Kew | Tuesday Eve.
My Dr. J.T.
Shall we be so fortunate as to find you disengaged on Friday2 Papa3 is with us, & the Busks4 have promised to come to us on that day, you will join us, it will give us much pleasure. Our dinner hour be 6 p.m.... come as much sooner as you can.
I have not answered your kind letter to me at Hitcham.5 I felt very grateful to you for y[ou]r sympathy in my sorrow,6 but I was so disinterested to write anyone, that even you were no exception.
I am very glad you will come out next week7—it is an age since we have had more than the merest glimpse of you.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/8/2556
[15 December 1857]: the date is given by reference to Tyndall’s dining with the Hookers on 18 December (see n. 2), the recent death of Frances Hooker’s mother (see n. 6), and Tyndall’s spending Christmas Day 1857 with the Hooker’s at Kew (see n. 7).
on Friday: Tyndall noted in his journal entry beginning on 17 December 1857 that he dined at the Hookers on Friday, 18 December and ‘met pleasant people there’, perhaps the Busks that Frances mentions (Journal, JT/2/13c/1041).
Papa: John Henslow.
the Busks: George Busk (1807–86), a British naval surgeon and zoologist, and his wife Ellen Busk (1816–90) (ODNB).
your kind letter at Hitcham: letter missing. Frances likely was staying at her father John Henslow’s home in the village of Hitcham in county Suffolk, where he served as rector of the Parish School beginning in 1837. See P. Armstrong, The English Parson-Naturalist: A Companionship Between Science and Religion (Herefordshire, England: Gracewing Publishing, 2000), pp. 8–9.
my sorrow: most likely because of her mother Harriet Henslow’s (1797–1857) recent death on 20 November. On 6 September 1857, Hooker had written to Tyndall that her mother was ‘very unwell’ (see letter 1432).
you will come out next week: Tyndall spent Christmas Day 1857 with the Hooker's at Kew (Journal, JT/2/13c/1042).
Please cite as “Tyndall1464,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on