Philadelphia 29 December 1856
My dear John
I was sorry to see the date of your last letter2, forasmuch as I knew by it that my friend Rothermel3 would not see you, which I had hoped he would do; and his hopes of the same were also disappointed as he told me after in a letter from Paris. He is a good fellow, plain, not very demonstrative, indeed not at all so, but of an exceeding good nature and temper—primarily—with a much broader inlet than outlet. He is an American, I don’t mean a fourth of July, starred and striped4 one, but one who has grown out of the needs and circumstances of America. But better than that he is a Man. And therefor I wished him to know you. He wrote me from Rome a short time since, of Art and the Past men and his letter was very refreshing—as Walt Whitman5 would say ‘with no ducking or deprecating about it’.6 My friend Read7 has perhaps seen you before this, as, in a letter dated Manchester8 a couple of weeks ago, I rec’d from him advisement that he would call on you again, for the third time, before he left England. Read is, I suppose, painting in the town of Manchester having been induced to remain thus a part, at least, of this Winter. I think he will exhibit one or more of his works in London before he leaves for Italy. He tells me he had seen Leigh Hunt9 and Alfred Tennyson and was very much pleased with the former, as, indeed, is every one who meets him. Read is quietly demonstrative and demonstratively quiet, with more apprehension than comprehension yet with more conception or inception than perception—rather contradictory that seems, but it is true nevertheless. In reference to Read himself, of course applying it to his works, I might quote from your heterodox Art-Critic—John Ruskin,10 who says of Carlo Dolci11 that ‘he polishes his pictures into inanity’.12 But Read is a pleasant gentlemanly little fellow and will appreciate whatever you do to him. I cannot forbear, tho’ at the risk of tiring you, from speaking further of this—Why is it that Read should have so much reputation as he really has here, and to a small extent also in England, when men like Rothermel are scarcely known? He writes pretty verses and paints paintings, to which I shall add no adjective other than pretty; he talks well, is well informed and agreeable. But these are not enough for me, or rather, to satisfy me of the cause of the reputation. I wish to know why the World cannot or does not recognize force and power? Why it cannot point out the loftiest peak of Manliness as well as the loftiest peak of the Alps? Have we really not two lives or rather is there not ourself and our life? And is not this matter of reputation altogether from life conventionally? If so, is it not time we should throw conventionalisms overboard? This it strikes me is Walt Whitman’s object in the ‘Leaves of Grass’13—to make us love our self—myself, your self. I need not say to you that I do not apply this to Read personally, as an isolation, his name and circumstances suggested the thought, and I would not speak of any friend thus but as a given example. As for Read himself, he has many good qualities with certain kinds of power which I could never think of equalling for example continuity and grip and work. But as he will never know of the e.g. I have made, and as you will hardly think me capable of the littleness of personal disparagement why I may let it rest here.
But why is it that the ‘World’ goes whistling over the mountains and falling down in worship before the little tumuli14 of heaped up words and dry bones? I know it is written ‘by their fruits you shall know them’15—but where is it written or taught to know what fruit is? I make no complaint, have none to make, but wish to know the sign when I meet the Master.16 I have met him and the sign has been given by Jesus in His sayings by Rubens17 once or twice, by Carlyle sometimes, tho’ latterly he gives me no sign nor has given me any since the counterfeit of his ‘Quashee’ and ‘beneficent whip’,18 sometimes too by our queer friend Walt: Whitman, but I wish to be with Him and to know Him always, in the darkness as in the light, not now and then but always. Teach me, if you have discovered it in your laboratory, that I may know manliness when I meet it. Teach me to know—to recognise at least, honesty, courage, love, justice, Catholicism.
I have a hope that America is working nearer to the light than any before. That light is dark enough truly. But I cannot help hoping this—it may be from the acceptiveness, the catholic receptiveness of America. It seems as tho’ all the bricks the Divine anger loosed from
Babel,19 which have been by the divine wrath hurling through the world ever since, are falling on America, in time to form a tower high enough to outtop the divine punishment and to smile forever beyond the clouds of his Anger—and this without the slightest reference to the millenium.20 That is far enough from us here now.
