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

(Funchal, Madeira.)—Entrusts the education of his children to Pollock and Huxley, desiring them to be brought up without any knowledge of ‘theological hypotheses’. Expresses his love for his wife, and sends love to members of the Pollock family.

(With envelope. Undated. According to Fisher Dilke, this letter was written ‘twenty minutes or so’ before Clifford’s death.)

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Transcript

My dearest Fred

I am told this must be written before I get dazed, as I may not get clear enough again. No words can say what a friend you have been to me. {1} I who have had so many and so good ones, must always count you the best and the truest. I have nothing to leave you but my children; the education of which I entrust to you and Huxley; I want them brought up without any knowledge of theological—that last syllable {2}—hypotheses at all, but if the nursery {3} should teach anything of the sort, it should be set aside with the simple argument suited to the form it is presented in. For the rest of their education, which I should probably spoil, {4} I must trust you. I like them to stay with the Roberts’s, whose kindness in this regard has been boundless, but if my most beloved and devoted wife Lucy, who is the best and best loved that ever lived, should survive the shock of my death, she will of course take care of such things herself.

Give my love to Sir Frederic & my Lady, {4} to my dearest Georgie and your kids, to the Walters and Jack and to all that have it.

Yours always
Willi

[Direction on envelope:] Fred

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Written in pencil, in a very shaky hand.

{1} Full stop supplied, in place of a comma.

{2} The writer had made several attempts to write the last two letters of ‘theological’. The following dash has been supplied.

{3} Reading uncertain.

{4} Comma supplied.