Her name is mis-spelled as 'Edith' in the label beneath the photograph,
Park Lodge, Wimbledon, S.W.—Transmits Nichol Smith’s reply.
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Transcript
Park Lodge, Wimbledon, S.W.
9 Jan. 1924
Dear McKerrow
I enclose Nicol† Smith’s reply. {1} I have written to him that I was forwarding it to you with the suggestion that you should write direct if you saw fit.
I expect to be home again about Tuesday. {2}
Yrs
W.W.G.
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{1} MCKW A3/11b.
{2} 15th. Cf. MCKW A3/12.
† Sic.
Title written by hand below. Reference number '13' included in print at bottom right.
Lee House, Montreal, Canada - The Rev. William Leach has requested WL to recommend to WW an application contained in the accompanying letter [see WL to WW, 5 March 1859]. Dr Leach is a canon of WL's Cathedral and Professor of Logic and Moral Philosophy in McGill College.
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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Transcript
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.
Oakley House, Caversham Hill, near Reading.—Thanks her for her kind letter, and asks whether she might pay her a visit on Saturday.
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Transcript
Oakley House, Caversham Hill, nr Reading
My dear Mrs Clifford,
So many thanks for your dear, kind letter. May I come in and see you very early next Saturday? Will ten be too early. There are so many calls to be made that it is difficult to fix on a more convenient time. But if my coming, for an hour at that time would put you out at all please send me a card by return, and kindly say what hour that morning is the earliest that will suit you.
Pray do not trouble to write if I may come at ten.
With much love,
Ever yours affectionately,
Ellen M. Watson
The British Academy, Burlington Gardens, W.1.—The Council of the Academy have resolved to propose McKerrow for election as a Fellow. Asks if he is willing to become one and observe the regulations.
(A printed form, filled up by hand; with an envelope.)
(Sheffield?)—Sends further notes on Nashe.
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Transcript
Dear McKerrow,
I am reading Nashe again.
Some of these ideas probably occurred to me before—& were communicated to you—I must apologize if so.
GCMS.
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This brief letter and the accompanying notes (MCKW A2/11b) were probably written not long before 20 October 1912, when Moore Smith referred to their contents in a postcard (MCKW A2/15), clearly expecting them to be easily identified. But as the statement with which the letter begins appears to indicate that Moore Smith had begun reading Nashe again after a break, it presumably precedes his letter of 28 September (MCKW A2/12), which also contains notes on that author.
Labelled 'Professor Grote'. Ink and wash sketch of Trumpington Church drawn directly onto the album page above.
Translated by Alan George Ferrers Howell, and transcribed by his wife Anne, 'with Additions, alterations & corrections in his own handwriting', as recorded by a note on the title page, first volume. Contents page at front of each volume.
Bound by Whitelaw and Fensham, Tudor Street, E.C.
Benvenuto da Imola (c 1320 – 1388), Italian scholar and historianWith elaborate title page: 'La Villeggiatura di Maiano, Ossia l'Illustrazione della medesima e delle sue adiacenze insieme con lo schiarimento d'alcuni punti d'Istoria di quel Paese e della Città di Firenze, e con annotazioni topografiche, ed altre riguardanti le opere e la persona di M. Giovanni di Boccaccio da Certaldo'. Index of contents, with page numbers, on pp. 3-7.
Note at end of manuscript: 'Copia estratta da un Manoscritto esistente in Casa Gherardi, favorito dal Sacerdote Francesco Mencheraglia'.
Leader, John Temple (1810-1903), politician and connoisseur of the artsTranscript
Nashe. {1}
III {2}
147. 20. too. I suppose this is ‘to’—and that you take it so.
154. 21. Nashe seems to understand istic as = hic, instead of being opposed to it. In his age hic and iste were thought to be synonymous.
162. 9. Is emendation needed? May not ‘Madam Amphitrite’ {3} simply mean ‘the sea’?
163. 5. Cp. Silius 5. 396 | latrantes undae
168. 15. I suppose ‘vernaculum’ is due to Plautus, Poenulus IV. 2. 105.
—. 32. Should it be ‘to them lurtched’? The sense is still not clear.
171. 27. ? Essæx-surprised? or last-surprised? Might not the attack on Gadiz be taken as a surprize?
