From Hector Tyndale   18 June 1855

Philadelphia 18 June 1855

My dear John

With your good welcome letter 10^th March¹ before me and my own conscience within me, much disturbed, I begin. To say that in all your ‘blame, censure & condemnation’ you are entirely in the right and I altogether in the wrong, makes poor amends for my idle ‘omission’, as you tenderly phrase it. In the miserable scrawl² I sent you a few days before yours came to me I spoke of a long and lingering idle fit. It has not passed off yet, in truth ’tis more – it has passed into almost sheer indifference to all things. If I spoke too much upon the theme – ego – before, and if I say too much upon it now, I crave your forgiveness. But in vindication of my love for you I must lay the blame upon my present state of mental health, and, of course, in doing so I must use the pronoun ’though believe me, my dear John, it is with no desire to dwell upon myself. Indeed that thing won’t bear much comment. My whole wish is simply that you may continue to give me such of your thoughts and kind remembrances as I may be worth.

I sincerely regret that you have been ill, but ere now I trust you have again regained your elasticity and health. You have no right to be any other than well; no man who feels with nature so much can be unwell. But to a poor miserable devil like me – I don’t speak now of my body, neither of myself proper, but only of my semi-self, the telegraph operating part of me – who discords Nature and untunes the elements in the infernal alchymy of my brain; to such a fellow nothing should be well – nor is it. To think that God’s blessed Nature, His sunshine, air, water, trees and flowers – bathing and floating forever through the beautiful blue of Heaven, should be resolved, or be attempted even, into nasty, stinking gases, or into sterile elementary matter. And yet something like to this with human nature is what I do, or have done, thinking it a pleasure! And now the devil of analysis won’t down or leave me, but having exhausted my powers in that infernal way, turns me in upon myself, and all these vile things, originating like nothing so much as coffin worms, within oneself, offend the inner senses of my soul – But no matter I have no right to sicken you with my maunderings and I shall not further.

I have said already that I was sorry to hear of your ill health, and yet, to tell you the truth, I ought not to be sorry, nor, perhaps, am I. As you say your letter was owing to it, or rather that when compelled to give up science ‘thoughts of friends enter’. Now a headache isn’t very pleasant company to enter memory with – and I fear a succession of such reminders would at last place both cause and effect in the same list – as bores.

I received two papers from you since my return which I read with much pleasure. The paper from D^r Coxe with an article on ‘Types of Mankind’³ was one of them. I thank the Doctor and please convey my kindest respects and pleasant remembrances to him as to Mrs: & Miss Coxe⁴ – if etiquette in England allows of this. The work referred to, ‘Types of Mankind’, is not one to do honour to this or to any other country; inasmuch as the motive of it is a low one – the Pharisee’s motive of self-justification and the glorification of one race above all others. Such a book, so far as it has any influence, is mischievous. I fear greatly, my fine Englishman, that ‘our race’ is so much engaged in building roads and other things of the kind, that we are prone to think all the roads from God’s central light terminate with us alone – center all in ‘Anglo-Saxon-dom’! I am not wholly sure that the great highway of humanity, for some generations at least, is not impeded, obstructed by this practical road-building race of ours. A life time spent upon so great a work even as the Britannia bridge⁵ is not, perhaps, the noblest life time one could find. I do not know that the ladder of Jacob⁶ is not seen, and mounted too, in glorious visions by men black as night – far away from sight or hearing of the ‘great Anglo-Saxon race’. I am not sure that because a few grains of dust upon the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ speculum have been noted and classified (!) into white dust and black dust and round dust and square dust, we see any clearer or further towards the Great Center Heaven our souls travail for. But after all I suppose it is all right by this theory – that each dust speck, when we know it, becomes transparent and gives additional power to the lens by becoming one itself, throwing two rays from Heaven instead of one, making what you call polarized light, I believe – which is not true light after all!

