Selected Letters of Sir J. G. Frazer

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selected letters of

S IR J. G. FR A ZER

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SELECTED LETTERS OF

S I R J . G . F R AZ E R edited by

Robert Ackerman

1

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Robert Ackerman 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frazer, James George, Sir, 1854–1941. [Correspondence. Selections. 2005] Selected letters of Sir J.G. Frazer/edited by Robert Ackerman. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0–19–926696–4 (alk. paper) 1. Frazer, James George, Sir, 1854–1941–Correspondence. 2. Mythologists– Correspondence. 3. Mythologists–Biography. I. Ackerman, Robert, 1935– . II. Title. BL303.6.F73A4 2005 301’.092–dc22 [B] 2005018647 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn ISBN 0–19–926696–4

978–0–19–926696–8

For Pat, without whom not


C O N T E N TS Acknowledgements Abbreviations General Introduction

viii x 1

Part I Before The Golden Bough, 1875–90 Letters

17 23

Part II Anthropology and the Classics, 1890–1900 Letters

71 80

Part III The Third Edition, 1901–15 Letters

165 174

Part IV After The Golden Bough, 1916–31 Letters

333 341

Index of Recipients General Index

421 423

ACK N OW L E D G E M E N TS Editions of letters see the light only with the assistance of numerous individuals and institutions. Here, then, I have the pleasant obligation of recognising all those who were instrumental in the creation of this volume. Pride of place must of course be given to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, holders of copyright for J. G. and Lilly Frazer, without whom this edition would not have been possible. In this connection I must mention the special help of David McKitterick, fellow and librarian of the College. Not only did the College give permission, but it also was gracious in permitting the publication of the many Frazer letters that it holds. I wish also to thank Jonathan Smith, the College archivist, for his tireless assistance in clearing a path for me through the Frazerian thickets. Frazer was a Macmillan author for half a century, and remains one to this day, which explains why the largest group of Frazer’s letters by far, running to several thousand, is to be found in the Macmillan Company’s Wles, now donated to the British Library. I am obligated to both publisher (Palgrave Macmillan) and repository; letters from this collection are published by permission of The British Library. The next largest cache of papers is in the Brotherton Library, in the University of Leeds, which holds Frazer’s letters to his friend and benefactor (Sir) Edmund Gosse. I wish to thank the Pitt Rivers Museum of the University of Oxford for permission to use the extant part of the thirty-year correspondence and friendship between Frazer and Sir W. Baldwin Spencer. Frazer’s letters to Dr Solomon Schechter are published courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York. After this the letters are spread rather more thinly, in the following institutions: In the United Kingdom, University Library, Cambridge; University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge; Loeb Library; University College London Library Services; Bodleian Library, Oxford; London School of Economics; National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Royal Anthropological Institute, London; Royal Library; the Royal Society, London. In Europe and Australia, Preussischer Kulturbesitz Bibliotek, Berlin; Universita¨tsbibliothek, Bonn; Universita¨tsbibliothek, Go¨ttingen; Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich; Universita¨tsbibliothek, Tu¨bingen; A˚bo Akademis Bibliotek, Finland; Australian National University; University of Melbourne Library; State Library of Victoria.

Acknowledgements

ix

In the United States, the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Lilly Library, Indiana University; Smith College Library; Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.; Library of the University of California at Los Angeles; Harry Ransom Humanities Center, University of Texas, Austin; Beinecke Library, Yale University. I am indebted to the following persons who answered questions and otherwise assisted: Michael Black, Jill Bradford, Wendy Brown, William M. Calder III, Juliet Chadwick, Jim Council, Manik Datar, Jocelyne Dudding, Kevin Egner, Gerard Hayes, Katy Hooper, John C. Kenna, Margaret Kenna, Henrika Kuklick, Joan Leopold, George Levine, Timothy Mason, Mick Morris, Caroline Oates, Kay Parrott, Moira Rankin, Margaret Rose, Renata Sayers, Jerry Schwarzbard, Hans Schwarze, Robert Segal, Julianne Simpson, Zoe Stansell, and Ineke van’t Spijker. Special thanks to Chris Stray for his numerous suggestions for improving the text, and to Paul G. Naiditch for his unexampled generosity in reading proofs, thereby improving the text immensely. I wish also to thank the late Mr Alan Clodd, who gave permission for his grandfather’s letters to be published, and to Dr Peter G. Baker, who carried out the laborious work of transcription of Edward Clodd’s diary and who allowed me to use some of his texts. I wish to thank Mrs Clare Cornford Chapman for permission to publish letters of her father, F. M. Cornford. I wish to thank Ms. Astrid Hess, great-grandniece of William Robertson Smith, for permission to publish Smith’s letters. I wish to thank Mrs Helena Malinowska Wayne for permission to publish letters of her father, Bronislaw Malinowski. I wish to thank Margaret, Viscountess Long, Frazer’s great-grandniece, for permission to publish several family letters. I wish to thank Sir Robert Marett for permission to publish several letters from his father, R. R. Marett. Frazer’s letters to Edmund Gosse and some of those to Edward Clodd appear here courtesy of The Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library. ß The letters of E. B. Tylor, Photograph and Manuscript Collections, Box V, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Letters from J. G. Frazer to Baron Anatole von Hu¨gel courtesy of the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Archives. Most of all, I wish to express my gratitude to my wife, Patricia, for her extensive help with this book, and for her love and kindness over the years.

