May 10th. 1843. | Auld Kinsale
My very dear Tyndall
The receipt of your last1 spoke to my tortured conscience like the stinging of bees and I hasten to make some poor amends for indeed what you justly call my unkind silence. But my dear fellow you judge me at least a degree too harshly. God knows I esteem and reverence the memory of that portion of the span of my existence which I whiled away in your society – and it is a sorrow to me to think that there were not more of the human family cast in the same mental mould that you were. Indeed in my course through life I may truly say that I never met a masculine individual that I could regard with such esteem and friendship as I did you, and such being the fact I allow that there is the less excuse for treating your friendship with neglect – curse the word, I never did treat it with the like, for in my inmost soul you have and ever will hold the first place among friends. Never dare to accuse me again of disregard, for by so doing you naturally insult yourself. forgive me my trespasses as you would wish to be forgiven.2 My friend, I am sinking into a gulf of apathy in this place. I am like an animal tied by a rope to a stake which can only feed in a ring circumscribed by the length of its tether and my whole soul and thoughts are fixed within that circle and the little world of its own which it bounds still looking inward to the support of family, the maintaining of business, and so forth, yet I would now fain become as eccentric as a comet3 and fly off at a tangent in writing to you. My cacoethes scribendi4 is like a galled5 post horse6 which would fain lie on his road for ever, but when roused by a few skelps7 in the gear, buckled to and whipped into a sweat, draws along as kind as any other jade. There is a complimentary comparison for you. You see I have got so far out of nothing, but I trust that my nothings will be only enough to smooth down the bristles of your anger, and that the heart of the fayre and courteous childe Walter8 will again expand towards poor me. Past times seem to me like the memories of buried years and indeed the great cause why the cold chain of silence has hung o’er me so long is that I feel such a change in the tenor of my life and such a separation from old friends and old pursuits that I feel like as if I had been transplanted to the dog star9 or set up shop in the moon; which of course would prevent me from keeping up a correspondence with the world I had left. But now a truce to nonsense, and let me tell you the events of the time past which have been but few. As to myself, I have been ill and well since in my turn, and am getting on in the same track, accompanied by my wife.10 My little one is a fine stout child; she is able to walk and say some words and is of course a wonderful child. All the good folks here are well and hearty, all hugging fast to the world still and keeping above ground. Sophy Donaclift will be married in a few weeks to the Captain of a vessel which came here to be repaired.11 He is a very nice gent and a German. I bought a boat from him a very fine one, 22 feet long wide in proportion built of oak and copper fastened, and all I want is to have you or some one like you here to keep me alive. I have not a male companion in the town now, all the Markhams12 are now living in Liverpool, having sold their property here13 and flitted. I was amused with the account you gave me in a former letter14 of the memoir of the Survey snott’s,15 and was tempted to say with the preacher ‘Lord, What is man that Thou are mindful of him’16 for I am sure that it must be the intervention of their good angel that kept some of them from the gallows. Do not suppose I allude to any of your small family, I only mean the upper crust or off scourings of the Survey – I thought to have gone over among you all some time this summer, but fear that neither time nor the way and means will permit, and as the ariel machine17 has not come to the perfection of travelling and we cannot go to the North Pole for a penny, I fear I must put it off for some time longer. I had no right to expect any news in your last but I trust in your next letter that you will let me know the aspect of affairs relating to the Survey and whether you intend to continue on it, and how you get on with the woman and how many children were fathered on you since, and whether you have reared whiskers as yet. And had you any diversion during the winter? It would be the delight of my heart to see you and visit you, but for God’s sake do not judge of my friendship by my letter writing. it would indeed be very scant if you were to do so. I believe it was Brutus that forgave Cassius because he inherited the failing which gave the offence from his parent.18 There is a noble precedent for you, for my sin is also a family failing, handed down through a long line of illustrious ancestry who were all bloody bad letter writers. I have at this time to write letters to six different relatives and think the best way would be not to write to any of them for fear one would be jealous of the other. I always feel a sober, quiet, delight in thinking of you, but it requires one of your fiery blow up letters to spur me to the perpetration of a billet. So now you know my weak point I think I am spinning a good yarn this turn. Give the enclosed to Latimer, remember me to all who may care for me and joined by the holy stone and all the other interesting localities in love, I am truly yours from Alpha to Omega19 Amen
J. C. Chadwick
All friends desire to be remembered and send their best wishes au revoir
I am just after getting a lend of a book called Pencellings by the Way, by N. Willis Esq.20 which is quite a God-send and as I am eager to devour it this must be my last postscript | farewell | write soon | good Bye.
and mention every thing remarkable. God bless you
We have Seymour’s company21 from Cork here at present and the height of fun – let me know how far Preston is from Liverpool and the best way of getting there, is it any way connected by railway?
RI MS JT 1/11/3501–2
LT Transcript Only
your last: letter missing.
forgive me my trespasses as you would wish to be forgiven: adaptation of the Lord’s Prayer, ‘And forgive us our trespasses | As we forgive them that trespass against us’ (Anglican Book of Common Prayer, 1662).
as eccentric as a comet: the degree to which the elliptical orbit of a comet deviates from a perfect circle.
cacoethes scribendi: compulsive need to write (Latin), derived from a line in the Satires of Juvenal: ‘Tenet insanabile multos scribendi cacoethes’ (the incurable desire for writing affects many).
galled: irritated, vexed, unquiet, distressed (OED).
post horse: a horse kept at a post-house or inn for the use of post-riders, or for hire by travellers (OED).
skelps: strikes or blows (OED).
fayre and courteous childe Walter: likely referring to Tyndall’s poetic pseudonym Walter Snooks (see letter 0109), with overtones of Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18), but possibly also an allusion to the medieval troubadour Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170–c. 1230), who had recently been brought back into prominence in ballads recovered by the German poet and antiquarian Ludwig Uhland.
the dog star: Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.
my wife: see letter 0148, n. 12.
Sophy Donaclift will be married in a few weeks … came here to be repaired: The marriage may not have taken place, as a year later, in a letter from 9 July 1844, Chadwick told Tyndall, ‘Miss Donaclift is not yet married but will be in time to Barry the tutor at Mr Perdue’s’ (RI MS JT 1/11/3508).
the Markhams: see letter 0177, nn. 16–21.
their property here: The Markham’s family home had been Rose Abbey, Kinsale.
a former letter: letter missing.
snott’s: applied to persons as a term of contempt or opprobrium (OED).
‘Lord, What is man that Thou are mindful of him’: Psalms 8:4.
ariel machine: see letter 0199, n. 22.
Brutus that forgave Cassius … offence from his parent: Marcus Junius Brutus (85–42BC) and Gaius Cassius Longinus (85–42BC) were Roman senators and leaders of the conspiracy against Julius Caeser, who reputedly fell out during the military upheavals following Caeser’s assassination in 44BC. In William Shakespeare’s Julius Caeser, Cassius asks ‘Have you not love enough to bear with me | When that rash humour which my mother gave me | Makes me forgetful’, to which Brutus forgivingly declares ‘from henceforth, | When you are over-earnest with your Brutus, | He’ll think your mother chides, and leave you so’ (IV.ii.172–7).
Alpha to Omega: the first and final letters of the Greek alphabet.
Pencellings by the Way, by N. Willis Esq.: Pencillings by the Way, 3 vols (London: John Macrone, 1835), a collection of letters to the New York Mirror about his experiences in Europe by the American writer Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–67).
Seymour’s company: not identified.
Please cite as “Tyndall0205,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 2 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0205