Wednesday.
My dear Mrs Pollock
Are we not unfortunate? There goes the driving wind which one would readily encounter were it not charged with rain—and thus it has poured down upon us for the last two days. Yesterday I called upon Mrs. Tennyson2 & delivered up your book.3 Her husband4 came in and I spent half an hour with them promising to return to dinner at 5 o’C. I had a note from Mrs. Tennyson5 on Monday asking me to come on that day, but I craved liberty to transfer the thing to Tuesday. In fact, how I know not, some letters which had been addressed to me at the post office found their way to their house, so that they were apprised of my coming before I informed them of it myself. I found Mrs. Tennyson just what you described her. Well I found them at dinner, Mr Juett6 (I am not sure of the spelling, but he was pulled up some time ago at Oxford touching orthodoxy). was also there. We had ‘honest talk and wholesome wine’,7 and two fine little boys joined us for a time. After Mrs. Tennyson went away we continued our talk, and after that again I ascended to the upper story, into the poet's own holy place; here he filled a pipe for me, lighted it himself and transferred it to my lips. and we smoked and talked for another hour. We talked of Maud8 and its critics of poetry, of Mr Buckle’s lecture,9 which he and Juett had glanced at and thought empty—of Christianity and the influence of the imagination. Tennyson does not dazzle, but there is that about him which pulled me like the force of gravity—a thorough candour and brotherliness, if I may use the expression, an absence of all artificial fences, so that there is no hindrance to the play of natural affinities. I left him as if I had known him for years, promising to call again before quitting the Island.10
I quit this place tomorrow & turn my steps homeward. On Saturday at the furthest I hope to reach London
always yours most sincerely | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/T/1202
RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/1995
[7 April 1858]: the date is given by the reference to visiting Emily Tennyson, wife of Alfred Tennyson, at their home Farringford House, Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight (see n. 10). Tyndall wrote in his journal entry for 6 April 1858: ‘At 12 o’clock Harry and myself went to call on Mrs Tennyson, found her at home, she was such as might be inferred from the description of Mrs Pollock—“charming” is the word which would best express her character’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/1066).
Mrs. Tennyson: Emily Tennyson
your book: see letter 1502, n. 2.
Her husband: Alfred Tennyson.
a note from Mrs. Tennyson: letter missing.
Mr Juett: Benjamin Jowett (1817–93), a theologian who held the Regius Professorship of Greek at Oxford (ODNB).
‘honest talk and wholesome wine’: words from Tennyson’s 1852 poem (and invitation) ‘To The Rev. F. D. Maurice’, ii.18: ‘You’ll have no scandal while you dine | But honest talk and wholesome wine, | And only hear the magpie gossip | Garrulous under a roof of pine:’.
Maud: Tennyson’s poem ‘Maud’ (1855).
Mr Buckle’s lecture: on 19 March 1858, Henry Buckle delivered a Friday Evening Discourse at the RI entitled ‘The Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge’, which was later printed in Fraser’s Magazine for April 1858. This was Buckle’s only public lecture.
quitting the Island: Tyndall vacationed on the Isle of Wight, England’s largest island and popular destination in the English Channel, with Henry Bence Jones from 3–8 April. He visited the Tennysons at their home on the island at Freshwater. Tyndall noted in his journal that they left the island on 8 April: ‘No walking along the cliff to day, so we go by Yarmouth and Lymington’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/1069).
Please cite as “Tyndall1506,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on