The Athenaeum.1 | 7th. Nov. 1864.
My dear Miss Roche
The thought of writing to you has occurred to me many times during the last six weeks; but my work during this period has so absorbed my energies, that my correspondence generally has suffered greatly.
I have been able to put things in train with Mr. Diegan.2 We have made a definite agreement and you ought to be informed that it is out of respect to you that Mr. Diegan agrees to include in his estimate the transfer of the tomb to old Leighlin3 and its proper erection there.
I ought to be in good spirits this week, for only a few days ago the Council of the Royal Society voted me a big medal4 for my recent scientific researches. It consists of a lump of gold worth sixty pounds; and some separate and additional lumps of the same total value—So that if I should fall into poverty I can pledge the medal, and thus keep my head above water for a time.
A fortnight ago I flew down for a day to the Isle of Wight.5 I spent an evening with Tennyson, and on the following day he accompanied me in a climbing excursion up the chalk cliffs. He leads a very retired life, as he does not like the gaze of the populace; but I have always found him very genial.
I wish you would help me in this little matter. There is such an appetite at present prevalent for news regarding every man of the least note in the world, that every such person is sure to be talked about and written about, and is often doomed to be very stupidly talked about. I wish you would get from my mother6 some account of her grandfather and grandmother.7 The latter I know was a quaker and the daughter of a wealthy man, but she was read out of the meeting for marrying beyond the pale of the Society I want to get some authentic account of both her and her husband. His name I think was Malone. I wish I could learn where any documentary evidence regarding this family is to be found.
I have succeeded in fixing the approximate time when the first Tyndall’s went to Ireland: if one could only be allowed to live and die in peace, without raking up such matters, it would be a blessing. But the curious world will not let one work in peace; and it will have nonsense if it cannot have truth.
Believe me | Yours very sincerely | John Tyndall.
RI MS JT/1/TYP/11/3851
LT Typescript Only
The Athenaeum: see letter 1907, n. 7.
Mr. Diegan: the sculptor Tyndall hired to create the tombstone for his father (see letters 2121 and 2142).
Leighlin: Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland, where Tyndall was born and his mother lived.
a big medal: see letter 2169, n. 3.
Isle of Wight: see letters 2154 and 2155 for Tyndall’s plans to visit the Pollocks and Tennysons on the Isle of Wight.
my mother: Sarah Tyndall.
her grandfather and grandmother: Sarah Tyndall descended from a prosperous farming family with lands in Ballybrommell, County Carlow, that included in earlier generations Quakers by the name Malone (see G. Cantor and G. Dawson (eds), The Correspondence of John Tyndall, Volume 1: The Correspondence, May 1840–August 1843 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016)). She wrote to Tyndall in October 1858 (in a missing letter but from an extract in Tyndall’s journal for 1871: ‘My grandmother’s family were people of wealth & property. their name was Malone, but my grandmother marrying out of meeting she was denied by them. Her father left three townlands one to each of her brothers—Ballybromwell to William, Ballintrain to Thomas, and Killkay to Pim. I believe that is Nehemiah, and to my grandmother one angry shilling This however never altered the affections of her husband towards her, and they had abundance while they lived. there were no such farms in the country as he kept. They had one son & that was my father and she reared him as she was reared herself as a Quaker’ (see letter 1569, n. 8, Tyndall Correspondence, vol. 6).
Please cite as “Tyndall2171,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on