From Thomas Archer Hirst   Sunday - May 11th/51

Marburg – | Sunday – May 11^th/51

My dear John –

In a couple of hours I set off on my Sunday duty all alone, that is, a walk and dinner somewhere God knows where, and before starting I have time to have a word with thee instead of as usual having thee by my side. Debus sails from Rotterdam today if all be well Kolbe who only arrived here on Wednesday last tried to persuade him to remain some days longer to explain the state of the Laboratory but he would not and is off according to appointment. The Laboratory will not be open yet for a week Zwenger¹ & Kolbe divide it between them, I believe it will suffer much thereby in point of convenience as most assuredly it is doing by the delay – Marburg indeed by the absence of you all as well as other attendant circumstances² has suffered even more than we anticipated. There are few Students in all Scientific Branches. Gerling is rubbing on as miserably as ever with even fewer hearers. Stegmann for the first time at Marburg has only one Lecture & that the unimportant one (comparatively speaking) on Descriptive Geometry. For his Analytical Geometry im Raume³ he had only 1 hearer who announced himself & it has been therefore abandoned. For me perhaps it is just as well – I hear his Descriptive Geometry 4 days per week and he gives me 5 private lessons. Knoblauch begins to-morrow morning with only a small number also. I shall hear him of course. I wished to put down my name but he would not allow it, and the kind little fellow placed everything at my disposal and requested me to take John Tyndall’s position in every particular. Since your absence Marburg has received a curious addition in the shape of an Irishman with a wife, 3 small children⁴ and a nurse. He comes from Dublin was recommended by Playfair to come here to Bunsen & to his astonishment found him not here.⁵ He speaks next to no German and is altogether a curious character. A long lanky body, with weak limbs and unless I am greatly mistaken weaker head. He appears a bit of an aristocrat who would learn Science in dilettante fashion, has some money at his disposal, & full of whims, has been already at Dublin & London colleges studying medicine & obtained a most suspicious title of Doctor; that is, if we take M^rs Simpson as authority who takes particular pains to give him his full title though it appears at the same time that he never practised. As far as regards Chemistry he asserts to have already studied it a few years ago under Prof. Graham but complains that the method of teaching was old fashioned and he wishes to begin anew at Qualitative Analysis & return to Dublin in October next (the 24^th is the day already fixed to be again in Dublin) a Chemist!! You would have laughed however to see how he has pulled me out of my cosy nest the last week and for humanitys sake tramped over Marburg in search of Lodgings as their interpreter and the laughable blunders &c that my experience in household matters & interpreting capabilities have occasioned. How I have to sometimes smooth down but oftener put up in silence with the most insignificant complaints and outrageous expectations of the Frau Simpson who has brought with her her English notions of comfort &c & they even of the most artificial & dispensable nature. From the housekeeping department, the dessert service &c ([unfor[t]unately] forgotten at Dublin) & these matters I hope I have freed myself by eliciting the services of the English Krantzchen⁶ in her behalf & introducing her to Fraulein Spannenburg.⁷ She will be an interesting though curious addition to their Society and as they will free me from certain undertakings for which I feel the greatest incapability, I am reconciled that their ideas of an English Matron should suffer (or otherwise) from such a representative. The chief failures of the Couple however I believe lie in these light headed artificialities; at bottom they are good natured I believe, but the anomaly of a Chemical Student in Simple Marburg with his Dublin drawing room characteristics & wife & family is somewhat striking and not completely admirable. – She is shocked at German Sabbath Breaking and stand in open-mouthed horror when I was compelled to answer her enquiries about the doctrines, pew rents, &c at the Elizabeth Kirche⁸ by a broad confession that for 6 or 7 months my head had never been in a gospel shop. She will relax her Sunday strictness however so far, to accommodate the Marburghers, as not to object to a drive for the Children & Doctors health after Divine service!! And now good bye to the good M^r & M^rs Simpson, my remaining time and paper must be otherwise employed –

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<Handwritten letter ends; hereafter LT Transcript Only>

