13th Oct. 1864.
My dear Pollock,
When Mrs. Pollock1 wrote to me last2 I had to put a kind of strain upon my heart to hold myself back. I feel a similar strain upon it now, but I am pledged to the Editor of the Philosophical Magazine to have a paper3 in his hands on the 18th and the experimental portion of this paper is not yet complete. I was up at 6 o’clock this morning working at it and shall be up at the same hour to-morrow morning—In fact without this devotion to it I cannot get it done.
I would sooner go down for a day after the 18th—a week day—than loosen my hold upon this paper on Saturday.
How long do you intend to remain upon the Island?4
Thank Mrs. Pollock for me in your most handsome phraseology for that beautiful little book5 that she was kind enough to send me. The man’s soul is all music. Some of the sonnets sadden me, for they cause me to ask “what is to become of the world when the old and tottering faith round which all this beauty is entwined has passed away.” Is not man’s moral and religious nature self-supporting, or shall we always need those outward fixings to prop it up? How are we to get the tendrils from the pole without injury I do not know, and still the pole is visibly giving way. I see nothing for it but to change the tendrils into trunks which shall be able to stand alone.
Yours ever | John Tyndall.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/2022
LT Typescript Only
Mrs. Pollock: Juliet Pollock.
wrote to me last: letter 2135.
a paper: probably J. Tyndall, ‘On Luminous and Obscure radiation,’ Phil. Mag., 28 (1864), pp. 329–341.
the Island: the Pollocks had been staying at Easton Farm near the town of Freshwater on the western side of the Isle of Wight.
that beautiful little book: Juliet Pollock sent Tyndall a copy of Charles Tennyson Turner’s Sonnets (see letter 2126, n. 2).
Please cite as “Tyndall2154,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on