Mittel Strasse No 5 | Berlin | March 6th / 53
My dear John,
Our last letters crossed1 but mutually answered each other as well as if they had been purposely made to do so. The account2 you gave of the proceedings at your lecture of course interested me as much as you. By the bye, I wish you enlighten me a little about the London Universities. Who are the professors of the Royal Institution, and what kind of students attend. What is the London Institution, is it synonymous with London University?3 and who are the principal men at these places?
About a week ago Booth wrote to me and enclosed a letter from Bevington which you had sent him together with Bevington’s £20.4 Of course the little fellow asked me what he should do, and I answered him that he must receive it by all means, that granted I could find such givers as Bevington I would consent to his amassing a small fortune. He is a manly sensitive fellow, that Bevington, his letter made me cry, and laugh too. One might travel far before meeting his equal. So you are to warn me that he is a prosy5 old fellow and has lost some of his teeth!! Tell him I promise faithfully never to look into his mouth. A strange notion to be sure, as if I should judge him as I would a horse! Another letter received also during the week has pleased me very much, it was from Jemmy Craven.6 In his own small way Jemmy is a good natured lad (by the bye I forgot he is older than me, I always did forget that fact). He has the slightest trace of something better in him than he has ever yet shewn, just sufficient to make him uneasy at times and make him conscious that there is a little hollowness about his life. But in Jemmy this feeling will never grow intense enough to make him shake off the net of shams and conventionalisms he has been inveigled into. He will remain always a little sceptic, never troubled with inconvenient aspirations yet never entering with heart and soul into the trivialities he sees practised about him, and in which for the sake of not being eccentric he will take a shallow part. Poor Jemmy! He will never see the frustrated possibility he is – he was bred and born among shams, in his youth he cast many of his conventional wrappages7 away, just sufficient to make him ever after a little unquiet – his life, to himself, in his best moments, will appear hollow, and he will die a respected citizen, he held up perhaps as a model to the generation which will follow. Poor Jemmy!
And now a word about your last letter.8 You know what sort of a fellow Dove is, how difficult to catch, how busy, etc. etc. Well, I asked him your question,9 he said at the moment he did not know and that information on the subject would be difficult to come at, but in the course of a few days he would see what he could find. Accordingly yesterday I went to him again, he had little more certain information to give. He said Bruce10 had made a journey to Sahara & published certain facts. He says that perhaps he will be able to tell you something about the coast of Guinea. Moreover that the daily variation of temperature in the desert is well known to be extraordinarily great. Bruce says that camels have been killed by it. In a week’s time Dove promises to tell you more. I have seen Wiedemann, he had not begun to translate his paper11 yet but promised to set his wife to work immediately. Clausius will not undertake the translation of his, he has given me a copy of the original and in the course of a fortnight I have promised to do it for him. (perhaps less).
Some time ago I was coming away from a party with old Knoblauch, I saw that in the cold frosty night he breathed badly. I made him take my arm and in spite of his polite protestations I would see him home. It was well I did or he would not have got there, the poor fellow suffered greatly, could get no breath whatever. At last after great difficulty a sledge12 came luckily past and I got him home, after opening about 10 locked doors in his house. It is very characteristic of the good hearted weak old man to see how he remembers that act of mine now that he is well. He has not the eye to see that for me there was any duty in the matter, in his harmless, selfish way he sees only a kindness rendered to him, which must be repaid. Since that night I have received tickets of admission to concerts, feasts, lectures, etc. etc. in abundance. Whenever I can I accept them, for Knoblauch is not the man to understand refusal. He expects his son and son’s wife here soon. Prof. K. has got a call (as independent parsons say) to Halle13 – I do not know whether or not he intends to accept it.
From Marburg there is a report that poor Wrightson has been making Miss Bücking an offer, and has been refused! Poor fellow, he used to make a confidant of me and I tried to discourage him as much as possible for I knew there was not the least hope for him (having heard her hint as much). He was blind, blind as a bat, he construed her good-natured manner towards him as an encouragement, not being able to see that her manner was just as ‘encouraging’ to everybody else. I have watched him pay her marked attentions, and I have seen plain enough how they were received, he could not see, but has gone blindly on annoying her until at last I hear the brother has shewn him the door.
Since writing the last I have been helping a dentist to pull Dickinson a tooth, he was glad to part with it and tells me now to remember him to you kindly.
Love to Debus. | Yours affectionately | T A Hirst.
Riess has just published an important book in two volumes, “Die Lehre von der reibungs Electricität”.14 My brother Bill15 writes me this morning that he has just made me into a veritable ‘Uncle Tom’.16 My address now is ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’.17
RI MS JT/1/H/177
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/230–231
last letters crossed: while Hirst’s letter is missing, it would have ‘crossed’ with Tyndall’s letter dated [14–]16 February (letter 0713).
The account: letter 0713.
London University: founded in 1836, it was comprised of University College London and King’s College. London University was not synonymous with the LI.
About a week ago … Bevington’s £20: see letter 0706.
prosy: talking or behaving in a commonplace, dull, or tedious way (OED).
Jemmy Craven: James (‘Jemmy’, ‘Jimmy’) Craven.
wrappages: that which wraps or covers (OED).
your last letter: letter 0722.
your question: Tyndall requisitioned Hirst to ask Dove whether or not there would be a wider range of temperatures recorded over 24 hours in the desert than in a wooded region at the same latitude (see letter 0722).
Bruce: James Bruce (1730–94), Scottish explorer who claimed to have traced the source of the Nile River in North Africa and wrote a five-volume account of his travels and experiences in Africa, J. Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773, 5 vols (London: G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1790).
Wiedemann … paper: see letter 0713, n. 15.
sledge: a carriage mounted on runners used for travelling over snow and ice (OED).
Halle: the University of Halle in Germany. In 1853, Knoblauch left Marburg for Halle (see letter 0823, n. 4).
‘Die Lehre von der reibungs Electricität’: Riess’s ‘Doctrine of Static Electricity’ was a treatise on his experiments seeking to understand static electricity. P. T. Riess, Die Lehre von der Reibungselektricitüt, 2 vols (Berlin: Hirschwald, 1853). It was not translated into English.
Bill: William (Bill) Aked Hirst (1828–?).
veritable ‘Uncle Tom’: Bill’s first child was born in 1853.
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’: Hirst was referencing the famous abolitionist novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly (London: Thomas Bosworth, 1852). The novel was incredibly popular in Britain, selling a million and a half copies in England and its colonies between 1852 and 1853 (Claire Parfait, The Publishing History of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852–2002 [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007], p. 108).
Please cite as “Tyndall0727,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on