14, Rue de la Mairie | Pau, Sunday 12th April | /57
My dear Mr Tyndall
You will no doubt be rather surprised to have a letter from me, but I am about to trouble you with a commission.
Wednesday the 22nd will be Tom’s1 birth day, and I wish to give him a little present. Will you therefore be so kind as to send me by post Mrs Barrett Browning’s2 last poem,3 I forget its name. We shall most probably meet in Paris during the summer when I can pay you for both book and postage.
Tom is pretty well and looks quite fat. I wish he would take more exercise. We had a very nice little trip lately to L’estelle4 a village at the foot of the mountains, the change did us all good.
John5 is still here, the very showery bad weather prevents his setting out on a foot tour.
I am pretty well at present, but far from as strong as I was before that terrible long illness which commenced on New Years Day.6 I shall be glad to leave Pau7 though it is a lovely place. I am tired of every thing about it. We hope to leave for Paris next month and there I hope to meet my sister, Mrs Simpson,8 her husband9 and family, which you may be sure will be a great joy to me.
We have no French acquaintances whatever and I have no opportunity of speaking except to the servant whose accent is not quite the thing as she is a Bearnaise.10
I hope you and Dr Debus had good weather for your walk.11
Pray excuse the trouble I give you, and also this long note, but we Martins12 know not where to stop when we begin writing.
Believe me | Dear Mr Tyndall | Very sincerely yours | Anna M. Hirst
PS | Please address the book to me as I do not want Tom to know until he receives it.
RI MS JT/1/H/124
RI MS JT/1/HTYP/496
Tom’s: Thomas Hirst.
Mrs Barrett Browning’s: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61), an English poet popular in Britain and the United States and wife of the English poet and playwright Robert Browning (ODNB).
last poem: E. Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (London: Chapman and Hall, 1857). See letter 1387.
L’estelle: Lestelle, a village at the foot of the Pyrenees in southern France close to Pau, now known as Lestelle-Bétharram. In his journal for 5 April 1857, Hirst wrote ‘Yesterday, the weather being tempting, we left Pau for a day or two, and directed our way to Lestelle’ (Brock & MacLeod, Hirst Journals, p. 1255).
John: John Martin.
that terrible long illness which commenced on New Years Day: see letter 1316.
Pau: see letter 1298, n. 4.
Mrs Simpson: Mary Simpson (née Martin, 1816–c. 1900), Anna’s sister who married Maxwell Simpson in 1845.
her husband: Maxwell Simpson.
Bearnaise: of or relating to the French province of Béarn in the Pyrenees.
good weather for your walk: Debus and Tyndall went to the Isle of Wight in early April. See letter 1366, n. 11.
we Martins: Mary Simpson (née Martin), John Martin, Anna Hirst (née Martin), and six other siblings were the children of Samuel Martin, Sr. (1749–1831) and Jane Harshaw (c. 1787–1847).
Please cite as “Tyndall1372,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on