My dear Tom.
It is a warm genial evening, and I having prepared my lecture for tomorrow2 may throw anxiety on that score to the winds and follow my natural inclination in replying to your last note3 which reached me this morning. Of course I understand it all and cheer you in each of your determinations. If that be ‘pride’ then I have it to my spinal marrow, and thus give another proof that I am bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh.4 Why should you think for an instant of foreign aid when your own old father who taught you to measure a base line,5 who was at your side in the forests of Westphalia,6 and who rejoiced with joy unspeakable when he found that the bowl of punch administered by that godlike little waiter at Dillenburg,7 had the effect of loosening your bowels; who eat for years the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink—who moreover consumed his son’s substance when he was a wanderer on the banks of the Lahn,8 and a sojourner amid the Lindens of Berlin.9 Who in fact made your treasury his treasury—By Heaven it would be against nature if you turned your face towards any one else during this temporary cessation of your money getting labours. So I will not beg nor entreat, but I command you, with a father's authority raised to the fifteenth power, I command you sir to write to me instantly if you need any of the ‘Devils Dust’.10 This word brings the great old Carlyle to my mind: I called upon his wife11 who has been long ill a few Sundays ago: she is a wonderfully clever woman. She asked me to come down next evening and see Carlyle. I did so. The man fed me milk, tea, toast and marmalade; and we had three hours of human cordial conversation. He suffers much from ill health, and I think intended to warn me in an indirect manner from going too far. He talked a good deal of science unto me among other things. I differed from him in his estimate of some scientific men and held unswervingly to my opinion. He laughed two or three times and I was delighted with the depth of his laugh—I was in good health at the time and could laugh deeply myself. Miss Jewsbury12 came in at last, Carlyle came down to the door with us looked up at the stars and said something to them or of them and so I bade him goodnight.
My lectures are going on well. The audience is very large, and is perfectly sustained. I have many very fair maidens among my hearers and Anderson tells me they are in love with me! but I have not yet found it out myself. I have found myself ever since I came to London slowly and surely striking root among the people and this simply because I never sought their friendship but did my work. And this I shall continue to do by Gods help. As a man I rejoice in the good will of my fellow men, and perhaps I sometimes experience a feeling akin to pride to find the great and the eminent holding out the hand of fellowship & equality to me; but if it be pride it is but of a moment’s duration—I fall back upon my natural instincts and am at peace. I should not wonder however if in the midst of it all I should make up my mind some fine morning to get married!
Well Tom I will not insult you by saying that your intellectual firstborn13 (though it is not such) will be more precious to me than the offer of a Knighthood. And I prize it the more as I know it is the first of a progeny, which will nail themselves into the memory of men. This is my unswerving faith—I defy you to look constantly at any one thing and come to any other result. Forbes has written to me,14 but not bitterly: Hopkins of Cambridge a great authority on glaciers has written to me15 and given in his complete adhesion to my view. I intend to go the Chamouni16 & the Mer de Glace17 this year & so make a clean & masterly finish - Love to Anna.18 Love to Tom.
Ever. John.
RI MS JT/1/T/638
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/493
[25]: the date is given by the reference to Tyndall mentioning having received Hopkins’s letter of 23 March (letter 1359), and his lecture the next day. In his journal for 26 March 1857, he mentioned receiving Hopkins’s letter and that ‘I lecture to day’, making this letter 25 March (Journal, JT/2/c5/919). LT had annotated the letter with 18 March 1857 as the date.
my lecture for tomorrow: the tenth of Tyndall’s ‘Eleven Lectures on Sound’ (see letter 1308, n. 7).
your last note: letter 1355.
bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh: a reference to Genesis 2:23, where Adam recognizes the creation of Woman, Eve.
to measure a base line: a reference to Tyndall and Hirst’s time working together surveying for the construction of railway lines in the mid-1840s.
the forests of Westphalia: Westphalia was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia for most of the nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth. Tyndall and Hirst explored forests nearby the University of Marburg, where they both studied in the late 1840s and early 1850s.
bowl of punch administered by that godlike little waiter at Dillenburg: on 8 April 1851, Tyndall and Hirst stayed at the Zum Hirsch gasthaus in Dillenburg (a German town nearby and to the east of Marburg), where they were served in their room a fine meal and a ‘glass of grog,’ served from a punchbowl. Tyndall wrote in his journal, ‘it was choice’ (Journal, JT/2/13b/530–1). During this period, Hirst suffered from extreme constipation, which often required medical attention, and he and Tyndall would occasionally discuss the issue in their letters.
consumed his son’s substance when he was a wanderer on the banks of the Lahn: referring to conversations between Hirst and Tyndall while walking along the Lahn River, a tributary of the Rhine River passing through the University of Marburg, during a week’s holiday in 1851.
the Lindens of Berlin: Unter der Linden, a street in the German capital that is lined with linden trees.
‘Devils Dust’: traditional, the flock to which old cloth is reduced by the machine called a devil (OED), but it seems that Tyndall is using the phrase to mean ‘money’.
his wife: Jane Carlyle (née Welsh, 1801–66). Thomas and Jane were married in 1826 (ODNB).
Miss Jewsbury: Geraldine Jewsbury (1812–80), a novelist and book reviewer, friend of the Carlyles (ODNB).
your intellectual firstborn: see letter 1319, n. 8.
written to me: letter 1349.
written to me: letter 1359.
Chamouni: see letter 1353, n. 9.
Mer de Glace: see letter 1306, n. 12.
Love to Anna: Anna Hirst.
Please cite as “Tyndall1361,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on