Mudeford near Christ’s Church. | 28th. June 1856.
My dear Mrs Pollock,
Miss Herries’s note, but not her book,1 has reached me this morning. I shall be in London on Wednesday next and my first act after I return will be to attend to her request. I am trying to be idle here for a week, and thus to permit my brain and muscles to regain their normal toughness. At my feet is the sea, splashing and booming and causing the pebbles to rattle up and down along the beach. Right opposite are the white cliffs of Alum Bay,2 it seems as if I could swim to them with ease, and yet I am told they are eight miles off. What glorious weather this is, the central day is hot, but the morning and evening are delicious; the deep quiet, and the perfume of the honeysuckle and beanflowers are a slight improvement upon the growls and gully holes of London. I wonder does science really injure a man’s imagination?* Sometimes when looking at the sprouting flowers I endeavour to follow the mechanical action of the sunbeams upon the atoms of matter whereby they are caused to arrange themselves into these beautiful structures, and to dye their petals in those splendid colours. You remember Mr Faraday’s experiment with the iron filings3 which you liked so much. These iron filings when acted on by the magnet, moved towards each other and clung together in a peculiar manner. The sunbeams appear to act in a somewhat similar manner: they shake up the particles of matter and cause them to arrange themselves according to certain laws, the result being the formation of grass, gooseberries and flowers. We eat the gooseberries; but the grass is too much for us and so we cunningly submit it first to the digestive apparatus of the ox and sheep; but the sun is still the original grand engineer to whom we owe the architecture of our bodies. Behind these of course are the questions which beset us now, but which are perhaps to be answered by a race of beings bearing the same relation to us that we do to the tadpole and iguanadon.The vision which is rudimentary in us may in them be developed into perfect day; and thus
‘The something in this world amiss
May be unravelled4 by and by.’5
I will not afflict you longer – goodbye
Yours sincerely | John Tyndall
*I wish I had Walter6 here to instruct in the noble art of swimming.
RI MS JT/1/T/1128
Miss Herries’s note but not her book: Maria Julia Herries (1820–57), the daughter of the politician John C. Herries, was an aunt of Frederick Herries Pollock, who had a brother, Edward Herries (1821–1911), in the consular service in Berne, where Tyndall met him in 1855 (RI MS JT/2/13c/869). Tyndall did not meet her personally until 9 May 1857 when he noted in his Journal: ‘Dined at [Peter] Barlow’s, and sat beside Miss Herries at dinner, a lady of remarkable intelligence much resembling Mrs Pollock’ (RI MS JT/2/13c/ 933). Her note is missing, and the book not identified.
Alum Bay: a picturesque beach at the western tip of the Isle of Wight within sight of the Needles rocks. It is renowned for its coloured sands.
You remember … the iron filings: Faraday’s famous demonstration of a magnetic field with iron filings was first shown at the RI on 23 January 1852 in ‘On the Lines of Magnetic Force’, Roy. Inst. Proc. 1 (1851–4), pp.105–8; Expt. Res., 3: 402–6. Plates showing the distribution of iron filings in a magnetic field were printed in ‘On the Physical Character of the Lines of Magnetic Force’, Phil. Mag., 3 (1852), pp. 401–28.
unravelled: The correct word was unriddled.
The something in this world amiss: Tennyson, The Miller’s Daughter was first published in A. Tennyson, Poems (London: Moxon, 1833), pp. 33–47. The quoted stanza continues: ‘There’s somewhat flows to us in life, But more is taken away.’
Walter: Walter Herries Pollock (1850–1926), the Pollocks’ youngest son. He later attended Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied classics before embarking on a literary career. Editor of the Saturday Review (1884–94).
Please cite as “Tyndall1250,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on