I am heartily glad that your Berlin prospects are so favourable, and that you met everywhere such kindness and willingness to please. In the common and usual aspect, your situation will not be without its advantages; though the manner in which you will make use of your environments will be of quite another nature. You say truly the presence of these men who surround you will serve you most and best as measures of your own strength; insight into your own relations towards the world and your fellow-men; in fact as one part of your apprenticeship in life, wherein we all have to learn to use the tools we find about us to the greatest advantage in order to qualify ourselves for taking our place on that more or less ideal platform, whereon the assembled students, as it were, receive the discipline and teachings of a higher Life – Philosophy. In one aspect John may not Life be considered as an immense College wherein are teachers and classes of every grade for the Human Student: wherein however his progress and rise depend materially and mostly on his own industry. The value of the whole institution reveals itself to him more as his own capability to appreciate increases. The lectures of the higher Professors therein are thrown away on the student whose place is lower. Emerson says somewhere we come into the world not only to act but to be acted on.⁹ But how and after what manner we shall be acted on depends also upon our present action. I can recollect well how one after another ‘the valuable’ in the world, has changed to me, how it has taken the several forms of money, pleasure, society, literature, fame and God knows what. These are School-classes I have passed or may be passing through, and the continually increasing insight into the existence of a higher theory of what is valuable runs before, reconciles and rewards him who earnestly uses the tools and opportunities that now lie at his hand. I go to the Frauenberg;¹⁰ Good bye till I return and have had a slice of black bread in the old Farm house there.

Here I am again after my walk and feel all the better for it; it rained rather heavily soon after I started. Mr and Mrs Simpson whom I met thought me, I dare say, a little insane; the former pressed me to dine with him in Ritter, but no, I persevered and have been rewarded with a sunshiny walk home. I read an article from January Searle on the way, which has reached me in the Truth Seeker, and which I will forward you, ‘Scepticism and its Manifestations’.¹¹ It is a broad, manly, honest essay, and free from many of January’s faults. Did I not know January I should satisfy myself with unqualified approval of the Essay and set down its author as a worthy man whom I would hail as Brother and whose presence in the world was cheering and satisfactory. As it is, another reflection will not withdraw itself, or hardly explain its presence, namely that there is in it no vertical deepening tendency. The man January by broad natural sympathies and (at some period of his life) active endeavour, has attained to a certain depth of vision, but at present his motion is for the most part lateral; I am almost afraid that he has too much of a notion that what insight he has already amassed is for the time being sufficient, if well spread and dispensed, to ensure him a certain literary status and accomplish a certain intended object. The materialities of the world have January too much in their grip at present to let him strip and use his boring-rods. Talking about him reminds me that only this morning a frank, honest-looking young fellow called on me and announced himself as Dr Huth of Wiesbaden,¹² and friend of Mr Phillips of Huddersfield.¹³ He is a relation of Bunsen’s, it appears, was a medical student here for 3 years, fell in love here and to-day has come, to get married to-morrow. His intended wife’s name was strange to me and I have already forgotten it, I liked him well, there was an honest light in his eye, and a certain enthusiasm as he spoke of the good January’s friendship that pleased me. In last week’s Leader¹⁴ is your ‘Forester’s Grave’¹⁵; it is a strange one for you, John, and as I take it, there is evident intellectual rust about the love machinery, the wheels don’t revolve quite naturally but want a little more of the oil of actual Experience about their axles. You understand me no doubt – One would have no hesitation in saying that it would be difficult to catch the Weasel who wrote the ‘Forester’s Grave’ asleep, and that for some time at least he had not been smitten or ‘pulled far astray by bright eyes.

But about the bowels¹⁶ I must not forget to report. The effect of the injection was as near ‘nil’ as is calculable. At the present moment they are far from being in natural action, though I am suffering under no crisis. Dr Dickson’s advice I shall be glad to have. Noll has not got the book here, it is at home and packed up. Can you find the address any other way? When I have time I will write you as clear and concise¹⁷

RI MS JT/1/H/157

RI MS JT/1/HTYP/131–133