Saturday
My dear Mrs. Pollock
Hurrah for Walter!2 It does not surprise me, holding as I do the general steadfastness & transmissibility of the molecular forces of the human brain; I am sure I feel the blood of 300 years ago in my own veins.3 Walter Pollock follows from his antecedents as naturally as any other effect follows its cause.
Yours ever | John Tyndall
I am off to Hampshire for a day to rest my weary head
RI MS JT/1/T/1213
RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/2025
[23 August 1862]: the date is given based on the content of the letter. Pollock’s son Walter had been elected a King’s Scholar at Eton, ‘No. 11 on a chosen list of twenty-one, out of eighty-three candidates’, on Monday 28 July 1862 (Remembrances, vol. 2, p. 107). This letter appears to be one Tyndall wrote following his return from Switzerland on Saturday, 16 August. Unless he started replying to letters on the same day he returned, this letter would likely be the Saturday following, 23 August.
Hurrah for Walter!: see n. 1.
the blood of 300 years ago in my own veins: presumably a reference to William Tyndale.
Tyndall had a deep interest in the possible genealogy of his extended family.
Please cite as “Tyndall1923,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on