Item 26 - Copy letter from Henry Sidgwick to Mrs Clough

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Typewritten. Thanks Clough for her new year's wishes. Since returning to Cambridge he has been making arrangements for the 'Lectures for Ladies'. Has discovered that it is much more easy to offend women than men. Encloses a programme [not included] which should demonstrate how they are extending their operations. They are now trying to arrange for the accommodation of girls 'who are gradually dropping in or proposing to drop in from other places.'

Refers to her tour, and reports that in September he came to England instead of going back from Switzerland to Germany. In relation to the Franco-Prussian war, his sympathies are thoroughly French, but he cannot join in the attacks on the Germans. Feels profoundly disappointed in Germany, which he had regarded as a nation advanced in morality; it is the liberals with whom he is most indignant, as the German Tories 'know no better'. The German liberals 'swallowed their constitutional principles in 1866...but they have now eaten their international principles too'. Hopes to see her in London, and expresses regret about 'Miss Clough's school'. Asks to be remembered to her, and to Mr and Mrs Smith [her parents?].

MS note by Nora Sidgwick: 'This letter did not reach us till the biography was printed off'.