8 Norfolk Road | Hove. | Brighton | Sunday Evg.
My dear Tyndall
My conscience misgives me that I have not half expressed to you the real gratitude I feel for all the instruction and pleasure you have given me in your lectures; and so you must allow me to write and thank you for all the pains you have taken to make your subject intelligible to me. This I do most heartily, and I feel that if I do not know so much about the matter as I ought, the fault is mine and not yours. At any rate, all I do know is due to you. Probably none of your audience were more thoroughly ignorant of such subjects than I, till you commenced my enlightenment.
I was sorry you could not come to us on Friday.2 I had rather set my heart on seeing you that day, as it was my birthday,3 which I always like to feel a pleasant day.
It is bitterly cold and raw here, and I shall not be sorry to find myself at home again next Saturday, unless the weather changes. Joseph4 came down with me yesterday and is now on his way back to Kew,5 a miserable evening for a journey. No fewer than three ladies said nothing but Dr Tyndall’s lecture6 would have tempted them out on Thursday! So I am afraid you were answerable for a good many headaches!
Lebe wohl.7 I hold myself in readiness for any work you may deem me capable of executing,8 and very much honoured by being allowed to do it.
Yours ever | Frances Hooker.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/8/2560
LT Typescript Only
[2 May 1858]: the date is given by the reference to Frances Hooker’s birthday, 30 April, which fell on a Friday in 1858 (but not again until 1869). 2 May was the following Sunday.
you could not come to us on Friday: Tyndall likely was unable to get away from the RI since on the Thursday he gave the last of an additional three lectures (29 April) which continued his ‘Ten Lectures on Heat, Considered as a Mode of Motion’ (see letter 1510, n. 9) , and on 30 April there was a Friday Evening Discourse delivered by Andrew Ramsay, ‘On the Geological Causes That Have Influenced the Scenery of Canada and the North-East Provinces of the United States’, which Tyndall attended. In his journal entry for 30 April, he wrote ‘Heard Ramsay’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/1072).
as it was my birthday: Frances Hooker was born on 30 April 1825. See S. M. Walters and E. A. Stow, Darwin’s Mentor: John Stevens Henslow, 1796–1861 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 108.
Joseph: Joseph Hooker.
Kew: where Frances and Joseph Hooker lived. See letter 1328, n. 8.
Dr Tyndall’s lecture: see n. 2.
Lebe wohl: farewell (German).
I hold myself in readiness for any work you may deem me capable of executing: Frances Hooker read manuscripts for Tyndall and provided feedback.
Please cite as “Tyndall1516,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on