ABBREVIATIONS Besterman BL Frazer GH GS J(R)AI Pitt Rivers TCC UCL UL

Theodore Besterman, A Bibliography of Sir James George Frazer, O.M. (London: Macmillan, 1934) British Library Robert Ackerman, J. G. Frazer: His Life and Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) J. G. Frazer, The Gorgon’s Head (London: Macmillan, 1927) J. G. Frazer, Garnered Sheaves (London: Macmillan, 1931) Journal of the (Royal) Anthropological Society Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford Trinity College, Cambridge University College London University Library, Cambridge

The Frazers’ letters to George Macmillan in the British Library are part of the huge donation of their author Wles by the Macmillan Company. The Frazer papers are BL Add. MSS 55134–55, arranged chronologically as follows: 55134 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

1884–97 1898–1902 1903–7 1908–10 1911–13 1914–18 1919–22 1923–5 1926–7 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932–3 1934 (January–April) 1934 (May–December) 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940–1

General Introduction ‘Who now reads Frazer?’ In the Wrst quarter of the twentieth century Sir James George Frazer (1854– 1941) occupied a unique position within the then relatively new discipline of British social anthropology. The twelve volumes of the monumental third edition of The Golden Bough that appeared in the years immediately preceding the First World War had created an audience for him (and for anthropology) among the educated classes in the English-speaking world. His inXuence and that audience were greatly increased in the years of post-war fatigue and disillusionment by the publication of his own one-volume abridgements of The Golden Bough (1922) and Folk-Lore in the Old Testament (1923). Although today many readers encounter The Golden Bough for the Wrst time in the notes to The Waste Land (1922), where T. S. Eliot states that his diYcult poem can be understood fully only by one who knows Frazer’s work, this assertion of Frazer’s importance to those seeking a diagnosis for the malaise of the West then amounted to little more than a statement of the obvious. The war had exposed the savagery that lay beneath the thin veneer of civilization and the hollowness of every belief and institution that had been assumed to rein in humanity’s baser urges. In his analysis of religion—one of the chief pillars of civilized restraint—as the institutional incarnation of a mistaken and outworn mode of understanding the world, Frazer was thoroughly in tune with the corrosive mood of ‘goodbye to all that’. Indeed, the Frazer archive at Trinity College, Cambridge, today contains many letters from otherwise unknown readers who wrote to thank him for having stripped away the mystiWcation surrounding religion and for having shown conclusively that it was a product of a fundamental error in understanding the nature of reality. At the same time as The Golden Bough and its author were being widely acclaimed (Frazer was knighted in 1914, and in 1920 became the Wrst person to be admitted to fellowship of the Royal Society who was neither a natural nor a physical scientist), he had already been dismissed as irretrievably oldfashioned by most of his colleagues in anthropology. Before the war the

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General Introduction

Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, Frazer’s own sometime prote´ge´, had begun to develop the intensive Weldwork-centred approach focused on social structure and function that would become the norm within British social anthropology, thus undermining and Wnally displacing Frazer’s armchair method and his belletristic comparative evolutionism, with its intellectualist focus on magic and religion as exemplary manifestations of the workings of the human mind. But although by the 1920s Frazer had become pretty much a dead letter within anthropology, this specialist critique never reached or never mattered to the lay audience, among whom his popularity was undiminished. Remarkably, it remains largely so today; both the twelvevolume Golden Bough and its one-volume epitome have remained in print since their publication, and he has continued to Wnd and hold ordinary readers, who still enjoy the elegance of his prose and who are still stirred by the epic sweep and vista he oVers of the development of the human mind. Frazer worked virtually all the time—for most of his long life, forty-eight to Wfty weeks a year, seven days a week, twelve or more hours a day, reading and taking notes, writing, proofreading, and writing letters. According to a distinctly rose-coloured memoir that he wrote in old age, early on he rejected the piety of his upbringing in the Free Church of Scotland, and he later became one of the most important advocates of rationalism and secularism in the English-speaking world in the twentieth century. (The reasons for his ‘deconversion’ remain obscure, but, unlike so many other Victorian religious crises, this one seems to have been accomplished without anguish. In the light of his lifelong focus on—some might say, obsession with—the inadequacies of religion, however, one is entitled to wonder whether the link was severed quite so painlessly.) His industry represents an excellent example of the Calvinist work ethic in overdrive, albeit turned to what from his parents’ point of view were perverse ends. Referring to his prodigious output, in an obituary, his friend the anthropologist R. R. Marett aptly called Frazer ‘an athlete of the study’.1 Thus, along with the three ever-larger versions of The Golden Bough, as well as numerous other works on the history of religion, he continued throughout his life to produce signiWcant work in the academic discipline in which he began and in fact never left—classics. (His six-volume translation and commentary published in 1898 on the Greek traveller Pausanias remained the standard work for about seventy-Wve years and is only now being revised—by a committee of scholars rather than an individual— because of a wealth of new archaeological data, and it is hard to imagine anyone ever attempting to supersede his Wve-volume edition of Ovid’s Fasti or 1 R. R. Marett, ‘[Obituary of Sir James George Frazer]’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 27 (1941), 377–91; ‘athlete of the study’ occurs on p. 384.


