25th June 1857
My dear Friend.
Your card which was handed to me a few days ago by Dr. Huter2 lies before me. It gave me sincere pleasure to recognize on it your well known hand so clear and without a tremor as to assure me that the writer was in good health. Unfortunately I lost Dr. Huter in the confusion of one of our meetings and have not had the pleasure of seeing him since. This night closes our season, when Faraday will give us the concluding lecture.3 You would love Faraday if you knew him. He is as good as a man as he is great as a philosopher. He is more like a father to me than anything else, and the longer I know him the more I love him. His mind and feelings are as fresh as a boy’s; I sometimes tell him that he is the young man and I the old one.4 Indeed I regard my connexion with him, and the solid warm friendship which has grown up between us, as the greatest blessing of my life. Next month I purpose making a journey to Switzerland, and intend to stay with Mr de la Rive in Geneva5 for a day or two. I want to complete that investigation on the glaciers which I referred to at Vienna. I was greatly pleased to see you there, and the kindness of the Vienna people has left a very agreeable impression of the meeting on the minds both of my friends and of myself. Can you tell me what the average thickness of the ice is upon the Lahn6 during winter, and what is the temperature of the air when the thickness reaches its maximum? I ask you this question because I remember seeing the masses of ice heaped up on the banks of the river from the windows of your auditorium7 in the winter of 1848–9. The question interests me at present as I am at work upon the glaciers.
And now I have to ask you to convey my warmest remembrances to Mrs. Gerling8 and to both the Misses Gerling.9 I have not yet forgotten the kindness which I experienced from them in Marburg.10 Indeed the old town and the goodnatured people it contains are to me very pleasant objects of recollection.
Goodbye my dear Friend | and believe me always | Yours most sincerely | John Tyndall.
UB Mbg 319:739
25 June 1857: despite Tyndall having given 25 June as the date, he must have been mistaken as mention of Faraday’s ‘concluding lecture’ the same day this was written dates it as 12 June 1857 (see n. 3).
Dr. Huter: possibly Karl Christoph Hüter (1803–57), a German physician, professor of medicine, and Dean of the Medical Faculty at the University of Marburg before his sudden death in August 1857 (ADB).
concluding lecture: see letter 1404, n. 11.
he is the young man and I the old one: Tyndall repeated this same phrase in another letter to Gerling (see letter 1576).
Geneva: see letter 1293, n. 3.
Lahn: see letter 1361, n. 8.
your auditorium: at the University of Marburg.
Mrs. Gerling: Christiane Gerling (née Suabedissen), wife of Christian Gerling (married in 1814).
Misses Gerling: Christian and Christiane had five children: Emma Wilhelmine Gerling (b. 1815), Marie Friederike Platner (née Gerling) (b. 1817), Caroline Mathilde Gerling (b. 1819), Christian Ludwig Gerling (b. 1821), and Caroline Maria Gerling (b. 1823).
Marburg: Tyndall attended the University of Marburg from 1848–50, studying under Robert Bunsen, Hermann Knoblauch, Friedrich Stegmann, and Christian Gerling.
Please cite as “Tyndall1399,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on