18th April 1855.
My dear Tom
Very many thanks to you for the battery1 which I doubt not will soon reach me. My health when I left you was very precarious and since that time it has not mended much – This is saying too much for I feel myself better & more hopeful today than I have been for a long time. To what do you think I attribute this favourable change? To giving up tea, coffee, wine & beer. But is only a proof of the abnormal state of my nerves when such trifles can effect me so seriously – I have felt very low at intervals since I left you – almost low enough to clench my teeth, bid good bye to the Royal Institution and sally forth to the mountains in search of the treasure I had lost. But I still expect to get through my course2 if not with glory at least with satisfaction. It is almost certain that I shall go to Paris3 & while there I shall spend a holiday time, and recruit myself. Today as I have said I feel better than I have felt for some time. With regard to the watch4 you cannot be more convinced of Anna’s innocence than I am – I am perfectly sure she never entertained a thought of my presenting her with the watch. But the thought of presenting it when it occurred to me gladdened me. I hate your formal presents, but this watch I regard as an appropriate gift – it is a part of myself and bears about it the marks and tokens of our companionship. It is fit that it should fall into Anna’s hands – Nobody knows so much of its history as you do and hence nobody would be likely to treat it with more tenderness and affection.
I saw the Emperor & Empress in their passage through London,5 and heard hundreds of thousands give the man the cheer which I gave him when all England was denouncing him.6 I saw them twice once in Pall Mall. The Empress seemed pale and anxious then; I saw them again at the end of Albermarle Street. The anxiety had fled and some passing accident called the bloom to her cheeks and she looked radiant – I am rejoiced to find that you are coming up on Saturday. Du Bois dines with me at Andertons tomorrow.7 I wish you were there; but if he is not engaged I will try and secure him for Saturday evening.8
Kiss Anna for me | affectionately yours | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/T/595
the battery: see letter 1068, n. 3.
my course: On the previous day, 17 April, Tyndall had delivered the first lecture of his course on ‘Voltaic Electricity’ at the RI.
go to Paris: Tyndall was to serve as ‘Supplementary Juror’ in Class VIII (‘Arts relating to the Exact Sciences, and to Instruction’) at the Exposition Universelle in Paris; see letter 1064, nn. 2 and 3.
the watch: see letter 1068, n. 6.
Emperor & Empress … London: The Emperor of France, Napoleon III (1808–73), and the Empress Eugenie (1826–1920) visited London in April 1855. They traveled from Windsor, arriving at the Bricklayers’ Arms Station (a railway terminus a mile south of London Bridge) late in the afternoon of Monday, 16 April, and then toured London by carriage, their route including Pall Mall. ‘A numerous and highly-respectable class of persons crowded Pall-mall and the approaches leading thereto’ (London Standard, 16 April 1855, p. 4).
all England was denouncing him: Some sections of the press (e.g. the radical Reynolds’s Newspaper, 15 April 1855, p. 16) denounced Napoleon because of the bloody coup d’état he initiated in December 1851 when 3000–4000 of his opponents were killed and many republicans were subsequently arrested and exiled. Another unsuccessful attempt was made on the Emperor’s life in Paris on 28 April 1855.
Du Bois … tomorrow: see letter 1067.
Saturday evening: After du Bois-Reymond’s lecture at the RI on the afternoon of Saturday, 21 April, Tyndall and Faraday dined at Gassiot’s house, but Hirst went to Tyndall’s lodgings and ‘had to […] spend the evening alone’ (Hirst’s Journal: RI MS JT/2/32c/1166).
Please cite as “Tyndall1070,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on