Easton Farm1 | Sunday | Sep. 11th 1864.
My dear Mr Tyndall,
Only a few lines before Church to say it is a grief that you cannot come, and to tell you that I never got your letter from the Stelvio and that consequently I have forwarded nothing to Sir J. Herschel.2
I hope you got mine answering yours3 from Pontresina.4
Why do you tell me anything so dreadful as the risk you run? it makes me shudder—true you are well now—but such perils repeated, as I fear they may be, are subjects for just alarm.
What! not a Saturday and Sunday to spare?—not two little days? Bear this in mind—the place is lovely, and Tennyson5 is come back, and Mrs Cameron6 is in and Lucy Frankland7 is here, and will not be here again—neither perhaps shall we—and I should like a moonlight walk with you if only to show off my courage.
Tell me what you think of Enoch Arden and Ayliners field.8 You will receive in a day or two the promised token from me of Charles Turner’s little volume of tender beautiful Sonnets9—And now good bye; God bless you, but if I were to say that I would remember you in my prayers you would smile as at a weak saying for you don't esteem prayers—and there are many arguments to be used against them—and I understand them but still I do pray and must pray and could not be happy otherwise though I don’t consider churches as essential to the act.
Yours most truly | Juliet Pollock.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/2020
LT Typescript Only
Easton Farm: the Pollock’s rented Easton Farm near the town of Freshwater on the western end of the Isle of Wight.
Stelvio: in letter 2134, Tyndall has asked Pollock if she received his letter he had written to her from Stelvio, a village near the mountain pass of the same name in the Ortler Alps on the border of Switzerland and Italy. However, as Pollock wrote here, she did not receive it and thus forwarded nothing to Herschel.
mine answering yours: Pollock’s letter is 2130; Tyndall’s is missing.
Pontresina: see letter 2121, n. 2.
Tennyson: Alfred Tennyson.
Mrs Cameron: Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79), a British photographer who was well known in the nineteenth century for her style of portraits. Notable subjects were Alfred Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, John Herschel, Henry Taylor, and Ellen Terry. Born in India, she and her husband bought a house on the Isle of Wight in 1860, which they named Dimbola Lodge (ODNB).
Lucy Frankland: not identified.
Enoch Arden and Ayliners field: Alfred Tennyson’s poems ‘Enoch Arden’ (1864) and ‘Ayliners Field’ were published in Enoch Arden and Other Poems (London: Edward Moxon & Co., 1864).
Charles Turner’s little volume of tender beautiful Sonnets: see letter 2126, n. 2.
Please cite as “Tyndall2135,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on