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even the two volumes on Apollodorus’s The Library.) Therefore, even though he no longer Wgures today in the narrative that Anglophone anthropologists have created to describe the development of their own discipline,2 he holds an honourable place in the history of classical scholarship, which generally speaking continues to understand itself as engaged collectively in the placement of innumerable grains of sand on the proverbial mountain of knowledge. (In this light Frazer, who produced more classical work than many fulltime classicists, may be said to have placed at least a whole handful.) Among historians of religion as well, among whom the comparative method has never been totally eclipsed as it has among anthropologists, Frazer retains respect. In addition, during the last quarter of the twentieth century we have seen the reconsideration by all the social (or ‘human’) sciences of their own histories in contextualized, non-Whiggish terms. Post-modern ideas about the ubiquity of text and the rejection of hierarchy among genres of writing and of the boundaries between them have opened anthropological, historical, and other social-scientiWc narratives to analysis by the kinds of critical reading that were once exclusively applied to professedly ‘literary’ texts. The result has been the creation of crossover forays in both literary studies and the history of ideas. Thus, instead of classics professors asking their doctoral students (in Browning’s phrase) to settle yet again hoti’s business, some might be asked to examine the eVects of anti-Semitism or sexism in the history of classical scholarship; likewise, graduate students in anthropology who may have despaired because every ‘primitive’ group has already been visited, revisited, and re-revisited by Weldworkers may instead be directed toward a theoretical dissertation on, say, a comparison of the presentation of time and space in Frazer, Ernst Mach, and Joseph Conrad.3 Last in this catalogue of networks and aYliations, Frazer, together with the group of anthropologically minded turn-of-the-century classical scholars known as the Cambridge Ritualists (Jane Ellen Harrison, Gilbert Murray, F. M. Cornford, and A. B. Cook), strongly aVected the climate of feeling for writers and artists in the 1920s, as well as non-classical literary criticism in the English-speaking world through the 1960s, in the form of so-called myth-and-ritual criticism.4 2 Adam Kuper, Anthropologists and Anthropology: The British School, 1922–1972 (London: Allen Lane, 1973; 2nd edn., 1975); Marilyn Strathern, ‘Out of Context: The Persuasive Fictions of Anthropology’, in Marc Manganaro (ed.), Modernist Anthropology: From Fieldwork to Text (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 80–130. 3 Robert Thornton, ‘ ‘‘Imagine Yourself Set Down . . . ’’: Mach, Frazer, Conrad, Malinowski, and the Role of Imagination in Ethnography’, Anthropology Today, 11, no. 5 (1985), 7–14. 4 Robert Ackerman, The Myth and Ritual School: J. G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists (New York: Routledge, 2002).

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From a wholly diVerent perspective Frazer may also be seen as a beached whale, perfectly positioned now for the politically honed Xensing knives of the practitioners of cultural theory, inexorably drawn as they are to any writer whose work may be shown to illustrate and incarnate—in this case, on a grand scale—the ideology of oppression. Around 1900 Frazer (like all his evolutionist contemporaries) had no doubt that educated Western Europeans represented the pinnacle of intellectual, social, and moral development yet attained by humankind; the anthropological version of the white man’s burden meant that we of the scientiWc and developed world should do everything possible to study these remnants of the old magical, superstitious mentality before they were swept away forever by modernity. Frazer having made no secret of any of this, no special critical acumen is needed to uncover or discover his positions and suppositions; he remains a tempting target, and early modern anthropology has already begun to be cultivated by literary critics. Finally, it is particularly appropriate to approach Frazer through his letters because letter-writing for him was for him much more than a matter of ‘staying in touch’ with friends and colleagues, a chore to be carried out at the end of the day as a way of relaxing after the real job of scholarship had been accomplished. On the contrary, letter-writing was absolutely central to the way Frazer understood what he was doing. He often compared himself to a spider at the centre of a web, one composed of gossamer threads leading to his many correspondents in the Weld. Each of them was presumably well situated to see and report on the slice of ethnographic life that was taking place before his or her eyes, but for precisely this reason the observers were unWtted to understand the larger meaning of what they was seeing—that is, how the beliefs and behaviour they were describing in fact exempliWed and illustrated larger or deeper patterns of thought and action. These patterns, with their ramiWcations, were visible only to one situated at the centre (in this case, the library of Trinity College, Cambridge), a person whose very distance from the Weld gave him the perspective necessary to discern the overall meaning of the great mosaic of human behaviour. One result of this ceaseless correspondence on Frazer’s part is to be seen in the thousands of footnotes to The Golden Bough, where along with the innumerable citations from classical texts and the exploration and ethnographic narratives dating from the Renaissance onward that one might expect, he also includes observations from educated persons lacking professional anthropological qualiWcations who are stationed at the outposts of the several European empires, along with excerpts from contemporary newspapers describing English country folk cursing their enemies by sticking pins into their eYgies or engaging in superstitious practices surrounding childbirth or harvesting or funerals. These last—most


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sent by correspondents unknown to him—are deployed alongside the classical references to demonstrate that ‘primitive’ ways of thought continue to exist and may be found everywhere today among those who have not (yet) participated in the long march to modernity. The foregoing, then, provides the outline of an answer to the complex question of relevance and utility that Wrst confronts any editor of Frazer’s letters today. ‘Who now reads Frazer?’, the query with which this discussion began, explicitly echoes the question posed by Talcott Parsons more than sixty years ago about Herbert Spencer (who was, in turn, among the most important presences in Frazer’s intellectual formation).5 Like Spencer, or indeed any twentieth-century grand-scale theorist (Arnold Toynbee, Mircea Eliade), at a time like ours when ‘totalizing’ discourse of any kind has been devalued or dismissed, Frazer oVers many hostages to contemporary criticism, and his reputation—or rather, ‘reputations’, because his standing varies depending upon the group of academic descendants one canvasses—has certainly suVered for it. It is as well from the start, therefore, to make clear that this edition of his letters, like my earlier biography, is not a covert polemic unwilling or ashamed to speak its name.6 If a Frazerian true believer still exists—and it is hard to imagine that one does—I am not that person. In terms of the questions as they were formulated during his lifetime, there can be no doubt that, overall, Frazer’s critics over the past century were ‘right’ and he was ‘wrong’. By which I mean that his principal assumption—that the goal of anthropology was to expose the operation of the ‘primitive mind’, understood as a qualitatively diVerent earlier stage in the evolution of human consciousness, and that the best way to proceed was to extract and collate items of behaviour and belief that seemed to resemble one another and thus constitute alleged universals, regardless of the cultural setting from which they came, and then argue backward from behaviour to motive—was profoundly and irretrievably Xawed. No one, not even his latter-day partisans— and there have been some, such as the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, the historian of Semitic religion Theodor H. Gaster, and the historian of social science Ian Jarvie—has defended this practice.7 It is also appropriate to recall that Frazer, an extremely modest man, always regarded himself as the servant of the ‘facts’, which meant that he always 5

Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937), 3. Robert Ackerman, J. G. Frazer: His Life and Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 7 Stanley Edgar Hyman, The Tangled Bank (New York: Atheneum, 1962); Theodor H. Gaster, The New Golden Bough (New York: Criterion, 1959); I. C. Jarvie, The Revolution in Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1964), and idem, ‘Academic Fashions and Grandfather Killing—In Defence of Frazer’, Encounter, 26 (April 1966), 53–5. 6

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understood all his theoretical statements as provisional. Here is one of many such expressions of his awareness of the tenuousness of the entire enterprise, from the preface to the second edition of The Golden Bough (1900): It has been my wish and intention to draw as sharply as possible the line of demarcation between my facts and the hypotheses by which I have attempted to colligate them. Hypotheses are necessary but often temporary bridges built to connect isolated facts. If my light bridges should sooner or later break down or be superseded by more solid structures, I hope that my book may still have its utility and its interest as a repertory of facts.8

The reason why any updating of Frazer (such as Theodor Gaster oVered in The New Golden Bough) is futile lies in his epistemology. Although in his personal life a man of the utmost probity, in terms of intellectual temperament Frazer can only be described as an inveterate speculator about human nature and motivation, a last representative of a philosophical tradition that dates back to the Scottish Enlightenment. As the words quoted above demonstrate, he believed that his innumerable beloved ‘facts’, which for him represented both the bedrock and the raison d’eˆtre of his books, were valuable in and of themselves, even before they were strung together to support equally innumerable theories. That these facts were implicated in ideology never occurred to him (or, it must be said, to virtually anyone else in 1900) nor that they might represent the responses to questions which, if framed diVerently, would produce entirely diVerent ‘facts’. Furthermore, his sociology, as methodologically naive as his epistemology, was that of the social contract, which meant that he understood his ‘savages’ everywhere in their rituals to be conscious, rational actors, which in turn meant that the problem with magic and its successor, religion, was that they were essentially ‘errors’ of intellect that we no longer make because, through science, we understand how the world really works. As might be expected, his empiricism was linked to a rationalist, associationist psychology. Although his work was drawn upon by Freud in the latter’s meta-psychological fantasy Totem und Tabu (1913), Frazer had no use for any kind of depth psychology or unconscious motivation, and to the minuscule extent that he came into contact with Freud’s thought, he utterly rejected it. (The unintentionally comical postscript to a letter from 1920 to his friend John Roscoe makes this clear: ‘I have got a new book Totemism and Taboo [sic], the translation of a book by a German or Austrian psychologist, who borrows most of his facts from me and tries to explain them by the mental processes, especially the dreams of the insane! Not a hopeful proced8 J. G. Frazer, ‘Preface to the Second Edition’, in The Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1900), i. pp. xxv–xxvi.


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ure, it seems to me, though he seems to have a great vogue with some people.’) Although in one sense it is meaningless to say that a person is born out of his time or represents a throwback to an earlier period—after all, nothing ever totally disappears, and the past lives only in the present—it is tempting to say that at this distance Frazer does indeed look like the Last Philosophe. Not only was he a double-dyed anticlerical rationalist in his writings on religion, repeatedly and sardonically invoking those Enlightenment favourites, the wily priests forever engaged in gulling the fearful and credulous masses, but even in his leisure hours he instinctively gravitated to the eighteenth century, editing the essays of Addison (while jettisoning the allegedly ‘coarsening’ contributions of Steele) and the letters of Cowper, and producing a volume of imitations of Addison’s genial character Sir Roger de Coverley.

Frazer and Letter-Writing In manner Frazer was shy and retiring, very much the library mole content to disappear behind an ever-lengthening wall of volumes bound in green, a man who often doubted his own judgement and often said he possessed little talent for practical life. At the age of 42 he amazed his friends in Cambridge and elsewhere by marrying Elisabeth (‘Lilly’) Grove, a French widow with two young children. At that point he willingly yielded management of his aVairs to the masterful Lilly, who, soon convinced that her high-minded, impractical husband was undervalued by the world in general and the University of Cambridge in particular as a result of his unwillingness to put himself forward, appointed herself his ‘manager’ and proceeded to decide who might and who might not gain access to him and, thereby, perhaps steal his ideas and in any case interrupt him in his all-important work. According to all accounts Lilly alienated many of his friends, as well as many acquaintances, so it is not surprising that as time passed he came to see fewer and fewer people face to face.9 As a result, in the end and even for old friends in Cambridge, letter-writing became his principal channel of communication. Two-thirds of his life had passed before the telephone became ubiquitous even in middle-class households, and he lived at a time when the post was 9 In 1911, A. E. Housman was translated from University College London to become professor of Latin at Cambridge and fellow of Trinity College. In response to a congratulatory letter from his friend Mrs Arthur Platt (wife of the professor of Greek at UCL), he wrote, on 19 January 1911, ‘The prospect of exchanging you for Mrs Frazer is one of the clouds on my horizon; but please do not repeat this remark to all your Cambridge acquaintances’ (Henry Maas (ed.), The Letters of A. E. Housman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 114). For a far less gentle description of Lilly Frazer’s manner as experienced by one of those not her social equals, see the reminiscence by Sarah Campion, the Frazers’ last secretary, ‘Autumn of an Anthropologist’, New Statesman, 41 (13 Jan. 1951), 34–6.

