Tuesday
My dear Dr Tyndall
Pray adhere to your yesterday’s promise,2 and come tomorrow: do not be tempted to put it off till Friday, on the chance of papa’s3 being here. For I have just had a letter to say he has made a blunder, and finds he is not to come up till next week! Do not please fail us tomorrow, however, for Dr Lindley4 and Mr Ball5 are both coming, and they are both worth meeting—And next week you shall come again, and meet Papa. Or rather, I ought to say I ‘hope you will give us the pleasure &c.’
But I know you will, if you can, will you not?
Let the lions6 growl as much as they choose; they must do without you this time.
I must tell you a conversation I had with Willy7 yesterday; it will amuse you. I was talking to him about Papa’s coming, and who were coming to dine here; and I ended by saying ‘which do you like best, Dr Lindley, Mr Darwin, or Dr Tyndall’—‘Dr Tyndall’. So I said ‘Why do you like him?’ ‘Because he is very good’. ‘Why is he good? what does he do to you?’ I expected him to say ‘brings me comfits’8—instead of which, he replied ‘He does like this’—and he folded his arms round the screen, and gave it a hug! He is a warm hearted little fellow, is he not?
If you come early enough tomorrow, I shall ask you to translate for me a speech of Mephistopheles,9 which has utterly baffled me. I am sorry you do not like Hyperion;10 but I am not surprised—I think it is a book more suited to a woman than a man, except that man be a poet—Still I fancied you had enough of the poetic element in you to like it.
I get on slowly with [it] Emerson11—that is, I read but little each day—in truth, I find it rather tough reading—That is, I often have to read it two or three times before I fully understand it. Still I like some parts of it very much—
Yours very sincerely | Frances H. Hooker.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/8/2544
LT Typescript Only
[12 May 1857]: the date is given based on the relation to letter 1366, in which Tyndall mentioned plans to send Longfellow’s Hyperion: A Romance to Frances Hooker, and the mention of Tyndall attending a Red Lions Club meeting. Since this club met on the second Wednesday of each month, and Tyndall was on the Isle of Wight during the April 1857 meeting, this letter is most likely dated the Tuesday before the meeting that was held on Wednesday 13 May. He wrote in his journal for 13 May 1857 that he spent ‘half an hour with the Lions in the evening’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/934).
your yesterday’s promise: not identified.
papa’s: John Henslow.
Dr Lindley: John Lindley (1799–1865), botanist and professor at the University College, London. Lindley received the RS’s Royal Medal later in 1857 ‘For his numerous researches and works on all branches of scientific botany, and especially for his vegetable kingdom, and his genera & species of Orchideae’ (ODNB).
Mr Ball: John Ball.
the lions: the Red Lions Club of the BAAS, which met on the second Wednesday of each month and every year at the annual BAAS meeting. Tyndall began attending meetings in January 1854.
Willy: William Hooker.
comfits: a sweetmeat made of some fruit, root, etc., preserved with sugar (OED).
Mephistopheles: a demon of German folklore, featured as the devil in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust.
Hyperion: see letter 1365, n. 6.
Emerson: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), an American essayist and poet (ANB). It is not known to which of Emerson’s works Frances Hooker refers.
Please cite as “Tyndall1395,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on