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Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall.—Encloses a cheque for the Clifford fund.

(With an envelope.)

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Athenæum Club, Pall Mall
7th April 1876

Dear Mr Pollock—I enclose cheque (£5) for the Conspiracy Fund. I would do the same over again if a fresh application is found necessary. I am very glad that the thing has been undertaken and think that nothing too much can be done that may tend to the preservation of so valuable a life.

Believe me,
Yours very truly
J. J. Sylvester

[Direction on envelope:] F. Pollock Esqr | 12 Bryanston St | Portman Square | W

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The envelope was postmarked at London, S.W., and London, W., on 7 April 1876, and is marked ‘Sylvester’ in a later hand.

(Cambridge.)—Cannot get away from Cambridge before Friday. Alludes to various theological doctrines relating to the body of Christ.

(Undated. Marked ‘1869’.)

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Union Society, Cambridge

Dear Fred

can’t fix it nohow to get a way† from Cambridge before Friday afternoon. Awfully sorry. The universe physical moral and spiritual has been execrated; in vain. I know “sicut in loco” {1} was condemned by the council of Trent; and think oculus saltem glorificatus {2} means only hyperæsthesia which is well known as a disease of the celestials. Will read S. Th. again on 1st opportunity. The Capernaite views {3} made it necessary to give distinct denials to several absurdly material doctrines, and the denials were afterwards made to mean more. Thus the refinement you mention of the harmless remark that “no man hath seen God at any time” into “the Divine essence is per se beyond human perceptive faculties”.

Yours ever
W.K.C.

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{1} Cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III. 76. 5: ‘corpus Christi non est in hoc sacramento sicut in loco, sed per modum substantiae: eo scilicet modo quo substantia continetur a dimensionibus’ (‘the body of Christ is not in this sacrament as in a place, but in the manner of a substance, that is, in the manner in which a substance is contained by dimensions’).

{2} oculus saltem glorificatus. i.e. ‘the specially glorified eye.’ Cf. Summa Theologica, I. 12. 3: ‘Ergo oculus glorificatus potest videre Deum’ (‘Therefore the glorified eye can see God’).

{3} i.e. the views of those who believe in transubstantiation.

† Sic.

Trinity College, Cambridge.—Refers to the subject of marriage. Is annoyed at having to write testimonials. Presents a Latin credo in honour of the goddess Liberty.

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Trin. Coll. Camb.

Dear Fred

Here, until the 12th. It is ordained for the procreation of children, and for a godly and wholesome discipline. {1}

Oh, I am mad!—mad!

x x x

17 people have written to ask me for prescriptions, I mean testimonials. They know that writing matrimonials drives me mad, that every testimony takes me a week to do, that it sears my conscience and sores my brain, that—why are people such fiends? They only does it to annoy, because they knows it teases. {2}

Therefore pity & forgive me, and persuade others to do the like.

I have killed 9 establishments and 4 baptists with Moss’s story about the cockatoo who letusprayed.

Make somebody put music to this

Credo in deam solam libertatem Matrem vitæ
Matrem viventium omnium Inscriptæ legis
fontem Humani generis totam gloriam {3}

or do you put it into latin with additions or subtractions.

Thine
(I will write a testimonial for the rest this evening)
W.K.C.

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{1} The first phrase comes from the marriage service in the Prayer Book; the second appears to be Clifford’s own invention, though the phrase ‘godly and wholesome Doctrine’ occurs in the thirty-fifth of the Thirty-Nine Articles (‘On the Homilies’).

{2} An adaptation of verses in Alice in Wonderland (1865):

Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.

{3} ‘I believe in the only goddess Liberty, mother of life, mother of all living things, source of the written law, the whole glory of the human race.’

Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge.—Sends a contribution to the Clifford fund. Discusses Tait's criticisms of Mayer.

(With an envelope.)

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Cavendish Laboratory
Cambridge
12 April 1876

Dear Pollock

I enclose £5 for the Clifford Fund. I hope that a slight displacement of his position on the earth’s surface may bring him into a milder air and one less stimulating than that at Gower Street, {1} so that as his oscillations between elliptic and hyperbolic space gradually subside he may find himself settling back again into that parabolic space wherein so many great and good men have been content to dwell, and may long enjoy the 3 treasures of the said great & good men as enumerated by S.T.C. {2}

The gospel according to Peter G. T. {3} although somewhat entêté {4} in the places where old controversies are fought over again is much sounder than it sounds when read aloud. The habit of lecturing generates a peculiar jargon which, when taken down by a reporter, looks strange. Tail† has always been proving that Mayer used inconclusive reasoning when he made an estimate of the dynamical equivalent of heat, {1} whereas Joule was on firm ground all along.

Hence Mayer should not have many marks for this piece of his work. But Mayer sent up ingenious answers to a great many questions propounded by nature, many wrong some right, but all clever. The strict examiner gives him but small credit for these but the historian of science must take account of the amount of good work by others which followed on the publication of Mayers† papers.

Now one man thinks most of the credit to be assigned to each individual as his property while another thinks most of the advance of science which is often associated by the noise even of fools, which directs wiser men to good diggings.

Yours truly
J Clerk Maxwell

[Direction on envelope:] F Pollock Esqre | 12 Bryanston Street | London W.

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The envelope was postmarked at Cambridge on 12 April 1876, and has been marked in pencil ‘Clerk Maxwell’.

{1} Comma supplied, in place of a full stop.

{2} Coleridge’s poem ‘Reproof’ contains the following lines:

Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The great good man?—three treasures, love, and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infant’s breath

{3} Peter Guthrie Tait.

{4} Obstinate (Fr.).

{5} This is probably the intended reading, but what is written resembles ‘Tail’.

† Sic.

Malaga.—Lucy has been seasick. Discusses the religious situation in France, and deplores the effect of the Church on the character of the Spanish people. They have no definite news about the war.