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delivered four to six times a day, so his normal medium of communication was handwritten letters (he never owned a typewriter or learned to type, and admired Gilbert Murray for having done both). In addition, his wife’s hearing was already impaired when they married in 1896, and it soon deteriorated to the point where she was unable to use the telephone; although his hearing was good, he rarely used the telephone either. The result was that over his lifetime he wrote perhaps eight thousand letters, several thousand of which have survived, enough to serve as the basis for a biography and to permit us to place him within the several networks of relationships that he maintained. (Happily, those who taught him penmanship and spelling did their job well, so reading his hand does not present any problems.) Frazer was not much given to introspection, and mainly regarded a letter as a conduit for the exchange of information. That said, the invaluable if obvious thing about letters is that, regardless of their ostensible subject, the message is always delivered in the writer’s voice, so that even someone as relatively calm and personally unforthcoming as he was inevitably revealed something about himself in all but the most perfunctory communications. Of course the epistolary voice is as much a product of artiWce, habit, and experience as one’s voice in print, but the letter’s very informality often means that the correspondent is not quite as careful as the author about permitting the reader to see and hear only what he or she wishes to be seen and heard. Furthermore, unlike the autobiography or memoir, in which the writer can perceive at least part of the larger meaning of an event through knowing how it caused or at least inXuenced that which was to come, the letter resembles the diary, in which the lack of foreknowledge guarantees the spontaneity of the utterance. Thus, when in 1897 John F. White, an admirer of the Scottish biblical critic and theologian William Robertson Smith, proposed to publish a tribute to that distinguished scholar who had died three years earlier, he canvassed Frazer along with many others in Cambridge and elsewhere, asking for reminiscences. White had no idea that Smith had been the most important person in Frazer’s adult life to that point, and he happened to approach Frazer just when the completion of a very large piece of work (the commentary on Pausanias) had left the latter close to exhaustion. In any event, despite the fact that he had already published a relatively dispassionate obituary shortly after Smith’s death,10 Frazer’s normal social and emotional reserve was suspended for the moment, and on 15 December 1897 he opened his heart in an amazingly long

10 ‘William Robertson Smith’, Fortnightly Review, ns 55 (1894), 800–7; repr. in Sir Roger de Coverley (London: Macmillan, 1920), 194–209, and GH, 278–90.


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and moving letter to a person he barely knew, in which he described how he and Smith met and how he was swept oV his feet by his new friend. Equally revelatory in a quite diVerent way was the fervent outpouring to (Sir) Edmund Gosse of 16 January 1907. Through a series of innocent mistakes and misunderstandings, in the course of submitting a review to the Daily Mail, where Gosse was the editor of the books supplement, the unworldly Frazer caused a tiny upset in oYce routine. This in turn had caused Gosse, in a moment of pique, to reprimand Frazer. Here (it is too long to quote) Frazer is quite beside himself in his childlike, feverish attempt to undo any possibility of a falling-out between him and his friend and benefactor. Although Frazer did not relish polemic, and seemingly lacked the competitive streak so prevalent among male academics, the letters (and only the letters) show another side to this otherwise quiet man. He could be roused to genuine anger that was more than mere self-defence by any imputation of intellectual dishonesty; both his one-time friends Andrew Lang and E. B. Tylor made such accusations and evoked Frazer’s wrath. Having read many hundreds of his letters, I can safely assert that although he appreciated wit in others, Frazer had no sense of humour whatever. The letters do, however, exhibit his sardonic side, so evident otherwise in his discussions of ancient or ‘primitive’ religion. Thus, on 7 June 1895, in reply to his friend the solicitor and anthropological scholar E. Sidney Hartland, who had suggested that Frazer lead an eVort to create a chair in anthropology at Cambridge, Frazer had this to say: As for stirring up Cambridge to appoint a professor of anthropology, I fear I must confess to never stirring up anybody to do anything. The character of an agitator is not one to which I aspire. Besides, the University and colleges are miserably poor, and their scanty incomes are necessarily devoted to far more important objects, such as giving feasts, keeping up gardens and chapel services, and maintaining hundreds of Fellows and Masters of Colleges in idleness. Or rather I should say these are the prime objects to which the Colleges devote their energies, and that the small surplus which is left over when these essentials have been provided for is handed over to the University to be by it applied to the subordinate object of promoting science and learning. This small surplus is not suYcient to endow a professorship of anthropology.

It seems fair, then, to say that these letters contain a great deal of information on the development of early, pre-professional anthropology in Britain, when disciplinary boundaries were either unclear or else lay in quite diVerent places from where they are now to be found, and when academic jargon and political correctness were unknown. Frazer is always clear and readable, and often eloquent when engaged in explaining or defending his ideas, as he is willing to do when he is conWdent that his correspondent has no hidden

10


hostile agenda and is, like himself, interested only in getting to the truth. This is the tone throughout of his relations with, for instance, Henry Jackson and R. R. Marett. In addition, no one can read extensively in this collection without coming away with a heightened sense of James George Frazer the private man, a man of deep feelings and of immense intellect, as well as the author of The Golden Bough and a ten-foot shelf of books besides.

