Deanery, Hereford. | Sept. 22d 1861.
My dear Tyndall
Many thanks for your so kindly sending me now and then abstracts of your lectures, of which I have received two just now, and which I always peruse with great profit and with great pleasure. In fact you always interest me.
With,2 of our Parish school, is much pleased by your sending him a copy of the one on Friday 7th of June at the Royal Institution.3 He is a most valuable little man and doing us a great deal of good here.
And now when are we to have the pleasure of seeing you and Frankland4 down here, it would give both Mrs Dawes and myself the greatest pleasure to get you down for a week when you are tired of work and a healthy excursion into the country would do you both good. We could run down to Merthyr Tydfil and see the mining district there, and to the neighbourhood of Brecon and what are called our black mountains, where you would both imagine yourselves in some Alpine district. At the end of this week I am going away for some ten days, but after that I believe we shall be here all the summer and autumn. At one time we had thought of going to the seaside for a short time but this wet weather makes us inclined to give it up. I can only say we do hope that you will contrive a visit here when it perfectly suits Frankland and yourself. Are you going to the Alps this summer? Write and tell me when it would suit you best, September or October or earlier, but recollect whenever you can come you will have a most hearty welcome. Both of you are old friends whom I highly esteem, and I don’t want you to forget me.
Tell Frankland you have heard from me, but I most likely shall write to him today if not interrupted by a Chapter meeting. I am wondering how the alterations about Addiscombe will affect him—I hope for good, and that some permanent appointment for him may arise out of it.5
Mrs Dawes sends her kindest regards, and | Believe me, my dear Tyndall, | Always and sincerely yours | R. Dawes.
We have not seen London since July 1859.6
RI MS JT/1/TYP/1/322b
LT Typescript Only
22 [July] 1861: letter 1798, dated 24 July, seems to be the reply. The typescript gives the month as September, but the context of the reply, Tyndall’s June Discourse and Dawes’s enquiry about his movements ‘this summer’ imply that 22 July is likely.
With: George Henry With. See also letters 1753, 1754 and 1758.
the one on Friday 7th of June at the Royal Institution: the title of Tyndall’s lecture delivered on that day was ‘On the physical basis of Solar Chemistry’. See letter 1783, n. 4 and Anon, ‘Royal Institution’, Morning Post, (11 June 1861), p. 3.
Frankland: Edward Frankland.
alterations about Addiscombe…some permanent appointment for him may arise out of it: Addiscombe House, near Croydon in Surrey, was the Royal Indian Military College of the East India Company that prepared cadets for the Engineers, Artillery, or Infantry. Frankland was appointed as lecturer in chemistry and physics in 1859. But following the transfer of the government of India from the Company to the Crown, after the Indian Mutiny, it was announced on 6 June 1861 that the College would close. It is not clear what permanent appointment Dawes had in mind, although Frankland subsequently increased his involvement with the RI, and became professor of chemistry in 1863. See C. A. Russell, Edward Frankland: Chemistry, Controversy and Conspiracy in Victorian England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 208–17.
This line is handwritten at the end of the typescript.
Please cite as “Tyndall1797,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on