So you condemn our poor Walt: Whitman’s ‘Leaves’ to one of the three mad cells of Carlyle—the cells of damned books Nos: one, two and three. I don’t. If a man were to build a Clipper ship21 in the middle of Sahara22 or a Locomotive on an Alpine Glacier he might not uncharitably be thought mad, And yet the Clipper and the Engine might both be models of excellence. Wherever Conventionalism rules, wherever ‘Society’ is legislator wherever ‘I dare not waits upon I would’,23 why there, I take it, Walt: is in his sphere. I confess that I cock my hat24 with a deeper breath and tie my neck-cloth25 less scrupulously when Walter26 talks to me—and I consult the looking glass27 less frequently. He pats my egotism but knocks my vanity on the sconce.28 Vanity is a good thing or outcrop of a good thing but we have had more than enough of it. Egotism is not so bad a thing but that we may try a little more of it. I may be as potter’s clay but by George29 I don’t wish ‘Society’ to be the potter in whose hands I shall be moulded. ‘Society’ owes as much to me as I owe to it, and a little more, and I wish the recognition of the debt. Let us, once in a while, put ‘Society’ to the expense of a law suit and not be forever acknowledging judgement upon any claim. Stand up then friend Walt: and let the trial proceed—God show the right.
Hurrah for the Alps. What’s the use of saying I should so like to have been with you—if it were but to have rested at the foot while you climbed the head of Alps. I regret exceedingly never having gone into Switzerland—when, too, it would have been but two or three weeks time lost to business! But no matter you have seen them and others have seen them and I have heard your voices coming down to me and that is pleasant. Oh ‘unproductive’ Alps30 and barren Sahara31 how poor would the World be without you. The trip was good for you I hope, good for your health I mean? If it was you can afford to bore yourself a little more by writing to me once in a while! ‘And so shall it be made productive unto me’ Did you ‘get drunk’ up yonder, that is were you exhilarated by the air? I have been so on our far western prairies,32 away off towards the Rocky Mountains; where the air is so pure that breathing becomes very joyous and happy and existence itself is delightful.
The Forbes theory33 you mention, that of the viscous nature of ice as applied to the movement of Glaciers, is a new one to me, but that is not very wonderful. It rather contradicts, however, the received theory of the three states of matter, or at least does so so far as water is concerned, for it denies it the solid form or state. Does it not? For if it has the fluidity even of the mortar,34 to which you compare it, it cannot be properly be called a solid, can it? Is it not possible to account for the movement of the glaciers on other grounds than this. Can it not be by the percolated streams, or sub-glacieran water courses which harden into ice, solidify as they again approach the air? Or may not the exuding of the water from the surfaces and the consequent freezing by contact with the air, cause the spread of the glacier in a downward direction giving it the appearance of flowing? Or do I understand you in saying that the glaciers themselves, which I have always understood to be ice, are of the consistency of mortar?
But, doubtless, you think me out of my bounds and will refuse to read if I continue whereof I am ignorant. The novelty of the theory however must be my sole excuse, and I shall look to you for a plainer showing.
Did’nt35 I tell you in my last36 that I had received your paper on ‘Cleavage’37? If I did’nt I should have acknowledged it and the pleasure it’s simplicity of explanation gave me. That is your style, stick to it I pray you. Be as untechnical as you can and let everybody, besides the F.R.S.38, know something of that we are sent here to live upon for a while. In doing this it won’t be at all necessary that when we look upon a river we shall say, ‘Yes, I know you are only HO,’39 or when we stand unhatted before the Mountains we shall pull out our scales to weigh the Silica and the what not, nor yet that when we gaze, with our souls in the gaze, upon the dear, sweet blue of the Ocean we shall unpack our test tubes and reagents and [worry] 1 = 127 out of the poor sea. No, these are not necessary but they are very technical and are the tendencies of the schools and sciences. Pray forgive me, if I touch on ground some might think profound by ignorance. But if the Lord will suffer children and ignorant ones to look upon the Mountains, upon the Seas upon the Storm and thunderbolt, why may not men suffer other ignorant ones to look upon and speak of their works.
Is there a character any where in any of the old plays or books, of the man who felt always that something was about to happen? I have felt so for some years back, I felt so before the Revolutionary emeutes of 184840 and I feel so now. I don’t know what it is, whether the World is to be shaken, or I am to have a bad nervous disorder! I believe always that ‘the King will come to his own again’41 as firmly as any Bourbonist or Jacobite,42 and depend upon it, the sneering, mocking, heartless generations will be hardly dealt with, reformatarily, ‘when the King comes in glory.’43 We all go to fine Churches and hear fine words which never have and never will butter any parsnips.44 I wish Old Cromwell45 would come back again with his Ironsides46 and that against him should appear the Scotch Habbakuk Mucklewrath47 and the rest of ’em,48 and that they should go at it again that the world might see something else than traders. Lord, how grand they would appear now among the cyphering men who can convince the devil himself that two ones are two, that twice two make four and that No: One is the best number of all.
