I declare that strikes myself as quite equal to the sorrows of Werter:2 I am manifestly in the surges once more, but I have already told you that I am a good swimmer, and I shall doubtless reach the shore at last. I know not whether to laugh or cry over the matter; but laughter is wholesome so I will laugh. One thing is manifest, that science would not get much out of me if my life continued in this fashion. But the daring deed in which I am now engaged being once accomplished I shall return dutifully to my allegiance to science. Goethe3—remember I am not like Goethe; not, at least, like your idea of Goethe—says that he always got rid of his misery by writing about it. By some mystic process the statement of misery puts it outside of a man. This is perhaps the clearest account that I can render to you of my present act. I could not go to the glaciers4 without letting you know something of this matter: there one false step might deprive you for ever of the record (a consummation, you will probably say, devoutly to be wished.) I purposed calling to bid you good bye, but this I will not do, for I see too clearly the result of all this. What will your mother5 think of me? I know too well that I am cutting her friendship adrift. I lose a limb, but I save my intellectual life. Having said so much I now take my leave of you with a lightened heart. I shall soon right myself & find solace in my old delights. I turn with a love which knows no weariness to that great mother6 who has been always so kind to me. She will heal her son’s wounds and give him the clear joy of the intellect as a rich compensation for that of the heart...7
RI MS JT/2/7/464–5
RI MS JT/2/13c/943–4
To Mary or Emily Drummond: this letter fragment, found in Tyndall’s journal, was his best recollection of the last paragraph of a letter to either Mary or Emily Drummond, whom he referred to in 1857 as ∆’. Tyndall wrote in his journal on 28 June 1857: ‘Posted at half past 9 o’clock P.M. this day the extracts of my journal to ∆’ I have not quite followed my own natural bent in this matter: that bent would undoubtedly be to make make [sic] sure of the maiden herself first’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/943–4). Tyndall’s feelings were not shared by Miss Drummond (Journal, JT/2/13c/944–5). In his journal he would describe this declaration of his affections as his ‘folly’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/952, 960, 1057, 1058).
sorrows of Werter: The Sorrows of Young Werther, a 1774 novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that catapulted him to literary celebrity status.
Goethe: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), the outstanding German literary figure of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His extensive writings included his theory of colours and a study of the structure and function of plants. During his time in Marburg (see letter 1399, n. 10), Tyndall became familiar with some of Goethe’s works.
go to the glaciers: leaving England for continental Europe in the summer, to spend time mountaineering and studying glaciers in the Alps.
your mother: Maria Drummond
that great mother: nature, ‘mother earth’. See n. 4.
for that of the heart: fragment only, letter is incomplete.
Please cite as “Tyndall1406,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on