To Juliet Pollock   Friday 28th Aug. 1857

Queenwood near Stockbridge | Hants | Friday 28^th Aug. 1857

My dear M^rs. Pollock

You will have expected to hear from me this morning, and it is not my fault that this has not been the case. In fact your letter¹ did not reach me until today. I arrived in London on Tuesday night and found the next day to be at a boiling temperature. I had a great quantity of writing to get through and thought that I could accomplish this more pleasantly in the country than in London, so I started on Wednesday afternoon and reached the fringe of the Hampshire Downs² that same evening. Were I in town it would give me true pleasure to join you and M^r Pollock,³ and if you remain at Tunbridge Wells⁴ any time, and feel no recession of that wave of kindness which prompted you to ask me down, I shall be very glad indeed to spend a Sunday with you. I hope to get up to London towards the end of next week.

It is the characteristic of a great mind to magnify the small and to micrify the vast, and I learn with much interest that Walter⁵ possesses the former faculty in such a remarkable degree. It would give me great delight to join the boy in some of his excursions—to share his perils, and if I might be permitted to hope, his victories also. I trust he has got a suitable brandy flask, for this to me would be an indispensable accompaniment. An Alpen stock,⁶ with an iron spike at the end, would also be serviceable: but he will best know what is needful for the arduous undertakings in which he is so habitually engaged, and I shall be very content to be advised by him, should I ever have the pleasure of joining him in one of his excursions. I wish very much he would write to me and say whether it would be necessary to have my shoes well nailed, as I unfortunately left those which bore me through the Alps at Chamouni.⁷ With love to him and his brother,⁸ and kindest regards to M^rs. Pollock⁹

Believe me | most sincerely yours | John Tyndall

RI MS JT/1/T/1129

RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/1914