My dear Mrs Dawes,
There is a heartiness and kindness in your letters which revives and stimulates me; and now on the spur of the moment I will write to you again.
The Dean2 some months ago wrote and asked me to vote for a certain friend of his at the Athenaeum.3 His friend did not get in, and I want you to inform the Dean that I did my duty. I voted for him myself and got Sir William Snow Harris and others to vote for him; still he was left behind, not I believe through any objection to the man himself, but clubs are influenced by curious considerations, a great deal depends on the way in which a candidate is brought forward, on the feeling of the club towards his most prominent supporters etc. I was sorry the Dean's friend did not succeed, but do please tell him that I did my duty.
I wish most earnestly you were nearer to London. I never told you what Miss Guthrie4 advised me, nay urged me to do some months ago. It was during a lecture here:5 I said something about going down to Hereford. Go, said she and carry away Mrs Dawes from the Dean and bring her to London. I looked at her timidly, as it is my nature to be timid in such cases. She looked at me with a determination which showed the energy of the soul within her. “Do it!” she repeated, and it was as much as I could do to resist the commands. If she is in Hereford, pray remember me most kindly to her.
Goodbye. | Yours always | John Tyndall.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/1/325
LT Typescript Only
[7th January 1863]: date suggested by LT.
The Dean: Richard Dawes.
a certain friend of his at the Athenaeum: letter missing; ‘certain friend’ not identified.
Miss Guthrie: Anne Leonora Guthrie (1807–93), half-sister of Mary Helen Dawes who lived at 4 Berkeley Street until moving in 1858 to Pool House, Hereford; the daughter of the surgeon George James Guthrie (1785–1856). (N. Denison, Richard Dawes: Education Pioneer and Dean of Hereford (King’s Somborne: The Somborne & District Society, 2017); ‘Deaths’, Morning Post, 1 April 1893, p. 1).
a lecture here: not identified.
Please cite as “Tyndall1961,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on