59 Montagu Square W. August 13th 1858
My dear Mr. Tyndall
Your letter1 found me so full of the thoughts of my beloved Walter,2 that a communication from his especial friend had a peculiar value for me; I thought how pleased Walter would have been to hear me read it out, and then I sat down to write, to tell that sweet little man all about it. The truth is, it was the second day of our parting from him, and I have found this parting so trying that except to tell you it has taken place I won’t say much about it—only I must tell you that when his trunk was being packed (the school trunk) and it was proposed to him to take some of his playthings—he said ‘no—I want only a few books, a little glass dog, my last present from Mama, for a remembrance of her and the portrait of Mr. Tyndall.’ —This portrait I was to be very careful in packing, and I unpacked all his things for him at school to ascertain its perfect safety! —By this, you see that we went to Brighton3 with him—and we spent the afternoon there,—feeling sad, but still sadder the next morning in waking, to miss his little tap at our door and his sweet cheerful tones. But he writes that he is happy and likes cricket though he is a great muff at it—And now I must tell you something pleasanter. Our eldest boy4 has given us very great satisfaction by the position he has taken at Eton5 where he has come in, triumphant, for the College—the topmost boy competing with 45 picked boys. —It is considered a high distinction—and I am sure you will be glad to hear of it—.
Your letter interested me deeply and I fancied I could see what you described so powerfully, and that I could have liked the climbing but for the coming down again and the following the lead of that unheimlich6 looking guide,7—I can feel glad that you have made this ascent, but I must wish that you were not about to do another—
Beware the pine tree’s withered branch,
Beware the awful avalanche—
This was the peasant’s last good night
A voice replied far up the height
Excelsior—8
Avalanche in this case refers to your own mode of descent (an avalanche of yourself) and the peasant must stand for myself and you persist—as in the song. —but we won’t quote the last verse.9 —Only as it dwells in my remembrance, I must just beg you to do nothing rashly, and not to contemplate any climb to which the making of a will is the first preparatory step.
We spent last Tuesday at Petersham10 with the Moores11 very pleasantly—Only Mr. Byam12 (clergyman) Mrs. Robinson,13 and Mr. Spedding14 there besides ourselves. —We walked in the garden between showers, and sat outside Gay’s summerhouse,15 contemplating the unfortunate Thames16—and so on till dinner. Poor old Mr. Moore was pretty well till the close of the evening, when he began badly to wish that ‘all the company was gone,’ and Julia M.17 then had a hard task with him. It is delightful to me to watch her in her true unobtrusive filial devotion. We returned home by the 9.15 train. Tomorrow we are going to Ely18 to spend a few days with our friend Mr. Thompson19 who is a cannon of the cathedral—
On the 23.d I go with Fred.20 and my baby21 I hope to St. Julians22—but alas—no Walter—and I am sorry to say, Frederick23 is detained in London till the 2.d Septr.
I have been sitting with Mr. Babbage to day and seeing his work shop. He is concentrating all his strength mental and bodily on the machine,24 and I fear he’s overtasking himself. I have urged him to sleep out of town for a fortnight. He is in an excitable highly wrought condition and clearly wants some relaxation. But I believe he is like the cork leg25 & he must go on.
There is a very good review of Buckle in the last Quarterly.26
Yours alw[ays]. Most truly | Juliet Pollock
RI MS JT/1/P/169
RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/1938–9
Your letter: letter 1540.
Walter: Walter Pollock.
Brighton: see letter 1365, n. 7. Where Walter was in school, possibly at Hurstpierpoint or Brighton College.
eldest boy: Frederick Pollock.
Eton: see letter 1296, n. 8.
unheimlich: uncanny, weird (OED).
guide: Johann Bennen.
Beware the pine tree’s withered branch… Excelsior—: H. Longfellow, ‘Excelsior’ (1841), vi.1–5. Longfellow’s poem was about a young man’s passage through a mountain village.
last verse: Longfellow, ‘Excelsior’, ix.1–5: ‘There in the twilight cold and gray, | Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, | And from the sky, serene and far, | A voice fell like a falling star, | Excelsior!’.
Petersham: see letter 1515, n. 3.
the Moores: James and Harriet Moore and their family Harriet Jane, Julia, John, and Graham.
Mr. Byam: Richard Burgh Byam (1785–1867), Vicar of Kew and Petersham. See ‘Obituary Memoirs’, The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review, 3 (1867), pp. 672–3.
Mrs. Robinson: not identified.
Mr. Spedding: probably James Spedding (1808–81), an English literary editor and biographer known especially for editing the works of Francis Bacon (ODNB). He dined often with the Pollocks, and on at least one occasion with Tyndall as well, later in 1864. See W. Pollock, Personal Remembrances of Sir Frederick Pollock: Second Baronet, Sometime Queen's Remembrancer, 2 vols (London: MacMillan and Co., 1887), p. 117.
Gay’s summerhouse: a pavilion on the bank of the Thames at Petersham, built by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry in the early eighteenth century. The reference is to the poet John Gay, author of The Beggar’s Opera (1728). The Queensberrys were Gay’s long-term patrons.
the unfortunate Thames: a reference to ‘The Great Stink’ of July and August 1858, where hot weather created unfavorable stenches from the untreated human and industrial waste throughout London and along the banks of the Thames. Newspapers christened it ‘the great stink’. Cholera outbreaks before this time were blamed on longterm problems with sewage disposal in the river and some major engineering works were already in hand. The smell brought renewed attention to inadequate sewer systems and prompted action to fix the problem (which occurred over the next several decades). See S. Halliday, The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis (Stroud: History Press Limited, 2001).
Julia M.: Julia Moore.
Ely: a cathedral city north-northeast of Cambridge.
Mr. Thompson: William Hepworth Thompson (1810–86), an English classical scholar, canon of Ely Cathedral, who in 1866 succeeded William Whewell as the Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge (ODNB).
Fred: Frederick Pollock.
my baby: Maurice Pollock.
St. Julians: see letter 1470, n. 4.
Frederick: William Frederick Pollock.
machine: see letter 1340, n. 3.
cork leg: an artificial leg. A reference to the short story by Henry Glassford Bell, ‘The marvellous history of Mynheer von Wodenblock,’ (1832), about a man with a magic cork leg who could not stop walking, subsequently popularized in a doggerel song, ‘The Cork Leg’ (ODNB).
review of Buckle in the last Quarterly: a review of the first volume of Henry Buckle’s History of Civilization in England (1857), in The Quarterly Review, 104:207 (1858), pp. 38–74.
Please cite as “Tyndall1545,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on