Royal Institution London | 4th January 1855.
My dear Tom
For a man to write or to speak with vigour it is necessary that he should believe that he is not beating the air, or preaching to the dusty envelopes of the dead letter office – now how am I to get this faith on the present occasion? You write to me,1 and on the NE2 corner of your letter stand the simple words January 2nd 1855, in the body of the letter you inform me that you are in Paris, but in what part of Paris you leave me to guess – you tell me to write to you ‘there’ – well I will do so, and the sin falls upon your head if my letter, pinioned like a phoenix, and bursting from the fire of my rejoicing heart be ignobly quenched amid the lumber before referred to. I can truly say that I read your letter with the greatest satisfaction – it came just in time to gratify a longing which I had experienced for some days. Your cards came to me,3 but they were directed by a strange hand, and I yearned once more for those familiar pothooks & hangers4 which, like magicians wands, or like the witch of Endor when she called the ghost of Samuel from the dead,5 place your image bodily before me. I have copied that letter of yours into my journal:6 not at all on your account, but with the prospective view that when I get married myself one of these days, my inexpressible darling, that is to be, will be amused by the perusal of it; I know that ladies feel an interest in such matters and therefore on her account I have copied the letter. I am far from being in an impressionable mood at present, but I did feel a stirring of my dry bones as you referred to your speech when Anna’s & your healths were drunk. ‘With great pride I thanked them all’ – I should like to have been present to witness the outgush of that pride, and had Anna been near me I should have kissed her with the pride of a proud father glorying in his son. The whole matter was to all appearance very beautifully arranged, and I am thankful to the gods for granting you that gush of sunshine, and that diamond frost-sparkle to beautify the day of your nuptials. I am loaded with the dross of science, otherwise my heart would burst forth into singing and I would send you an epithalamium of which Edmund Spenser7 need not be ashamed. I am also thankful to the minister8 for having talked so very little nonsense, and if ever I meet him he may reckon upon the best glass of whiskey punch that I can procure. I owe him this, as he has taken a burden off my shoulders, for if he had not acquitted himself properly I should have felt it incumbent on me to make my own experience in matrimonial matters the subject of an exhortation to you and Anna on commencing life. There is something to my mind highly philosophical in this tending of human hearts to draw towards each other; and I doubt not, were there a man wise enough to do it, that a treatise on a kind of moral mechanics might be written in which love should be the force, and which would possess strict scientific precision. I can imagine myself for example beside a fair girl, looking steadfastly at the spirit in her eyes, feeling a force, symbolised by magnetic induction, rising within me until finally yielding to the resistless influence I clasp her strongly to my heart while our lips flash together like the union of opposite electricities!9 – What an old fool I am you will say to imagine such a thing! But remember I only imagine it as an object of philosophic interest. I should like extremely to make an investigation in connexion with this subject, and there is very great probability of my taking it up at some future day. If ladies could be purchased by the pound like bismuth, and affection excited by means of a copper helix,10 the Royal Society should not be long without a communication on this important subject. You will deem me crazy Tom, for I believe I never wrote to you in this foolish way before; but what can a man say when his heart is soft iron, and his brain an assemblage of molecular currents! I could write to you very gravely on magnetic philosophy but on nothing else. My cousin11 is here still and is not altogether satisfied with his progress. He is very quiet, calculated to make an excellent husband; and although not at all possessing the intellectual power of Hector,12 is endowed with a large common sense – it is this latter, combined with a hankering after beauty, that renders him difficult to please. He meets the qualities he seeks separate in separate individuals, but has not yet met them combined.
My first lecture is given on the 16th.13 I expect to give an evening lecture at the London Institution on the 17th14 and shall be happy to see you and Anna there. If Anna knows the people in Cecil Street,15 and thinks the place comfortable I would advise her to go there – as indeed I doubt my own powers to make her as comfortable here as I could wish.
affectionately hers and yours | John Tyndall
My eye has just caught the stamp of your paper: I will direct there at a venture.16
RI MS JT/1/T/591
You write to me: letter 1027.
NE: north-east; i.e. top right-hand corner of the letter.
Your cards came to me: cards missing.
familiar pothooks & hangers: Hirst’s idiosyncratic handwriting. Pot-hook refers to the ‘curved or hooked stroke made with the pen’; hanger is a nursery name for ‘the stroke with a double curve’ (OED). Thus the phrase ‘pothooks and hangers’ refers to a person’s handwriting.
the witch of Endor … Samuel from the dead: Hirst’s handwriting evoked Hirst’s ‘bodily image’ before Tyndall, just as the Witch of Endor conjured up, for Saul, the ghost of Samuel from the dead (1 Samuel 28:3–25).
copied that letter … my journal: letter 1027; Tyndall’s Journal, 3 January 1855: RI MS JT/2/13b/413–14.
an epithalamium … Edmund Spenser: An epithalamium is a nuptial song or poem in praise of the bride and bridegroom, and praying for their prosperity (OED). To mark his wedding in 1594 the poet Edmund Spenser (1652–99) wrote an Epithalamion, which was published the following year.
the minister: see letter 1027, n. 5.
the union of opposite electricities: The view that there are two opposite types of electricity – often called vitreous and resinous, and conceived as two separate fluids – which, when the come together, neutralize each other producing a spark
affection excited by means of a copper helix: Tyndall likens the attraction of the sexes to the magnetic field produced in his experiments.
My cousin: Tom Payne, who had recently visited Tyndall in London.
Hector: Hector Tyndale.
My first lecture … 16th: The first of Tyndall’s 11 lectures on ‘Electricity and Magnetism’ was delivered in the RI at 3pm on Tuesday, 16 January.
an evening lecture at the London Institution on the 17th: Tyndall subsequently recorded in his Journal for 17 January: ‘My lecture pleased my audience better than it pleased myself. It is said that they spoke highly of it’ (RI MS JT/2/13b/419). The title of the lecture has not been ascertained, but it was probably on magnetism.
the people in Cecil Street: see letter 1027, n. 9.
at a venture: in realization of the risk involved.
Please cite as “Tyndall1028,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on