Dear Tyndall,
I have been in the country or should have written3. I quite understand that the Alpine Club and its affairs are of infinitesimal importance to you, but as you have joined the body and contributed to its volume4 and as there is in it the promise of future work of a kind that you may turn to real good account, I still think it a pity that you should separate from it. You should not misconceive the feelings of the men in it towards yourself. Several, and those the men whose minds run beyond mere climbing, have spoken or written their wish to see you President both as an honour to the Club and as giving a prospect of future good guidance. Others look on you simply as the boldest and most successful mountaineer and would on that score welcome you as their chief. If you would have taken the place there would certainly have been no opposition but I was led to fear that among a very few who have been affected by recent controversies5 there might be a want of cordiality instead of the unanimous acclamation that I desired. Perhaps I was wrong.
Be this as it may I am still desirous that you should not leave the Club and especially at a moment when your doing so will be misunderstood.
If you are fixed on so doing, let me suggest that it would be a graceful thing for you—if not too inconvenient—to come to the dinner on the 13th and propose Kennedy’s health.6 If you can do so I think it would be well whether you remain or leave the club especially in the latter case.
Pray send me Rendu.7 I will return it as soon as you please.
Ever yours, | J. Ball
A. S. Eve and C. H. Creasey, Life and Work of John Tyndall (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd, 1945), pp. 387–8
John Ball: see letter 1749, n. 1.
3 December 1860: date according to Life and Work of John Tyndall, p. 387.
or should have written: see letter 1749. Tyndall’s response to this letter, in which he seems to have signalled his intention to resign from the Alpine Club, is missing.
contributed to its volume: ‘A Day among the Séracs of the Glacier du Géant’, Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers: A Series of Excursions by members of the Alpine Club (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859), pp. 39–57.
recent controversies; the dispute with Forbes. See letters 1703, 1708, 1709, 1731, 1741, and 1746. See also The Ascent of John Tyndall, pp. 143–4, 148–51, and N. K. L. Kaalund, ‘A frosty disagreement: John Tyndall, James David Forbes, and the early formation of the X-Club’, Annals of Science, 74 (2017), pp. 282–98.
come to the dinner on the 13th and propose Kennedy's health: Tyndall did attend the dinner, and proposed the health of E. S. Kennedy, the incoming President (Journal, RI MS JT/2/13c/1194). He resigned a year later: see letter 1749, n. 6.
Rendu: see letter 1708, n. 4.
Please cite as “Tyndall1750,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on