Midsummer1
My dear friend
Be pleased to accept my grateful thanks for the bottle of ‘medicine’ you were so kind as to send to me this morning I value it highly for its intrinsic worth, but I value more highly the friendly spirit which such an act exhibits. I esteem friendship in all men, but more particularly do I love to have the friendship of the good and discerning, for I then think they must see something better in me than I can discern in myself and this increases a desire in me to become what I seem to them to be I shall attend to your directions in the use of the medicine: when Mrs M.2 becomes quamish3 or low in spirit I shall administer a little of Mr T’s4 bottle and then give her a good shaking to rouse up her spirits I am taking to Ireland a very lean and delicate wife, but I hope to bring her back fat and healthy. She is more unwilling to go as she fears, in consequence of her extreme debility, that she will not have any pleasure on the journey, but I hope that the change of air, scenery &c. will renovate her constitution and cheer her spirits.
I am very sorry for your present debilitated state,5 and if wishes, prayers, or benedictions would be of any service, you should have mine with all my heart. I often enquire at my own mind why it is that the worthy man is generally called to pass through more bodily suffering and privations, than the man who does not seem to have a particle more of intellect than the ass, or ox that he drives; and the only answer that satisfies me is that the just Governor6 would not be just in giving to the man who possess extensive mental capacity, and intellectual enjoyment the same share of bodily strength and health as he who is deficient in mind, and I feel confident that the intellectual man, although he may suffer weakness and other privations, would not exchange places with the man who is only capable of goading a donkey. ‘He whom the Lord loves he chastens’7 – and ‘God takes the good, too good on earth to stay, and leaves the bad too bad to take away’.8 Although I hope you are good enough to be taken away, I hope you will be left to experience more of the enjoyments of this world than you have ever known. You have not experienced the sweets of matrimony. If you could get the genuine article it is even sweeter than the cogniac,9 and he who made the woman ordered the man to marry her,10 so, if you should go to the other world without obeying orders, you might get your ears pulled and pinched, and so you ought; yet I would not like to hear you made squeak.
Yours affectionately | R. Martin
RI MS JT 1/11/3757
LT Transcript Only
Midsummer: In Ireland the summer solstice was celebrated on St John’s Eve and Day, 23 and 24 June, although Martin might also mean the longest day, 21 June.
Mrs M.: Mrs Martin, presumably Robert’s wife.
quamish: variant spelling of qualmish; affected, or liable to be affected, with a qualm or qualms (OED).
Mr T: Mr Tyndall.
your present debilitated state: Soon after, in letter 0219, Tyndall told his father that his ‘health [is] somewhat delicate – resulting from too much confinement during the winter and spring’.
the just Governor: an expression used by John Wesley and other Methodist theologians, who differentiated between God the Creator and ‘God the Governor, the just Governor’ who acts justly in meting out rewards and punishments to humankind (J. Wesley, ‘Thoughts upon God’s Sovereignty’, in The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., 4th edn, 14 vols (London: John Mason, 1841), vol. 10, pp. 347–9, on p. 349).
‘He whom the Lord loves he chastens’: Hebrews 12:6.
‘God takes the good …too bad to take away’: a popular eighteenth-century epitaph of unknown origins (B. Richings, A General Volume of Epitaphs, Original and Selected (London: J. W. Parker, 1840), p. lxiv).
cogniac: variant spelling of cognac.
he who made the woman ordered the man to marry her: probably an allusion to Matthew 19:4–6, ‘And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder’.
Please cite as “Tyndall0212,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 2 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0212