Tuesday evening | May 16. 1843
My very Dear Tyndall
Your two letters1 came into my clutches in proper time – The P.S.2 to the first astonishes with a vengeance – Miss Edwards!3 in – Preston! – what could she want there? – What did she want with you? – if your meeting was accidental certain am I you would have said so! – but it was not ‘an hours tete a tete’ is far from the result of accident – but you say ‘more of this anon’ so say I – I feel particularly anxious to learn what formed a subject for the ‘hour’ – I suppose you acquitted yourself honourably of the charge respecting the ‘lines by W Ginty’4 – she is well aware it was you (and not me) that wrote them! – ‘Honour bright’ Tyndall – my conduct towards her has been the reward of her merit – but halt thee Ginty – !Whither so fast! I am in blessed ignorance of this proceeding
And musing thus the matter o’er
I needs must own it is perplexing
Oh all ye skilled in womans lore
this for me tis vexing
Pray do explain that ‘tete a tete’
From Tyndall’s pen so late ejected
An hours chit chat
And all to that
Ye cannot guess – but I suspect it
I recollect at one time in Kirkby one evening I was writing a letter to you – Miss E was present when I was directing it – She took a pencil out of her pocket and copied the address I laughed at her of course and asked her her motive to no purpose tho’ – she laughed at me in return – so that this enabled her to trace out your reverence without inquiry.
– She seems to have some kind of foreknowledge! Call you her handsome – interesting &c. &c. hope you have not fallen in love with her – Oh, Jack! – No advantage taken during the tete a tete en solitaire?5 Eh! Just explain this affair when you have time – to me at present it is utterly incomprehensible – she has a large languishing loving eye has she not? One that could ‘sublimate the soaring soul above the sublunary system of solidities, or precipitate it into the dismal depths of Dis6 — darkness and desperation’.7 A letter from Sinnett lately informs me that she has come of age8 and has left her uncle and aunt in Kirkby – ‘She has’ continues Sinnett ‘taken the reigns into her own hands’ ‘where she will drive to is another question’. You are resolved to keep me busy, what between book-keeping and other projects I am a man of business now indeed. You shall have the enclosure by next post and a letter to the Society.9
Yours Ginty.
Letter from Skipton10 today says Col Colby has informed Capt. D.11 to his great surprise, that 200 men must be discharged12 – What about this London job?13 – Is it not a pity to let the opportunity which this contest affords slip? – one subject would do all – their skill at making estimates – Tithe Plans to wit.14
RI MS JT 1/11/3603
LT Transcript Only
Your two letters: letters missing.
P.S.: abbreviation of post scriptum, Latin for written after.
Miss Edwards!: Mary Edwards.
‘lines by W Ginty’: see letter 0183, n. 4.
tete a tete en solitaire: solitary (i.e. on their own) head to head (French).
Dis: a fictional city in Dante’s The Divine Comedy containing the lower circles of hell.
‘sublimate the soaring soul … darkness and desperation’: a line from a humorous letter by ‘Palælogus Modestus’ published in the Liverpool-based Kaleidoscope; or, Literary and Scientific Mirror, 1 n.s. (1821), p. 183, and subsequently reprinted in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, 7 (1839), p. 287.
come of age: turned twenty one, the age of legal majority in nineteenth-century Britain.
the enclosure by next post and a letter to the Society: letter missing.
Skipton: see letter 0096, n. 3.
Capt. D.: Captain Robert Kearsley Dawson.
200 men must be discharged: presumably as part of the general reduction in civil assistants and labourers on the English Ordnance Survey; see letter 0194, n. 15.
this London job?: not identified, but presumably concerning the putative Survey of London; see letter 0154, n. 3.
their skill at making estimates – Tithe Plans to wit: see letters 0188, n. 6 and 0195, n. 15.
Please cite as “Tyndall0207,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on