Here I am at the bottom of six pages and of my inkstand—a patent humanitary inkstand, warranted to give out as little ink as may be required—I thank goodness that you haven’t got ’em yet in England, or you’d set it very shallow for me—hey ? But I don’t care I’ve buttonholed49 you and shall rise a happier man—having ‘bestowed all my tedium’50 on you. Whenever you can, do please write to me, you don’t know what a charitable thing you will be doing. ‘All your cousins’ send their love and regards to you and hope to see you here some time or other.
Will you ever pick Walt: Whitman up again. By the way I forgot to tell you that he has published a second edition.51
Affectionately Yours | Hector Tyndale
RI MS JT/1/T/49
RI MS JT/1/TYP/5/1619–24
Hector Tyndale: Hector Tyndale (1821–80), an American businessman, Union general during the Civil War, and cousin of John Tyndall. See J. M. Mclaughlin, A Memoir of Hector Tyndale (Philadelphia: Collins, 1882).
your last letter: possibly letter 1274, John Tyndall to Hector Tyndale, 27 August 1856, Tyndall Correspondence, vol. 5.
Rothermel: Peter F. Rothermel (1817–95), American portrait and historical painter (ANB).
starred and striped: a reference to the stars and stripes of the American flag (at the time there were 31 stars and 13 stripes).
Walt Whitman: Walt Whitman (1819–92), American poet and essayist (ANB). Several but not all references to ‘Walt Whitman’ in this letter include a colon after ‘Walt’, which is an indication that ‘Walt’ is abbreviated from ‘Walter’.
‘with no ducking or deprecating about it’: in a poem included in Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, NY: self-published, 1855), p. 26, titled ‘Song of Myself’ in a later edition, Whitman wrote: ‘I chant a new chant of dilation or pride, We have had ducking and deprecating about enough, I show that size is only development’.
Read: possibly Thomas Read (1822–72), American poet and portrait painter (ANB).
Manchester: a large industrial city in northwest England.
Leigh Hunt: Leigh Hunt (1784–1859), English poet and essayist (ODNB).
John Ruskin: John Ruskin (1819–1900), English art critic and social thinker (ODNB). Ruskin was a prolific writer and very much interested in scientific topics. Ruskin would later come into dispute with Tyndall over theories of glacier motion and scientific naturalism. See P. L. Sawyer, ‘Ruskin and Tyndall: The Poetry of Matter and the Poetry of Spirit’, in James Paradis and Thomas Postlewait, eds. Victorian Science and Victorian Values: Literary Perspectives (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1981), pp. 217–46; and J. Smith, Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 281–2.
Carlo Dolci: Carlo Dolci (1616–86), Italian painter.
‘he polishes his pictures into inanity’: In Modern Painters: Their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to All the Ancient Masters (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1843), Part I, Section I, Chapter II, p. 13, Ruskin wrote, ‘Three penstrokes of Raffaelle are a greater and a better picture than the most finished work that ever Carlo Dolci polished into inanity’.
‘Leaves of Grass’: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, NY: self-published, 1855).
tumuli: plural of tumulus, an ancient sepulchral mound (OED).
‘by their fruits you shall know them’: Matthew 7:16.
the Master: God.
Rubens: Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), Flemish Baroque painter.
‘Quashee’ and ‘beneficent whip’: references to Carlyle’s essay ‘Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question’, Fraser’s Magazine, 40 (1849), pp. 527–38, in which he controversially argued against the abolishment of slavery. On p. 534, ‘Quashee, if he will not help in bringing out the spices, will get himself made a slave again (which state will be a little less ugly than his present one), and with beneficient whip, since other methods avail not, will be compelled to work’. Quashee is a term for a native of the West Indies.
all the bricks the Divine anger loosed from Babel: reference to the Tower of Babel of Genesis 11:1–9, in which God stops those living on earth from building a tower and scatters them across the globe confusing their languages so they could not understand each other anymore. The destruction of the tower by God is not mentioned in Genesis, however, but in other ancient sources such as the Book of Jubilees.
the millenium: a reference to the theological expectation of a Second Coming of Christ, which would bring a new Kingdom of God to restore society from its current state.
Clipper ship: a fast sailing ship of the mid-nineteenth century.
Sahara: the Sahara desert of northern Africa.
