To Juliet Pollock   15th Aug. 1857

Chamounix Savoy 15^th Aug. 1857.

My dear M^rs. Pollock

Your letter¹ reached me half an hour before commencing an expedition to the summit of Mont Blanc,² and the feelings which it excited placed me, for a time, quite outside the little world of bustle and commotion which is the usual preliminary to such an undertaking. As my two friends³ and myself climbed the heights of Charmoz⁴ and clambered along an unfrequented and trying route towards the Grand Mulets,⁵ we were for a long time silent, each occupied with his own thoughts—mine were occupied with your letter. I think I must have seen Miss Hirries.⁶ I had heard of her extraordinary endowments from M^r. Barlow,⁷ and afterwards I think I found myself seated at her side at his dinner table. We talked of many things, and her conversation so much reminded me of you that I think it must be to her that your letter refers. We made some little experiments upstairs after dinner; and to my mind now the expression of her intellectual countenance is vividly present. I think I can appreciate your grief and the grief of your aunt,⁸ for even the reflection of it which reached me lent a solemn sadness to the whole journey which I have just concluded. It is instructive to observe the influence of the emotions upon the physical condition of man. During part of my journey the contemplation of your loss made me forget all physical toil, and I climbed ice & granite almost unconscious of the effort required to do so. This is perhaps one of the high uses which it is possible to draw from sorrow—It may overwhelm, but it can also strengthen and purify our souls, and give us a fortitude which happiness cannot bestow. But I speak of my own experience—of the experience of a man whose business it is to develop strength of character and to make even affliction subservient to this end. Still I doubt not, that your practical wisdom, and the contemplation & discharge of the high duties which it falls to your lot to perform in the world, will save you from yielding too much to the pressure of this great calamity. Would that I could lessen it, even by bearing a portion of it myself.

I will tell you at some future day all about my attempt upon the ‘Monarch of Mountains’.⁹ At present I will only say that my friend¹⁰ and I stood beside each other on the summit, and among others pledged the health of you and yours in the scant bumper which remained to us after our ascent. It cost us seventeen hours of incessant toil to ascend from the Grand Mulets, and to come back there again. This journey is usually accomplished in ten hours; but a heavy fall of snow had taken place three days previous to our ascent, and we had to wade through this usually up to the knees, and sometimes to the very hips. It was fearful labour—we reached the Grand Mulets at night-fall, just in time to save us from the superadded¹¹ peril of darkness amid the crevasses. We had a single guide¹² along with us.

Since I wrote to you last¹³ I have been hard at work upon the Mer de Glace,¹⁴ and its confluent tributaries. The problem is a very large one and unfolds itself by slow degrees. I sometimes attribute this slowness to myself; it requires, in my case, long pondering before I can get a clear glance into the heart of any question at which I am engaged. This period of preliminary doubt is one of dissatisfaction; and perhaps it is the necessity of crossing this chasm which deters many from the prosecution of original work. But it is equally true in science as in poetry that ‘Nature never did betray the heart that loved her’,¹⁵ and though the precise object at which the investigator aims may not be attained—may indeed be unattainable, still if he be only faithful to his task he is sure to be rewarded according to the method of Nature herself. I was very anxious to examine the state of the insipient ice, and the character of the crevasses upon the Col du Géant¹⁶ and at other considerable elevations, but found that if I conformed to the rules of the Guides, paying five pounds for one excursion, and twenty five for another, that science would come in for but a poor fraction of my funds. I therefore resolved to attempt the ascent of the Col with the little boy alluded to in my last letter.¹⁷ Some preliminary expeditions had given each a confidence in the other, but neither of us knew any thing of the route; indeed we had learned with some satisfaction that there was no route, as the character of the glacier, in its most dangerous and precipitous part, was perpetually changing. In order to be able to commence the expedition early I and my little demon, as I called him, lay together under a rock the night previous. It would hardly be possible for me to give you an idea of the nature of our journey. I have described things in my journal just as they occurred, but my journal is at the Montanvert,¹⁸ and I am at Chamouni;¹⁹ and even if it were here the description would be too long to inflict upon you. The pass I believe is considered one of the most perilous in the Alps, and the orthodox allowance is two practised guides to each voyageur. The two things to be dreaded are the crevasses and ice avalanches—We were within 20 yards of the track of one of the latter as it thundered past us—I fell into one crevasse but escaped without an injured bone. The whole journey indeed proved a strong discipline in caution and fortitude, and both the ‘demon’ and myself, after we had escaped the seracs²⁰ and found ourselves amid the ordinary chasms of the glacier, expressed with considerable warmth our ‘content” with what we had accomplished. We reached the summit of the Col in two hours less than the time usually accorded to travellers.

I hope you will excuse this misty letter. I hope you will also overlook its dirt and blotches. I am a little muddled today, a kind of half drunkenness being a residual phenomenon to the ascent of Mont Blanc. I am resting myself in the house of my guide, and both he and my friend are almost blind from ophthalmia.²¹ I have escaped this, though the glare was at times overpowering. It is pouring rain: had we been a day later clouds and thunder would have caught us on the summit. But kindly nature gave us a glorious, moonlight night and a sunny day to accomplish our journey. My work here is drawing to a close, or at least the time that I can devote to it is nearly finished. So that even if you were disposed to grant me the favour of another letter it would not find me here. I hope to be in London in eight or ten days from the present time—give my love to the boys²² and say to the eldest²³ that he has forgotten his promise to write to me. With kindest remembrances to M^r Pollock²⁴—

Believe me always | most sincerely yours | John Tyndall

BL 63902–874E–10–51