I who worked his map agree in saying – he is a very decent gay fellow and an Irishman.
No more of your pencillings of penance I want scribblings of ‘Nationality’
Cant write more – its near post time and I must away.
Yours ever sincerely | Ginty.
Best respects to the Mess. The Capt.,34 was here to day I’ll be apt to pounce on a summat35 in the Mercury.
Adieu.
RI MS JT 1/11/3592
LT Transcript Only
Saturday evening Feb. 5th 1843: Ginty seems to have written the wrong date, as the Saturday was 4 February.
pencil production of yours: letter missing.
my last letter: letter 0183.
Sinnett has ‘come Paddy over you’: see letter 0184.
Miss E.: Mary Edwards.
the Lune: the River Lune which runs through Kirkby Lonsdale.
encomiums: formal or high-flown expressions of praise (OED).
Enclosed I send you a P.S., of Sinnett’s: enclosure missing. P.S. is an abbreviation of post scriptum, Latin for written after.
inamorata: female lover or sweetheart (OED).
quondam: former holder of an office or position (OED).
‘sweetness on the desert air’: T. Gray, ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard’ (1750), 56.
the ‘Mercury’ of yesterday: ‘Marriages, Births, and Deaths’, Liverpool Mercury, 3 February 1843, p. 35.
Wm. H. Owen Esq.: William Henry Owen, son of George Owen.
Gorey: a market town in County Wexford.
Capt. Edwards: Captain Robert Edwards.
I hope it is true: According to the Kirkby Lonsdale parish records, the marriage did indeed take place, although it is dated 7 June 1843 rather than in February. A year later it resulted in the birth of a daughter, Mary Anne.
codded: imposed upon, deceived (OED).
Veritas: the goddess of truth in Roman mythology.
the mean R.E. monopolists: the Royal Engineers who proposed to take on the work of the Tithe Survey, thus depriving private surveyors of the ability to compete for contracts for the work; see letters 0188, n. 10 and 0195, nn. 15 and 16.
Next Friday’s paper will probably contain it: no such letter appeared in the Liverpool Mercury for Friday 10 February 1843, nor in any subsequent issues.
in the singular No.: Ginty means that Tyndall might be Veritas.
‘I speak as unto wise men, judge ye what I say’: 1 Corinthians 10:15.
I’d make old Tom knock t’other hand off: Colonel Thomas Colby, who had lost his left hand when a pistol exploded in it in 1803.
deaf Harry: Captain Henry Tucker, who ‘throughout his successful career …had been extremely deaf’ (J. H. Andrews, A Paper Landscape: The Ordnance Survey in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 246).
W.G.H.: Lieutenant William George Hamley.
‘devil take hindmost’: a proverbial expression first recorded in print in Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s play Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding (1611).
McNeill, Caughy, Fielding, Old Nangle (from Achill) and Nolan: Hugh Boyd M‘Neile (1795–1879), an evangelical preacher and demagogic opponent of Roman Catholicism; James Caughey (1810–91), a Protestant revivalist preacher recently returned from Canada; Fielding Ould (1801–69), evangelical minister of Christ Church in Liverpool; Edward Nangle (1800–83), an evangelical clergyman in the Church of Ireland who established a Protestant colony in Achill, an island off the west coast of Ireland; Thomas Nolan, another evangelical Liverpool clergyman who was part of the Protestant ‘Irish clique’ led by M‘Neile (F. Neal, Sectarian Violence: The Liverpool Experience, 1819–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 48).
a great ‘free trade banquet’: The banquet, organized by the Liverpool branch of the Anti-Monopoly Association, was held at the Amphitheatre in Queen’s Square on Tuesday 31 January 1843 and was attended by c. 2,000 delegates. O’Connell’s remarks about M‘Neile were not reported in newspaper accounts of his speech at the banquet.
his Church: St Jude’s Church on Hardwick Street, Liverpool, where M‘Neile was the perpetual curate from 1834 to 1848.
a recommendation: for a pay rise.
O.S.: Ordnance Survey.
Mr Kennedy: see letter 0183, n. 26.
Dick: Richard Hunter.
The Capt.: presumably Captain Henry Tucker.
a summat: a something.
Please cite as “Tyndall0185,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0185