Queenwood. | 9th January. 1853
My dear Tom.
I wish I could write you a nice letter as a return for the pleasure which your letter of the 2nd of this month has given me.1 But I cant write fluently for this reason – I am terribly costive and my brain is always cloudy when my bowels are not free.2 I send you a draft for £30 for which you will receive cash on presenting it to Asher the bookseller. Before the end of January I will send you some more as I shall want you to pay for some crystals which Prof. Knoblauch has ordered for me.3 A happy new year to you Tom also. On New year’s night I was in Preston4 and witnessed one of the saddest, solemnest, and most beautiful scenes that have yet crossed my experience: it was a little boy about three years old with a face full of beauty and radiant with intelligence, the son of a friend of mine, lying on his back dying.5 You could scarcely believe it, he appeared to be whispered away by angels. This morning your note came to me enclosed in one from Pridie6 containing some remarks on poor Booth’s health which agree but too well with your own. Poor fellow he appears to have received his summons. Pridie I have learned to admire for his behaviour in this affair; in fact I have got quite an affection for him. I will send your letter to Bevington and thus you can tell your own story. I know Sylvester and will write to him or to Thomson on that subject. Beforehand however I wish you would give me a notion of what the nature of the thing is. I know Sylvester himself at the request of the British Association is drawing up a report of some new system of Mathematics.7 The “Memoirs” have heretofore been in bad repute on account of irregularity, and its present Editors must endeavour to outlive this and gain it a better name.8 Why Tom there was nothing personal that could be avoided in that letter regarding Adie. Really I think most people would have been more severe than I was. I quite agree with you that the less the scientific man is present in person the better, and I shall endeavour to profit by your remarks – you see that Adie is not yet convinced, and he has said something in his last remarks which I might be very severe upon if I wished – but you will see that he will hardly feel my remarks I shall rub him down so softly and tenderly. I had a letter this morning from Carter making some enquiries regarding Queenwood, as a lady friend of his wishes for his advice regarding an educational establishment for her son.9 I was glad to hear from Richard,10 his letter aroused images of old times, which rose before me like the tintings of pictures painted two centuries ago. He mentions having received your dissertation.11 I chanced to drop in to the Royal Society on Thursday evening last, and heard a paper of my own read12 – not having the slightest anticipation that such a thing was going to take place. The secretary13 made some remarks regarding the absence of the author, and at the end of the paper a gentleman arose and made a kind of critical speech, closing it by a certain question which he said he should like to ask the author. The president14 a minute before had learned that I was in the room, and he smilingly said so adding that the author would perhaps answer the question himself. I got up and replied. It was the first time I had opened my mouth in the Society and I was totally unprepared, but nevertheless what I said seemed to please them for when I sat down they gave me a round of applause. You see where they have put me in the programme of the Royal Institution.15 It certainly is a position of honour, but it is a position of terror also. There I twinkle like the end of a burnt stick between two such orbs as Airy & Stokes.16 Well boy in such a case the heart is half the matter and I trust that wont fail me. And now I will pause Tom. If ever I go to Berlin I must look more closely into Dirichlet. Do you [ever] see a young fellow named Wiedemann (a son-in-law of Mitscherlich17) On Thursday last I had a conversation with Faraday regarding a memoir of his.18 I returned from [London] last night and have not yet had time to read the paper, but if it be a good one, as I believe it is, I will translate it for the Memoirs. I will stop now – may the Lord bless you Tom, and sustain you with corn and wine, and grant of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth.19 Good bye boy.
Your affectionate│John
Carter says “I had the pleasure of receiving a few weeks ago the Inaugural Dissertation of our mutual friend Hirst. It was sent to me “with the Author’s kind regards”, b[ein]g unaccompanied by any note or other testimony which would enable me to make any recognition of the pleasing event.
If you can give me any account of his whereabouts when you write I should feel obliged.
RI MS JT/1/T/558
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/224–6
your letter: letter missing.
costive: constipated (OED).
crystals … Knoblauch has ordered for me: Tyndall had been trying to purchase crystals from Knoblauch since July 1852 (see letters 0638, n. 9; 0650; 0651; 0743, n. 4; and 0748, n. 2).
Preston: a city in Lancashire and home of Tyndall’s friends Robert and Margaret Allen.
the son … dying: Charles Edward Allen, son of Robert Copeland Allen and Margaret Allen. See letter 0699.
Pridie: W. R. (Roby) Pridie, a friend of Hirst from Halifax, and son of the Rev. James Pridie, an Independent Minister in Halifax.
I know … system of Mathematics: see J. J. Sylvester, ‘On a Theory of the Syzygetic Relations of Two Rational Integral Functions, Comprising an Application to the Theory of Sturm’s Functions, and That of the Greatest Algebraical Common Measure’, Phil. Trans. 143 (1853): 407–548.
Memoirs: this is in reference to the Scientific Memoirs, a series devoted to publishing the translations of the most important papers that were published in foreign journals. In 1852, Tyndall was appointed an editor (see Volume 3), and at this point he was working on editing the 1853 edition (Tyndall and Francis [eds.], Scientif. Mem.). On 16 January, Tyndall remarked that the translation work required for the Scientific Memoirs weighed heavy on his mind and he wished that he had not encouraged the continuance of the project (Journal, JT/2/13b/595).
I had … Carter: see letter 0697.
Richard: Richard Carter.
your dissertation: see letter 0697, n. 4.
a paper of my own read: On 6 January, Tyndall’s debut at the Royal Society was a paper read discussing heat transfer through various substances. J. Tyndall, ‘On Molecular Influences. Part I. Transmission of Heat Through Organic Structures’, Phil. Trans. 146 (1853), 217–31.
secretary: Samuel Hunter Christie (1784–1865), British mathematician.
president: William Parsons (1800–1867), the third Earl of Rosse, Irish astronomer.
programme of the Royal Institution: Tyndall was scheduled to give a prominent Friday evening lecture at the RI on 11 February (see letter 0712, n. 3).
Airy & Stokes: Sir George Biddell Airy (1801–1892), the Astronomer Royal, and the physicist George Gabriel Stokes.
Mitscherlich: Eilhard Mitscherlich (1794–1863), the German chemist responsible for discovering isomorphism and polymorphism in crystals.
regarding a memoir of his: Presumed to be Wiedemann’s (1852) paper ‘On the Motion of Liquids in a closed Galvanic Circuit’, which was translated and included in Tyndall and Francis (eds.), Scientif. Mem., pp. 232–56.
sustain you … the earth: Genesis 27:28.
Please cite as “Tyndall0698,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on