From Anne Wynne   8th. October 1861¹

Corfu| 8th. October 1861

My dear Dr. Tyndall,

It was at Coire on the 13th September that Colonel and I read with great delight in Galignani’s² of your ascent of the Weisshorn. I do like you to perform those feats and you have joy in them, joy in all the grandeur and joy in standing where no one else has stood. And since our return here we have received the book³ which you so kindly sent us above a year ago and for which we greatly thank you. We thank you for your continued kindness in thinking of us and we thank you for the very book itself. I could not lay it down until I had come to the end of the narrative part. I love to read of those sort of things and you write of them well.

I do wish we could see you somehow, but there is nothing to bring you here, and when we go away we go only to the Tyrol, and not to those breakneck places of it where you love to haunt, and where it would be the delight of Edward and Frank⁴ to go too.

They have good hands and active feet, tho’ I cannot tell whether they could ever do what you do. Frank is at school at Buxton in Derbyshire and our only way of seeing him is by going to Germany and getting him to meet us there. This year we all from here, Col. Wynne,⁵ Lucy⁶ and I, went to the Tyrol; and Frank came there to us, and Eddy too got a months’ leave, and we had the happiest time all together, wanting only Harry.⁷

We were very happy, and we were in such a nice place at Rentle near [word illeg]; at an inn where they treated us so fairly so kindly and in so friendly a way, that the place being one of such beauty far and near, we could not bear to leave it, and stayed there till within ten days of the term of Frank’s and Eddy’s holidays.

Then we made a little tour by Landeck to the Stelvio and over it; and by Bozen over the [Brenner Pass] into Innsbruck Munich and Stuttgart, where we broke up: and Col. Wynne and I returned here by the way of the Splügen, Milan and Venice.

You know we don't see things with the knowledge of them which you have, so of course in our ignorance we lose much, but we see with great pleasure. Eddy, Frank and Lucy too were here and there and everywhere; and I too, pursued the beautiful scenes into the mountains as far as my head would allow me, but that is not far. Lucy has done what not every young lady of eighteen would do. She has stayed behind us in Germany for the sake of learning much which she cannot get at here. She is not at a school, but in a German family of ladies, at Cannstatt near Stuttgart, and so far the plan answers admirably. The family likes her and she likes it, and she is learning much and is eager on it and very happy.

And I am glad to have her away from this garrison town which is not I think a nice place for young girls, tho’ there are many simple nice young English girls here, Lucy’s friends, of whom nobody would know that they had lived in a garrison town. Still we are glad to have Lucy away from the place and eager on learning and living the simple German life in that nice intellectual kindly religious family, they are Lutherans and Lucy for the time goes where they go.

This place of Corfu is a vexing place—one may have a happy home in a place which does not itself please one, and our home is a happy one and my husband strong and well.

But this place is a vexing place, a grieving place. O so ill governed, not governed at all, and England in utterly a false position here.⁸ This “Protection” by us of these islands is a ridiculous thing and mischievous lowering to England oh so painfully. All do not take it to heart as I do but all the English here say the same thing—there is nothing else to say—“a ridiculous government ridiculously administered”. Either let us have these islands and govern them, or let us give them up and have nothing to say to them.

As it is they are no good to us, we enrich them, ask no taxes from them, let them do just as they like, and so they despise England, an idle chattering race they are whose only occupation is intrigue, a two tongued people. They would be a better people, a more hospitable people, if like other people they were taxed and then made to work. A happier people in that case perhaps they would not be, for they are an Oriental race in their love of ease and idleness. They have not stirring pursuits.

I won’t write more about this vexing position of England here. I had not meant to do it at all. I want to say that I hope you are well, and that you take proper care of yourself. I wish you had a sister living with you to take care of you when you are in London. Is de Chaillet’s book true?⁹ It is very interesting and makes one think, makes one reflect about more than the gorillas; viz.: the long continued suffering condition of Africa, and the remedies for it now.

I wonder I have not written you a merrier letter for I have only this public grief to grieve me—and I have just now been reading the merriest letter which Colonel Wynne has been writing to Frank, curious that I should have employed the same time in exhaling angry feelings against the Ionians—It is only because of England—that is the reason I grieve so.

Dear Mr Tyndall Col. Wynne wants me not to send this letter as he says he wants to write too. So he may, another time.

I am your truly | affectionate friend | A. Wynne | sent 15th Oct.

RI MS JT/1/TYP/5/1857–9