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Malaga.—Saturday 15th July—1876

My dearest Fred—You can’t think how glad we were to get our letters the other night. I thought my poor child would have gone crazy when we were kept rolling about in mid mediterranean and missed the boat from Almeria here. She got so weak from want of food and sickness that she fancied all sorts of things, and dreamt she had to leave the baby at 3 minutes to 9 on the 7th of July. The only thing she would touch at last was a couple of boiled eggs, because it seemed improbable that the filthy Spaniards could have got at the insides. The Pall Mall budget {1} was a great boon, and now an Englishman who feeds at the hotel has got me into the Círculo Malagueño for 8 days; it is a decent club and has a good many papers. I was amused at Greenwood’s remarks about Clémenceau and the religious irreconcileables—they are the pink of propriety and circumspection. He is no doubt right so far as he goes in calling it an “exaggeration” to attribute all our misfortunes to the Catholic Church; one might as well say the whole of our mortality comes from small-pox. But he is wrong in thinking that French liberals in the country are still to be “frightened” by statements of that sort; they are made daily, with more force and circumstance, by at least one paper in every town which is large enough to have a paper at all, and the Church is associated even in the minds of women with intrigues and conspiracies not merely against abstractions like liberty and the rights of man but against very present and concrete freedoms and conveniences of life. The “ordre moral” made itself thoroughly hated in its 3 years. There is some law which I don’t understand requiring authorization by the mayor of dancing at private parties exceeding a certain number. This authorization was given in the villages to friends of the clergy but refused to Republicans—and similar inconceivably petty tyrannies were practised everywhere. Hence the importance of the new municipal law. I believe that of 12 million adult men in France, 8 at least would have felt personal pleasure in kicking M. Buffet. At Avignon, a centre of reaction, I was buying a paper and asked if it was republican. “Ça sent beaucoup le clergé” said the old woman with a wry face and a shrug. “On n’observe plus que les fêtes du peuple” said the waiter at Marseilles when I asked if the band would play on ascension-day. The same thing holds throughout Algeria, except at Oran which is more than half Spanish. As for this country, I think it requires to be colonized by the white man. The savages would gradually die out in his presence. One sees here how God makes man through the instrumentality of his Holy Church, when He gets him all to Himself for some centuries. And a sickening sight it is. The mark of a degraded race is clear upon their faces; only the children have a look of honesty and intelligence, a fact which is also observed in the case of the negro, and is a case of Von Bär’s law that the development of the individual is an epitome of that of the race. It is instructive also to contrast the politeness fossilized in their language with the brutal coarseness of their present manners—of which I may sometime tell you what I will not soil paper with. I think it possible that one Spaniard may have told me the truth: he had lost so many teeth that he left out all his consonants, and I could not understand a word he said. When we went on board the Rosario at 11 p.m. the boatmen stood in the way to keep us from the ladder, and threatened us for the sake of another peseta over the regular charge. The steward tried to cheat me over the passage-money, but I appealed to the authorities who came on board at Malaga and got the money back. (There are many strangers here). Then he made another grab in the matter of our breakfasts, in the face of a tariff hung up in the cabin. It is tiring to have to think that every man you meet is ready to be your enemy out of pure cussedness. I don’t understand why one is expected to be polite and reticent about the distinction between the mixture of Hebrew piety and Roman universalism attributed to Jesus and Paul, and the ecclesiastical system which is only powerful over men’s lives in Spain, the middle and south of Italy, and Greece—countries where the population consists chiefly of habitual thieves and liars who are willing opportunely to become assassins for a small sum. I suppose it frightens people to be told that historical Xtianity as a social system invariably makes men wicked where it has full swing. Then I think the sooner they are well frightened the better. {2} We have no definite news here about the war. How would it do to add Hungary and German Austria to Germany, and make Austria into a Slav state with capital at Constantinople? The Hungarian freethinkers would balance the Austrian ultramontanes, and Russia would be well out of it. There is an Arab proverb that “where the Turk has trod the grass never grows”—but a good deal of ploughing and irrigation might efface his footsteps. Best love to Georgie & the little kid. I am now convinced that we are really the same person. À la libertad.

Thy
Willi

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{1} The Pall Mall Budget was a weekly paper, founded on 3 October 1868, containing a selection of articles from the Pall Mall Gazette. Cf. CLIF A4/14.

{2} ‘As for this country . . . the better.’ This passage has been marked off in pencil, square brackets being placed around the two sentences ‘One sees here how God … sight it is.’

(Place of writing not indicated.)—Has been working with Lockyer on molecules and talking metaphysics with Huxley. Refers to his (own) talk on ‘the right and wrong of admitting the results of the scientific method in certain ground which it has already occupied’.

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Dear Fred—Very sorry I can’t come to be wound up on Wednesday but we are going to the play. I am so tired, having spent the day at work with Lockyer at a paper on molecules, and the evening in talking metaphysics with Huxley. I think we have got out satisfactorily that the force between 2 molecules cannot be entirely in the line joining their centres as everybody has hitherto supposed, and this suits admirably my guess that they are small magnets.

As to my sermon, {1} I suppose it may be called so because the tag {2} dealt with the right and wrong of admitting the results of the scientific method in certain ground which it has already occupied. Now this point, that it is right to use the scientific method even on this ground, and that it is wrong to resist the evidence because the results are unpleasing, is to me a point of infinitely more importance to get people to feel, than without that to make them gently believe any amount of unorthodox doctrine. A question of right and wrong knows neither time, place, nor expediency. I think we have made a mistake in our laissez faire. It is not an intellectual revolution that has to be accomplished. The opinion of cultivated people goes of itself at an enormous rate; but the control of the feelings of the masses is falling more and more into the hands of the medicine-man, and he is awake to his true vocation and preaches social sedition. I am afraid for my civilization if we do not make an effort to discredit him, and to get people to recognize what they have hitherto acted on, that the right is an affair of plain open dealing and not of ghosts and conjuring tricks. They can be talked out of that here and now as they have been before in other places; and the clergy of all denominations are doing their worst with no small success.

Thine ever
Willi.

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{1} Possibly 'Right and Wrong’ or ‘The Ethics of Belief’.

Trinity Lodge, Cambridge.—Explains why he has not yet subscribed for the relief of Clifford's widow, and asks Pollock to convey the enclosed sum to her anonymously.

(With an envelope.)

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Trinity Lodge, Cambridge
28 Mar 1881

Dear Frederick Pollock

When your father asked me some time ago to subscribe to a Memorial or rather—for it was in his life time—a public Testimonial to Prof. Clifford, I declined to do so, for reasons which I still think valid. I think it was after his death that I said I would subscribe for the relief of his widow, for whom I feel a sincere compassion. If I have failed to do so, it was not because I had changed my mind in the matter, but simply because the Memorial was still designed {1} in honour of her husband & contained words to which I could not affix my name. I wish now to redeem whatever pledge I may have given, & beg that if you think the poor lady will accept the sum enclosed you will kindly convey it to her—without mentioning my name.

You will judge how far this is possible without offending her delicacy. It seemed to me possible that she might not disdain to receive a little additional help from one who had as much admiration for her late husband’s talents as he had disapproval of his philosophical opinions.

Believe me
Yours very truly
W. H Thompson

[Direction on envelope:] F. Pollock Esq | 48 Gt Cumberland Place | London | W

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The envelope was postmarked at Cambridge and London, W., on 28 March 1881, and has been marked ‘Master of Trinity | for L.C.’

{1} Reading uncertain.

