From James Craven   28th January, 1851

Halifax, 16, Cheapside. | 28th January, 1851.

Dear Tyndall

From the above heading you may give a shrewd guess at my present occupation and position. Yes, Tyndall, I am now what people call ‘standing on my own bottom’, which I as little contemplated when I served my time and when we last met that such a consummation was to take place so very early that I am placed in a position so novel and unexpected that I don’t exactly know whether this can be a stern reality or merely a dream. Dreaming, however, or not dreaming, and I have almost a strong persuasion that it is the former, I perceive myself walking quietly down to the office with ‘James Craven, Agent and Surveyor’ painted on my glass doors immediately opposite the Post Office as regularly as I used to journey down into Horton Street.¹ Arriving in them I certainly fancy there is an air of greater comfort pervading them than those in Horton Street, especially in my little ‘Private’ room where I am at present located penning this:– Suffice it that I have comfortable offices and am ready to engage on any work. You will be glad to hear that I have already been employed and my first engagement was to take a set of levels which occupied the whole day and which I accomplished as well as anyone could, which I can assure you gave me great pleasure and gives me an assurance in this department which I certainly did not before possess. I have however experienced a prelude of that abominable idleness which every young man must experience in first starting, and though almost hardly a fraction of this listlessness has yet been my lot, yet the mere phantom of it I have had has brought me to regret – and it is only the prospective view which keeps my spirits up and prevents my cursing myself and everyone around me for advising this step. To guard against this I endeavour to cheat myself by forming schemes which I compel myself to believe must be accomplished, but whether this kind of self deceit can be kept up I shall see. But why, Tyndall, do I mention these things? When I sit down to write you I never know what I shall say as I should were I writing to others – there seems to be an understanding on my part to acquaint you with my inmost thoughts, and I even believe were I to fall in love (which will not be very unlikely now) I should tell you – whether or not I take no pains to restrain or conceal anything from you, and in your letters I naturally expect however unreasonable that you give me your counsel and advice. Let me now thank you for the readiness you have always acted towards me herein for I have some way overlooked this duty in the supposition you did not mind or care for them; but still it appears ungrateful on my part not to offer them though they be disdained. Now, what the deuce am I writing about – really thou wilt think me a little wrong somewhere, and that I am wandering – which is something I begin to fancy myself seeing my tastes and manners are so different from others, that I feel I am misunderstood, that I am placed in circumstances which somehow have a kind of spell or influence over me, that I wish for circumstances more exciting and interesting than these at present – that I feel in fact in a kind of nightmare bound by circumstances tightly enough and which I have not the power to break, and somehow dreaming at the same time of a more genial situation could I but free myself from the present. We are indeed curious mortals! Sometimes happy and sanguine, at others how depressed! how different we are and when one considers what a curious world are we surrounded by, how we can understand nothing, know nothing beyond the effects which certain things strike us as possessing but which if one wish to examine further elude us and leave us wondering – then that religion too with its host of bigotry which surrounds it, who can understand that, and who can reconcile all the inconsistencies which everywhere surround it and make and reduce it to a form and shape instead of the shadowy shapeless unsatisfactory thing it at present assumes. When we examine these things there is a something which would lead us to suppose that we are mere machines, gifted with faculties merely to torture us – and that we are entirely divested of power in guiding ourselves – in fact that we are guided and governed by circumstances and are the creatures of destiny. You laugh! – or smile at the remarks of the young surveyor – no doubt they are curious and flimsy to you, but I begin to entertain them as I can see no better conclusion from the premises we have to judge from. However, these are not subjects to interest you who have to my notions formed some ideas which if submitted to a thorough examination and compared with the standard from which I think you start no warranty can be found for them nor do I see that any hypothesis can be formed in accordance with that book and yet be rational and perfectly natural. If however I pursue reflections as these further and force them on your notice you will imagine that the writer had better have entered into any arrangement no matter what if it furnish plenty of employment than be as he is employed and have time to speculate over such matters as these. These are dangerous subjects, so to leave them.

I mentioned that I had received a letter for Hirst from Tidmarsh who it seems is following out his whim, though from the account I should fancy it has not answered so well as he had anticipated, and to me there appears notwithstanding his usual good-humoured style a certain cheerlessness and want of companionship one might easily suppose to be the case in such an out of the way land.²

I trust you are well and making that progress in your studies that you could wish, and hope that the experiments you undertake may be successful and that you are in good health. I close trusting to hear from you, and

Believe me, | Your friend, | James Craven.

Mr John Tyndall | Marburg.

Mrs Lewis – Lizzy Hebden³ that was – has been pigging⁴ and a son is the result. Eltershaw⁵ has married a lady with some property and what is termed has made a good match of it.

Success in your Galvanic studies. | Amen.

RI MS JT/1/TYP/11/3547–3549

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