My dear Mr Tyndall
You will probably come to the conclusion before long that I am an intolerable bore, but really if you undertake to teach you must forgive your pupils if they come for explanations if they do not understand. I enjoyed Thursday’s lecture2 extremely, as I think all did. Did you not feel that your audience were interested? I think I understood all but the last part, and I am perfectly willing to believe that non-comprehension to be entirely my own fault. Still I feel so anxious to understand, and have been trying so hard to make it out, that if you could spare a little time to explain it a little more fully I should be very grateful. You were so quick, that I could not follow you. The part which puzzles me is your last diagram. Your calculations were so rapid that I could not see where the figures came from, and I could not make out how you deduced the length of a wave from them. In short, I am very stupid, but I do think I could understand it if you could go over it again for me. Am I very bothering? I wonder whether you thought of the drive to Schönbrunn3 when you were drawing that diagram of the interference of waves!
When shall we see you again here?
With many apologies for worrying you
I remain | Yours most sincerely | F. H. Hooker.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/8/2602
LT Typescript Only
[5 April 1857]: the date is given by the reference to Tyndall’s RI lectures on Sound (see n. 2). His last lecture on 2 April was on the interference of sound waves (RI MS JT/4/6a/4, 27), and upon his return from his vacation on the Isle of Wight from 5–15 April, he noted in his journal on 16 April that he had received a letter from Frances Hooker (Journal, JT/2/13c/926). If Frances attended the lecture on 2 April, she likely wrote this letter to Tyndall soon thereafter (she wrote, ‘I enjoyed Thursday’s lecture,’ implying it was very recent) and before he left for the Isle of Wight on 5 April. We date it as 5 April with the understanding that it could have been written anytime from 3 April to 14 April.
Thursday’s lecture: Tyndall’s ‘Eleven Lectures on Sound’ (see letter 1308, n. 7). In his journal for 26 January, he wrote: ‘Now however my weightiest work is over, and my Thursday lectures will I think be easy and amusing to me. I found today that I could project the figures of the kaleidophone beautifully, and this indicates a wide field of illustration’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/918).
drive to Schönbrunn: Tyndall, the Hookers, and Thomas Huxley, after exploring in the Alps in August, attended the Vienna meeting of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher (German Naturalist Academy), held from 16–19 September 1856 at the Polytechnic Institution (Journal, JT/2/13c/877, 912–14). They must have also visited Schönbrunn, a former Habsburg palace in Vienna.
Please cite as “Tyndall1368,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on