Flora's postcard came when he was away for two months in the north, but he still should have replied sooner. Does indeed remember the 'expedition from Burrows Lea with the Russells to Leith Hill Tower'; he must have been about six, and chiefly remembers eating 'as many bilberries as [he] could' and being 'shamefully sick'. Would like to visit her soon, but they have guests at the moment; would much like to see Flora's French [lead] soldiers. She may have heard that Julian and Ursula have had a son, Philip, and all seems to be going well; Erasmus, his middle name, is a Darwin family name.

Thanks Flora for sending her verses, which are 'not doggerel; they are much too delicate and graceful for that, and have too much feeling'. Must be a 'very real recompense, to be able to call up the "pattern and the vision"... and still enjoy seeing it' though she no long tries to 'draw it'. Sorry he missed seeing her at the 'Maxes' [sic: Maxses?], who seem to have made themselves 'comfortably at home in Tillies cottage'; it is 'very pleasant having them as neighbours'.

21 Hyde Park Place, London, W.2. - Sends a subscription to the bibliography; is sorry to hear about Frazer's eyesight, suggests he may find dictation a good substitute, typists need not understand all that is dictated; French scholars deserve great credit for appreciating Frazer's work.

Washington Irving Hotel, Granada.—Modifies his previous remarks about the Spanish people. Describes a case of murder at Granada, and refers to the prevalence of violence in the province as a whole. It is expected that there will be a revolution soon. Gives a brief opinion of the Alhambra. Asks about Pollock’s work, and suggests he translate Spinoza.

(With an envelope.)

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Washington Irving Hotel. Granada. Thursday Aug 3.

You are quite right, and one ought not to despair of the republic. These folk are kind and rather pleasant when one is en rapport with them and they have a deal of small talk. We found a jolly old couple one morning when we were coming back from a hot walk in the Vega of Almeria (vega = cultivated plain surrounding a town, which feeds it); we asked for some milk which they had not, but they gave us a rifresco of syrup and cold water, not at all bad, and the old woman showed Lucy all over her house while the man smoked a cigarette with me. Lucy’s passport is the baby’s portrait, with which she gains the hearts of all the women and most of the men. What made it more surprising was that they took us for Jews. Wilkinson, our consul at Malaga, who has been here with his wife and daughter (awfully nice people and cheered us up no end), says that the country people are better than those in the towns. But although we have been nearly a fortnight at Granada, only one murder has been even attempted, so far as I know, within 100 yards of the hotel. A had been making love to B’s wife, and so she was instructed to walk with him one evening under these lovely trees. She took occasion to borrow his swordstick and stuck him in the back with it while her husband fired at his head with a revolver. One ball grazed his temple, and another went in at his cheek and out of his mouth carrying away some teeth & lip. He came round to the spanish hotel opposite and was tied up on the doorstep; they dared not let him come in because the police are so troublesome about these affairs. The defence was that A was a republican and had been a Protestant; so you see B’s love of order was such that he did not think jealousy a sufficient justification. Wilkinson had just received a report of the last quarter of /75; in those three months there had been only a few more than 400 murder cases in the whole province of Granada. The hot weather seems to try them; a paragraph in the Malaga paper, headed Estadístics de Domingo 30, gives 15 cases of shooting and stabbing last Sunday in Malaga, but only 5 appear to have been fatal. This is not assassination, but is merely an accompaniment of their somewhat boisterous conviviality; they get drunk together and then draw their knives and go in for a hacking match. It is not even quarrelling in all cases; in Granada the other day three men shut themselves up and fought till they were all dead. They may, to be sure, have disliked each other mutually all round, but I am inclined to think it was a party of pleasure rather than of business. They do not attack strangers in this way (i.e. with knives and revolvers) unless, of course, there is a reason for it; but when anything offends their delicate sense of propriety one cannot expect them not to shew it a little. Thus they threw stones in Seville & Cordova at a lady who is now staying here, because she went into the street by herself, and they do not approve of that. I am afraid my Norfolk jacket hurts their feelings in some way, but they have been very forbearing, and have only stoned me once, and then did not hit me. Another time a shopkeeper set his dog at me, but although this was rather alarming with temp. 92° in the shade, it must have been meant as a joke, for Spanish dogs only bite cripples of their own species—except, indeed, the great mastiffs that are kept to bait bulls that won’t fight. Of course one is not so insular as to think there is only one way of giving a hearty welcome to the stranger; and the “’eave ’arf a brick at ’im” method is improved by variety. What generally happens is this; the grown people stop suddenly at the sight of you, and wheel round, staring with open mouths until you are out of sight; while the children, less weighted with the cares of this world, form a merry party and follow at your heels. When you go into a shop to buy anything, they crowd round the door so that it is rather difficult to get out. The beggars come inside and pull you by the arm while you are talking to the shopman. I have invented a mode of dealing with the crowd of children; it is to sit on a chair in the shop door and tickle their noses with the end of my cane. I fear that universal sense of personal dignity which is so characteristic of this country is in some way injured by my familiarity; the more so as it cannot be resented, for the other end of my cane is leaded, and I do not try it on in a macadamized street. Anyhow they go a little way off. In Malaga the people seemed more accustomed to the sight of strangers, and contented themselves with shouting abusive epithets. {1} It seems our dear Castelar will have another chance soon; everybody says that there will be a revolution before long, as the Queen will be at Santander before you get this, so that Alfonso may be shot before we are out of the country. If so, the Barcelona papers will be amusing. No doubt the whores of Seville are making ready to give a right royal welcome to the veteran head of their profession; the question is, will she get so far? If Castelar returns to power, I hope among other little reforms that he will prevent the post-office officials from stealing letters for the sake of the stamps on them; it is a great interruption to correspondence and must be a laborious way of earning money. One of them was caught in Malaga because a packet of letters which he had thrown into the sea was accidentally fished up; but he was shielded from punishment by the authorities.

We are very happy here, with a Swiss cook and an Italian land-lord; there are some English, Germans, and Italians staying over the way, and in a few minutes we can be among the memorials of a better time. I am too tired now to talk about the Alhambra, but it seems to me to want that touch of barbarism which hangs about all Gothic buildings. One thinks in a Cathedral that since somebody has chosen to make it, it is no doubt a very fine thing in its way; but that being a sane man one would not build anything like it for any reasonable purpose. But the Alhambra gives one the feeling that one would wish to build something very like it, mutatis mutandis, and the more like it the more reasonable the purpose was. Moreover I think it must be beautiful, if anything ever was; but then I have no taste.

