14 Rue de Cirque1 Paris | Wednesday morning before 6 o’c
My dear Huxley
Until yesterday2 I was not aware that you had been chosen for the Fullerian at the Royal Institution.3 I have been wandering through Normandy without a home or local habitation to which a letter could be addressed, and this I suppose is the reason why I did not hear of your success earlier. I shake you by the hand my dear Fellow4 with a satisfaction I would venture to say almost equal to your own on receiving the intelligence. The fates once seemed to point to our connexion in a distant land:5 we are now colleagues at home, and I can claim you as my scientific brother. May the gods continue to drop fatness upon you, and may your next great step6 be productive of all the felicity which your warmest friends or your own rebellious heart can desire.
Believe me, dear Huxley, | Ever yours sincerely | John Tyndall
Send the enclosed7 to Francis for me.
IC MS HP 1.19
14 Rue de Cirque: see letter 1101, n. 11.
Until yesterday: It is possible that Tyndall received news of Huxley’s appointment on 3 July 1855. However, as several London newspapers carried that information in their issues of 4 or 5 July, its more likely that he heard about it on 10 July.
the Fullerian at the Royal Institution: At their meeting on 2 July, the managers of the RI had elected Huxley the Fullerian Professor of Physiology. Huxley was the seventh incumbent of this professorship, which had been endowed in 1833 by the philanthropist John Fuller.
Fellow: Tyndall appears to have capitalized the word ‘fellow’ to make Huxley a fellow Fellow of the Royal Soceity.
our connexion in a distant land: Like Tyndall, Huxley had previously applied for a post – in his case the chair of natural history in 1851 – at the University of Toronto.
your next great step: After an eight-year courtship, Huxley married Henrietta Ann Heathorn at All Saints’ Church, St John’s Wood, on 21 July 1855.
the enclosed: enclosure missing.
Please cite as “Tyndall1106,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on