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.
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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.