Broughton | April 29th 1855
My dear John,
With respect to the offer made to you of a chair in Toronto1 my advice is quite decided. Refuse it. Whoever offered you it does not in my opinion appreciate the importance of your present researches and of your presence in England in the centre of the scientific world. Three years ago I spoke against your going to bury yourself in the backwoods2 and if the step was unadvisable then it is far more so now. Refuse it.
On Friday last I exhibited my experiments3 in Broughton and pleased the people pretty well I think. The experiments with Ruhmkorff’s coil were more brilliant than usual. The concert also passed off well. At Queenwood everything goes on well. Pare (?) and Finch are there at present. They attended the Imp. Soc.4 last night. It was a very good meeting and Pare was evidently pleased. I had some talk to him, and it is just possible that I may have removed the rather poor impression of me which he expressed to you.5
How is du Bois succeeding? He managed quite as well as I expected,6 sometimes indeed I thought he spoke well, but on the whole I did not think he made the most of his experiments he was not sufficiently lucid in his explanations and descriptions of what his experiments were intended to prove. I remember one instance, the convulsions of the frog when a spark was taken from the machine. He explained it too loosely. I begin to fear that I shall not come and hear him again. I do not like leaving Queenwood on a Saturday evening, and again it is very expensive. We cannot get a return ticket for 14/6.7 Such tickets are only granted at London. Give my kind regards to du Bois and tell him I wish very much he would come and spend a day or two with us, you might come with him. But I will write to him soon.
Anna is in good health and good spirits. We have never been quiet since before Easter but now that concerts and visitors are past I shall be left once more undisturbed with my work. How about my paper to the R.S.8 – have you heard any thing of it?
Yours as ever | T A Hirst
RI MS JT/1/H/216
chair in Toronto: see letter 1074.
Three years ago … the backwoods: Hirst had advised Tyndall against going to Canada when he applied for the professorship of natural philosophy at the University of Toronto in the autumn of 1851; see letter 1074, n. 2.
exhibited my experiments: ‘On Friday [April] the 27th I exhibited some experiments on Electricity, etc. at the Lecture Hall in Broughton, and afterwards took part in a concert conducted by [John] Cornwall’, the music master (Hirst’s Journal: RI MS JT/2/32c/1166).
Imp. Soc.: Mutual Improvement Society at Queenwood College: see letter 1050, n. 2.
poor impression of me which he expressed to you: The reason for Pare’s ‘poor impression’ of Hirst has not been ascertained. See also letter 1081.
He managed … expected: Hirst had attended du Bois-Reymond’s first lecture at the RI but not the second (which was delivered on 28 April 1855).
We cannot get a return ticket for 14/6: To travel from Waterloo Station, in London, to Dunbridge Station, which was the closest to Queenwood College, was a distance of 84½ miles. Bradshaw’s General Railway and Steam Navigation Guide for February 1855 indicates (p. 21) that express trains, which carried only 1st class passengers, completed the journey in 2 hrs, 47 mins, while the fastest journey for 2nd and 3rd class travellers was 3hrs, 27 mins, although some trains took much longer. The cost of a single 1st class ticket was 18/6; 2nd class 12/6; 3rd class 7/-.
my paper to the R.S.: see letter 1058, n. 3.
Please cite as “Tyndall1080,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on