7th. March 1857.
My dear Tom.
When I last wrote to you,1 indeed each time that I wrote to you I had fifty pounds in my purse and more in the Bank which I could have sent you at a moment’s notice. I kept this until I received your last note2 but one declining it, and then thinking it useless to keep it longer beside me I invested it, together with £150 which I had in the Joint Stock Bank, in an East Indian Railway.3 Francis has managed all this for me thus taking all trouble out of my hands. This left me without ready money. But I had completed my series of articles for Hughes4 and he owed me 45 pounds. I therefore immediately wrote to him for the money and waited 10 days without receiving any reply: I wrote again five or six days ago, but up to the present moment have heard nothing from the man. Today I managed to get twenty five pounds into my hands and have already dispatched the first halves of the notes to Wright.5 When I receive his acknowledgment I will send him the second halves—so this point is settled. I also sent immediately after receiving your letter 9 pounds to Henry Hill6 the receipt of which he has acknowledged in a letter to me—which however like an unbusiness like man I have thrown in the fire. There was no need whatever my dear Tom of fencing your request round with those precautions—had you said to me in your last note but one ‘I want 100 pounds.’ you could have had it without crippling me in the least, and it was your repeatedly declining the thing which induced me at length to invest the money. If you need any more you may have it in May for then my half years salary is paid7—and I hope you will not think it necessary for me to pledge my word to any conditions, but that you will just deal with the money exactly as if it were your own. So much for these stupid matters of pounds shillings & pence.
I had a note from Prof. Forbes this morning8 in which he states that he has seen the proceedings of the Royal Society and that he will have some remarks to make on several parts of the paper upon glaciers, that if the paper were to be published in detail he would defer making those remarks until he should receive it and requested me very courteously to have the kindness to send him a copy of the paper as soon as it should be published. I replied of course with all courtesy. The paper has caused some sensation, and produced a very mixed effect. Some heavy & high authorities have recently given us their adhesion to the new theory. My love to Anna: Huxley is waiting for me
Ever yours | J. Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/T/879
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/490
last wrote to you: letter 1324.
your last note: letter missing.
Joint Stock Bank, in an East Indian Railway: the London Joint-Stock Bank, founded in 1836; and the East Indian Railway, founded in 1845, which introduced railways to eastern and northern India.
series of articles for Hughes: Edward Hughes (1819–59), Headmaster of the Royal Naval Lower School, Greenwich Hospital, edited a series of illustrated Reading Lesson Books for youth (published in London by Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans between 1855–8), which featured articles written by eminent men of science and literature in four volumes. See ‘Edward Hughes’, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 19 (1859–60), pp. 190–1. Tyndall wrote articles on ‘Natural Philosophy’ for the series: First Book (1855), pp. 296–338; Second Book (1855), pp. 289–322; Third Book (1856), pp. 238–65; and Fourth Book (1858), pp. 229–76. The series did not compete well with a similar series published in Ireland. See D. Layton, ‘Britain’s first science HMI’, New Scientist, 75 (1977), pp. 404–6.
Wright: Richard Wright.
Henry Hill: a friend of Hirst’s.
half years salary is paid: from the RI.
a note from Prof. Forbes this morning: letter 1349.
Please cite as “Tyndall1351,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on