5 Lammerlaws | Burntisland1 | July 5th. 1853.
My Dear Dr Tyndall
I hope you are quite well. We are enjoying our holidays very much. Alex received your kind letter2 and we were very well pleased with it. Aunt Coxe3 said that we may be very thankful that we have such a kind friend as you in the world for to write us such a nice long and kind letter and we both agree with her. Alick would have written a much longer letter had not the post being going away. There is to be a fare4 here on the on next Tues–day the 12th of July and there is to be a great number of games &c played there. I hope your headache is quite well. I am sorry that you intend leaving Queenwood.5 Our cousin Elma Fraser6 came here to spend her holidays on Saturday last. Our cousin Grace Fraser7 sister of Elma is going to be married on the beginning of August to a young gentleman named Thomas Gillian Rose Innes8 and we are going to a week more than the holidays for to see to her marriage. This is a very fine bathing and fishing place and we bathe every good day. It has been very bad weather the last few days and yesterday was the worst of them all. Grace has been receiving a very great many preasents. An old watchmaker named Wighton9 sent her a very beautiful broach and when Uncle10 went to Edinburgh we were very sorry to hear that he was very ill with Collery.11 Table moving12 is getting very common now and also the sprit rapping13 and it is said that in nearly every party in Paris they do it and Professor Pharody has put it in the Tines.14 Alick and all the rest join in love with me to you
I remain | yours sincerely | G. Cumming.
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/271
LT Typescript Only
Burntisland: see letter 0777, n. 2.
your kind letter: see letter 0774.
Aunt Coxe: refers to May Anne Coxe (née Cumming).
fare: misspelling of fair.
leaving Queenwood: see n. 2.
Elma Fraser: not identified.
Grace Fraser: Grace Louisa Fraser.
Thomas Gillian Rose Innes: Thomas Gilyean Rose Innes (1799–?) would become the deputy lieutenant of Banffshire in 1854 (W. Anderson, ‘Innes’, The Scottish Nation; or the Surnames, Families, Literature, Honours, and Biographical History of the People of Scotland, vol. 2 [Edinburgh: A. Fullerton & Co., 1867], p. 536). They were married on 5 August 1853 at Saint Cuthberts in Edinburgh, Scotland (‘Scotland, Marriages, 1561–1910’, database, FamilySearch [https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XY9P-GDH (accessed 27 August 2015)], Thomas Gilyean Rose Innes and Grace Louisa Fraser, 5 August 1853; citing Saint Cuthberts, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland; FHL microfilm 1,066,767, 103,072).
Wighton: likely William Wighton of Edinburgh or one of his family members.
Uncle: refers to James Coxe.
Collery: likely refers to cholera.
Table moving: ‘the moving of a table by supposed spiritual agency, esp. during a séance (OED).
spirit rapping: the communication from or with spirits by raps or knockings (OED).
Professor Pharody has put it in the Tines: Faraday had written a letter to the editor on séance phenomena that appeared in The Times (M. Faraday, ‘Table–turning’, The Times, 30 June 1853, p. 8). Tyndall referenced this article in a letter to Faraday (see letter 0783, n. 5).
Please cite as “Tyndall0781,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on