Queenwood College | November 6th. 1853.
My dear Dr. Tyndall,
The bonfire is going to be tomorrow, it is smaller this time than it was last time. There are seven new boys come since you have been here last1 so we have seventy six boys, the room crammed full. One morning we had a very nice game at foot-ball about a fortnight ago Mrs Edmondson2 invited us to take tea with her and that night we had the Panorama of London3 and that night Tommy4 and I sang a song and its name was Old Lang Sine5 that is a Scotch song. Every Sunday the first class in singing go down into the lecture room from 3 – 4 and I am one of them.
Flight6 sends his kind love to you and so do I
I remain | Your affectionate Friend | T. Grieve | Good bye.
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since you have been here last: Tyndall last visited Queenwood in September (see letter 0804, n. 3).
Mrs Edmondson: Anne Edmondson (née Singleton), wife of George Edmondson. Anne greatly supported her husband’s work as Headmaster of Queenwood.
the Panorama of London: possibly Thomas Horner’s (1785–1844) Panorama of London, completed in 1829 and housed in the Colosseum at Regent’s park until 1854.
Tommy: presumably another student at Queenwood. Not further identified.
Old Lang Sine: misspelling of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, a 1788 poem by the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759–96).
Flight: Walter Flight (1841–85), a student at Queenwood during the mid-1850s. Flight eventually became a mineralogist at the British Museum, and was notable for his work on meteorites (ODNB).
Please cite as “Tyndall0818,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on