Showing 7 results

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.

—————

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?

—————

Black-edged paper.

{1} There are two indistinct words here.

On embossed notepaper, 'Archbishop's House, Westminster, S.W.' - Thanks for memorial of the Cardinal [Wiseman].

Hôtel Floresta, Taormina [headed notepaper]:- Will start back towards England next Wednesday or Thursday, stopping perhaps for a few days at Rome; wants to be back by the end of the month. The weather has been ‘delicious for a while now’, but he is ‘a little tired of the place’, probably as he is now accustomed to the ‘strange sights that one sees in such a Southern climate’ and ‘no more moved by a cactus’ than he would be ‘by an oak tree in England’ - for which he is beginning ‘to feel a bit of a longing’.

The ‘priest element is still predominant’ at his hotel: a ‘high-church Anglican has arrived’, and he can ‘hear [Edward Sheridan] Purcell’s Manning being discussed on the terrace’ as he writes. Miss [Lena] Milman, ‘from the tower of London [her father was Major there]’ is also staying here; she was ‘deafened by the explosion in the Tower, and is spoken to and speaks in a loud voice’. One of the two Roman Catholic priests [see 46/45] is her cousin, and they ‘converse during meals with the voice of John Burns addressing an open-air meeting’: since they ‘discuss most topics, and pretty freely, the sober visitors are much diverted or else shocked’. Her cousin is ‘in an indirect manner’ rather like ‘the hero of a late story of George Moore, *John Norton’ - or ‘something like him, for the hero is an odious person, and the story too for that matter’. Miss Milman is a ‘friend and disciple of George Moore’s’ and once told him about her ‘priestly cousin, whom G. M. promptly transmogrified into the most detestable portrait… in his not over-choice gallery of characters’.

When he returns to England, Robert will ‘have had enough scrambling over the globe for some time’; will not go to Greece in July with Fry, Dickinson, and Wedd as he had hoped. Hopes Georgie will be ‘fit for his tripos when he returns’.

Signed by Henry Edward Manning, Robert Isaac Wilberforce & William Hodge Mill.

Asks her to tell Captain Hibbert that he hopes to come and find them at home; would have given him 'great pleasure to come on Sunday Evening' but he has to 'close the Mission at the Augustinian Church that night'. If he can get away in time, he will happily call on them on his way home.