Royal Institution. | 16th. December 1863.
My dear Ginty,
You referred to the Jungfrau1 in your last letter to me,2 and when it reached England I happened to be in the vicinity of that noble mountain. Soon after I received it I found myself one glorious morning at 7 o'clock upon the summit of the majestic peak.
The death of Mr Edmondson3 I trusted would not make much difference in the constitution of Queenwood School.4 It seemed to be the intention of Mrs Edmondson to keep the old staff together, and thus to maintain the place on its former footing. Mrs Edmondson however has since died and at Christmas the school will pass into other hands.
Informed of this I went down there on Sunday to make enquiries regarding the probable future of the School. Many of the old masters are going away; but the new principal who visited the place some time ago appears to have made a favourable impression. I think he would have acted more wisely had he endeavoured to retain the men to whose exertions the prosperity of Queenwood was really due. Still I am not clear at present whether it will be advisable to remove your boys to another establishment.
In the event of their being removed one of the masters, Mr Wright,5 has opened a school at Southsea,6 a very healthy locality. He is a thoroughly respectable man, and his wife7 is an excellent woman. In his house I think your boys would be well taken care of in case you thought it well to remove them from Queenwood. Mr Wright you are probably aware was the surveyor and teacher of drawing at Queenwood.
I am tremendously hard worked at present; otherwise I would send you a longer letter. Give my kind regards to Mrs Ginty.8 Yesterday Col. Wynne9 called to see me. He has been called over by the Government in connexion with the fortifications of Corfu. He looks well—the same upright fellow morally and physically as when we first served under him.
Believe me | yours ever truly | John Tyndall.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/11/3643
LT Typescript Only
the Jungfrau: see letter 1915, n. 7.
your last letter to me: letter missing.
Mr Edmondson: George Edmondson (1798-1863), headmaster of Queenwood College
in Hampshire from 1847 until his death. Edmondson, a Quaker, had attended Ackworth School in Yorkshire. From 1817 to 1824 Edmondson lived in Russia, tutoring the children of his mentor, Daniel Wheeler. After returning to England he opened a school at Blackburn in 1825, then one near Preston, before becoming the head teacher at Queenwood College when it opened in 1847. Under his influence science and technological subjects were emphasized (ODNB).
Queenwood School: Queenwood College, a boys’ school near Stockbridge, Hampshire, England, opened by George Edmondson in 1847 (the site was previously Queenwood Farm). Queenwood was an experimental school dedicated to science teaching, and Tyndall and Hirst both taught mathematics for surveying there, Tyndall from 1847–8 and again from 1851–3, and Hirst from 1853–6. Edward Frankland had been employed by the school (for the 1847–8 school year), as well as Heinrich Debus (from 1851–67). Although Edmondson had hired Tyndall, Hirst, Frankland, and Debus, they all became critical of his management of Queenwood. The school remained operational until 1896 (see W. H. Brock, ‘Queenwood College Revisited,’ article XVII in Science for All: Studies in the History of Victorian Science and Education (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 1996).
Mr Wright: Richard Pears Wright (1829–92), an English mathematician and educator who taught engineering and surveying at Queenwood College from 1851–63. From 1870 until his death in 1892 he was a teacher of mathematics at University College School, London (J. Hoge (ed), Lady Tennyson’s Journal (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1981) p. 226, n. 21).
Southsea: coastal resort near Portsmouth on the south coast of England.
wife: Fanny Wright (née Bellamy, dates unknown), married Richard Pears Wright in July 1852 at Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, London. In 1855 she gave birth to Alice Maud Wright, who died in January 1857. Tyndall attended the child’s funeral (see letter 1324, n. 3, Tyndall Correspondence, vol. 6).
Mrs Ginty: Margaret Ginty.
Col. Wynne: George Wynne.
Please cite as “Tyndall2051,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on