173. 19. ? ‘Maiden-piece’—‘our maiden paragon’ = Elizabeth.
177. 20. ‘of an enflamed zeale to copper-smithes hal’?
178. 10. should not ‘shee’ be ‘hee’? (the country gentleman)
179. 32. laborathro. {3} The Spanish form seems to be laboradór—and a medial ‘d’ often in Spanish has the sound ‘th’. That would give ‘laborathór’.
180. 10. ‘it gives their handfuls to’—? it keeps their hands fully employed.
184. 2. Was the Lord Mayor that year a Fishmonger?
186. 21. arming forth, though it be but a catch . . . . . . . bowle, to impe-the-winges-of his convoy—‘to speed his convoy.’
186. 29. What had the bailies of the Cinque Ports to do in Yarmouth?
188. 31. 200 witches are however said to have been executed in Scotland in 1590 for causing a storm the year before.
191. 32. Is ‘clumme’ a variant of ‘glum’?
210 8. This seems to come from an etymology of ‘absurdus’—I suppose not in Isidorus Hispalensis?
217. 9. Query, a parody of a legal phrase such as in the ‘particular strict and usual’ meaning of the word.
[217.] {5} 20. Does this mean in Armado-language— ‘was no breathe-able (or acceptable) scent to the channel of her ear’
244. 358. Solstitium, come into the court without. I suppose the play was not acted in the Court-yard of the Archbishop’s Palace? I am rather surprized at yr statement that the usual supper time was 9—and that the play was presumably acted still later. In Ascham’s time at Cambridge dinner was at 10 & supper at 5 I think and Nashe says the feast at a Commence-ment was held about 3.
249. 491. I dont feel sure that these lines are corrupt—‘when he returns to the sea from which he rose, then he assumes the god’—Or do you think the word ‘dawns’ implies a description of his rising?
250. 530. I should think ‘woods’ must stand for ‘words.’ Is there some definition of Poetry to correspond to this? Or would you prefer ‘woods’ because the Phaethontidae were turned into poplars?
[250.] {5} 533–5. I dont see any corruption here. The rocks do not refuse to be the source of streams And a stony heart cannot object to a cry of woe from those whom it has oppressed.
252. 615-7. These lines seem to me corrupt.
253. 630. Is Vertumnus humorously made to say | Orĭon Vrĭon Arĭon
258. 799. ‘I print this as prose.’ In my copy it looks like verse.
[258.] {5} 804. I suppose the last line of Collier’s note contains an error. ‘Town’ in the song means ‘homestead’ I suppose.
267. 1049. Can it be ‘flye fiue meale in the Element’ = fly in five pieces
270. Is a line wanting before l. 1160? Or should 1160 and 1161 be inverted?
285. l. 1654. If ‘me’ can be the Ethic Dative, the text may stand.
272. 1215. something must be wanting. Perhaps the whole Latin quotation
Where on the contrary ‘servitutem servi
Risci jocisque ulciscuntur mali’
which is then (incorrectly) translated.
291. 1836 &c. Some emendation seems necessary. I can only suggest
My murmuring springs, musicians of sweete sleepe,
2) Channel’d in a sweete falling quaterzaine,
1) To murmuring male-contents, with their well-turn’de aires {6}
To lull their eares (or cares) {7} asleepe, listning themselves
292. 1884. ‘This lowe built house.’ I am rather doubtful if actors would have spoken of the Arch-bishop’s Palace in these terms. And if so, I dont know what the line means. May they not mean the grave to which they are carrying Summer? & the words be sung, as the procession has already passed out of sight of the company?
250. 545 etc. You dont say these lines are corrupt—but they surely are. It seems to me that a line is wanting before 547—such as
‘And this same stream that now lies waterless’
In 550 ‘ran’ should probably be ‘run.’ But even so, the whole passage is very clumsy.
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{1} The succeeding notes relate to Nashes Lenten Stuffe and Summer’s Last Will and Testament.
{2} This volume number appears only before the first entry, but the rest are indented to show that it was intended to relate to all of them.
{3} ‘Madona Amphitrite’ in McKerrow’s edition.
{4} ‘laboratho’ in McKerrow’s edition. Cf. MCKW A2/15.
