My dear Tom.
I received your letter2 this morning – Faraday was in the laboratory at the time, and I dare say if he looked at me he could see my eye light up with pleasure. I read your ‘scolding’.3 I thought on Saturday that I had the right to be the scolder, that you ought to have been up to see me before I left; but looking backward from this distance I believe you have all the right on your side. Dear Tom if it be only a holiday lounge I should not object to your lying seven days at a time provided you could find enjoyment in it. You know that I have ever looked to tendencies instead of to isolated acts, and as for want of hospitality, heaven knows that I shall be always ready to stuff you with the best I can lay my hands on whenever you come to see me. – As I came home on Saturday and looked at my tenantless room I felt like a man who had become a widower – there was a vacant seat by my fireside and I felt a slight vacancy about my heart also. So you must not think bitterly of your poor brother. He may be stern and perhaps churlish sometimes, but give him time and the tide of humanity will return and you will find that there are milksprings of kindly feeling bubbling through his rugged constitution. This is an exceedingly bad figure, if you used such a one when writing to me I would doubtless be impudent enough4 to criticize you for it. The defect of the composition is the mixing up of the ‘tide’ with the ‘milk springs’ – either of itself is good but both conjointly beget a monstrous idea. With regard to the Manchester affair5 I can only subscribe to your own notion of the matter. I would make no more in this affair – I say so because I do not see what possible good could result from it. Of course Mr Edmonson’s duty and interest is not to permit the fraud you mention a moment’s existence at Queenwood. If such things are tolerated there then I prophesy a practical doom to Queenwood.
From being an object of the greatest interest to me I confess it would because the object of my contempt and you may make this my feeling known to Mr Edmondson if you think fit. The thing is a public cheat and Mr M.6 has shewn any thing but prudence in putting his character in such peril. But the law I suppose is that there is no real prudence when there is no high moral principle – a law which often defeats the calculations of the worldly wise.
I have ordered a spiral for you7 this day and you shall have it before the 14th – am I not a charming boy?
I copied a scrap of the letter you sent me8 and sent it up to Faraday – We regarded the matter as simply absurd and indeed it is so – why I was proposed in June as a candidate for the Royal Medal9 – Tyndall, Frankland, Lindley,10 Ehrenberg,11 Sylvester, Bunsen were all proposed the same day. I suppose those who proposed Hofmann ‘intended’ that he should have the medal, but the majority of the council12 it appears intended otherwise – Bence Jones declares to me that by the Lion and the Unicorn13 he meant Hofmann and myself and that the thing would be simply nonsensical were he to mean any thing else, for nobody else had the smallest chance of the medal, and as we were equal somebody happened to suggest that the best plan would be to give the medal to a third party. Do not think that I wish to decry Frankland’s best merit when I say that he had not a single vote: How then can it be said that it was owing to the inability of the Council to decide between Frankland & Hofmann that I got the medal – The whole story bears its own refutation on the face of it. I wonder at any man possessing a particle of reflection giving currency to such unadulterated nonsense. I have written this much more to please you than to please myself, I hope I shall never hear another word about the Royal Medal.
My Friday evening lecture14 appears to have made a good impression – far better indeed than I could have anticipated – I will take your advice as far as I can with regard to my health. I have had some headache today, but employing the evening as I do in writing to you must have a tendency to recover it.
Say to Heinrich that I will examine his crystal tomorrow after my lecture15 is finished and write to him tomorrow night. – Accept these kisses on one your forehead and one on each cheek from
Your affectionate | John
RI MS JT/1/T/586
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/307
[30 January 1854]: Hirst wrote ‘Feb. 1st’ at the top of this letter, but that was presumably the day he received it. Tyndall wrote here that he received ‘Hirst’s letter this morning’ (see n. 2), a letter he recorded that he received in his journal entry of 30 January (JT/2/13b/655).
your letter: letter 0874.
your ‘scolding’: Hirst was upset at Tyndall for not waking him up or sending him off after his visit to London (see letter 0874).
only a holiday lounge … be impudent enough: the transcription for this section of Tyndall’s letter is based on LT’s typescript, as the handwritten copy is missing.
the Manchester affair: see letter 0874, n. 4. Not otherwise identified.
Mr M.: John Mummery. He had purchases a German doctorate (see letter 0817, n. 4).
I have ordered a spiral for you: Hirst had requested Tyndall to order a spiral for him on 29 January (see letter 0874, n. 7).
the letter you sent me: see letter 0874, n. 3.
the Royal Medal: Tyndall was notified that he won the Royal Medal at the beginning of November 1853, but because of controversies surrounding his selection, he declined the award (see letter 0837, esp. n. 2).
Lindley: John Lindley (1799–1865), an English botanist and horticulturalist notable for his work in botanical nomenclature. Lindley provided scientific counsel to various British organizations and government bodies, and won the Royal Medal in 1857 (ODNB).
Ehrenberg: Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795–1876), a German naturalist notable for his work on microorganisms and fossilization (W. Sarjeant, ‘Hundredth Year Memoriam: Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg 1795–1876’, Palynology 2 (1978), pp. 209–11).
the council: see letter 0816, n. 7.
the Lion and the Unicorn: see letter 0874, n. 3 and 0875, n. 5.
My Friday evening lecture: ‘On the vibration and tones produced by the contact of bodies having different temperatures’, Roy. Inst. Proc., vol. 1, 356–9. Tyndall delivered this lecture at the RI on 27 January.
my lecture: the first of six lectures Tyndall delivered at the London Institution in 1854. Tyndall noted that he delivered this lecture on 2 February on the topic of magnetism (Journal, JT/2/13b/656).
Please cite as “Tyndall0876,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on