59 Montagu Square W. | April 21st
My dear Mr. Tyndall
Your letter2 and your message from the mountains3 were like airs from Heaven to a cockney, whose most open skies are those of the Regents Park, and whose only attainable height is the top step of the nursery staircase which you are to climb with a sentinel, you remember; yesterday, sitting by my husband’s bed, to which he was confined by a rheumatic attack; I read your Mountaineering,4 retaining the interest I felt in it before,5 with some additional delight: I was able more completely to enjoy the poetry of your prose and the beauty and originality of your thought without the fetter of a critic’s task to bind me to that close verbal attention which sacrifices the general effect to the consideration of detail. Your miracle chapter is perfect now,6 and is more likely to do good in its quiet, sober tone than a more impetuous protest.
We passed last Saturday at Hatton,7 where Fred.k caught cold, dawdling about the garden in a cold wind, but where I enjoyed some pleasant hours walking and talking with the Chief Baron,8 occupied with a variety of subjects equally interesting to us both: spirit rapping was one—and this led us farther on with the speculations and feelings of the highest interest.
I do not know a mind more open to truth, more candid, more perfectly liberal than his: nor do I know a heart more tender more generous in affection.
Fred.k is just come down and is better though not yet well: perhaps if he could join you, and do the 23 miles a day off the high road, he might be set up again. I believe on elastic turf or moss and with a variety of ups and downs, and no broad roads and no gravel I could myself accomplish 13 with advantage—you carrying the knapsack.
I have just finished the life of Pitt9—the life—whoever writes it—of a truly great and virtuous man, raising one’s idea so often painfully degraded of humanity. Every biography tending to such a result as this of Pitt, must be esteemed as a treasure well worth the digging for.
Now—Mr. Moss10 summons me to a walk and he is an autocrat, and I must go. — a pavement walk. —no cuckoo which you must be hearing—no violet by a mossy stone—no primrose by a river brim—only shops and omnibuses.
But yet in its own way it may be agreeable.
It remains to me to wish you cor[dia]l inclinations as often as possible since Satan is to be combated11 by a letter to me when he suggests any less excellent occupation.
So commending you to temptations of brandy and water without chops.
I remain most truly yours | Juliet Pollock | With love from the boys and their dad
RI MS JT/1/P/185
[1862]: reply to letter 1885 and/or 1886.
your letter: letter 1885 and/or 1886.
your message from the mountains: Juliet appears to have just received a copy of Mountaineering in 1861, published on 16 April and may be referring to this. It is also possible she is referring to letter 1886. Tyndall’s description there of his excursion (journeying through ‘deep valleys and conical hills’ etc) perhaps reimagines Dorset’s hilly landscape as mountainous.
your Mountaineering: Mountaineering in 1861, see also letter 1804, n. 9.
retaining the interest I felt in it before: Juliet read the proofs and commented on them (especially chapter 5). See letter 1866.
Your miracle chapter is perfect now: for Tyndall’s response to Juliet’s comments on an earlier version of the chapter (5) discussing miracles, see letter 1866.
Hatton: Country house outside village of Hatton, Middlesex owned by Sir Jonathan Frederick Pollock, first baronet.
Chief Baron: Sir Jonathan Frederick Pollock, first baronet (1783–1870) (ODNB).
I have just finished the life of Pitt: Philip Henry Stanhope, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt 4 vols (London: John Murray, 1861–2).
Mr Moss: Juliet’s youngest son, Maurice Emilius (1857–1932).
Satan is to be combated: in letter 1885, Tyndall suggests he will ‘drive away Satan by taking up my pen & writing to you’.
Please cite as “Tyndall1887,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on