Oh how I wish I had been with D^r Francis & yourself (my kindest regards to the Doctor always) on your Welsh trip.⁷ But no matter the trout you ate and the hills you climbed and the great driving clouds you saw do me good through you. When you next go out of that nasty workshop of yours (I don’t speak comparing it with other laboratories, among which it may be a perfumed garden for aught I know) keep a journal and send it to me, and dwell as much as possible on ‘that rare and radiant maiden’⁸ will you? Ah John the evil in you must be de-evilised (I don’t advance any theory upon the origin of the name of the early playmate of humanity) before you can settle down in a staid gentlemanhood, like _____.⁹ How can you speak so lightly of the needs of your lonely, solitary hours. ‘Charm one from the skies’¹⁰ indeed! I think I see you at it! The nearest approach you will make to a cloud-lady will be one from the hills – cloudwards perhaps – healthy, happy, good and a woman.... These don’t come from thunders, lightnings or rain storms. – And then too, your ‘life is so full of satisfaction except when smitten with debility’ (is ‘that rare and radiant maiden’ one of your debilities?) that you never have the revelation ‘of the need of a wife’! How many wives do you think you can get upon such terms? I tell you what, my fine bachelor, some of these days you may ‘charm one from the clouds’ and if you do, take care of the thunder storms that’s all.

I am glad your cousin Payne has reached the great apex of the XIX pyramid A.C.¹¹ I suppose any one who stands there can see more than ‘forty centuries’¹² ever saw. Yes gold is a wonderful thing, so wonderful that it would be worth the Philosopher’s while to examine into the relations existing between it and the human (‘Anglo-Saxon’) mind. When you can ascertain the connexions between Mind and Matter, between ‘the child of all the ages’ and mighty gold, you will have done more than you did (beautiful as your experiments were) than when you drew the latent music from metals and from the earths. – I am glad to hear that one, at least, of your cousins has common sense, for it is not very common hereaway.

I do not think anything unpleasant or unkindly can arise between Faraday and yourself¹³ because of a difference in views, unless, indeed, one, or both of you are desirous to quarrel because one likes mustard which the other does not. As you say Faraday is too great a man for such things to weigh with him beyond the intellect, and he is great enough for his simple opinion to shake the results of yours or any other man’s researches. I would not, certainly, yield my religious convictions to his,¹⁴ but I would, as certainly, like to clear up the difference in our views; and failing that I would feel that it was a difference of nature, which like other apparent differences is to be reconciled only by the Future. By the way if there is a simple relation anywhere of his general views of magnetic force, and if you have any easily ‘come-at-able’ relation of your own views, I shall be very glad to receive them, don’t let the postage stand in your way but send me any and all you think will interest me. I asked you before to send me anything new, or able, on scientific matters and I am glad of this chance to refer to it again, and keep an account of any expenses you may incur and let me have it from time to time. Have you heard anything more of the Edinburgh professorship?¹⁵ It would, I think, be a capital thing suiting you in every respect, particularly as it might give you a wider field of publication.

May ‘that huge young fellow¹⁶ with the black barb whom you took me to see’ live long & happily with his chosen wife under ‘his own vine & fig tree’ without ever having the slightest occasion to desire to dress himself with the leaves of the latter. What you say of the English newspaper press entirely agrees with my own notions, but I apply it as well to the same gentry hereaway – Slavery-ridden, Custom-obeying, populace-courting always. But so it has ever been. The greatest comfort (!) being that the noble ones are growing (however slowly) in stature & in numbers. There is no Sodom¹⁷ now, out of all the Sodoms, without, at least, ‘three men’ to save it from damnation.

Our early spring was dry & cold, latterly wet & cool, but thank God, the crops look finely here & promise well. I don’t sell corn but I, in common with poorer devils, eat it & it has been enormously dear, causing, with the ‘hard times’ an unprecedented amount of suffering here. Allow me to throw up my hat (the hat of my minds eye) at the slow coming success of the Allies, ‘long may they wave’. American sympathy (newspaper sympathy I mean) has been with Russia heretofore because of two things, I your courting of Austria the d--est tyrant in the world¹⁸ they say, & II you didn’t take Sebastopol¹⁹ & sympathy goes with power. Beat Russia & annihilate Austria & then we’ll come down.

Write soon. affectionately yours

Hector Tyndale

I haven’t been so ‘waked up’ this long time as in writing this to you and it is with sincere regret I find the paper too small. If there is anything unsaid by me, consider it said & credit me with it. Yours Hector

RI MS JT/1/T/47