To Anna Martin   July 13th. 1854.

July 13th. 1854.¹

My dear Miss Martin

I had, as I thought, folded up my papers for the night, and in order to make me sleep, had been selfish and sinful enough to prepare for myself a dose of brandy and water, when the thought of a letter which I received from my friend Tom this morning² occurred to me and I could not resist the luxury of reading it once more. The night is so calm, so silent, so different from what I am accustomed to in London – for I am stopping in a cottage at the outskirts of a quiet Hampshire village,³ I myself, if I except the flies and crickets, being the only living creature within its walls – that, added to the effects of Tom’s letter, and perhaps in part to the brandy and water, the tranquility of my position sheds a kind of dewiness over my old frozen heart, and renders it more pleasant to me to write than to go to bed. You have doubtless read the story of Damon and Pythias⁴ whose friendship, evidenced in the willingness of one of them to suffer death for the other, has been handed down to us as a sample of better ages than our own. In the chivalrous moods which used to come upon me, when I was younger than I am now, I have often thought that such a piece of friendship might be enacted even now. That the same fresh and faithful heart was still beating in the present world as in the world of yore, and that it might be perfectly possible for two young men of the 19th. century to entertain as noble a friendship and to act as brave a part as that which history has recorded of the two friends of Syracuse.⁵ There have been times when I have felt it possible that Thomas Hirst and myself, if called upon to do so, might act in a similar manner towards each other. And though this foolish feeling is now tempered – withered perhaps by time and choaked by study – the memory of it at least still clings to me and keeps my affection for Tom alive. I read his letter⁶ this morning with deep interest, and I reread it to night with undiminished pleasure. The boy (as I used to call him) cunningly commences with a description of a visit to my poor birthplace,⁷ calling many things to my mind which he must have known would soften its parched soil and render it fit for the further intelligence he had to communicate, intelligence which I may say did not take me by surprise. The intelligence was that you were no longer his daughter⁸ but occupied a relation to him entirely new. I have watched the growth of this consummation more closely than perhaps Tom himself imagines, or, to speak more correctly, I saw without watching the tendency and probable termination of the correspondence which had been established between you. Knowing this, there are people in the world who would doubtless deem it very strange that I never uttered a thought upon on the subject. But the friendship between Tom and me is not a meddling friendship, and I believe that our lives demonstrate that a union of no common strength is compatible with the perfect individual freedom of the friends united. I have left Tom to his own unbiassed choice, and now that that choice is made the fact of his having made it is a sufficient proof to me that it is a wise one. Most gladly however do I add to this conviction another derived from the perusal of some of your letters to Tom – letters so clever and so good, that my eyes were quickly opened to their effect upon a mind receptive of all cleverness and of all goodness. The fact is, that if Tom had not taken his present step I think I should have become your wooer myself, and thus instead of the athletic son, with the wine of life rushing through all his arteries, lending light to his eye and vigour to brain, you would have had for a suitor the dilapidated old father, possessing only half a heart and with a cheek and forehead furrowed by monitions from the world to come.

I will not say that Tom is perfect, nor am I even polite or poetical enough to tell a lady that she is so. But this I will say that he has the power of understanding the best moments of the best men, and the greatest moments of the greatest: and this power he could never have without having been, at least during some portion of his life, great and good himself. Now when I know this, and that to this he adds the wisdom of practical life, and a competent knowledge of the world; what am I to think of the little sorceress who has wound her spell around him and tied my Hercules⁹ to her apronstrings? But that sorceress knows the residence of her power as well as I do, that it is based upon the affection and the truth of her own character. These are qualities the retention and exercise of which will preserve both Tom and her the same faithful lovers through long future years, as they feel themselves to day.

And now I have time to reflect for a moment on the probable increase to my own comfort which this alliance promises. I dream of tea trays and arm chairs by the cosy fireside, and kind looks and kind words spoken when my head aches. I am sure we shall all be very happy when we come together.

And now goodbye and excuse this badly written letter for my eyes are dim and weary.

And believe me | With a bit of Tom’s love | Your friend | John Tyndall

RI MS JT/1/HTYP/351–352

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