MY DEAR SIR,
I am sorry that Birmingham Institute2 will not have the advantage of a lecture from you, but thank you very much for your kind offer of your paper3 which I am very anxious to see.
I write to-day on a different subject. You will see from the enclosed prospectus4 that several active mountaineers are about to form “an alpine club”.5 Do you feel disposed to join us?6 We should be extremely glad of your co-operation and I have no doubt of the success of the project—Rule VII7 appears to me questionable. I am not answerable for it.
Did Mr. Huxley accompany you in the ascent of Mont Blanc?8
I am, My dear Sir, | Yours very faithfully, | WILLIAM MATHEWS Junr.
Eve and Creasey, p. 386
William Mathews: William Mathews (1828–1901), English botanist, surveyor, mountaineer, and founding member of the Alpine Club in 1857 (ODNB).
Birmingham Institute: the Birmingham and Midland Institute was founded in 1852 ‘for the Diffusion and Advancement of Science, Literature and Art amongst all Classes of Persons resident in Birmingham and the Midland Counties’.
your paper: J. Tyndall and T. H. Huxley, ‘On the Structure and Motion of Glaciers’, Phil. Trans., 147 (1857), pp. 327–46.
enclosed prospectus: Mathews likely sent to Tyndall the first circular (of three) describing the proposed formation of the club. The text of the first circular, and changes to the second and third, are included in D. F. O. Dangar and T. S. Blakeney, ‘The Rise of Modern Mountaineering 1854–65’, Alpine Journal, 62 (1957), pp. 16–38, on pp. 26–9.
“an alpine club”: the Alpine Club was founded at a dinner meeting at Ashley’s Hotel in London on 22 December 1857. Tyndall was elected a member on 27 November 1858.
to join us?: Tyndall did not join as a founding member of the Alpine Club.
Rule VII: in the enclosed prospectus, Rule VII stated, ‘A candidate shall not be eligible unless he shall have ascended to the top of a mountain 13,000 feet in height’. Rule VII was removed from the third circular.
Did Mr. Huxley accompany you in the ascent of Mont Blanc?: Thomas Huxley had joined Hirst and Tyndall in the Alps to summit its tallest mountain, Mont Blanc, and further explore the region from 10–22 August. They left Chamonix on 12 August, spent the night in a cabin on the Grand Mulets, and reached the summit, without an exhausted Huxley, on 13 August (Journal, JT/2/13c/1002, 1030). Huxley returned to London by 3 September, see L. Huxley (ed.), Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, 2 vols (London: Macmillan and Co., 1900), vol. 1, p. 146.
Please cite as “Tyndall1459,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on