The nine letters reflect the two men's shared interest in mathematics and their closer ties of friendship: the discussions of mathematical problems and recent work appear in letters with private nicknames: Brer B'ar and Wicked Will (Johnson) and Brer Crawfish and Bullfrog (Glaisher). Glaisher also shares his opinions on international copyright, the cost of books used by schools, his work editing papers, his preferred work pattern. He writes a good deal about Trinity College life and politics, noting with pleasure the number of Trinity men in the Cabinet, and provides an assessment of Prince Albert Victor at Trinity ("I only hate him when he picks his teeth"). In one 30 page letter dated 25 October 1888 he writes candidly about the internal politics surrounding the election of a Trinity representative to the University Council, and has much to say about certain members of the Trinity College Fellowship: H. M. Taylor, A. R. Forsyth, Arthur Cayley, Henry Jackson, James Ward, J. N. Langley, and the Master H. M. Butler. Accompanying the letters is a note dated 21 Feb. 1891 recording a divided vote on Tutorial accounts which appears to have been separated from an explanatory letter.
Four letters concerning arrangements to do the portrait, mentions that his sister Mrs J. M. Image "knows Mr Taylor & has fired my imagination with his description."
Halford, Shipston on Stour -Thanks him for the book ['Man, God and Immortality'?], worries that it may injure the sale of the bigger books; can make nothing of 'tangor' in Ovid, suggests he try Housman, 'who is saturated with the usages of Latin poetry'; approves the dedication to Boni, who was kind in Rome in 1901; death of H. M. Taylor prompts him to remember the rhyme, 'Not Trotter nor Taylor nor Image Esquire is half such a man as little Joe Prior,' though he didn't agree with the sentiment, did not respect Prior; could not return to Cambridge with its ghosts; he did not expect to survive so many; writes of his failing health and that of his sister; will be losing their maid in the spring. Accompanied by the envelope.
Trin. Coll.