From Juliet Pollock   August 5th . | 1857

S^t. Julians. Seven Oaks | August 5^th. | 1857

Address 59 Montagu Square | To be forwarded

My dear M^r. Tyndal¹

You will like to know that your letter² was of use in turning our minds for awhile from the contemplation of a fresh and bitter grief. In the few weeks that have elapsed since your departure, I have gone through many tears of sorrow. I have lost in Maria Herries,³ by a sudden death from sore throat at S^t. Gervais,⁴ one of those dearest to me upon this earth. We were brought up together; and to the tenderness that naturally arises from early associations and the habit of companionship, was added a peculiar and intense sympathy of taste, pursuit, and feeling, such as must have given rise to a friendship of an enthusiastic character, even if we had only met in later days by chance. Her mind was of so uncommon an order that to love her in a merely common way was impossible.

But it is not speak of our affliction that I write, but to tell you that your letter opened a source of interest to me when it was much needed; and it is strange how the opening passages harmonized with the tune of my own feelings, preparing me the better to follow you through the rest. It seemed to me, that I saw with an extraordinary distinctness your wandering in the regions of ice, your singular, solitary place of shelter, and then that the sun appeared to me in its rising among the Alps in its full, peculiar beauty. It seemed that these influences of nature flowed into my mind with a particular force, which may be due either to the vividness of your descriptions, or to the state of excitement of my own feelings.

It was my unhappy office to bring the fatal tidings here to the Aunt,⁵ who as a mother brought us all up, and it was necessary for me to exert all my strength both for her sake, and for that of my baby. A deviation from the track of sad thought is of great assistance to such an effort, and so I am indebted to your letter almost as to a fresh breeze among the woods or a stroll upon a mountain top.

Coleridge’s Sunrise⁶ is, I believe, translated from the German, but I don’t know it well, and I will look at it when I return again to my home. I think, myself, that many of his aspiring lines are inflated, and that it is in his slighter, more unambitious pieces, that tenderness and melody are to be found. —

I feel an inward satisfaction that you have atchieved⁷ the granite left half told by Forbes,⁸ and the satisfaction will be complete, when your ice theory⁹ is universally acknowledged as the only thoroughly comfortable one. —

I received a note from you¹⁰ before your start, to which I was unable then to reply: but let me now assure you, that ‘clumsiness’ and ‘ungraciousness’ were only in your own imagination that night, and that both my husband¹¹ and myself were aware only of your kindness. You must scratch out that little sentence from your diary. It is not worthy of being there. —Goodbye. My spirits, whatever effort I make over them, are not such at the present time, as to make me a welcome correspondent, and I have only written because I thought it would please you to know that your conference with me across the Alps had helped to soothe a very solemn grief. —My three boys¹² are with me here: and the two eldest desire their love to you—

My husband is obliged to remain in London till the end of the week.

Yours most truly—Juliet Pollock

RI MS JT/1/P/165