My dear Mrs. Pollock,
From Weymouth I went on Thursday to Portland discoursing on the way with the brother of a man who had produced colour blindness by overexertion & whom I examined in London many years ago. At Portland I met my young engineer Lieutenant,2 and rambled with him over the rocks, and over the Isle and along the breakwater. They dig splendid fossils and huge trees out of the quarries where they were buried when the world was young. By the way my friend asked me to take a glass of sherry on my arrival—He filled a glass with a most transparent amber like liquid, which when I quaffed it astonished me. Through mistake he had given me a bumper of first rate Irish whiskey;3 but it almost cost me my breath.
From Weymouth we started along the shingly beach on Friday morning. The shingle was worse than snow & to shorten the labour we took a boat for 6 miles—we rowed past a multitude of swans; some calmly sailing on the water, and others whirring past us with a musical sound which I could not say proceeded from the bird’s throat or from its wings. Onward for some hours along the beach when we turned inland to the right, and were soon comfortably housed at the Bull Hotel Bridport.
Thence we started on Saturday morning. Bridport lies splendidly: I have hardly seen anything more charming than some of the views of the town & country from points on our road—deep valleys and bold conical hills—some tree–tufted & some bare. A splendid summer scene the landscape must present. We reached the windy seacoast—up the hills, down into the gorges —The smoke of Lyme became visible & towards it we steadily walked. We reached the place at 1 P.M. had luncheon—my young friends departed for Sidmouth as they wished to spend Sunday as Christians. I stayed at Lyme, purposing to join them afterwards. During the afternoon I wandered out; three or four miles along the shore, among the remains of the dead world which is there buried in the rocks. I met some men and they warned me that the tide was coming in; but I scanned the cliffs and saw that the tide was not likely to make a prisoner of me there. So I went on beyond Pinhay Bay & turned up the Undercliff. I wandered about amid the broken knolls, unguided by a track. It was sweet; the grass was green and soft & short, and all blown over with primroses. The slow bushes were all white with blossoms, and the crags festooned with ivy. I got to the summit of the highest cliff, and as I scanned the loveliness before me I appeared to be drinking a kind of wine which made the soul slightly inebriated while it did not compromise the body’s poise. It was lovely, and beyond it was the sea roaring & spreading its broken waves in seething foam upon the shore. Down again from my cliff; down among the slowbushes & primroses. I thought of you at times as I breasted the knolls & I said [inly], “This would never do for him, but wouldn’t she like it.”
Yours ever | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/T/1228
RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/1987–8
[20 April 1862]: Juliet replies to this (see letter 1887) on Monday 21 April, so most likely Tyndall wrote it on Sunday 20 April.
my young engineer Lieutenant: Edward Wynne (see letter 1869).
Through mistake he had given me a bumper of first rate Irish whiskey: Fortunately on this occasion, despite the deplorable loss of whiskey, the result of accidentally being given a mis-identified liquid was not deadly.
Please cite as “Tyndall1886,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on