To Hector Tyndale   10th March 1855

Royal Institution | Albemarle street | London | 10^th March 1855

My dear Hector

Nine long months have flown by since we saw each other¹ and no word has passed between us. This is not as it should be, for I believe neither one nor the other of us has, sincerely speaking, any better excuse than mere laziness to assign in extenuation of his omission. On the whole I think you are more to blame than I am – for in the first place you have more force, and secondly you have fewer objects on which to expend it. Therefore you ought to have written, and I blame, censure, and condemn you for not having done so, whereas my present act evokes a corresponding amount of self gratulation on finding myself your pioneer in the path of duty. But speaking seriously the rugged fact which is the cause of my writing to you just now is my inability to do any thing which draws heavily upon my brain – I have been smitten down during the last week by influenza or something of the kind. My bodily fortress was already in a state of dilapidation when I was thus assailed, so that the shock has made some impression upon me. I have been compelled to dismiss science from my head for the last two days, and when I do this thoughts of friends enter, and I become more humanized, so that a fit of illness has in some measure its compensations. Under the circumstances I thought I might occupy myself pleasantly for an hour in writing to you, and this is the simple genesis of my present letter.

Oh this miserable pulpy brain of mine! would that it were made of some tougher material – even the simple effort of writing to you sets it simmering, and I dare say I shall have to desist before my task is complete. You left me early in August – I continued to work until the 20^th of September when I went to Liverpool to attend the meeting of the British Association.² It was a pleasant & successful meeting – one night it fell to my lot to explain Foucault’s experiments proving the rotation of the earth,³ and I nearly cracked my voice in my endeavour to fill the vast hall where the multitude was assembled. From Liverpool Francis and myself dived into Wales⁴ and had a most glorious trip of about 10 days duration. It is a beautiful country, and as gratifying to the soul as the more stupendous scenes of Switzerland. There is such a harmony in the mountain grouping, the colours are so beautiful, and then the dinners of trout, plucked bleeding from their nature streams give a completeness to the country and enables it to appeal to the sum total of man animal and angelical. After my Welsh trip I took a rush over to Ireland, and my last impression of the country was that the people there were extremely dirty.

On my return I attacked my work once more and got a long investigation safely finished. This I handed in to the Royal Society in November – it was afterwards chosen by the Council for the so called Bakerian Lecture,⁵ which is delivered annually before the Fellows. I send you an abstract of the Lecture⁶ and when the paper is presented in full, if the postage offer no great barrier, I will send you a copy.

During the Autumn I had another cousin of mine from Melbourne with me here – not a Tyndall, but a Payne;⁷– he went out to Melbourne 15 years ago and has made an immense fortune there. He is about the age of ourselves and came over to this country, taking Palestine in his route, to seek out a wife. He spent a good while in Dublin; the rumour of his wealth having been spread abroad, and his object being pretty well known, he was literally besieged – His strong common sense however enabled him to see all the little artifices that were laid for him, and he finally left Dublin & came over to London. He was just as unsuccessful here, so he went-back to Ireland in January and I have not heard from him since. He is very different from you in disposition, and although so successful as a man of the world possesses nothing like your force of intellect. He is however steady, sincere & punctual and enjoys a large portion of practical common sense.

A little discussion has recently arisen between Faraday & myself regarding a very interesting point in magnetism.⁸ Many people no doubt thought it rash, and perhaps wrong in me to differ from him – But Faraday’s own life is a practical illustration of independent thought, and in expressing an honest, and I believe well founded dissent from him I do no more than follow the example which he has set. The man is too great and too good to allow this to interfere with the cordial personal relationship which subsists between us; but such a man is always surrounded by lesser men, and if a shade should ever cross his feelings towards me (which I do not in the least anticipate) it will proceed from them. He supposes a universal magnetic medium to exist in space, and entertains peculiar notions regarding the nature of the magnetic force, to which I cannot subscribe – Some of my reasons I have given in the last number of the Philosophical Magazine⁹ – Many, & among the number the Astronomer Royal,¹⁰ think them sound, and if you should chance to see this magazine you will I doubt not be able to judge of them yourself as well as any body else.

