Saturday night 25th. Feb. 1854
My willful sister
I received your letter2 to day, read it twice over and then sent it down to Queenwood to shew my friend ‘Tom’3 how energetically you can write when you are aroused. My present writing is therefore from memory and perhaps this is all the better as a distance of 10 hours renders a man’s feelings mellow and will prevent me from being energetic in my turn. I can truly say that I would not willingly give you a moments pain, I can just as truly say that I would not willingly give your father4 a moments pain, and whenever I have done so there has been pain inflicted on both of us. I remember when in Germany your father wrote to me saying ‘John Tyndall they say we are going asleep, come and rouse us.’5 I took your father at his word and have often frankly told him that he had been too long accustomed to the soft lotions which you deem so commendable. I did rouse him, and no doubt have often roused your ire, but the result has been sufficient to console me for even your disapprobation. Besides in the case under consideration6 I did first try the soft lotion and spared all allusion to the imprudence of conniving at the purchase of a spurious title. I heard it mentioned with universal applause at Queenwood during my visit7 there that you had expressed yourself very decidedly against the imposture, but I heard it added at the same time that you did not know how far your father had committed himself. When I mentioned the subject to your father I was aware of this, still I forbore all allusion to it, actuated purely by the wish to see matters set right without wounding his feelings, for I believed, and still believe, that he countenanced the thing, without reflecting on its immorality. I believe that neither you nor he saw the true magnitude of the evil, for if you did you would have extinguished the notion at the outset and thus prevented the individual in question8 from expending his money in the purchase of his own dishonour.9 The best you can do at present is to cover up a weed which ought never to have been permitted to strike root. There ought to be an odour of sincerity about Queenwood, the people there ought to be so honest and highminded as to prevent the thought of such a transaction from being entertained by any body connected with the place. You have spoken to me frankly and I return the compliment, but I assure you I do so without the slightest feeling of anger. What I state is my cold intellectual conviction. You speak of my losing power, this may be a grave matter in your estimation but in mine it is one of extremely small moment. Certainly I should not like to lose power with the wise and good, for this would be indicative of my own error or perverseness. But I am extremely indifferent as to that power the retention of which depends on the withholding of an unpalatable truth. Just so far as I am false and incompetent do I lose power in reality, and just so far as I am true and competent do I retain it. This is my interpretation of the law, which I doubt not is widely different from yours. Surely I must have had truth on my side to render my presence at Queenwood at all tolerable: surely there must be some latent voice within your own soul pleading my cause and inducing you not withstanding all my roughness to your father to call me brother! I say it is the rectitude of my position alone which has been able to disarm those natural feelings of resentment which my necessary roughness was calculated to evoke; and when this transaction has receded among the memories of the past, I shall not blush to look upon the part I have acted in it, nor shall I fear your verdict concerning me although the nature of that verdict never entered into my calculations.
I could say more if I wished. Three years ago your father was a careworn man. I remember scanning his countenance sometimes shortly after my return to Queenwood10 and seeing the cloud of anxiety upon his brow and the deep depression of heart depicted on his countenance; when I left Queenwood11 he was a plump jolly faced man and compelled to increase the periphery of his waistcoat – what does this prove? Why that my pills though unpleasant were of a tonic character and good for both body and soul. Instead of quarrelling with me you ought like Socrates12 to pray to the gods to grant your father men honest enough to act by him as I did. This is your reasonable service; and your ‘strong feelings’ are so many clouds and tinted spectra which distort and discolor and prevent you from discovering the veritable facts of the case. Now I think I have given you a Rowland for your Oliver.13 One other remark in your letter crosses my mind – you say something about your father not doing a certain thing lest it should be considered he was bribing me to speak well of the place. This is a dark passage to me: I cannot unravel it. The truth is I rarely speak of the place at all, for I conceive the place must speak for itself, and here I see very clearly where your creed and mine begin to diverge from each other. I now leave the question to the judges who overlook earthly things, and leave it to them also to punish a young lady who instead of writing me a Valentine or something of the kind in which she excels has misapplied her time and talents in sprinkling me with gall and bitterness.
