Universitats Straße 4 | 9th Aug. 1853.
My dear Tom.
Your letter1 has come – your two letters2 and with them the notes3 all safe. Your first was a hard one4 Tom the only hard one you ever penned to me. I thought first of all I would write a reply in poetry and prove to you by the melody of my song and without any attempt at logic that you had in some measure wronged me. I walked towards the Linden5 and saw the orange clouds sailing over the Brandenburger Thor6 – the sun was tumbling down his last steep arch and [smiting] with gold the foliage of the Thier garten.7 I was full of my idea – could I only have given it utterance I should have smelted you into tears. I composed a verse or two but at length thought that plain prose might answer. You protest against me – against my blasphemy – you protest meanwhile against your own notion of me which for the first time is a dislocated one. I hope you will ever continue to protest against this same notion – you protested against a misanthropist – I am not one. To your chivalrous defence of woman I say bravo with all my heart. Its only defect consists in its being misplaced. When I spoke against them I judged them from a superhuman ground and I thought you would see this. In stating their defects I merely expressed a necessity of my own soul. Turn to your Tennyson, to that Enone,8 and see the description of Pallas9 given there. I wanted a girl like Pallas – quite for other purposes I confess than sewing and washing and breeding. I never read that passage without a glow and a thrill which I would respectfully urge is quite as useful in its way as your conception of a good breeder. I pleaded for an object of worship and you hand me over a quality which a woman enjoys in common with a cow. There is a greater compliment in my censure than in your praise. Why did I connect such thoughts at all with a woman simply because she comes nearest to the thing I sought. This I conceive is praise sufficient for her and higher than any contained in your defence. You are too swift in your judgment of me. From the fact that circumstances compelled me to be solitary you infer that nature intended me to be solitary. Open your heart my boy and put another construction upon the position of your friend. I have cheerfully accepted my lot and made myself a throne in it and shall certainly continue my course as long as I believe it right. Put me in mind of it when we meet and I will tell you a little story. It may dissipate this mirage which you have contrived to get between you and the truth. When I think of my early feelings – feelings which though kept back are still unblasted – of the poetry I have written to bright eyes, of the friends who loved me and whom I loved – and then hear him whom I cherished on higher grounds than any of them uttering his dictum that nature intended me to be solitary the utterance is to me that of an unknown tongue. You say I must change my ‘Stand punckt’10 – you must change yours if you would judge correctly of your friend. You say you would like to be human towards me. I dont want you to be. If you had been less anxious about it you would perhaps have succeeded better. I never sought your affection, if it comes to me as a stone seeks the earth it is welcome, dont strive to love me – you cant do it. My relation to you has been as clear and independent as ever was the relation of man to man. You say you noticed with dissatisfaction my desire to be strong and to see others human. You noticed a feeling which if ever it gave itself utterance never to my knowledge manifested itself towards you. But I have harped too long on this old string – let me lift my heart above it. If you catch me writing such a letter again you may conclude your friend has become a dotard. Perhaps I should not have written it at all had I not just taken a glass of rum and water for the sake of my bowels which are very hard – but as it is I will let it go.11
<hereafter LT Transcript Only>
I have seen Schneider. Your box was sent off in July and reached London before the end of last month. It went over Hamburg.12 One word about money matters. I thought you were rich and therefore did not bestow a thought on the matter till your letter13 reached me. That £28 will go for instruments. I should like to spend a month in Paris. The other £20 will take me clean off the Continent, perhaps more, but then I shall require a little money in London. I dont know whether the payments of the R.I. are yearly or half yearly. If half yearly I shall need no money from you after the October £20, if yearly I shall. Can you advance it? I should like an answer to this soon, as upon it will depend my arrangements. The instruments I purchase are not at my own cost. The money will be refunded. All I want you to do is to be my banker protempore14 – if you can, well; if you cant also well – I will square my measures accordingly.
Your affectionate | John.
Send me a dozen postage stamps in your next letter.
RI MS JT/1/T/567
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/254–255
Your letter: letter 0791.
your two letters: see n. 1; second letter missing.
the notes: Tyndall had asked Hirst to send him ‘the 1st halves of two £10 notes’ (see letter 0787). In response, Hirst sent two £5 notes with letter 0791. Hirst must have sent the other two £5 notes with the missing letter.
Your first was a hard one: letter 0791. This letter represented Hirst’s first real admonishment of Tyndall (excepting letter 0667), suggesting that at this point Hirst was becoming a mentor in his own right. It should be noted as well that letter 0791 was Hirst’s first letter to Tyndall from Queenwood, his new station in life.
the Linden: Unter den Linden, a well-known avenue in Berlin named for the linden (lime) trees that grew along the street.
the Brandenburger Thor: the Brandenburg Gate, located at the western side of Unter den Linden. Built between 1788 and 1791, the Gate was commissioned by King Frederick William II (1744–97) as a sign of peace and was designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans (1732–1808).
the Thier garten: a garden in Berlin located by Unter den Linden and the Brandenburger Thor.
Enone: first published in 1832, Tennyson’s ‘Œnone’, is based on the story of Œnone and Paris from Greek mythology, specifically the Judgment of Paris, which resulted in the Trojan War. In the poem, three goddesses tempt Paris. Rejecting offers from the goddesses Pallas and Herè, Paris accepts Aphrodite’s offer of the most beautiful woman in the world, thus deserting his lover, Œnone (A. A. Markley, ‘Tennyson’, in Norman Vance and Jennifer Wallace [eds.], The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, 5 vols [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015], vol. 4, pp. 539–57, on p. 549). See also letter 0743, n. 11.
Pallas: one of the goddesses in Tennyson’s poem, ‘Œnone’. Pallas offers Paris ‘Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control’ (p. 142), but Paris rejects this offer (see n. 10). See also letter 0743, n. 11.
Stand punckt: German for ‘standpoint’. Tyndall was responding to Hirst’s comment in letter 0791: ‘I think you must alter somewhat your “standpoints” when judging our veritable “womankind”’.
I will let it go: as the remainder of the handwritten letter is missing, it is LT Typescript Only from this point on.
Hamburg: see letter 0769, n. 4.
your letter: letter 0791. In this letter, Hirst told Tyndall ‘I have at present only £20 at your disposal’.
protempore: ‘for the time being’ (OED).
Please cite as “Tyndall0793,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on