Will Marcus Aurelius be out in September? {2} I wish you had been going to lecture for Domville on Spinoza. Why not make a new CCenary {3} English translation, and let me put in a short dissertation on modes and on modern ontology? I think MacM. would like it much, and philosophy is popular just now. Best love & kisses to Georgie & Alice. I am very glad you are going to Devonshire; my small sisters have become thorough connoisseuses of babies.

Thy
Willi

[Direction on envelope:] F. Pollock Esqr | 12 Bryanston Street | W. | London. | [In the top left-hand corner:] [Inglate]rra {4}
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The envelope was postmarked at Alhambra, Hotel Washington Irving, Granada; at Granada on 3 Aug. 1876; at Estafeta de Cambio, Madrid, on 7 Aug.; and at London, W., on 9 Aug.

{1} ‘But although we have been … epithets.’ This passage has been marked off in pencil.

{2} An article by Pollock entitled ‘Marcus Aurelius and the Stoic Philosophy’ was published in Mind in January 1879, but the connection between that article and the work mentioned here is unclear.

{3} i.e. bicentenary. Spinoza died in 1677.

{4} Parts of the envelope have been torn off, including part of this word and the stamp.

24 Bryanston Street, W.—Discusses the Cliffords’ health and movements. The doctors do not think that Willi should return to England yet. She and Fred think of coming to join them, perhaps with the children. Gives news of their present activities and engagements.

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Transcript

24 Bryanston Street W
June 13./78

Dearest Lucy

A great many thanks for 2 letters from Malta & Genoa w[hic]h I got the day before yesterday, & for the others from Malta w[hic]h I could not acknowledge as we had no address. We were thankful that Malta seemed to suit Willi & that you fell in with pleasant friends. It was a great pity that you had an accident & were laid up; how did it happen? I do hope you are quite right again. I hope you took your journey to Lugano very very quietly and that you will soon establish yourselves comfortably at Monte Generoso. Fred wrote to you yesterday to tell you of his interview with Dr Clark. He said that nothing he sh[oul]d like better than to order you home in August or so, it would be so good for Willi morally, but that unless he really improves in the next month it would be most imprudent. Both he & Dr Beatty agree that in his present state nothing wd be worse for Willi than an English climate. You know Fred & I have set our hearts upon joining you wherever you are when the time comes for our holiday, at the Rieder Alp or in Yorkshire or Scotland & I sometimes think that we might easily manage to bring out both our kids so as to enjoy them altogether—I mean Ethel & Alice & perhaps C. Alice too. We shd not bring Alice if we cd not bring Ethel too. Don’t you think it would make Willi happier to stay abroad if he were to see his little girl & have her for about 4 weeks? Everybody goes abroad in August & if you were to come home you would find all your friends scattered. We have been staying with Mrs Ritchie near Windsor for Whitsuntide, & they & the Douglas Freshfields are all thinking of going to the Rieder Alp with great enthusiasm. The Tyndalls would be close by at the Bel Alp. So that on the whole I cannot help thinking you would enjoy yourselves more in Switzerland in August than in Great Britain, & that I suspect would be the only month Willi would be allowed home.

The W. Colliers are in London for a week & ask after you. Also we have some Dutch people over here to entertain. We did so enjoy our holiday in the country & London feels most dreadfully stuffy & stale on coming back. It is a joy to breathe in the country. Fred will have told you about Walter’s lecture at the R.I. They went to St Julians for their holiday & the parents are in Paris. I am a great deal better, in fact quite well. We are to take our Dutchman & woman to the R.I. tomorrow to hear Prof. Dewar on the Liquefaction of Gases. An interesting article in Mind next month will be “An infant’s Progress in Language”—i.e. Alice’s, done by her dada. I do hope you will be happy at Monte Generoso & meet friends. Best love to yr old man & you. Ever dear Lucy yr affectionate

GHP.

Monte Generoso (Mendrisio, Switzerland).—It is very cold. Gives an account of their travels since they left Malta. Refers to a review by Tait. Hopes that the news from Belgium ‘has given all the cardinals the stomach-ache’.

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Monte Generoso June 16/78

My dearest Fred—Here we are at length, you see; if my writing is illegible, it is not that I tremble, but that I am cold. We certainly did not expect to be sent on an arctic expedition without any lime-juice. It isn’t the temperature that matters so much as the damp, and the house being built without fireplaces. I will however recount all the misfortunes that have happened to us since we left Malta. I supposed that a French boat would be better than an Italian, and so took passage in a Fraysinet; being also tempted by the prospect of going straight to Genoa instead of calling at a lot of hot and malarious Italian towns. The boat was small, crowded and uncomfortable, but would not have been very bad but for the odour of an unfortunate cripple in the next cabin. (If I get confused, remember that it is sunday† morning, and some excellent folks are clacking away to A.G. {1} just outside). We got to Genoa in time for an early fast train which would have taken us to Milan in comfortable time for lunch; but the sanitary authority chose to come at 8 instead of 6 to set us free, for which the Superior Being said he ought to have 4 dozen on the spot. The Superior Being was Major Dudley North, aide-de-camp to the late Gov[erno]r of Malta. After we had given him that name (which he thoroughly deserves) I overheard a little frenchman saying “ce grand anglais n’est pas fait comme les autres parce que les autres sont plus petits”. The S.B. was exceedingly kind to us. He said no people were so obstinate as women and invalids, and it was necessary that some one should give orders and be responsible. He and Mr Magistrate-and-Collector Sharpe, (an old maid on his way home from India, just like Jack when he first comes in in “a terrible villain”) travelled with us as far as Alessandria, and took care of us. Then the government contrived that we should arrive at Milan at half past nine instead of half past seven, and the Lord provided an Italian nobleman for the last two hours who insisted on keeping all the windows open at his end of the carriage. Of course I caught cold being thoroughly worn out by getting up at 6 for the sanitary who didn’t come, and an 8 hours journey. We were at Milan during those damned Xtian festivals so that everything was shut up and Brioschi was away at Rome. Our arrival in Switzerland was the signal for a rainy season which has been bottled up for months. We had to wait a day for the rain at Mendrisio, where we were told that the mule ride up here was very fatiguing[,] especially for those unaccustomed to the animal. So I was persuaded to be carried up in a chair like this. [Alongside is a sketch of a seated man being carried in a litter by two others.] After a little while one learns a peculiar trick of holding on, and then it is not quite so bad. Lucy was on a mule with a stumpy tail, and had the umbrellas and wraps strapped on behind her, so that she looked like Dian stalking to the chase. [Alongside is a sketch of a rear view of a person seated on a mule, with ‘umbrellas and wraps’ strapped behind.] The road is sheltered until the last few steps, when one comes on the open space where the hotel is. That gave me a violent toothache at once. They say Addington Symonds has just been here for a month, and derived enormous benefit; but I suppose God sharpened the wind to the shorn lamb, as usual. The people here can’t remember it so cold as it became yesterday. I went to bed with a jorum of arrowroot gruel, strongly flavoured with brandy, and Georgie’s hot-water-bottle which was an infinite comfort.