{5} The entry is indented to show that the page number of the preceding entry relates to this one as well.
{6} Numbers are braced to these two lines to indicate that their order should be reversed.
{7} ‘or cares’ added below ‘eares’. Brackets supplied.
Her name is mis-spelled as 'Katharine' in the label beneath the photograph.
Hotel Washington Irving, Granada.—On the 15th they leave for Cordova, Alicante, and Barcelona. They are ‘quite mad about everything Moorish’. Refers to the Pollocks’ forthcoming visit to Exeter, and discusses their children.
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Transcript
Hotel Washington Irving
Granada. Spain.—
4th August 76
My dear Georgie
The old man has written all the news this time. We leave here on the 15th for Cordova, stay there a day or two & then depart for Alicante & Barcelona but shall not stay long at either place so I hardly know our next address. I should so like to know what the babies say to each other. Do make them rub noses & kiss each other. Of course they will be delighted to see you at Exeter & Alice will receive much attention.—We are very happy here & quite mad about everything Moorish. I often think what terrible people we shall be to ask to dine when we return for if we only get a chance we talk about the Moors by the yard & here we argue & talk together & read up about them to such an extent that there will be no contradicting us on any point soon. The old man won’t get rid of his cough. he has seen two Drs but they neither seem to think him worse.
Ethel’s nose was a source of great anxiety to me for a long time. But I am assured that a baby’s nose is always doubtful—Mamma says mine was flat. It is quite the reverse now, so I should make myself easy about Alice.—I do hope you’ll have a nice time at Clovelly. You must want a change. Do tell me how Ethel looks, they will tell you where to write at Exeter if we have not told you ourselves. I have no time for more. Much love to you both and to the sweet thing.
Your affectionate
Lucy
(Place of writing not indicated.)—Thanks her for her ‘beautiful sad portrait’ and for Ethel’s.
(Perhaps a postscript to D2/11a.)
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Transcript
Thankyou my dear, dear friend for your beautiful sad portrait which I love—and for dear little Ethel’s. I wish I could say more but my time is not my own—this last day but one.
Ever yours lovingly
Ellen M. Watson
Ink and wash sketch of Trumpington Church drawn directly onto the album page above.
Title written by hand below.
86 Banbury Road, Oxford.—Declines to join the advisory panel, but expresses his support. Objects to a passage in the prospectus contrasting English and German scholarship.
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Transcript
86 Banbury Road,
Merton College, Oxford {1}
6 Jan. 1924.
Dear Greg,
I fear I mustn’t. The invitation has pleased me greatly. But in view of the number of my odd jobs here, and above all of my obligations to the Press—all of which eat up too much of my time for my own work—I dare not take on any new responsibility. I cannot promise to give the Review the active support of contributing to it, and I doubt if in any capacity I should be likely to do enough to justify the presence of my name on the panel. Of course I am all in favour of the Review, & I mean to push it here, and of course I am prepared—should you ask me—to offer my opinion now and then for what it may be worth. But I shan’t be playing fair if I appear to promise more.
May I even now as a token of my good will offer an opinion on the first sentence of the prospectus? It would be much improved if it stopped at the word ‘country’. The reference to Germany is unfortunate. I for one do not feel it ‘something of a disgrace’ that we have not had an Anglia and an Englische Studien. All the vital, productive movements in English scholarship during my time have started in this country, and have been carried on most efficiently in this country. What has Germany given us since 1900, or 1890? Why is it a disgrace not to have had the German machinery if our output is better than what Germany has given us with her vaunted equipment? I am afraid that the writer of the sentence whoever he was (I am sure it wasn’t you) was unconsciously administering to the further swelling of the German head, and indulging quite unnecessarily, and perhaps inopportunely, in the English pastime of self-abasement.
My best wishes for the New Year.
Yours sincerely
D. Nichol Smith.
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{1} This printed address presumably ought to have been struck through.
McGill College, Montreal - WL has used WW's 'Elements of Morality ['The Elements of Morality, Including Polity', 2 vols, 1845] for several years as a text book for 3rd year students. WL thinks an adapted version of the book would be good for the higher class of Canadian public schools and he would be willing to try and adapt it for that purpose.
(Numbered ‘29705’.)
(Reprinted from the Proceedings of the British Academy, 1903–4.)