3 March 1851
My dear Tyndall
I hardly deserve a letter from you as I never answered your last, but your present one1 does not admit of delay, I wish it did, for truth to say I do not happen to be well today, I will at once tell you the view I take of the question you put to me, you seek fame rather than money, or you would willingly defer the latter while you seek the former. Now if you accept the Quakers offer2 I judge that you will be expected to give your whole energies as well as time to the task or at least so much of both as will leave you but jaded energies to pursue the abstract sciences. Even were the means at hand, it appears to me then that the labours of mind that you have for so many years been expending in your present pursuits will be in some if not in great part lost. You can plainly see to what my advice will tend, but there is yet a question to consider, have you the means of pursuing your studies that is of living without compromising your independence without involving yourself in debt if you have I say go on and prosper for I feel assured with your abilities and industry that you must succeed, providing always you forget not, ‘what profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul.’3 The Queenwood offer does not appear to me to hold out any advantage except that of a present livelihood in fact of settling yourself down as a schoolmaster and perhaps rising some day to be the Principal of Queenwood.
I hope you will be able to read this very bad writing – I shall be most happy to make the acquaintance of your friend4 & shew him the lions of Harrow and also to introduce him to Mr Russell5 – is there anything else I can make myself useful in, you are I am sure satisfied of my willingness.
I do not think these are the days when a man who has with ability & industry devoted himself to science and added to our stock of knowledge will be suffered to linger in obscurity or feel want, whenever it does happen something wrong I am sure may be traced in the man himself – Farewell for the present – Mrs Wynne desires her kind remembrances, and with all our best wishes –
Believe me very truly yrs | Geo. Wynne
A Monsieur Tyndall, | Marburg6
RI MS JT/1/W/94
RI MS JT/1/TYP/5/1842a
your last … present one: letters missing, but comparison with letter 0472 shows that Tyndall had asked for advice about whether to accept the offer to return to teach at Queenwood College.
the Quaker’s offer: George Edmondson, headmaster of Queenwood College, who had invited Tyndall to return to his old position teaching mathematics and surveying, was a Quaker. Tyndall recorded that the letter offering the position arrived on 22 February (letter 0469, n.1).
what profiteth it … lose his own soul: Wynne quotes, with some minor differences, the high call of Jesus to his disciples: ‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ (Matthew 16:26; similarly Mark 8:36).
your friend: unidentified, but perhaps the son of Schnackenberg, referred to in Journal entry for 23 February (JT/2/13b/522): ‘I have been visited by Pfarrer [trans. Pastor] Schnackenberg and everything has been arranged as to the departure of his son for England’.
Mr Russell: John Scott Russell.
A … Marburg: the address is not on the original letter but was transcribed by LT from the envelope. It suggests that Wynne expected the Germans to read French.
Please cite as “Tyndall0471,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0471