Just got your letter and delighted at the prospect it holds out. I saw a proof of Tait’s review which Macmillans sent me—I would rather Clerk Maxwell had done it, because he has more than one idea; Tait divides all mathematical books into those which are friendly or not friendly to the study of quaternions. We have always been on the best of terms; my review of the unseen universe {2} was entirely complimentary to him and Balfour Stewart, and only used the book as a peg on which to hang shots at other things—(good metaphor—wants working up). I am very much better for the news from Belgium, and hope it has given all the cardinals the stomach-ache. The torpedo is protected from sardines: he carries an oil-box in which he packs them when captured, and in this way he pays his way. Love to Georgie & Alice, with many kisses, from

Thy
Willi {3}

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{1} i.e. Almighty God. Cf. the second postscript to CLIF A4/13b.

{2} The Unseen Universe, by Balfour Stewart and P. G. Tait (1875). Clifford’s response to this book was published in the Fortnightly Review (new series, vol. xvii, pp. 776-93) and reprinted in Lectures and Essays (vol. i, pp. 228-53).

{3} Reading uncertain. Probably ‘Willi’ altered from ‘Willy’.

(Monte Generoso, Mendrisio, Switzerland.)—It is very cold. Discusses Willi’s health. Yesterday he was introduced to a group of people as a celebrated atheist.

(Undated.)

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Transcript

Oh my beloved Fred & Georgie why are we to be frozen to death? This is the coldest most shivery chatter-your-teeth sort of place you can possibly imagine & yet we hear it is the great thing & best new dodge for consumption. J. Addington Symonds who is very far gone indeed has been here some weeks getting cured & has now gone to a still higher & colder place. Willi is not any worse than he was at Como, & his appetite is pretty fair & that’s the best report I can give. I must tell you that though he was very tired & ill getting from Como to Mendrisio, the moment he got into Switzerland he looked brighter blinked his dear blue eyes, spotted a pretty girl, & said he felt better for being on Republican soil.—Yesterday at Mendrisio a nice looking man was very civil to me & made up to me for some time. {1} I thought it was all on my own account, for I looked very nice, till he took me on the side & with a little apology all in a stage whisper asked me if my husband was the Prof Clifford who had dropped on to Elam. {2}—When I had told him yes he left me to my fate, {3} collected his party together & presented them to Willi with great pomp & ceremony. We think he may have been Cook’s agent & may charge his folk a little more for having introduced them to a first class Atheist. The food here is very good, {3} the place is very lovely, but for the cold we sh[oul]d be in good quarters. Willi was so thankful for the hot water bottle (Georgie gave him) last night. He had 4 men to bring him up (he has only drawn two) in the dandy chair he looked like a Guy Fawkes, altogether we made up a brave & beautiful sight.

Your letter has just come, & the post goes out at the same time so I can’t say more. The old man is a shade better if anything I think. Goodbye dears we long to see you & shall pimp {4} when we do—post going

always
Your affectionate
Lucy

So glad about Walter’s lecture.

Can’t write well because of the praying and singing folk 20 yards off. {5}

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{1} Full stop supplied.

{2} This is the apparent reading, but the meaning is unclear.

{3} Comma supplied.

{4} Reading uncertain.

{5} This sentence was added at the head of the letter.

24 Bryanston Street (London).—Thanks them for Alice’s birthday gift. Hopes Monte Generoso will suit Willi. Discusses their correspondence, and repeats her suggestion of coming to see them with the children. Sends news of friends.

(With an envelope.)

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Transcript

24 Bryanston Street
June 17./78

My dearest Lucy & Willi I have not been able to write before to thank you very naughty people for sending Alice that most lovely necklace. It arrived on her birthday, on Saturday, in its exciting registered box & I knew at once that nobody but you would have thought of her so far away. It looks like Maltese work—is it? It is most exquisite & fairy like, but she will not need the silver forget-me-nots to remind her of her uncle & auntie. It was very wrong of you to get it for her you know & you both deserve a thorough good scolding. This morning I have got your card from Lugano. I do hope & think that you will find Monte Generoso a real good place for Willi & that he will enjoy the rest & beautiful air there. Fred wrote to you on Wed. to Lugano w[hic]h ought to have reached on Friday; we also sent a paper—& I wrote on Friday. I suppose you will be going down to Lugano now & then for letters till you are sure everybody has y[ou]r address. (I see you say you have ordered letters to be sent on.) {1} F. is going to send you the Pall Mall Budget. We thought you w[oul]d have seen all the papers of the world in y[ou]r hotels. I am very anxious for y[ou]r answer to my letter & suggestion of last Friday: I think it would be so much the best plan, & now there are so many comforts in travelling, coupé-lits &c, that the children & I should do it most easily. I think we had better come bag and baggage: Bessie, Jessie & 3 chicks. Fred & I sh[oul]d feel very venerable at being the parents of all that.

We saw Mr Roberts of the Mint at the R.I. on Friday. He looked radiant when he talked of your children & said they were so good & nothing but a joy in the house. What a dear little man he is. Fred called at the Huxleys yes[terda]y & heard a capital report: Mrs H. & Madge had gone to the seaside & all the rest were quite well.

Alice had a good many presents on her 2nd birthday. The baby’s opera from her dada & a box of bricks, 2 pinafores, 2 pelisses, a doll, a box of furniture, another picture-book & another box full of painted bricks to be made up into puzzles. She bore the excitement well on the whole & was not cross. She had no tea-party w[hic]h was just as well. She was very hazy about what it all meant & answered when asked how old she was, sometimes “Alice”, and sometimes “buffday”.

We shall be longing to hear how you prosper on the generous mountain. Ever dear Lucy & Willi your very affectionate

Georgina H Pollock

[Envelope addresed to:] Mrs W. K. Clifford | hôtel de Generoso | Mendrisio | [In the top left-hand corner:] Switzerland

—————

The envelope was postmarked at London, W., on 17 June 1878, and at Mendrisio on 20 June 1878. Letters omitted from words abbreviated by superscript letters have been supplied in square brackets.

{1} ‘I see … sent on.’ interlined; brackets supplied.

Exeter.—Lucy is unwell (in London), and will not be able to get up for two or three weeks. Describes Minnie’s amusing recital of the creed. Congratulates Sir Frederick Pollock on being made Queen’s Remembrancer. Has written to The Times to suggest that the Oxford railway accident may have been caused by the use of an old carriage.

