Broughton | Jan 28th 1855
My dear John,
I half expected before this to have a line from you though I am not disappointed at not doing so for I know well how busy you must be. Anna and I have regretted several times that we saw so little of you in London and we are looking forward with pleasure to our papa’s next visit to Broughton.1 We have got peacefully settled here and there is an atmosphere of domestic happiness about Vine Cottage2 that I am sure would please you well and would make your lecture all the better if some Friday night you would run down and return on Monday morning. Every body here received us kindly; of welcomes and good wishes we have plenty and as far as I can calculate the latter are likely to be fulfilled. To tell most people that I am satisfied with my wife would be absurd for of course they would know that if I was not I should never admit it, but to you the assertion may have a different meaning. Yes, John, so far my hopes and anticipations are all fulfilled. I love my wife to-day as warmly as I did a month ago. Already I begin to feel a better man and I feel sure that we shall influence one another for our good.
The boys are slowly assembling at Queenwood3 and as far as we can judge at present our prospects this half year are in every respect greatly improved. Mr E.4 has consulted me more this time than ever before. I hope for his sake, or rather for Queenwood’s that he may continue to be as communicative. He shewed me a letter from Mr Gale,5 who writes to Mr E. for more particular reasons why his son is not to return to Queenwood. (Edmondson in informing Gale’s father of his intention not to readmit Gale did so in a very smooth, quaker-like and unsatisfactory way). It is an affecting and truly fatherly letter which I requested Edmondson to allow me to answer. This answer you shall see soon.
Let me hear from you soon John and tell me can I do anything for the Phil. Mag. just now if so give me orders as soon as you please.
I have had a kind note from Bevington, he seems to be more than ever satisfied with Henry Hill6 and writes very cheeringly about him.
Anna sends her love and so do I.
Thine affectionately | T. A. Hirst
RI MS JT/1/H/212
our papa’s next visit to Broughton: Tyndall was humorously being described as their ‘papa’, presumably in response to his claim in letter 1028 that he was Hirst’s ‘proud father glorying in his son’.
Vine Cottage: Thomas and Anna Hirst lived in Vine Cottage, in the nearby village of Broughton.
assembling at Queenwood: after the Christmas vacation.
Mr E.: George Edmondson.
a letter from Mr Gale: Mr Gale was the father of one of the pupils at Queenwood. A pupil with this surname had clashed with a schoolmaster, Haas, but refused to apologise. Although Edmondson recommended expulsion, Hirst persuaded the boy to apologise. There was subsequent correspondence with the father including the letter referred to here (Hirst’s Journal, RI MS JT/2/32b/1152–4 and 1157–8).
Henry Hill: Henry Hill (c. 1830–86) had been a member of the Halifax Mechanics Society where he had become a friend of Hirst’s. Tyndall and Hirst had subsequently recommended him for employment in John Bevington’s leather factory.
Please cite as “Tyndall1035,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on