Queenwood College | Thursday. Noon
My dear John
I received your letter2 with Stegmann’s3 this morning Yesterday I received one from Stegmann4 himself and another from the Dead Letter office5 telling me there was a german parcel ready for me as soon as I should think fit to send 8/4 This of course I have done and expect the parcel tomorrow. Rest assured I shall attend to what good old Stegmann says, nay more I will ask advice about translating his book6 which I have no doubt merits it, of this we will speak soon. Before writing to Price I should like to know as much about him as possible whether his work7 is to be a compilation merely or contain new investigations of his own Get to know as much about him as possible and ask Mr Gyde8 if you please to send me the 1st vol of his work9 which was published a short time ago Its title is ‘A treatise on infinitessimal Calculus containing differential and integral calculus, Calculus of Variations and Applications to Geometry’. By B. Price. Published by J. H. Parker10 in Oxford. As yet I know nothing of Mr Price.
Enclosed I send you a letter11 received by the same post as brought Stegmanns and which has pleased me still more perhaps. It is the first letter I have ever received from my old Tutor12 who treated me so nobly when a lad at school and when I ran away there to Germany. I have no doubt that even from this short letter you will get a glimpse into one of the best hearted noble fellows I know. As an educator I never met his equal and daily I recall his example for my own use. He is now about 45 years old I should say, and was a wrangler13 at Cambridge as far as I remember. With all my heart I wish you knew him. It will be a week or two yet before I shall be able to answer Stegmann What you say of Debus14 contains much truth, as I predicted we were never better friends than we are at present again.
Yours affectionately | T. A. Hirst
P.S. Tomorrow I lecture at Abbotts Ann on Heat15 Yesterday Debus lectured at Andover on Electro-Chemistry16 I was with him. Edmondson is in London again on very important business, he told me, for I objected that he was leaving home too much at present. What his important business is I don’t know. If I mentioned a word about your cold and the way you are treating it you would not be well pleased so I wont. | TAH
RI MS JT/1/H/485
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/297
[8 December 1853]: dated by LT. Her dating is correct as 8 December was a Thursday and Hirst lectured at Abbotts Ann on 9 December (see n. 15).
your letter: letter 0850.
Stegmann’s: letter 0823.
I received one from Stegmann: not identified.
another from the Dead Letter office: letter not identified. A Dead Letter Office is a department within the post-office where unclaimed or undeliverable letters are examined, being returned to the writer or destroyed after a certain time (OED).
his book: see letters 0823, n. 2 and 0850, n. 3.
his work: see letter 0823, n. 3.
Mr Gyde: see letter 0761, n. 4.
the 1st vol of his work: see n. 8.
J. H. Parker: John Henry Parker (1806–84), a writer on architecture who became a bookseller at Oxford in 1821 (‘Parker, John Henry’, The Encyclopedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, ed. H. Chisholm, 11th edn, 29 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), vol. 20, pp. 827–8).
a letter: see n. 13; not further identified.
my old Tutor: in his journal, Hirst noted the letter was from his Wakefield schoolmaster, Reverend Richard Garvey (1785–1861) (Hirst, ‘Journals’, 25 December 1853).
a wrangler: ‘The name for each of the candidates who have been placed in the first class in the mathematical tripos at Cambridge University’ (OED).
What you say of Debus: see letter 0850, n. 6.
lecture at Abbotts Ann on Heat: see letter 0836, n. 10.
lectured at Andover on Electro-Chemistry: not identified.
Please cite as “Tyndall0851,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on