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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

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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.

(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.