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Transcript

Exeter.
Dec 27/74

Dearest Mother

I can’t write anything coherently because there is a man here talking to Papa and and nothing muddles me like a noise. Poor Lucy is laid up with a very severe cold and slight fever. She had a violent toothache and her face swelled up to an awful size and I took her to Fletcher who did her some good. But the doctor says she won’t be able to get up for two or three weeks, poor little thing. It’s very wrong of Mr Providence to make her ill just as I have to be down here and can’t look after her. My little sister Minnie (9½) has distinguished herself. She was saying the creed to Edith “he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead ‥ and after several other adventures he got back to heaven.” They all send their love to you. Please to congratulate Sir Frederic from me on being made Queen’s Remembrancer and ask him to remind her that I am going to be married and would like a nice large pension.

Mind you get rid of your cold and don’t go to see Hamlet too often. I have written to the Times to say that an old carriage broke down on the train I came down by, just at the time of the Oxford accident; merely to illustrate the practice of the railway company. {1} It may be put in tomorrow (Monday). I shall write to Morley tomorrow and tell him to apply to you. I have read more of my book about the Arabs (Dozy, histoire des Musulmans d’Espagne) and am more than ever delighted with it. Goodnight, dear Mama; a happy new year to you all.

Your loving son
Willi

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Letter-head monogrammed ‘W C’, presumably the initials of the writer’s father.

{1} On 24 December a serious railway accident occurred on the Great Western Railway line close to Shipton-on-Cherwell, near Oxford. Thirty-one people were killed and more than seventy injured. Clifford wrote to The Times the next day to suggest that the accident might have been caused by the use of an old carriage ‘which had not been used for some time’, since the breakdown of an old carriage had delayed his own journey from Paddington to Exeter on the same day. His letter was printed on Thursday the 31st (p. 7).

Aldeburgh - Thanks him for 'Selected Passages from his Works'; reminisces about Frazer meeting [Sir Alfred] Lyall, Ray Lankester, [Sir Frederick] Pollock and [James Allanson] Picton in 1905 when they rowed to Oxford; and a visit the Frazers paid in 1910 in company with [Thomas] Hardy 'and his present wife' [Florence], [John Bagnell] Bury, and Sutherland Black, and when he was summoned to town on Holman Hunt's death; the 'Literary Review' has a review of Paul Couchoud's book ['L'Énigme de Jésus'?] by Thomas Whittaker; quotes the Einstein limerick starting, 'There was a young lady named Bright'.

Trinity College, Cambridge.—Sends some lithographed notes on analytical geometry. Has been told that they cannot become Masters of Arts till next term. Jokes about Pollock's hat, and refers to Auerbach’s Spinoza, the new edition of Shelley, and Sidgwick's interpretation of one of Myers's poems.

(Marked 'Jan. 1870'.)

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Transcript

Trin. Coll. Camb.
Tuesday.

Dear Fred

My lithographed notes were on analytical geometry, and they only got as far as the logical foundations of the algebra thereof; howbeit the first two I send you. We cannot become MM.A. (had you there, I think) till next Term, teste Luard, who ought to know {1}—and who apparently thought I ought to know, for he nearly went into a fit at my ignorance, and spoke in a tone which implied that the eastertermness of first masterhood was at least a synthetic judgment a priori. Don’t know Grote. {2} In regard to your shiny hat (otherwhence described to me as a bright and beautiful object) I wish to observe

1ᵒ. That a habit is to be broken because it is an external circumstance which interferes with my liberty.

2ᵒ. That nevertheless habit-breaking is a virtuous action or a sin according as it proceeds from my internal activity or from the action of circumstances yet more external than the habit.

3ᵒ. That I do things not because society is ripe for being improved by becoming more like me (and I am so nice!) but because I darn choose, confound you!

4ᵒ That nobody is bound on my principles or on any thing else; because Freedom is All.

5ᵒ That you had better sit on it.

Is Auerbach’s Spinoza {3} all about Clara Maria van der Ende? I think she must have been an interesting person. I have gotten the new Shelley, than which I am sure a more detestable book {4}

Yours truly (I mean gruly; it’s put in for the rhyme—I am suffering from heartburn. Sidgwick says that in Myers’ poem the figure of Faith as Our Lady is only realistic and does not mean anything—what do you think? {5}

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Written in purple ink.

{1} Luard was the University registrary.

{2} Probably either John Grote, a Fellow of Trinity, formerly Professor of Moral Philosophy, or George Grote, the historian and politician. The latter’s Aristotle is mentioned in CLIF A4/3.

{3} Presumably Berthold Auerbach’s novel Spinoza, first published in German in 1837, though his translation of Spinoza’s works, published in 1841, also contains a ‘life’.

{4} The reference may be to the revised edition of the poet’s poetical works edited by Mary Shelley, published by Edward Moxon, Son, & Co. in 1869.

{5} The reference appears to be to F. W. H. Myers’ poem ‘The Translation of Faith’, published in Poems (London and Cambridge: Macmillan & Co., 1870). Cf. the following lines:

From where she lay the very Faith arose;
She stood as never she shall stand again,
And for an instant manifest to men:—
In figure like the Mother-maid who sees
The deepest heart of hidden mysteries

The poem is dated at Rome, 7 January 1870, but the preliminary note to the volume is dated March 1870, which would appear to indicate that the date marked on the letter is wrong. However, it may be that Clifford, Sidgwick, and Pollock saw the poem before it was published, or the allusion might be to a different poem.

(Place of writing not indicated.)—Pollock should certainly consult his fiancée about the length of their engagement. Sends some lines which were meant to begin his play Lassalle, and explains why he is thinking of taking it up again. States the terms of business of the Birkbeck Bank. Has been to see Le Roi Carotte.

(Undated. Le Roi Carotte, a comic opera by Offenbach, was first performed in England on 3 June 1872.)

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Transcript

My best Fred

I quite agree with you that you ought to speak. There may of course be a question about the wisdom of a formal engagement of great length; but it is distinctly a question in which she ought to have a voice.

Misunderstandings are so very easy in these matters that I think it is impossible to be too candid in defining one’s precise position, even when candour has the air of brutality; as if one should tell a jeune mariée that one did not desire her to be unfaithful to existing ties. There is a pretty song which has the refrain

I was a fool to love, I know,
But more a fool to tell you so!

It seems to me, though, that if the poet had even said “I love you, I want nothing in return, but I thought it fair to let you know”; he would have met with a more marked success.

I can’t find the lines I spoke of, but here are some about three years old, that were meant to begin the play of Lassalle. {1} I dropt the design on hearing that at the time of his death he was in treaty with Bismarck. Now I think I shall take it up again to shew how the prophetic spirit may ruin the holiest cause.

