Dear Mr. Tyndall,
I have to thank you for your most agreeable as well as valuable “reminder of the Montanvert.” 1857 gave me my only peep at snowy mountains,2 and I have often longed since to go again, & look with hope to some long vacation when we may take all our children to be happy with us, & all the better to enjoy it from having your little book.3
Wishing you a happy new year, &, to use a North of Ireland word, many happy moutainy days.
Believe me yours truly | Mary S. Stokes
Lensfield Cottage | Cambridge Jan 11.
RI MS JT/1/S/285
Mary Susanna Stokes: (1824–99), wife of George Gabriel Stokes (1819–1903) and daughter of the astronomer Rev Thomas Romney Robinson, was raised in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, Ireland.
1857 gave me my only peep at snowy mountains: Tyndall met Mary Stokes and her new husband on 21 August 1857 on the glacier as he descended to Chamonix. See Journal, RI MS JT/2/13c/1029.
your little book: Glaciers of the Alps (see letter 1595, n. 4).
Please cite as “Tyndall1857,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on