The Letters If we turn to the letters themselves, the Wrst thing to be said about them is that they do not constitute a random collection. The largest single group by far, running to several thousand, is part of the immense donation of its corporate Wles that the Macmillan Company made to the British Library.11 (These include a large number written by and to Lilly Frazer, also a Macmillan author.) They represent the written record of Frazer’s half-century of publishing with the house of Macmillan, with the vast majority directed to his editor, publisher, and friend, George A. Macmillan (1855–1936). Inevitably, a large fraction of these deal with the particular book he is seeing through the press at the moment—detailed queries about proofs or maps or print schedules, changes of address, or the like—and as such are not worth publishing. On the other hand, many letters to Macmillan relating to books that are being planned are deWnitely worthy of notice, in that they aVord insight into Frazer’s methods and also his relations with other scholars, and accordingly do appear here. Occasionally, they constitute the only evidence for projects that remained phantoms and never saw the light. And of course the existence of Macmillan’s replies permits us to see the growth of their relationship over the years. That relationship deepened over the years for a number of reasons. Macmillan, himself a classicist, was genuinely interested in the commentary on Pausanias, as a contribution to scholarship as well as a possible commercial opportunity created by the new inXux of British tourists to Greece and the consequent need for a guidebook to the excavations then taking place. Although he probably had no special interest in anthropology before publishing The Golden Bough, George Macmillan seems to have moved with Frazer as the latter shuttled back and forth between anthropology and classical scholarship. By 1914 Macmillan was publishing more anthropology than any other press, perhaps even including those of the universities, and this seems directly attributable to the success of The Golden Bough. 11 Within the Macmillan corpus, the Frazer letters (including those from and to Lilly), chronologically arranged, are BL, Add. MSS 55134–55.


11

The next largest collection is, perhaps predictably, to be found in the library of Frazer’s own college, Trinity, where he was a fellow for more than sixty years. Trinity holds mainly his letters to and from scholars, among the better known of whom are numbered Edward Clodd, A. B. Cook, F. M. Cornford, Jane Ellen Harrison, E. Sidney Hartland, A. E. Housman, Henry Jackson, John Roscoe, and William Robertson Smith. A third group, smaller but signiWcant, is the correspondence with his friend and benefactor, the man of letters Sir Edmund Gosse, in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds. To the world, Gosse was the ambitious litte´rateur, interested mainly in getting along and getting on, in which eVorts he succeeded eminently. He showed a diVerent, benign side to Frazer, who always regarded Gosse as the greatest author of his acquaintance, and to whom Frazer was eternally grateful for rescuing him from Wnancial disaster. A fourth collection, in the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, requires some comment. It consists of one box that contains the extant (signiWcant) fraction of the thirty-year correspondence that began in 1898 between Frazer and (Sir) W. Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929), the premier Australian anthropologist of his era. No one at the Pitt Rivers is now sure who collected these letters, when, or why. They were probably assembled by the Oxford anthropologists R. R. Marett and T. K. Penniman for their 1932 tribute, Spencer’s ScientiWc Correspondence, a volume that contains extracts (some little more than a sentence or two) from nineteen letters from Frazer; some of these I published in my biography, J. G. Frazer: His Life and Work (1987). Here I have included nearly all of Frazer’s side of the correspondence, complete, most published for the Wrst time. Summaries of some of Spencer’s letters are given in the notes. Most of the rest are to be found scattered in university libraries around Britain, Europe, and the United States; among Frazer’s more notable correspondents are the classical scholars Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Mo¨llendorV and Hermann Diels and the anthropologists Sir Francis Galton, A. W. Howitt, Andrew Lang, R. R. Marett, E. B. Tylor, and Edvard Westermarck. In addition, although Lilly Frazer was disliked by many in Cambridge as an unpleasant and interfering woman, she had numerous friends (especially abroad) and maintained a large correspondence as well. A writer mainly of children’s stories and playlets to be used in French classes, she was a pioneer in the teaching of foreign languages through the aural-oral method. I have included a number of her often amusing letters directed to friends, which often usefully complement Frazer’s own, and in which she gives invaluable candid glimpses into the Frazers’ domestic life. This seems an appropriate place to describe the criteria used in compiling this edition of ‘selected’ letters. Frazer often makes the point to his

12


correspondents in the Weld that they should not censor their reports but instead include every detail, however trivial-seeming, of what they see and hear, because one never knows what will be signiWcant to a later observer. On the same principle, there is no doubt that one might glean useful biographical information from, say, the many invitations to come to tea or to dine that Frazer issued over the years, or the many times that the pressure of work caused him regretfully to turn down invitations to Edward Clodd’s annual Whitsuntide house parties, or the many notes to his friend Baron Anatole von Hu¨gel in support of the university’s Archaeological and Anthropological Museum (of which von Hu¨gel was the director), or the many acknowledgements of books and articles sent him by friends and admirers, or the many classical references he chased down and identiWed for non-classical friends, or in the 1920s the many letters to his French friends, France being where the Frazers spent perhaps half the decade, or, in the same decade, the many letters devoted to reports about their declining health and that of their friends. These would all be useful if the aim of this volume was a complete reconstruction of Frazer’s social and intellectual world, but it is not. Hundreds of such letters, along with hundreds from Lilly Frazer as well, have had to be jettisoned in order to produce a volume of manageable size. In addition, in Frazer’s case as well as nearly everyone but royal personages and child prodigies, his early years (before the publication of The Golden Bough) are rather thinly represented, so I have included a rather larger proportion of the extant letters from this period, at least partly because of their relative rarity. Frazer having shuttled between classics and anthropology throughout his life, it is worth noting that the letters published here are distinctly weighted toward the latter Weld. This imbalance does not bespeak prejudice on my part, but is rather an artefact of the diVerent ways that he pursued his two disciplines. His three major classical projects—Pausanias, Apollodorus, and Ovid—were carried out at home in his library, complemented in the case of Pausanias by two trips to Greece to obtain up-to-date information from the archaeologists. Perhaps because Cambridge then contained so many classical scholars, with whom he would have spoken rather than written, this part of his life does not seem to have produced many letters. In Frazer’s kind of anthropology, by contrast, his trawl through the world’s ethnographic archives as represented in the libraries of Cambridge had to be supplemented by innumerable letters, in which his often faraway correspondents furnished him with new data and also augmented and sometimes criticized the information he had derived from the library. This was especially true in his relationship with the four Australian ethnographers whom he called his ‘band of brothers’—Lorimer Fison, Alfred Howitt, and especially Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen. Not only were these men breaking new ground in


