Ipswich1 | July 6th. 54
My dear old Friend,
I was truly delighted to see your well remembered hand writing again2 and not a little flattered to find that you still desired to remember your Youghal bed-fellow.3 A few lines of poetry for which you were partial (Oh let that eye wild as the Gazelle’s &c4) whenever I happened to remember them brought the ‘light of our youthful days around me’ and your features were brought so clearly before me that if we met in the King of Otahuti’s country5 I should recognise you. My present employment of Superintending the Recruiting in this part of England keeps me so busy,6 especially at the beginning of the quarter, that I have little time for private correspondence therefore won’t apologise for the shortness of this but if you let me know your address when I go to town (which I hope to do in 12 or 14 days) I shall pay you a visit and have a long chat about the strange things that have happened to both and with a first grasp of the hand renew our former friendship
Your old and sincere | Friend | T. C. Higginson | 16th Reg.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/2/596
LT Typescript Only
Ipswich: a port town in Suffolk, England.
Delighted to see … hand writing again: letter missing.
Youghal bed-fellow: both Higginson and Tyndall were civil assistants with the 5th Division of the Irish Ordnance Survey in the early 1840s. They must have lodged together when Tyndall was stationed in Youghal, County Cork. See Volume 1.
Gazelle’s &c: from the fourth stanza of the dedication ‘To Ianthe’ in Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, ‘Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the Gazelle’s’ (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, vol. 1 [Brussels: Du Jardin–Sailly Brothers, 1829], pp. 7–8, on p. 8).
King of Otahuti’s country: misspelling of Otaheite, or Tahiti.
Superintending the Recruiting … keeps me busy: at this time Higginson was a Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery.
Please cite as “Tyndall0952,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on