Since your departure I have heard frequently from D^r and M^rs Coxe. He sent me once a newspaper containing something concerning ‘types’¹¹ – with the request to send it to you – I did so and hope you have received it safely. He wrote to me sometime ago saying that he thought the state of his health would soon induce the gentleman who now fills the chair of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh¹² to resign his post, and asking me whether he might name me as one willing to accept the chair supposing it to be offered to me – My election to it he said would be next to a certainty – The post would be worth from 800 to £1000 a year, and I should have 6 months for private researches. I replied saying that I would not put myself forward as a candidate but if the post were offered to me I did not see any insuperable obstacle in the way of my accepting it – Thus the matter rests; I think however the contemplated resignation is not likely to take place soon – not perhaps for years.

I took a run down to Hampshire last Saturday accompanied by Francis and remained there till Monday morning – That huge young fellow with the black barb¹³ whom I took you to see, has recently got married to a sister of John Martin’s, who was sent out to Sidney with Smith Obrien, but who is now in Paris.¹⁴ I have had many acquaintances and friends during my brief career, but they have all slipped away from me, all slid into matrimony and left me alone. Under ordinary circumstances, when I can pursue my speculations and experiments without any miserable physiological drawback, my life is so full of satisfaction that the thought of a wife, or the need of a wife never reveals itself to me; but when smitten with debility, when I am forced to sit by the fire and to think as little as possible then I feel that ‘a rare and radiant maiden’¹⁵ would be of inestimable value to me. Would that I could charm one from the clouds to keep me company at these special seasons always provided that I might send her back to the clouds as soon as her services were no longer necessary.– Dont shew this heretical stuff to any of your lady friends.

I have been reading this evening, and from time to time during the week, with infinite disgust, the remarks of certain patrons of the English press upon the death of the Emperor Nicholas.¹⁶ Surely there is something very ignoble in the joyful yelping of these curs. He was a noble foe, and for my part I could not contemplate his extinction without a feeling of solemnity almost approaching to sorrow. Would to God that we had a few men of his calibre in this country at present. As far as I can see he was a real ruler of men and no mockery. Instead of meanly rejoicing at his death our prayer and effort ought to be to find men so fit to cope with him as to neutralise him of the fair dignified opposition of force to force. These newspapers I must say sometimes sicken me – there one lies before me in which the writers talk about literature, the dignity of literature, and rejoice in the fact that government has given some literary man a post – evidently making themselves not only members but exponents of this guild of literature, and yet the fellows who so talk are fellows whom God intended to be tailors and cheesemen, and into whose dull souls his celestial light has never shone. We have scarcely a paper worth reading except the Times¹⁷ – It is changeful and inconsistent people say, but I find blood and life in its sentences – Its very errors offend the intellectual nostrils less than that flat putrescence which is the characteristic of more than half what emanates from the English newspaper press.

It is drawing towards bed-time and simultaneously towards the close of my sheet of paper. We have had an awfully severe winter here – last week the snow & frost had cleared away and the blood of spring appeared to be tingling in the world’s cheeks – but winter has come back again, coy and stern and today there is a pretty deep layer of snow upon the ground. Now I think for a man with a broken brain I have managed to fill my sheet pretty well; I need not of course ask you to write to me, for a cohort of voices will doubtless rise within you on the perusal of this, crying aloud ‘you must write to John’. I expect therefore a speedy outrush from your heart, for I know you have got a heart, and that there are forces within it which can act when called upon. Tell me all that has happened to you since our separation – present my regards to your wife, to your sister, to your brother Sharon,¹⁸ to all my unseen friends – Your picture is behind me as I write – and I have once heard you called ‘a handsome fellow’ – This you are not, so dont suffer yourself to be elated. And now my dear Hector I stretch my thoughts across the thousands of miles that separate us; squeeze you by the hand – give one brief warm hug and bid you goodbye.

Affectionately yours | John Tyndall

RI MS JT/1/T/1442