13

their ethnographic observations of tribes then regarded as the most primitive peoples in the world—‘living fossils’—but they all admired Frazer greatly and were all willing to accept him as their intellectual leader. Further, because post to Australia took four to six weeks to arrive, the epistolary traYc in both directions usually took the form of very long and substantive letters, many of which have survived. A note is in order about the way in which the letters have been presented. It is customary for a collection such as this to begin with a lengthy editor’s introduction that supplies life-and-times context, followed by the letters presented chronologically. I have tried something a little diVerent here. I have divided the usual river of introductory text into four parts, each ending with a signiWcant event in Frazer’s life, so that each part introduces and oVers immediate context for the letters from that period. Frazer having been the archetypal library scholar, it is not surprising that the moments I have chosen to stand as the critical points are all connected to his intellectual life. The Wrst period ends with the publication of the Wrst edition of The Golden Bough, in June 1890; the second with the publication of the second edition, in December 1900; the third with the publication of the third edition, written between 1911 and 1915, a few months after the Frazers made the decisive move from Cambridge to London; the fourth and Wnal period takes us from the third edition to the last letter of any signiWcance, in 1931, although another decade would pass before his death, in May 1941. Finally, virtually all the texts are printed in their entirety, in chronological order, and are taken from holograph manuscripts except for one large group from the corpus at Trinity College. In 1947 Trinity College permitted R. Angus Downie, one of Frazer’s amanuenses in the last years of his life and author (under the exceedingly watchful eye of Lady Frazer) of the Wrst attempt at a biography ( James George Frazer: The Portrait of a Scholar (London: Watts, 1940)), to take away and copy hundreds of Frazer’s letters in preparation for writing a full-scale life. In 1955 he returned the typescripts but not the originals, and no one now knows what happened to Frazer’s autograph letters. Because the originals have disappeared, the typescripts (marked TS) have perforce become the copy text. Unfortunately, the typescripts contain obvious errors of transcription; I have indicated omissions and mistakes within square brackets. A last word on style: the Frazers and their friends were inconsistent in the way they used quotation marks or underlining or nothing at all for the titles of books and articles; likewise they seem to have used single quotation marks and double quotation marks interchangeably. I have not normalized these to conform with today’s typographic conventions but have presented the texts not merely verbatim but literatim.

14


Major Personalities To save the reader the bother of having to turn sometimes many pages in order to Wnd the Wrst occurrence of a person’s name, where basic information is given in a note, and because the number of important correspondents in this collection is relatively small, it seemed sensible to present a list of them all in one place. H. Montagu Butler (1833–1918), Master of Trinity College, 1886–1918. Edward Clodd (1840–1930), banker, anthropological scholar, and secularist; among Frazer’s best friends. Francis Macdonald Cornford (1874–1943), fellow of Trinity, one of the ‘Cambridge Ritualists’, and later a distinguished translator of and commentator on Plato. (Revd) Lorimer Fison (1832–1907), Australian missionary and anthropologist; along with A. W. Howitt, among the Wrst to recognize the importance of the study of Aboriginal life. (Sir) Francis Galton (1822–1911), physical anthropologist, traveller, and president of the Anthropological Institute; brother-in-law of H. Montagu Butler. The biography: Karl Pearson, The Life, Letters, and Labours of Francis Galton, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914, 1924, 1930). (Sir) Edmund Gosse (1849–1928), man of letters, later librarian of the House of Lords. A consummate ‘insider’ in the literary establishment, as secretary of the Royal Literary Fund he was able to assist Frazer no fewer than three times when the latter found himself in Wnancial straits, as well as securing him a Civil List pension. The biography: Ann Thwaite, Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape (London: Secker & Warburg, 1984). Alfred Cort Haddon (1855–1940), when he became acquainted with Frazer, had just returned from a zoological expedition in the late 1890s to Torres Straits in the South PaciWc. His experience there caused him to change disciplines, from zoology to anthropology. Later, reader in anthropology at Cambridge and Frazer’s close friend. The biography: A. H. Quiggin, Haddon the Head Hunter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1942). E. Sidney Hartland (1848–1927), Frazer’s good friend, a solicitor with a lifelong scholarly interest in anthropology and folklore. He delivered the inaugural Frazer Lecture in 1922. Alfred William Howitt (1830–1908), Australian natural scientist and anthropologist. Kamilaroi and Kurnai (Melbourne, 1880), by Howitt and Fison, was a pioneering study of Aboriginal life. The biography: Mary Howitt