The bank is the Birkbeck bank in Southampton Buildings; backed, I am told, by the Union. You must not draw more than fifty without giving a day’s notice, and they retain the cancelled drafts; otherwise it is like any other bank except that you get 4 per cent on your lowest balance for the month, paid at the end of the year.

After all, Moulton & I went to see Le Roi Carotte. {2} He is an exact incarnation of the Rurals. {3} Thine ever

Willie.

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{1} Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-64) was a German socialist.

{2} A comic opera by Offenbach. It was was first performed in England, in a translation by Henry S. Leigh, at the Alhambra Theatre Royal on 3 June 1872, and ran there till about 26 November (see The Times, etc.).

{3} Probably a reference to the members of the ‘Assembly of Rurals’, a name given to the French National Assembly of 1871.

(Funchal, Madeira.)—Entrusts the education of his children to Pollock and Huxley, desiring them to be brought up without any knowledge of ‘theological hypotheses’. Expresses his love for his wife, and sends love to members of the Pollock family.

(With envelope. Undated. According to Fisher Dilke, this letter was written ‘twenty minutes or so’ before Clifford’s death.)

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Transcript

My dearest Fred

I am told this must be written before I get dazed, as I may not get clear enough again. No words can say what a friend you have been to me. {1} I who have had so many and so good ones, must always count you the best and the truest. I have nothing to leave you but my children; the education of which I entrust to you and Huxley; I want them brought up without any knowledge of theological—that last syllable {2}—hypotheses at all, but if the nursery {3} should teach anything of the sort, it should be set aside with the simple argument suited to the form it is presented in. For the rest of their education, which I should probably spoil, {4} I must trust you. I like them to stay with the Roberts’s, whose kindness in this regard has been boundless, but if my most beloved and devoted wife Lucy, who is the best and best loved that ever lived, should survive the shock of my death, she will of course take care of such things herself.

Give my love to Sir Frederic & my Lady, {4} to my dearest Georgie and your kids, to the Walters and Jack and to all that have it.

Yours always
Willi

[Direction on envelope:] Fred

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Written in pencil, in a very shaky hand.

{1} Full stop supplied, in place of a comma.

{2} The writer had made several attempts to write the last two letters of ‘theological’. The following dash has been supplied.

{3} Reading uncertain.

{4} Comma supplied.

Combe Bank, Sevenoaks.—Has found his collars, and hopes to find his socks too. Is sorry to hear about Smut (their dog). Refers to the characters of Cyril and Hughie (Spottiswoode’s sons), and wishes she were there. Fred Pollock has sent an account of his forthcoming lecture at the Royal Institution.

(Dated Sunday.)

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Transcript

Combe Bank, Sevenoaks {1}
Sunday

My own pet—I have found my collars: there is so much furniture in this room that it takes a week to investigate all the drawers; but I hope before coming home to have discovered my socks also. The news about Smut is very sad—he ought to have some medicine, but do not give him Morison’s pills because they do not agree with him. Cyril is a dear little boy; he never thinks of himself but is entirely wrapped up in Hughie whom he thinks a most alarming swell. {2} They have a conjuring book and are always doing tricks except when they play cricket with the dog. Oh my sweet child if you were only here! {3}—mushrooms! grown in a hot-house in the dark—such beauties—dwell upon them in silence for a few moments. Fred Pollock has sent an account of his lecture that he is to give at the R. I. in words of one syllable. {4} Here is the post going so I must shut up

By-bye my own darling child
Your loving old man
Willi.

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{1} Home of William Spottiswoode.

{2} The references are to Spottiswoode’s two sons, Cyril Andrew (born 1867) and William Hugh (born 1864).

{3} Lucy may have stayed at home because she was about to give birth to the couple’s second child, Alice Margaret, born on 11 April.

{4} Pollock delivered a Friday evening discourse on Spinoza at the Royal Institution on 20 April. See The Times, 24 April 1877, p. 12.

The Hollies, Clapham Common, S.W.—Is distressed to hear how ill Clifford is. All at the Metaphysical Society like him, and Cardinal Manning, on hearing the news, wrote out the enclosed cheque immediately. Encloses a cheque of his own.

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Transcript

The Hollies
Clapham Common
S.W
April 26th 1876

My dear Mr Pollock

I am indeed distressed to hear how ill poor Clifford is. You are quite right in supposing that I know him well—& I like him ever better than I know him—thinking of him as one of the finest intellects & bravest natures I ever met.

We all like him at our Metaphysical Club I think—extremely—& I had a pleasant little proof of it last night when I was telling Cardinal Manning how ill he was & talking over the discussion between Clifford & himself at the last Metaphysical evening. The Cardinal was greatly touched & sorry—& begged to be allowed to do whatever I was myself going to do—by way of aiding the Fund which you are so kindly collecting. I was quite sure that if Clifford did come to know of this eagerness & forwardness of Manning’s it would be a great pleasure to him & undertook to send to you the enclosed cheque for £10 from the Cardinal—which he wrote in my name rather than in Clifford’s out of a feeling of delicacy.

He went away with me from the midst of a great reception he was holding to give me this at once—& if our Metaphysical Society does nothing else but encourage the sort of kind & friendly feelings thus shown I think & hope it will not have existed in vain.

I enclose my own cheque for £10–10 & shall be greatly obliged to you if you will let me know whether any more would be desirable or necessary.
With thanks to yourself for writing to me

I am
[…] {1}
James Knowles

To / F. Pollock Esq

I have crossed the Cardinal’s cheque for greater security—& I think it ought to have a 1d stamp put on it—ought it not?

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Black-edged paper.

{1} There are two indistinct words here.

11 Portsea Place, Connaught Square, W.—Has sent for a copy of Little People, and will copy out the ‘lily song’ (see A2/7). Refers to aspects of her husband’s personality she would Pollock to bring out in his memoir. Has been trying to comfort herself with ideas of a future consciousness. Mrs Deffell is concerned that the Pollocks are not enjoying their holiday.

(With an envelope.)

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Transcript

11 Portsea Place. Connaught Square. W.
Weds night 16th Ap[ri]l

My dear Fred

I have sent for my copy of Little People {1}. Meanwhile I will copy out the lily song in case you want if from the MS copy he gave me because it has a little note which was too late to include in the book. I hope you are not working too hard. I am convinced I shall be the death of you because I keep thinking of more & more sides which I am anxious you shall bring out. I have been thinking now of how merry he was, how he liked to see his friends about him (he was always arranging little dinners & asking if we could not afford “a little party” & you remember his bachelor parties.) And how simple & how happy he was & what a ringing laugh he had with a little shout at the end. There was such a wonderful light & life & brightness ab[ou]t him.

