Saturday.
Dear Alpha2
I expected ‘Thou’ by yesterday’s post and by this evening’s post – disappointed – how’s that? I hope it will be there tomorrow as I promised S3 to let him have it by Monday evening at the latest. I suppose you have seen the III.4 I infer from the notice that there is more than one in the field, it reads: ‘Some important communications’. Perhaps some C.E.S5 about the meeting we recommended the week previous. Did you con the pages of the III? The death of – Wood Esq. M.P.6 in the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Institution. Awfully sudden. The deceased entered eternity with the ‘Ordnance Survey of the six northern counties’7 on his lips. You can infer from this that the thing is talked about among the nobility! I hear that they have got 20.000 acres more of Tithe work!8 Is it so? If I don’t mistake, something appeared in a Preston paper about this matter, to the effect that the Board had been remonstrated with and that the C.E.9 officers were ordered to do no more after the old contracts had been fulfilled! Was this a fact? If so – that about the 20.000 acres must all be talk. A fact came to my ears yesterday which astonished me and at the same time pleased me. I only regret I did not know it sooner, perhaps tis time enough? Not content with monopolizing the professional rights of Civil Engineers in the Tithe commutation Surveys they carry the rascality further and contract for the surveying of farms on estates!!! Such is the fact. A short time after I left George Street10 office a map of an estate or farm (a small one) was drawn in the office, and it is said it was done for 10 shillings although the cost of its execution was nearly if not all out £3. This happened in last February or March. I never heard it till last night. I have put chaps on the scent to find out the particulars. This I call important! Do you? (!!!) But just hold hard yet awhile on this matter! Have you ever heard of Hornby Castle?11 if not, I have, and seen it too. It is situated on the river Lune in the northern extremity of this county. Well! Hornby Castle is a very fine castle. I have seen the crimson tints of a departing sun shed a glorious halo on its domes and its minarets. To me in fancy its mouldering towers and ivied-turrets have hymned a lonely requiem to ‘the deeds that were done in their time’12 I have seen its splintered and now useless flag-staff totter in the winds of heaven! I have seen the tumultuous Lime roll its restless flood around the hallowed precincts of its firm base, that seemed to ‘mock the lapse of ages’13 and ‘bid defiance to all-conquering time’!14 I have gazed upon that venerable superstructure enraptured! I have turned from that ‘sad relic of departed worth’15 to the surrounding scene in its rich, gay, loveliness of sublimity. The dark wild forest and wide-spread woodland – the emerald valley and burnished lake and said ‘These! all these, I wish to heaven they were mine!!’16 Within the portals of this time-hallowed domicile our recreant taskmaster takes up his abode when he goes to that part of Her Majesty’s realms to examine. That old Baronial Hall has degenerated into the hands of serfs and menials. Oh shades of the Baron and the Chieftain, dream ye now who tread the halls that bore ye. I ween not, or your hoary phantoms would return to dispel the dastard plebeians ‘who revel o’er the ruin they have wrought’.17 Infamous pollution! ‘The long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults’18 of that proud tenement of other days – is indeed outraged! ‘Hornby thy castle is a Holy Place’19 – Thy Hall a Palace, for ‘twas trod by ‘Chiefs and ladies bright’20 – by noble hearts and warrior arms, but now alas, the starched-up exquisite – the scented puppy, and the petty tyrant strut in pampered churlishness thro’ thy portals, emblems, sad emblems of ‘thy tale of ruin’.21
‘Thus generations in their turn decay
So flourish these (alas!) when those (oh God!) are passed away’.22
The present occupier of this castle and Hamley are intimate and yesterday I heard that Hamley is going to get this place drawn on a large scale. He to pay just what the men’s time will amount to, and all this for friendship’s sake. Give him rope enough23 say I – He will put his foot in it, this is worse than any charge against him yet. Not a word but whispers, I’ll watch his movements – The other job was done certainly. How gloriously these will harmonise with the Tithe robbery!
I heard last night (I heard a devil of a lot last night! did I not?) for the first time that Jim Newton deserted last spring left the wife (Cuddy’s24 sister) who is now at home. Jim has not been heard of since, I understand. Not a word from Manchester or Skipton yet! All damn lies about the Discharging. I knew it. The wish was parent to the lie with the rascals!
Yours | Comracht Moran.25
By the time you get this I hope to have yours. Saturday 4 o’clock P.M.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/11/3820
LT Transcript Only
21 October 1843: Louisa Tyndall annotation: ‘[October] 23’. However, 23 October was a Monday, and the letter was written on a Saturday. Louisa Tyndall probably derived her date from a postmark stamped two days after the letter was composed.
Alpha: an occasional nickname for Tyndall.
S: not identified.
the III: i.e., Spectator’s third letter. Spectator is Tyndall's Liverpool Mercury pseudonym.
C.E.S: not identified, possibly Civil Engineers.
Wood Esq. M.P.: George William Wood (1781-1843), Member of Parliament from 1832-43. He died of a stroke during a meeting of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, of which he was vice-president. He was also a Fellow of both the Linnaean Society and the Geological Society.
the six northern counties: see letter 0231, n. 16.
Tithe work: see letter 0231, n. 19.
C.E.: Civil Engineers.
George Street: probably a reference to the headquarters of the Institution of Civil Engineers; see letter 0238, n. 7.
Hornby Castle: a country home in Lancashire developed from a medieval castle. In 1843 the castle was owned by Pudsey Dawson (1778-1859), who was later High Sheriff of Lancashire.
‘the deeds that were done in their time’: unidentified reference.
‘mock the lapse of ages’: F. Schiller, Fiesco, II.xiii.
‘bid defiance to all-conquering time’: unidentified reference.
‘sad relic of departed worth’: Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, II.lxxiii.1: ‘Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!’
‘These! all these, I wish to heaven they were mine!!’: unidentified reference.
‘who revel o’er the ruin they have wrought’: unidentified reference.
‘The long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults’: a common description of Gothic cathedrals.
‘Hornby thy castle is a Holy Place’: possibly a reference to Lord Byron, ‘On the Castle of Chillon’, line 9: ‘Chillon! thy prison is a holy place’.
‘Chiefs and ladies bright’: T. Moore, ‘The Harp that Once Through Tara’s Halls’, line 9: ‘No more to chiefs and ladies bright | The harp of Tara swells’. On Moore, see Biographical Register.
‘thy tale of ruin’: unidentified reference.
‘Thus generations in their turn decay | So flourish these (alas!) when those (oh God!) are passed away’: Homer, The Iliad, Book VI, lines 185-6: ‘So generations in their course decay, | So flourish these, when those are past away’. The interjections are Ginty’s.
Give him rope enough: this alludes to the proverb: ‘Give a thief rope enough, and he’ll hang himself’. J. Ray, A Compleat Collection of English Proverbs (London: J. Hughs, 1737), p. 161.
Cuddy’s sister: Martin Cuddy; sister’s name unidentified.
Comracht Moran: a joking pseudonym for William Ginty; meaning and origin not identified.
Please cite as “Tyndall0249,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on