[London] | 9th. August, 1856.
My dear Tom
I have received your letter,1 read it with pleasure, sent it to Wright, and also sent your brother’s letter2 to him. I was not surprised to hear your account of the dearness of things in Biarrits. Such places are always dear, simply because they are the resort of people who can afford to pay. Every body in London, that is every physician, knows Biarrits. Your plan would be, if you intended to make a long stay to take up your quarters elsewhere. Francis has no doubt that in some of the places he had in his eye you might have excellent lodgings for ten shillings a week: you would of course have to dispense with fashionable neighbours, and this I take you would consider no great evil. But on the whole I think you have acted the wisest part under the circumstances. I am glad that you have established yourself with the physician and your method of doing so was certainly, the shortest, the frankest and the best route possible. Our weather here for a long time has been excessively warm; for many years I have seen nothing like it. This morning, the 9th, the weather has changed and the rain is falling gently but persistently. I wish I could join you in your plunge bath in that ‘glorious bay of Biscay’ those waves would make me a poet, and probably a better natural philosopher. I have derived much instruction from watching waves. But I am on the point of commencing a trip of my own which promises well: four days hence will find me in Switzerland. I have been reading much of later regarding the descent of glaciers, a subject on which a great deal has been written, but on which, I believe a great deal remains to be done. I have read the ‘travels’ and ‘letters’ of Forbes,3 and made myself thorougly acquainted with his theory. The impression left upon my mind by his writing is that the matter needs closer looking after. So this I intend to combine with my journey. I will spend a week or ten days at the Grimsel,4 and proceed from there to the glaciers of the Aar, the Rhone and Grindelwald,5 and hope to learn wisdom from the iceblocks. Huxley will be with me part of the time. Then I break away to the Tyrol and meet Frankland on the Summit of the Stelvio,6 where there are other glorious glaciers. I could content myself with the glaciers of the Tyrol, but in order to appreciate Forbes’s theory I must see what he has seen. Afterwards Frankland and I push on to Vienna. The journey is too long, or rather it will be too expensive, and were it not that the double motive of the Naturforscher Versammlung7 and the fact of my never having seen Vienna I would not go there.
I saw Atkinson8 two days ago, on his way from Oxford to Scotland. One of his first questions was regarding you. Debus has returned in good health from the Tyrol, where he made but a brief journey, being chiefly in Munich. I had a note from George Edmondson a few days ago in reply to a question of mine regarding the acoustic bellows.9 He said at the end they were hourly expecting Mr Smith;10 and that they would be fuller and stronger this half year than last. I wish he may be able to say the same two years hence.
For the last week or two I have been terribly worn down with work. I am clear in head thank heaven but my body needs the freshness of the mountain air which is now in prospect. This caused me to put off writing to Priddie11 longer than I otherwise should have done. I have written to him, but shall not receive his reply before I start. I have told him simply that he must substitute me for you, and that I will settle with him when I return. Fox was with me here a few days ago. I accompanied him to University College hospital12 and saw one awful operation performed. I never before had so lively a sense of the blessings of chloroform: the sufferer did not feel anything. My work13 has been thus far wholly unsuccessful, save the augmentation of my experience, which will come in useful some day. I have obtained totally negative results where others (Thomson for example) have obtained positive ones with means which are perhaps a hundred times less perfect than mine. But I pause, and instead of science send both you and Anna the very XXX of my affection.
Ever yours | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/T/631
your letter: letter 1267.
your brother’s letter: This letter from John Henry Hirst to Tyndall is missing.
‘travels’ and ‘letters’ of Forbes: J. D. Forbes, Travels Through the Alps of Savoy and other Parts of the Pennine Chain, with Observations on the Phenomena of Glaciers (Edinburgh: Adam & Black, 1843; 2nd ed., 1845). Forbes had also published a series of 16 ‘Letters on Glaciers’ in the Edinb. New Phil. Journ. between 1843 and 1851.
the Grimsel: See letter 1267, n. 5.
the glaciers of the Aar, the Rhone and Grindelwald: See letters 1266 and 1268.
the summit of the Stelvio: The Stelvio Pass is some 9000 ft above sea level and connects Stilfs (Stelvio in Italian) in the South Tyrol with Bormio in northern Italy. The statement appears to contradict the arrangement suggested in letter 1268.
Naturforscher Versammlung: Tyndall was to attend the meeting of the Deutscher Naturforscher Versammlung in Vienna from 16 to 22 September 1856.
Atkinson: See letter 1216, n. 2.
acoustic bellows: Presumably an apparatus whereby air is driven through a pipe, as in an organ or siren. It is unclear why Tyndall had asked Edmondson about such a device.
Mr Smith: Not identified; he was evidently Hirst’s replacement at Queenwood College.
Priddie: see letter 1267, n. 10.
University College hospital: The medical school and hospital in Gower Street attached to University College.
My work: Prior to his Alpine vacation in August and September 1856 Tyndall was concluding his research on diamagnetism.
Please cite as “Tyndall1272,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on