John Tyndall
I would strongly advise you to let this matter rest and to talk no more about it, and I trust you will accept this letter as the completion of all I have to say upon the subject.
I suppose you mean to say something hard when you speak of my being bribed to speak well of the place, or that your father thought I might consider something a bribe. Happily I do not understand the expression and therefore cannot feel angry regarding it. My belief is that Queenwood must speak for itself, and that its appearance must not be maimed by affording shelter to what you so justly call a ‘sham’.14 The other point which strikes me is an allusion to a ‘threat’ which, if I understand aright, was made use of by Dr. Hirst.15 If I be correct in my interpretation you must be in great error regarding Dr. Hirst’s character; for depend upon it he does not deal in threats. What he says I believe he will with the most coldblooded sincerity make good. I have no notion as to what the nature of his expressions may have been, but I am confident he does not mean to threaten any body. Do not let your feelings get you in a false position here, and cause you to imagine that Dr. Hirst is a mere blusterer who wishes to frighten you. If the governing party at Queenwood seeks to make truth its fulcrum it can well afford to smile at threats – but if the censure of an honorable man is really called for in the vindication of truth, than so much the worse for Queenwood if such censure be disregarded as [only a] threat. This is the third or fourth protest which it has been my lot to receive from the ladies of Queenwood.16 But I cannot forget that when the ‘ladies’ of Queenwood had the entire control of matters, and soft lotions to order, the result was such as not to increase my estimation of their wisdom in a sphere which really does not belong to them.
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/320–321
LT Typescript Only
25[–27] February 1854: while the original letter is missing, Tyndall copied this out in his journal dating it 25 February. He presumably added the postscript, however, after receiving Hirst’s letter (0889) dated 26 February, and therefore did not send this letter until the morning of 27 February (see letter 0893, n. 4).
your letter: letter missing.
‘Tom’: Thomas Archer Hirst.
your father: George Edmondson.
when in Germany your … come and rouse us: letter not identified. Tyndall began teaching at Queenwood in August 1847, but left to pursue a doctorate in Germany at the University of Marburg in 1848. By 1851, student numbers at Queenwood had sunk tremendously and Edmondson asked Tyndall to return to teaching. Tyndall returned to Queenwood in September 1851, with his completed doctorate (Brock, ‘Queenwood’, p. 13).
the case under consideration: reference to John Mummery’s purchase of a German doctoral diploma (see letters 0817, n. 4; 0833, n. 10; 0836, n. 7; 0874, n. 2; and 0876, n. 6). Tyndall and Hirst were disappointed with Edmondson’s apparent indifference and advised him to take swift action against Mummery’s fake diploma (see letters 0879, n. 5; 0881; 0882; and 0889).
my visit: see letter 0857, n. 3.
the individual in question: John Mummery.
purchase of his own dishonor: see n. 5.
my return to Queenwood: see n. 4.
when I left Queenwood: see n. 4.
Socrates: Socrates (470–399 BCE), the ancient Athenian philosopher and moralist known for the Socratic method – a dialectical form of questioning and inquiry. He was condemned to death by the city of Athens for impiety and the corruption of young minds (Plato and B. Jowett, ‘Apology’, in Five Great Dialogues of Plato [Claremont: Coyote Canyon Press, 2009], pp. 19–43).
a Rowland for your Oliver: tit for tat or to give as good as one gets. The line is referenced from the Medieval epic poem, La Chanson de Roland, in which the warriors Roland and Oliver could not beat one another in combat and were considered unbeatable as a team (OED).
justly call a ‘sham’: see n. 5.
a ‘threat’ which … by Dr. Hirst: there was some confusion on Tyndall’s part about the nature of Hirst’s ‘threat’ concerning the Mummery affair (see letter 0893, n. 4).
the ladies of Queenwood: likely a reference to George Edmondson’s wife Anne Edmondson, and his daughter Jane Edmondson.
Please cite as “Tyndall0890,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on