Sunday 6th April
My dear Tom
Thank you for the Observer1 though it does contain but little and that little I have not yet read. I wish I had met Col. Wynne down there2 – I am sure I should have found many points of contact between you – these things are in some measure matters of habit. The points of contact of course must be nature’s gift, but the discovery of them often lies within the domain of wit. Your judgement of the man however is a correct one.
My health still oscillates. I gave my first lecture on Thursday last,3 and had some beautiful experiments. The audience still continues very large, very attentive and very kind; I met on Thursday Mr Mallet4 whose name you have sometimes seen in the Phil. Mag. he described some beautiful experiments regarding the cleavage of ice and the manner of making them – I tried them yesterday and failed. But I dont know why I mention the fact. On Friday evening we had a lecture from a young fellow named Roscoe5 who has been recently associated with Bunsen in an investigation on the chemical actions of Light. I can truly say that I carried all the discourse away with me & found no difficulty in understanding it, but the general impression was that it was a failure. Yesterday an artist6 who is engaged on a painting of the theatre of the R.I. when the Princes7 were there took my noddle8 also to fit into it at some corner. Afterwards I called upon Claudet the photographer9 to borrow some Daguerreotypes type for my next lecture. I spent an interesting & constructive hour with him, during which however he managed to take me in half a dozen positions.10 So that in one day I have had a regular descent of artists.
Scarcely has the discussion with Matteucci11 passed away when I am attacked by Plücker in his private letters to his friends. Wheatstone – a great partisan of Plücker’s – shewed me a letter12 wherin he stated that I had in a seducing manner totally disfigured his ancient way of viewing the subject. and also insinuates that I had influenced Faraday’s opinion of him. He has also written to Faraday13 in the same strain. If he wished to retain Faraday’s esteem he could not have done a more silly thing. I shall endeavor to avoid discussion with him, though he proposes to write an edition of his labours and to lay his claims before the Royal Society.14 If one wished there is no man who could be more readily reduced to a scientific scarecrow than this same Mr Plücker. But it is worthless work to loose time in a strife of the kind and if he does not pressure very hard I will let him have his way.
With love to Anna Believe me Tom | affectionately yours | John
RI MS JT/1/T/889
for the Observer: The Queenwood Observer was an occasional newspaper written and printed by staff and students of Queenwood College. A few copies have survived at the Friends’ Library in London. The issue Tyndall referred to evidently contained an essay by Hirst on ‘Swinging’. See Hirst Journal, 13 April 1856 (RI MS JT/2/32c/1191).
down there: According to Hirst’s Journal, Colonel Wynne had visited his son Eddy and Hirst at Queenwood on Friday 28 March (RI MS JT/2/32c/1191).
I gave my first lecture on Thursday last: the first of 11 lectures on light.
Mr Mallet: Robert Mallet (1810–81; FRS 1854) was an Irish railway engineer and geologist who made pioneering studies of earthquakes. The meeting with Mallet was not recorded in Tyndall’s Journal.
a young fellow named Roscoe: Henry Enfield Roscoe (1833–1915; FRS 1863), English chemist. After training at University College London he became a pupil of Robert Bunsen’s at the University of Heidelberg where he worked on the chemical action of light (photochemistry). He lectured at the RI on ‘The Measurement of the Chemical Action of Light’ on 4 April 1856. See Roy. Inst. Proc., 2 (1854–8), pp. 223–5.
an Artist: The artist was Alexander Blaikley (1816–1903), a Sandemanian and distant relative of Faraday’s.
the Princes: Prince Albert had taken his two sons Albert Edward (1841–1910), Prince of Wales, and Alfred (1844–1900), the Duke of Saxa Coburg, to hear Faraday’s Christmas lectures in December 1855. See Tyndall Journal, 27 December 1855 ( RI MS JT/2/13c/ 811).
my noddle: my image. According to a key to this frequently-reproduced painting, which hangs outside the lecture theatre of the present-day RI, Tyndall is about half way up on the left hand side, three places to the right of two women. The clean-shaven image does not look like Tyndall at all!.
Claudet the photographer: Antoine Claudet (1797–1867; FRS 1853), French photographer and inventor who kept a shop in Regent Street.
half a dozen positions: Claudet photographed Tyndall. It is not known whether any of these daguerreotypes survive uncatalogued at the RI.
discussion with Matteucci: Matteucci’s former criticism of Tyndall’s magnetic work. See letter 1161.
shewed me a letter: Wheatstone showed Tyndall the letter (which was in French) when he went to Hammersmith on Sunday 30 March 1856 (RI MS JT/2/13c/832).
He has also written to Faraday: Plücker had written to Faraday in English on 21 March 1856. Faraday Correspondence, 5:3109. Plücker accused Tyndall of ‘fighting against a theory, which never was mine’ and merely giving the very explanation of how uniaxial crystals behaved in the presence of magnets that he had given in 1849.
lay his claims before the Royal Society: He did so in J. Plücker, ‘On the Magnetic Induction of Crystals’, Phil. Trans., 148 (1858), 543‒547. Plücker had been elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in June 1855, mainly through the efforts of Wheatstone.
Please cite as “Tyndall1208,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on