In general, the sketches seem to have been done first in pencil and then gone over in sepia and/or black ink line and wash. In one sketch, 'Girton Lecturer Diffusing Sweetness And Light', depicting Duff with a number of Girton College students, the wash is watercolour paint rather than ink. Many of the sketches are initialled 'E. M.' for Eveleen Myers; the date is often added, 1887 in all cases. Duff and Babington Smith are almost always identified, usually with initials, occasionally by name.
Most of the sketches are given titles, as follows: Untitled (landscape with castles); 'Between two Hemispheres'; 'Two ways of greeting the sun'; 'Rough? or Smooth?'; untitled [Duff and Babington Smith conversing); 'Breakfast 12.30 P. M.'; 'Arcades ambo. Mr H. B. Smith & Mr Duff. 3. A.M.'; 'The midnight oil'; 'two heads are better than one'; 'A Bear-Fight Extraordinary' (including A. H. Clough the younger); 'The Young Idea'; 'Back From Cyprus!'; 'Hero Bombarding A Hat'; 'The Early Bird And The Late Worm | Breakfast. 11 A.M.' ('Worm' and 'Bird' are transposed in a correction above the original title); 'Highland chieftains: Clan Duff & Clan Smith'; 'The Macduff, On The Rampage'; 'Greek Messenger Describing Death of Jocasta' [Babington Smith acted in the 1887 Cambridge Greek Play production of *Oedipus Tyrannus'; 'Girton Lecturer Diffusing Sweetness And Light'; 'Intelligent Sympathy'; 'Practical Consolation'; 'New brooms sweep clean - reforms of H. B. S. in the Education Office'; 'After The Battle - An Enemy's Counsel' [scene from a game of whist or bridge]; 'Savoy Theatre: a 'Bond' of affection'; 'Thus We Two Parted. In Silence And Pain; / We Were Half-Broken Hearted - But Soon Met Again!!'; 'A Donkey-Race For the Tripos'.
The Girton students depicted with J. D. Duff are Gertrude Mary Butler, Edith Mary Bough, Edith Lydia Johns, Mary Hay Wood, Jane Lily Edwards, Sylvia Grant [later Farmer], Beatrice Geraldine Hudson [later Colby], Jane Ewing Wilson [later Hannay], and Augusta Klein [later Kirby].
Sans titre