Monday morning
My dear Mrs Pollock,
I quitted London on Friday week, having picked up my friend Huxley on my way to the railway station. As I drove northward it was part of my arrangement to pass through Montagu Square2 and call upon you—but the time was too short. We reached Sandown3 that night—walking from Ryde,4 and next day we visited Whitecliff Bay5—an extremely instructive part of the Island. We returned to Sandown, and walked thence to Ventnor;6 from which place we took a carriage to Black Gang Chine.7 Thence on Sunday morning we started for Brook,8 and were fortunate enough to find the fossil forest which there cambers the beach. It is extremely remarkable. Trees 2 and 3 feet in diameter, some perfectly detached, others embedded in the rock, and all silicified—turned to complete stone—are strewn in numbers over the sand. Thence we went on to Plumley’s Hotel Fresh-water-Gate,9 and the whole of the next day we spent about the Needles,10 Alum Bay,11 and the wave-forsaken cliffs (for the tide was out) about Freshwater. I thought many times of calling upon Tennyson,12 and proposed two or three times to the party to pay our respects en masse; but we did not like to bother him. On the Tuesday we walked to Newport13 and that evening reached London.
I took it for granted that you were at St. Julians,14 otherwise I should assuredly have called upon you on Wednesday. On the afternoon of that day I went down to my friend Lubbock15—who has a house near Chiselhurst,16 and with him I spent a most genial and happy xmas. I wish very much his wife17 could know you—she is an extremely gifted person, I am quite persuaded that you would love each other.
I am now hard at work at my book:18 it is tremendous uphill work, but having put the hand to the plough, it is not the want of either you or me to ‘look back’. It must be done, and when done let us trust that it will be worth the labour expended on it.
The Juveniles19 commenced yesterday: Frankland lectured very nicely, but he is not so Flexible, nor so much of a boy as Mr Faraday.
You know that I wish you a happy New Year—why then should utter what you know so well. Kiss Moss20 for me, and give my love to Fred,21 Walter22 and to your husband23
Good bye | ever yours | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/2007
[ 28 or 29 December 1862]: the date is given based on Tyndall spending Christmas 1862 at the Lubbocks’ and the reference to the first of Edward Frankland’s juvenile Christmas Lectures at the RI, which occurred on Saturday, 27 December 1862. Tyndall wrote in this letter that Frankland’s lectures ‘commenced yesterday’, which implies that Tyndall wrote this on Sunday, 28 December, although he wrote ‘Monday morning’ (29 December) at the top. Tyndall also had left for the Isle of Wight (according to Hirst’s Journal) on Friday, 19 December 1862 with Huxley, Busk, and Lubbock, as Hirst noted in his journal entry for 21 December 1862 (Brock and Macleod, Hirst Journals, p. 1627).
Montagu Square: a square in Marylebone, London, where the Pollocks had their primary residence at no. 59.
Sandown: a small seaside town on the southeast coast of the Isle of Wight.
Ryde: a small seaside town on the northeast coast of the Isle of Wight, six miles from Sandown.
Whitecliff Bay: a sandy bay on the easternmost point of the Isle of Wight.
Ventnor: a small seaside town on the south coast of the Isle of Wight, six miles from Sandown.
Black Gang Chine: an amusement park and holiday resort on the south coast of the Isle of Wight.
Brook: a small seaside town on the southwest coast of the Isle of Wight, 30 miles from Blackgang Chine.
Plumley’s Hotel Fresh-Water-Gate: Freshwater is a large village on the western coast of the Isle of Wight, surrounded by Freshwater Bay, which used to be called Freshwater Gate. Plumey’s Hotel was one of the many hotels at the resort.
Needles: the Needles is a row of distinctive chalk stacks that rise 30 meters out of the sea off the west coast of the Isle of Wight, near Alum Bay.
Alum Bay: westernmost point of the Isle of Wight.
Tennyson: Alfred Tennyson lived at Farringford, near Freshwater, from 1853.
Newport: a small town in the centre of the Isle of Wight.
St. Julians: the Herries family home in the town of Sevenoaks in Kent, England, southeast of London; the manor was built by John Herries between 1836–7.
Lubbock: John Lubbock.
Chiselhurst: their house Lamas.
wife: Ellen Frances Horden Lubbock.
my book: Heat as a Mode of Motion.
The Juveniles: Edward Frankland gave the RI’s 1862 juvenile Christmas Lectures on ‘Air and Water’ on 27 and 30 December 1862 and 1, 3, 6, and 8 January 1863 (‘Royal Institution of Great Britain’, The Examiner: A Weekly Paper on Politics, Literature, Music and the Fine Arts, 20 December 1862, p. 814). This lecture series for children began in 1827 and still continues. Tyndall himself delivered the Christmas Lectures a dozen times over his time with the RI, his first in 1861 (F. A. J. L. James (ed.), Christmas at the Royal Institution: An Anthology of Lectures (Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific, 2007)).
Moss: Maurice Pollock.
Fred: Frederick Pollock.
Walter: Walter Pollock.
your husband: William Frederick Pollock.
Please cite as “Tyndall1954,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on