To Hector Tyndale   27th Aug. 1856.

Feldkirch Austria | 27^th Aug. 1856.

My dear Hector

It was with a kind of pang – a sting of selfreproach, that I recognized your hand in the address of a letter last night¹ in a town near the Swiss frontier. You have been good enough not to complain of my neglect; but nevertheless I feel that I have been guilty of this in not replying long ago to your last kind letter.² Your books – for I knew they were yours – reached me safely; at least one part of the translation of Heine,³ and that wonderful book of Walt Whitman’s.⁴ I welcomed them warmly and shall be glad to welcome your friends with equal warmth, if I be in London when they arrive. I have been for the last fortnight among the glaciers of Switzerland, and during the next fortnight I hope to visit some of those of the Tyrol. Afterwards my object is to join the German Savans⁵ at their meeting in Vienna, which commences on the 17^th of September and continues for 6 days. I hope you have given your friends letters to Chapman.⁶ He is in connexion with so many eminent literary men that his acquaintance would be peculiarly valuable. I believe he is thinking of giving up the publishing business and of turning his thoughts to medicine: he will still carry on the Westminster Review,⁷ but all else he purposes resigning. I sometimes, when I have sufficient leisure, write an article for the Review myself.⁸

I sent you a little paper⁹ some time ago on the cleavage of Slate rocks, and one object I had in view in coming to Switzerland was to see whether the simple principle there enunciated did not make itself manifest in the structure of glacier ice. I am greatly pleased to find that it does so. Much, as you are aware, has been written about glaciers. Agassiz once took up a position¹⁰ for a considerable time upon the middle of one of them, for the purpose of making observations upon them; and I and a friend of mine Huxley – whose name is already distinguished and will one day be celebrated in Natural History, slept one night in a hut¹¹ on a litter of hay, 8000 feet above the level of the sea, for the purpose of being able to carry on our observations at a sufficient height. We were beaten back by a heavy snow storm, but nevertheless learned a great deal. This was on the glacier of the Aar,¹² in sight of the position of Agassiz: but we were more fortunate upon two glaciers of Grindelwald and of the Rhone. You know the glacier slowly moves downwards, and various theories are now afloat to account for this motion. That most generally accepted in England is the so called viscous theory of Prof. Forbes.¹³ He supposes ice to possess a quality like that possessed by warmed pitch or sealing wax. A power of flowing to some extent, and to this power he ascribes the descent of the mass. It is the idea which must first suggest itself, for nothing can be more like a gigantic pail of mortar overturned than some of these glaciers. But whether the notion will bear philosophic analysis is quite another question. Our ramblings upon the ice have been sometimes attended with great difficulty and certainly not without danger. I was very near losing Huxley upon the Rhone glacier last Sunday.¹⁴ The chasms, or crevasses as they are called, are in some places terrific and we sometimes have had to walk between two of them upon an edge of ice not more than ten inches in width. We have been blessed, on the whole, with splendid weather, and some of the glimpses which we have had of the mountains summits have been indescribably magnificent. Last Sunday from an eminence about 9000 feet above the level of the sea, we could see at once the gigantic Finsteraarhorn¹⁵ just beside us, the Weisshorn,¹⁶ Monte Rosa,¹⁷ with the black cone of the Matterhorn (Mont Cervin)¹⁸ rising between them, like a savage tattooed with streaks of snow. Round further to the left were the snow summits of the Furca chain, and over all this the glorious sun shone from a sky the blackness of whose blue was almost awful. We had also the good fortune to see many phenomena of which we had previously but read, a splendid coloured circle drawn like a rainbow all round the sun; our own shadows cast upon clouds with a glory round the head of each: in fact we saw the ‘spirit of the Brocken’¹⁹ in all its splendour. You may infer from all this that I am in good health; I hope to return to London with the true muscles of a Tyndale – lithe and tough as the willows of the Barrow!²⁰

I hardly know what to think of Walt Whitman, though I have read many parts of his book three or four times. He seems to have occupied his mind in drawing out a catalogue of natural objects, which might, were sufficient power at hand,²¹ be fused into a glorious poem. But whether it is that I demand too distinct a purpose from the poet, or that his purpose lies too deep for my discernment, I cannot see the drift of his poem. His perpetual reference to natural objects, and his wonderfully naked statements regarding them, prove that he possesses what the Germans call the objective faculty; but the whole is so mixed up with his own subjective thought, with the hues and tinges of a mind rank by nature, and unprimed by discipline, that I am rather bewildered when I seek real nourishment from this poem. The fault may lie in me but if you like frankness in Walt Whitman, you will not be inclined to blame it in me if I say that I believe he sometimes writes what he himself will not understand seven years hence. The world to him is a kind of spirit of the Brocken, a gigantic fog – maps with a halo round its head. I hope the discovery of this, which he will one day probably make, will not impair his strength, and that when the illusion vanishes, the power which made it its medium of expression will still remain.

Did I tell you that I had the great privelege and pleasure of meeting Carlyle? I spent²² a few days at the seat of Lord Ashburton in Hampshire last January,²³ and met there Carlyle, his wife, and many other people of note. Tennyson had left on the morning of the day on which I arrived. When I next meet the old Titan I will ask him what he thinks of Walt Whitman. He once told me that if he were director of the British Museum library he would select the bad books from the good ones – a bad book he said was like a bad man, whose acquaintance was to be shunned for fear of injury. The bad books he would not be permitted to destroy, but he would put them out of the daylight. In three cellars of the building he would stow them away, so that they might be read by those who admired them, and on the doors of those cellars he would write Damned N^o 1! Damned N^o 2! Damned N^o 3! I am curious to know into which of these he will thrust the Leaves of Grass!²⁴ M^rs Carlyle is a very remarkable woman and her power of conversation quite wonderful. The secret of her power appears to consist in a clear insight, and a terrible sincerity in announcing what she sees. I have also lately made the acquaintance of another estimable lady, Miss Jewsbury,²⁵ with whose writings you are no doubt better acquainted than I am.

And now Hector I think I must bid you goodbye. Give my love to all my cousins; and when your occupations let you, remember the drop of your blood which circulates in the laboratory of the Royal Institution.²⁶

Ever affectionately yours | John Tyndall

[Postscript]²⁷

If the account which I read of the matter be correct the act to which you refer²⁸ was one of the most cowardly and brutal ever committed. It would be a national scandal to let it go unpunished.

I met a young American²⁹ a few days ago at the Grimsel, he was in mortal terror of death from fever. I comforted him and bathed his feet with hot water: my friend gave him some pills and he was well the next day. He was altogether helpless: had plenty of money but no culture – could not speak a word of French or German, and was terrified at the idea of being left among those who did not understand him. He told me his father had an office in Philadelphia, but I did not ask his name.

RI MS JT/1/T/1444