14 Waverley Place | Thursday.
My dear Tyndall,
I met John Murray last night. He talked about you, said he wanted to call upon you and begged that I would let you know he would be glad to make an arrangement about the publication of your Lectures.2 He will be very glad if you will look in upon him.
I fear you could not have had a very pleasant trip.3 Here the weather has been diabolic.
Imagine my astonishment just now at getting an invitation to dinner from Buckle the Great:4 I shall decline, as I have too much of the Arab about me to eat a man’s salt5 and then pitch into him. And I am afraid I shall be tempted to do the latter some day or the other.
I made an awful muddle à propos of you the other day. Plücker6 came to the Museum7 with Wheatstone who introduced us. You know the awkward pause that ensues when one has made one’s bow under those circumstances. I wanted to say something and knew I had heard something about Plücker from you, so I must needs tell him that you were a great ally of mine and that I had often heard you speak of him!!
It was not till he was gone that I came to a sense of what I had done.
Ever yours faithfully | T.H. Huxley.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/9/2899
LT Typescript Only
[22 April 1858]: the date is given based on relation to letter 1511 (written on a Wednesday, 21 April, in which Tyndall made a comment about Henry Buckle that Huxley here replied to).
publication of your Lectures: Tyndall presented ‘Ten Lectures on Heat, Considered as a Mode of Motion’ at the RI on in early 1858 (see letter 1440, n. 8). While the idea to publish these lectures with John Murray was proposed, Tyndall did not publish with John Murray until 1860 when he decided to publish a book about his mountaineering trips (see letters 1530 and 1563), titled Glaciers of the Alps. Tyndall gave a series of lectures on heat again in 1862, and these were published the following year as Heat Considered as a Mode of Motion (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1863).
could not have had a very pleasant trip: see letters 1506, 1507, and 1510.
Imagine my astonishment… Buckle the Great: in letter 1510, Tyndall wrote to Huxley about Carlyle’s thoughts about Henry Buckle (see letter 1506, n. 9), and here it appears that Huxley is remarking on the coincidence.
too much of the Arab about me to eat a man’s salt: ‘to partake of his hospitality. Among the Arabs to eat a man’s salt was a sacred bond between the host and guest. No one who has eaten of another’s salt should speak ill of him or do him an ill turn’ (in E. C. Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable [1870], 2 vols (London: Cassell & Co., 1895), vol. 2, p. 1069).
Plücker: on Plücker and Tyndall’s relationship, see letters 1299 and 1360. Tyndall met with Plücker on 10 April at August Hofmann’s. From his journal entry: ‘Hofmann arranged to bring Plücker and myself together. He laid aside his coldness and we talked together for a long time in a very friendly manner’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/1069).
the Museum: The Museum of Practical Geology and the Government School of Mines and Science Applied to the Arts (Royal School of Mines as of 1863), was founded in 1851 at Jermyn Street in London. Huxley held the position of Professor of Natural History there from 1854–72, and continued with the School of Mines when it moved to South Kensington in 1872 until 1885. For an overview of the role of the School of Mines in science education, see R. Macleod, ‘“Instructed men” and Mining Engineers: The associates of the Royal School of Mines and British Imperial Science, 1851–1920’, Minerva 32 (1994), pp. 422–39.
Please cite as “Tyndall1512,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on