Stuk 2 - Letter from W. K. Clifford to Frederick Pollock

1 folded sheet

(Place of writing not indicated.)—Pollock should certainly consult his fiancée about the length of their engagement. Sends some lines which were meant to begin his play Lassalle, and explains why he is thinking of taking it up again. States the terms of business of the Birkbeck Bank. Has been to see Le Roi Carotte.

(Undated. Le Roi Carotte, a comic opera by Offenbach, was first performed in England on 3 June 1872.)

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Transcript

My best Fred

I quite agree with you that you ought to speak. There may of course be a question about the wisdom of a formal engagement of great length; but it is distinctly a question in which she ought to have a voice.

Misunderstandings are so very easy in these matters that I think it is impossible to be too candid in defining one’s precise position, even when candour has the air of brutality; as if one should tell a jeune mariée that one did not desire her to be unfaithful to existing ties. There is a pretty song which has the refrain

I was a fool to love, I know,
But more a fool to tell you so!

It seems to me, though, that if the poet had even said “I love you, I want nothing in return, but I thought it fair to let you know”; he would have met with a more marked success.

I can’t find the lines I spoke of, but here are some about three years old, that were meant to begin the play of Lassalle. {1} I dropt the design on hearing that at the time of his death he was in treaty with Bismarck. Now I think I shall take it up again to shew how the prophetic spirit may ruin the holiest cause.

The bank is the Birkbeck bank in Southampton Buildings; backed, I am told, by the Union. You must not draw more than fifty without giving a day’s notice, and they retain the cancelled drafts; otherwise it is like any other bank except that you get 4 per cent on your lowest balance for the month, paid at the end of the year.

After all, Moulton & I went to see Le Roi Carotte. {2} He is an exact incarnation of the Rurals. {3} Thine ever

Willie.

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{1} Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-64) was a German socialist.

{2} A comic opera by Offenbach. It was was first performed in England, in a translation by Henry S. Leigh, at the Alhambra Theatre Royal on 3 June 1872, and ran there till about 26 November (see The Times, etc.).

{3} Probably a reference to the members of the ‘Assembly of Rurals’, a name given to the French National Assembly of 1871.