‘I dare not waits upon I would’: W. Shakespeare, Macbeth, I.vii, Lady Macbeth, ‘Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would”, | Like the poor cat i’ the adage?’.
cock my hat: to tilt one’s hat at an angle. A reference to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (see n. 13), on p. 25: ‘I cock my hat as I please indoors or out’.
neck-cloth: a cloth worn round the neck (usually by a man); a cravat, neckerchief (OED).
Walter: Walt Whitman, see n. 5.
looking glass: a mirror. A reference to Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (see n. 13), on p. 61: ‘Can each see the signs of the best by a look in the looking glass? Is there nothing greater or more?’.
sconce: a jocular term for the head; esp. the crown or top of the head (OED).
by George: used as an exclamation or mild oath; George as in Saint George (OED).
unproductive Alps: perhaps a reference to ‘The rocky precipices of and snowy peaks of the Himalaya are converted into the broad plains of Hindustan, the unproductive Alps spread out into the fertile levels of Lombardy’, in J. MacCulloch, Proofs and Illustrations of the Attributes of God, from the Facts and Laws of the Physical Universe: Being the Foundation of Natural and Revealed Religion, 3 vols (London: James Duncan, 1837), vol. 1, p. 411.
barren Sahara: perhaps a reference to ‘Woe for the age, woe for the man, quack-ridden, bespeeched, bespouted, blown about like barren Sahara, to whom this world-old truth were altogether strange!’ in T. Carlyle, ‘Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Baronet. Vol. i–vi’ (review), London and Westminster Review, 6 (1838), pp. 293–345.
our far western prairies: Hector Tyndale spent two years in Texas during the late 1830s and joined the 1st Dragoons cavalry expedition to Dakota and Montana under the command of Major Edwin Sumner. See J. M. Mclaughlin, A Memoir of Hector Tyndale (Philadelphia: Collins, 1882), p. 6.
Forbes theory: see letter 1306, n. 8.
mortar: a pastelike material, originally consisting of sand, lime, and water, now usually a mixture of cement and water, which is applied to form the joints between stones or bricks and which, when set, bonds them together (OED).
Did’nt: misspelled by Tyndale, as well as in the next sentence.
my last: letter missing.
your paper on ‘Cleavage’: J. Tyndall, ‘Comparative View of the Cleavage of Crystals and Slate Rocks’, Phil. Mag., 12 (1856), pp. 35–40.
F.R.S.: Fellow of the RS.
HO: hydrogen and oxygen, the two elements that make up a water molecule (H2O).
Revolutionary emeutes of 1848: in 1848 a series of violent political uprisings swept through Europe including France, Switzerland, Italy, and a number of German states.
‘the King will come to his own again’: possibly a reference to the popular Royalist, or Cavalier, English Civil War ballad ‘When the king enjoys his own again’.
Bourbonist or Jacobite: Bourbonists were the supporters of House of Bourbon, a French royal house until the French Revolution in 1792. The House of Bourbon was restored in 1814–5 until it was again overthrown in 1830 by the House of Orléans. Jacobites were the supporters of the House of Stuart, a Scottish royal house. The movement drew its name from the Latin, Jacobus, for the Catholic King James VII of Scotland, II of England and Ireland who was deposed in 1688 by the English Parliament. During the eighteenth century two major, albeit failed, attempts were made to restore the Stuarts to the English throne in 1715 and 1745.
‘when the King comes in glory’: Matthew 25:31.
butter any parsnips: nothing is achieved by empty words or flattery (OED).
Old Cromwell: Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), English military and political leader (ODNB).
Ironsides: ‘Old Ironsides’, nickname given to Oliver Cromwell.
Scotch Habbakuk Mucklewrath: Habakkuk Mucklewrath, a character in Walter Scott’s novel The Tale of Old Mortality (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and London: John Murray, 1816).
the rest of ’em: possibly a reference to fictional Presbyterian Covenanter characters who formed the subject of Scott's novel. Covenanters were persecuted by the restored Stuart monarchy in the late seventeenth century.
buttonholed: button-hold, to take hold of (a person) by a button, and detain him in conversation against his will (OED).
‘bestowed all my tedium’: ‘Why should I bestow all my tediousness upon you, because I have you in my power, and have ink, paper, and time before me?’ in W. Scott, Rob Roy, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co. and London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818), vol. 1, p. 6.
a second edition: W. Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Brooklyn, NY: self-published, 1856).
Please cite as “Tyndall1311,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on