9 May 1856
My dear Mr. Faraday,
The following note from the War Department reached me last night, it contains my doom.
War Department Pall Mall | 8th May 1856
Sir,
I am directed by the secretary of State for War to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 1st instant, and to inform you that his Lordship considers the explanation you have furnished to be quite satisfactory.
I have the honour &c | H. R. Drewry
I opened this letter with the neutrality of a man who has really made up his mind for the worst, but I confess it gives me great pleasure to think that the matter has thus terminated.
I hope you are improving,1 and that you will soon return quite restored. This weather is awfully trying – I was at a very low ebb in my lecture of yesterday, but barring the failure of a difficult experiment or two, managed to drag through pretty well. Frankland is in town for a few days and Despretz – who desires me to present his respects to you2 – is coming. He purposed starting on Tuesday evening,3 but he has not yet appeared.
I hope Mrs Faraday is well. I should think that Folkstone cliff is very cold for her at present.4
Last Wednesday evening5 I was at Lord Ashburton’s and met Wheatstone there. We had a conversation about the stereoscope and I was pained to see the desire manifested so strongly to deprive Brewster of what he really merits – or to reduce his merits to zero.6 Wheatstone says he must give me a lesson on the subject; that is, he must instruct my muddy understanding – the matter appears to me as plain as a proposition of Euclid:7 but it does not seem as if he had really mastered any theory but his own.
Good bye | Ever Yours most truly | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/12/8
Faraday Correspondence, 5:3139
I hope you are improving: Faraday and his wife had borrowed Bence Jones’s holiday home in Folkestone in order to restore his health. Faraday to Bence Jones, 9 May 1856 (Faraday Correspondence, 5:3138).
his respects to you: letter 1219.
Tuesday evening: 6 May 1856.
very cold for her at present: The weather was so bad that Mrs Faraday did not venture out at all (Faraday Correspondence, 5:3138).
Last Wednesday evening:7 May 1856.
reduce his merits to zero: A very ‘bitter dispute’ had broken out when Brewster publically claimed priority over Wheatstone for the invention of the stereoscope in his The Stereoscope: its History, Theory and Construction (London: J. Murray, 1856). See letter 1109, n. 13.
a proposition of Euclid: Euclid (fl. 295 BC), Greek mathematician whose geometry was the epitome of deductive logic.
Please cite as “Tyndall1223,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on