I often think of his glee when he came home from the Metaph: {2} if it had been a good night & the Bishops had appeared & he had been in good form how he w[oul]d not only tell me everything everybody had said but mimic the manner in which it was said. We have sat over the fire & shouted with laughter when he added ridiculous little tags of his own on to what had been really said. The last time he ever went he spent all the money he had on the way (he dined at the club first) & when he was at the station coming home found to his dismay he had’nt† a penny. Lord Arthur Russell turned up so he borrowed a 1/– took a ticket & “paid back 6d on account”.1 It will be good for people to see his brightness & spice of wickedness. I should be so sorry if they thought he always lived at high pressure like a prophet—it w[oul]d spoil his humanity.

It seems as if one could say too much ab[ou]t him—too many things that were good. I have been thinking such wild things lately and—supposing for a moment there is after consciousness—wondering if it could be possible for many forms of intellect & beauty to take refuge in one physical frame until they made up a perfect whole worthy of standing alone; so that Willi represented the former consciousness of many & is after all living still or carrying on in some other world what is first going on in this—the survival of the fittest. You see this differs from the old transmigration idea (the Buddhist &c.) because it makes only the best & greatest, i e the strongest, survive, & even these are grouped after the fashion of the atom & molecule theory—it is that over again until the higher type is formed. It would quite account for his many sidedness, his many forms of greatness imperfect only from accident or physical restraint.

I think I shall set up as having invented a new religion. You cannot think how well it works in many ways. It would account for the dim remembrance of things we have never consciously seen which sometimes flickers across us. What a comfort the flicker would be a sign we were working upwards. Then (in old days) the population question frightened me so when I thought of the people that had been pouring into the unseen world since we first became me. It gets rid of this—the weak & useless & so the majority die out, are lost in the struggle for existence yet we sh[oul]d all believe our own people immortal—is it not Darwinian? It gives no excuse for persecution or priesthood and has many other sides all of which I have arranged most carefully. I don’t know where my unknown world is to be because I know nothing about Space or what my immortals (they need not even be immortal) are to do, the higher type would find the higher worlds—which of course would still be progressive. Of course I know it is all nonsense & I know it all ceases with the circulation & that the brain & nerves & grey matter & all that makes our consciousness dries up and there is no more life left than in spoilt quicksilver or mercury, but one tries to comfort oneself with any madness.

Mrs Deffell came yesterday. She said Georgie had sent her “a charming letter” but she (Mrs D.) seemed much concerned ab[ou]t your holiday & drew a tragic picture of you writing & Georgie sewing & the rain raining & nothing going on but the bill. I wonder if Jack’s toes are visible yet. I fear the poor little chicks are not getting much good out of the country in this wretched weather.

Now I will take my chloral which I have reduced from 22 to 16 grains as an experiment & go to bed. Goodnight my dearest Georgie & Fred

Y[ou]r loving
Lucy Clifford

Willi often used to say “be free” at the end of his letters, he said it was an old form & much better than goodbye which was full of superstition.

[Direction on envelope:] F. Pollock Esq | Royal Ascot Hotel | Ascot

—————

Black-edged paper and envelope. The envelope was postmarked at London, W., and at Staines and Sunninghill, on 17 April 1879. Letters missing from words abbreviated by superscript letters have been supplied in square brackets.

{1} The Little People, and Other Tales (London: Chapman and Hall, 1874), a collection of fairy stories by Lady Pollock, W. K. Clifford, and W. H. Pollock.

{2} The Metaphysical Society.

† Sic.

Trinity College, Cambridge.—Thanks him for a paper-knife. Imagines a comic scene in connection with the canvassing for the university living. J.W. is shocked that Pollock went to see the play Frou-Frou.

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Transcript

Trinity College, Cambridge
Wednesday
May 11

Dear Mr Pollock

This is indeed a paper-knife of pride. {1} I have just been cutting up a French translation of Helmholtz’ Tonempfindungen {2} with it, and I am sorry to say that severe book is already looking quite drunk with the accidental touch of ivory grapes and vineleaves. By a very happy thought I have just laid in a stock of the Trinity paper-knives, which I am assiduously leaving about by way of bread upon the waters.

The university living has given rise to the following interesting scene of canvass

1st Lady (in BB♭) Consider, my dear Mrs Th–ms–n, that my son-in-law has seven children.

2nd do (in DD) But, you see, my dear Mrs B–nd, my candidate has eight children.

1st Lady (in F) Well, but ‥ you know ‥ there is no-doubt whatever that ‥ before the day of election ‥ my son-in-law’s family will also have reached that number.

2nd lady (in a voiceless whisper) But ‥ we have the strongest reasons to think, that before then we shall have nine, and perhaps even ten {3}!

1st Lady disguises her collapse

Of course it is the 24th, and the mistake was mine. Luckily in writing to Mrs Crotch I called it Wednesday the 24th, and can easily explain that the latter is the correct date. J.W. is really quite seriously shocked about your going to Frou Frou at the Olympic. {4} He told me he once had an opportunity of seeing Devrient {5} in Faust, and had neglected it. I endeavoured to look like Leighton, as if no amount of friendship or courtesy would enable one to regard that as venial.

I must go now and read Fred in the Spectator, {6} so good-bye.

Yours ever
W. K. Clifford.

—————

Black-edged paper.

{1} Probably a birthday present. Clifford celebrated his birthday on 4 May.

{2} Théorie physiologique de la musique, fondée sur l'étude des sensations auditives (1868), a translation by Georges Guéroult of Hermann von Helmholtz’s’ Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (‘On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music’), first published in 1863.

{3} Underlined twice.

{4} Frou-Frou, a comedy by Ludovic Halévy and Henri Meilhac, translated from the French by H. Sutherland Edwards, was produced at the Olympic Theatre on 16 April.

{5} One of the members of the notable German theatrical family, probably Karl August Devrient (1797-1872), whose most popular parts included the title role in Goethe’s Faust.

{6} An unsigned review by Frederick Pollock of Robert Willis’s Benedict de Spinoza, his Life, Correspondence, and Ethics (London: Trübner & Co., 1870) in the Spectator, No. 2184 (week ending 7 May 1870), pp. 589-91.

21 Hyde Park Place, W.2. - Apologises for having no better report to give; as to the 'Fasti', he thinks the Lincoln's Inn Library will buy a copy; suggests employing an assistant to check references in bulk; agrees that 'crainte' is the better word.

9 Stanhope Place, Hyde Park, W. - Pole's article on 'A Clever Forger' in the Cornhill [Magazine] 'has been ascribed to several writers. Asks if the letters from Edward FitzGerald to Sir Frederic Pollock, mentioned by Wright, are published.