Friday
My dear Mrs. Pollock.
I have been leading such a life of hard work & dissipation—acting the host almost daily & leading my guests to drink wine by showing them the good example of drinking cognac myself—that I have found my whirling brain quite out of order for writing. Across this Getümmel,2 your letter3 reached me. I was quite at your side. London vanished & I was listening to the ripples of Grassmere.4
I have been calculating the time it would take me to get down & back & the result is not favourable. Two days would be spent on the journey—two or three ought to be spent there. Five days are absoluty5 beyond my power to afford.
I shall be compelled to go to Cambridge to the Brit Association.6 This makes a gap in my working time. & there is so much before me that I must work like a Titan7 to get through it
We have lovely weather here. How lovely it must be among the lakes just now. But I must draw a screen over the picture lest my frail nature should be too strongly tempted.
Goodbye then. Kindest regards to your husband8—love to all the boys,9 & all kindly wishes to yourself
Yours ever | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/T/1208
RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/2049
[September 1862]: the content of this letter suggests it was written some weeks after Tyndall returned from the Alps on 16 August, and prior to the British Association meeting which began on 1 October (see n. 6).
Getümmel: turmoil (German).
your letter: letter missing.
Grassmere: Grasmere, a lake an village in the Lake District.
absoluty: misspelt by Tyndall.
I shall be compelled to go to … the Brit Association: the BAAS held its thirty-second meeting in Cambridge from 1–7 October 1862 (see also letter 1904, n. 9). At this meeting, on 2 October at 8pm Tyndall delivered a ‘Discourse on the Forms and Action of Water’ (Brit. Assoc. Report 1862, 1863), p. l). The lecture impressed the American science editor Edward Youmans who was visiting England at the time (Times, 4 October 1862 p. 7). For his thoughts about the lecture, see J. Fiske, Life and Letters of Edward Livingston Youmans: Comprising Correspondence with Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, and Others (London: Chapman & Hall, 1894), pp. 139–40.
Titan: possibly referring to the Titans, the pre-Olympian Gods of Greek mythology.
your husband: William Frederick Pollock.
the boys: Frederick, Walter, and Maurice Pollock.
Please cite as “Tyndall1932,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on