Preston, | June 29th, 1843.
My dear Father
I was quite prepared for the sentiments stated in your last1 relative to my long letter,2 I knew you would not relish it, and my mother poor woman, why I had more hope of radicalizing3 even you than her. I shall make just one remark in connexion with our two last letters and that is that the God of protestantism never intended that it4 should be established by unjust means.
I am not now employed in the office,5 I have been engaged during the last week examining the town of Preston – that is – testing the Surveyors measurements. I was out in the country yesterday about seven miles from this. At about two o’clock I found myself getting hungry and by great good fortune I found two pence reposing in my pocket. I decided on getting a gill of milk. I went into a farmer’s house and called for my drop. The milk cost me a penny and I devoted the balance on hand to the purchase of something less than a square yard of a comical kind of oaten bread called ‘snap and rattle’.6 I made a hearty meal on my two penny worth. It enabled me to work hard until five o’clock and then walk a distance of eight miles home.
With respect to my going to Ireland I am so circumstanced at present that I’m quite unable to form an idea as to when I can go there.
You might have heard me speak of young Tidmarsh very often, he will be going to the Cape of Good Hope shortly. I’m sure he ought to rejoice to find himself independent of the Ordnance Survey. He has some very influential friends out at the Cape and I doubt not that his arrival there will be crowned with all the success he anticipates. He is now about 21 years of age7 – his mother doats on him – of course she feels the separation deeply, but she says she’d feel quite content if she saw me going out along with him.8 Poor woman, she’d like to see us companions for ever.
Do you think a letter would reach William Tyndall if I directed it to Philidelphia? If he be an influential person I think it would.
Were you well acquainted with Robinson Tyndall?
Do you know what Debby9 is doing in the Co.10 Galway?
My love to my mother and Emma | Your affectionate son | John.
Mr William Tyndall Market Street, Philidelphia
RI MS JT 1/10/3290
LT Transcript Only
your last: letter missing.
my long letter: this does not seem to be letter 0196, and thus this ‘long’ letter is probably missing.
radicalizing: Tyndall later recalled that at this time he ‘met some extracts’ from the writings of Thomas Carlyle ‘in the Preston newspapers. I chanced, indeed, to be an eye-witness of the misery which at that time so profoundly moved Carlyle … With my memory of the Preston riots still vivid, I procured ‘Past and Present’, and read it perseveringly … I found in it, moreover, in political matters, a morality so righteous, a radicalism so high, reasonable, and humane, as to make it clear to me that without truckling to the ape and tiger of the mob, a man might hold the views of a radical’ (‘Personal Recollections of Thomas Carlyle’, New Fragments, pp. 347–91, on p. 348–9).
it: presumably the Kingdom of God on earth.
the office: the Divisional Office of the English Ordnance Survey’s 1st Division.
‘snap and rattle’: a dish from northeast England of toasted oatcakes crumbled in milk.
He is now about 21 years of age: According to an obituary, John Tidmarsh was born on 17 January 1824, so was in fact only nineteen at this time (‘Death of Mr. John Tidmarsh’, Register (Adelaide), 12 November 1906, p. 6).
she says she’d feel quite content … along with him: a desire reiterated in letter 0215.
Debby: Deborah McAssey.
Co.: County.
Please cite as “Tyndall0213,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 8 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0213