23rd Dec. 1853
My dear Tom.
I dont want you to love Henry Hill – I dont want you to love any body but me and your wife when you get one. I never meant that you were to expend your love in this general way. God forbid that I should be so prodigal of so precious an article. I did not use the term ‘heart’ as the organ of the affections in my note.1 I believe I did not use it well – I spoke of the note2 being a head production, but I did not mean to put the head forward as antithesis to the heart. I can scarcely tell you what I meant but if you have made the experience you will understand me. I find myself sometimes by a kind of unconscious brain process writing without having realised with perfect clearness what I intend to write about In such cases I am very apt to repeat expressions which I have already heard, without being conscious of their exact weight and meaning. Again I find by looking at any subject that I establish an affinity between myself and it – I see it all round and every word I write about it seems to hit what I want it to hit – while at other times I beat about the bush and make oblique strokes – writing rather of memory than by present insight. It was in some such sense as the latter that I used the term head production – and I may at the time have been wholly unfit to judge of the matter, as I remember well, squadrons of other thoughts were lying around me. I have written a note3 along with yours4 to Bevington – There will be a Christmas box to him although they will not reach him until Christmas is gone. My cold is almost gone and I am getting very strong and hardy. I have just finished a digest of Riess’s two volumes,5 which has occupied me these two days. The matter is now clear off my hands and the next step is to smelt up the stuff and cast it into my own moulds. Debus I have not yet seen – I told him that a bedroom was ready for him if he liked to avail himself of it, but he is foolish I suppose and stays away. All you can say in its defense cant beautify that ugly figure ‘as honest as the day’6 – It tempted me out without an umbrella some time ago and wet me before I came back. Day is a fop – a blusterer – often a conspicuous liar – a mere play-actor without earnestness or soul – night has both – Sweet stars! Look smilingly down on me your defender
Your affectionate | John
RI MS JT/1/T/585
my note: letter 0853.
the note: a letter Hirst wrote to Bevington, which he showed Tyndall. The letter was regarding Henry Hill’s financial problems (see letter 0853).
a note: letter missing.
yours: refers to the letter Hirst wrote to Bevington (see n. 2).
a digest of Riess’s two volumes: see letter 0727, n. 14.
as honest as the day: Tyndall was referring to his critique of Hirst’s use of the phrase in the letter to Bevington sent to Tyndall for feedback (see n. 2).
Please cite as “Tyndall0860,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on