Edinbro. | April 12th
One single line dear Dr Tyndall, to thank you for yours of yesterday2 – and to say how cordially I hope you will indeed lay in a stock of health that will stand you in good stead for many a long day.
James3 desired me to tell you, you must look sharp and convert the writer4 of that article in the Daily – Scotsman.5 There is no time to lose, for he is already 75!
I am sure you will be sorry to hear that my brother6 – who was with us for a week lately, on his way to the far North7 in pursuit of his favourite enjoyment – fishing – met with an accident in getting out of the steamer at Wick8 – the sea being extremely rough, he fell and broke one of his ribs – thus not only losing all chance of what he went so far, and under most disagreeable circumstances, to obtain – but – I fear, laying himself up for a considerable time, away from all the amenities of life – in a most outlandish region, with neither books – society nor any one thing to mitigate the tedium of confinement. Close too, to a river swarming with salmon – and this he feels the sorest trial of all! His enthusiasm in the ‘gentle art’9 exceeds any thing I ever saw – An absolute passion.
Are you among those who rail at Sir David Brewster’s marriage?10 I – for one applaud it highly – and, advocating marriage as I do at all ages, at none does it seem to me so important as at that, when one can no longer find enjoyment in, or welcome from the world – When one’s own fire side is the place where one wants to be cheery and happy. He may yet well live 10 years – and should he be doomed to pass these like ‘a crazy owl – moping in solitary darkness’?11 When…12
RI MS JT/1/TYP/1/1/273
LT Typescript Only
[1857]: the year is given based on Tyndall’s journal entry of 15 April 1857: ‘A pleasant note from Mrs Coxe. She tells me the gentleman who wrote that stricture in the Daily Scotsman must, if he be converted at all, be converted soon as he is already 75’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/925).
yours of yesterday: letter missing.
James: James Coxe.
the writer: probably David Brewster, mentioned later in this letter regarding his age at his second marriage (see n. 10). He had turned 75 years old on 11 December 1856, four months before this letter. In a 13 December 1861 letter to Tyndall, William Hopkins wrote, ‘Sir David Brewster told me at Manchester that he (Sir D.) was a convert to my, (or rather to our), views [on glacier motion]’ (RI MS JT/1/TYP/2/641).
that article in the Daily – Scotsman: not identified.
my brother: William Fullerton Cumming (b. 1804–92), a physician and author of Notes of a Wanderer in search of Health, through Italy, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, up the Danube, and down the Rhine (London: Saunders and Otley, 1839) and Notes on Lunatic Asylums in Germany: and other parts of Europe (London: J. Churchill, 1852). See ‘Obituary’, Lancet, 140 (1892), pp. 349–50. In his journal entry of 15 April 1857, Tyndall wrote, ‘Dr Cumming had broken a rib through a fall from a steamer in Scotland’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/925).
far North: the far north of Scotland, most likely to the River Wick.
steamer at Wick: steamer service, probably from Iverness, to Wick, a town in northern Scotland where the River Wick feeds into Wick Bay and the North Sea beyond.
‘gentle art’: fishing.
Sir David Brewster’s marriage: Brewster’s first wife Juliet Macpherson died in 1850, and he remarried on 27 March 1857 at the age of 75 to Jane Kirk Purnell (b. 1827), daughter of Thomas Purnell of Scarborough who was 46 years his younger. They had met on 17 November 1856 while Brewster was travelling to Cannes on account of his health. In January 1857 Brewster followed her to Nice, where they were married. Brewster and Lady Jane Kirk Brewster had one daughter, Constance Marion who was born 27 January 1861. See M. M. Gordon, The Home Life of Sir David Brewster, 2nd edn (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1870), p. 270.
‘a crazy owl – moping in solitary darkness’: possibly a reference to the poem ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751) by Thomas Gray (1716–71): ‘Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow’r | The moping owl does to the moon complain | Of such, as wand’ring near her secret bow’r, | Molest her ancient solitary reign’.
When…: fragment only, letter is incomplete.
Please cite as “Tyndall1371,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on