Broughton, | May 11th/56
My dear John,
Thanks for your cheering letter1 which has done more than all else to encourage me to perseverance and cause me to forget the pain of the preceding week. To every word my better self could respond and by responding grew stronger. I wish you would ask Huxley for the title of the book by Lallemand2 to which he referred, for it will unquestionably be of use to us. I was also glad to hear the result of your letter to Lord Panmure.3 I expected it and feel sure your letter will prove of service.
This is the first fine sunny day we have had for some time and I am going to give Anna a drive. You will have seen from the Times that John Martin is at last at liberty.4 We are expecting him daily and if he comes I have resolved to send poor Anna with him to Ireland to try what native air will do towards restoring her health.
At the break up5 Debus and I intend to exhibit a few experiments to amuse the company for an hour and give a scientific tone to the assembly. We are very poorly off for apparatus since our fire 6 (Frictional electricity being a too capricious subject7 for the occasion) Ruhmkorffs coil8 is one of our most available instruments and I want to know if you can suggest a suitable experiment or two with it besides the one I usually shew with the light falling over the edges of a beaker of mercury in a vacuum.9 Debus is going to produce some chemical blazes and I only want two or three good experiments to serve as introduction. I shall not make it a lecture but rather a series of striking experiments accompanied with very brief descriptions. If you could suggest one or two I should be thankful for I am sorely pressed with other things which unfortunately are not connected with Physical experiments.
With love | Yours affectionately | T. A. Hirst.
RI MS JT/1/H/224
your cheering letter: letter 1225.
the book by Lallemand: letter 1221, n. 3.
letter to Lord Panmure: letter 1217.
John Martin is at last at liberty: Reported in the Times on Saturday 10 May 1856 in its Parliamentary Report, p. 6. Martin had been transported to Tasmania in November 1849 to serve a ten year sentence, but was pardoned in 1854 on condition that he did not settle in Britain or Ireland. He settled in Paris in October 1854 and received an unconditional pardon in May 1856 following which he returned to his estates in Ireland.
At the break up: the last day of Queenwood College’s summer term.
since our fire: There appears to be no record of this incident which probably occurred in the laboratory. The school was to be destroyed by fire on 10 June 1902.
a too capricious subject: spectacular experiments with frictional electricity machines had been a common entertainment since the 18th century, but can easily fail because of damp atmospheric conditions.
Ruhmkorff’s coil: an induction coil capable of producing spectacular sparks of over a foot in length devised by the Franco-German instrument maker, Heinrich Daniel Rühmkorff (1803–77) in 1851. Tyndall had previously borrowed the coil in April 1855; see letters 1080 and 1081, n. 5.
mercury in a vacuum: Hirst was here describing the stratification of light later more commonly reproduced in a discharge tube.
Please cite as “Tyndall1226,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on