RARE! “Anthropologist” Edward Clodd Hand Written 2 Page Letter Dated 1911

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Up for auction a RARE!
“Anthropologist” Edward Clodd Hand Written 2 Page Letter Dated 1911. There is staining and residual mounting tape present.
ES-2322
Edward Clodd
(1 July 1840 – 16 March 1930) was an English banker, writer and
anthropologist
. He had a great variety of literary and scientific friends, who periodically met at
Whitsunday
(a springtime holiday) gatherings at his home at
Aldeburgh
in Suffolk. Although born in
Margate
, where his father was captain of a trading brig, the family moved soon afterward to Aldeburgh, his father's ancestors deriving from
Parham
and
Framlingham
in Suffolk. Born to a
Baptist
family, his parents wished him to become a minister, but he instead began a career in accountancy and banking, relocating to London in 1855. He was the only surviving child of seven. Edward first worked unpaid for six months at an accountant's office in Cornhill in London when he was 14 years of age. He worked for the London Joint Stock Bank from 1872 to 1915, and had residences both in London and Suffolk. He married his first wife Eliza Garman, a doctor's daughter in 1862. He had eight children with Eliza, though two died when they were young. In his old age, he married his secretary, Phyllis Maud Rope (born 1887), who survived him by 27 years. Clodd was an early devotee of the work of
Charles Darwin
and had personal acquaintance with
Thomas Huxley
and
Herbert Spencer
. He wrote biographies of all three men, and worked to popularise
evolution
with books like
The Childhood of the World
and
The Story of Creation: A Plain Account of Evolution
. Clodd was an agnostic and wrote that the
Genesis creation narrative
of the Bible is similar to other religious myths and should not be read as a literal account. He wrote many popular books on
evolutionary science
.
[3]
He wrote a biography of
Thomas Henry Huxley
and was a lecturer and populariser of anthropology and evolution. He was also a keen
folklorist
, joining the
Folklore Society
from 1878, and later becoming its president. He was a Suffolk Secretary of the
Prehistoric Society
of East Anglia from 1914 to 1916. He was a prominent member and officer of the Omar Khayyam Club or 'O.K. Club', and organised the planting of the rose from
Omar Khayyam
's tomb on to the grave of
Edward Fitzgerald
at
Boulge
, Suffolk, at the Centenary gathering. Clodd had a talent for friendship, and liked to entertain his friends at literary gatherings in Aldeburgh at his seafront home there, Strafford House, during Whitsuntides. Prominent among his literary friends and correspondents were
Grant Allen
,
George Meredith
,
Thomas Hardy
,
George Gissing
, Edward Fitzgerald,
Andrew Lang
,
Cotter Morison
,
Samuel Butler
,
Mary Kingsley
and Mrs
Lynn Linton
; he also knew Sir
Henry Thompson
, Sir
William Huggins
, Sir
Laurence Gomme
, Sir
John Rhys
,
Paul Du Chaillu
,
Edward Whymper
,
Alfred Comyn Lyall
,
York Powell
,
William Holman Hunt
, Sir
E. Ray Lankester
,
H.G. Wells
and many others as acquaintances. His hospitality and friendship was an important part of the development of their social relations. George Gissing's close friendship with Clodd began when he accepted an invitation to a Whitsuntide gathering in Aldeburgh in 1895.