15

Walker, Come Wind, Come Weather (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1971). Henry Jackson, OM (1839–1921), praelector in ancient philosophy, Regius Professor of Greek, and vice-master of Trinity; Frazer’s teacher at Trinity and, later, friend. The biography: R. St. John Parry, Henry Jackson, O.M., a Memoir (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926); Robert B. Todd, ‘ ‘‘One of the Great English Worthies’’: Henry Jackson Reassessed’, in Christopher Stray (ed.), The Owl of Minerva, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, suppl. vol. 28 (2005), 88–111. William James Lewis (1847–1926), professor of mineralogy, University of Cambridge, 1881–1926. Close friend of both Frazers, and one of Lilly Frazer’s conWdants. George A. Macmillan (1855–1936), classical scholar and publisher: Frazer’s editor for nearly Wfty years. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942), Polish anthropologist, who made extended Weldwork a sine qua non for ethnographers and (along with A. R. RadcliVe-Brown) created modern structural-functionalist anthropology; in his early days Frazer’s prote´ge´. The biography: Michael W. Young, Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist 1884–1920 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), covers only the Wrst half of Malinowski’s life; still useful is Raymond Firth, ‘Introduction: Malinowski as Scientist and Man’, in R. Firth (ed.), Man and Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957), 1–14. (Canon) John Roscoe (1861–1932), Anglican missionary and African explorer and anthropologist; one of Frazer’s closest friends in the second half of his life. Solomon Schechter (1847–1915), rabbinical scholar and one of Frazer’s best friends in Cambridge; in 1902 he emigrated to New York to become the chancellor of the new (Conservative) Jewish Theological Seminary. The biography: Norman Bentwich, Solomon Schechter: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938). William Robertson Smith (1846–94), Scottish Orientalist and biblical scholar. As co-editor of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Smith wrote the key articles on ‘Angel’ and ‘Bible’, in which he presented an epitome of a century of German biblical criticism. His fundamentalist coreligionists in the Free Church of Scotland were scandalized, which led in the 1870s and early 1880s to a series of trials for heresy. Smith wore his notoriety lightly, but in 1883 left Scotland for a position at Cambridge as reader in Arabic. After a year at Trinity (1883–4), where he met Frazer, he became a fellow at Christ’s College and later University Librarian. During the ten years they knew one another, Frazer’s best friend. The biography: J. S. Black

16


and George Chrystal, The Life of William Robertson Smith (London: A. & C. Black, 1912). (Sir) W[alter] Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929), professor of biology at the University of Melbourne and, along with his colleague and friend Frank J. Gillen (1856–1912), universally regarded as the greatest of the early Australian anthropologists. His friendship with Frazer lasted for thirty years. The biography: D. J. Mulvaney and J. H. Calaby, ‘So Much That Is New’: Baldwin Spencer, 1860–1929 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1985). For a current repositioning of Spencer and Gillen within the history of anthropology, see Howard Morphy, ‘More Than Mere Facts’, in S. R. Morton and D. J. Mulvaney (eds.), Exploring Central Australia (Chipping Norton, NSW: Surrey Beatty, 1996). Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917), generally regarded as the father of modern British anthropology. His Primitive Culture (1871) represented the Wrst sustained study of the development of culture from an evolutionary perspective. First professor of anthropology in Britain, at Oxford. The biography: R. R. Marett, Tylor (London: Chapman & Hall, 1936).

Part I Before The Golden Bough, 1875–90

The Wfteen years between the Wrst extant piece of Frazer’s writing and the publication of The Golden Bough comprise his student days and his academic apprenticeship as a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. We have a modicum of information about his early years, some of which comes from two memoirs he composed at the end of his life.1 He was born in Glasgow on New Year’s Day, 1854, the eldest of four children of Daniel and Katherine Frazer. His father was a leading chemist in the city (Frazer & Green, Buchanan Street) and an active Liberal. Frazer’s parents were among those thousands who had seceded from the Church of Scotland in 1843 and created the Free Church of Scotland; in view of his lifelong critique of religion in general, and Christianity in particular, it is noteworthy that he recalled with aVection the piety of his upbringing. (It is also worth remarking that in not coming from a Church of England (or Scotland) family Frazer resembles many of those who carried forward the anthropological critique of religion in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth: Herbert Spencer was from a Unitarian family, E. B. Tylor was a Quaker, A. C. Haddon a Congregationalist, William Robertson Smith was Free Church, Jane Ellen Harrison a Baptist, Joseph Jacobs a Jew.) The family soon left the city for the more salubrious suburban air of Garelochhead, where young James attended LarchWeld Academy (nothing remains there today from his era); at 15, then not an unusually early age, he proceeded to the University of Glasgow, where he compiled a brilliant academic record. In the memoir the teachers he chose to remember were the Latinist G. G. Ramsay, the philosopher John Veitch, and the physicist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin). The presence of the latter two illustrate an important academic diVerence between Scottish and English schools; south 1 ‘Speech on Receiving the Freedom of the City of Glasgow’ and ‘Memories of My Parents’, in Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmogonies and Other Pieces (London: Macmillan, 1935), 117–51.

18

Before The Golden Bough, 1875–90

of the border he would never have had an opportunity to study either philosophy or natural science, whereas Glasgow gave him a much broader curriculum. As a result, he had to make up a good deal of ground later, when up against English schoolboys who had done little besides Latin and Greek before they went up to university. Ramsay gave him the necessary solid foundation in classics, his chosen subject. Veitch, a last footnote to the Scottish Enlightenment, oVered him the resonant notion that psychology was a necessary preliminary to philosophy: before one could create an intellectual system, one needed to understand how the mind itself works. Frazer, no scientist, nonetheless credited Thomson with instilling in him the idea that the natural universe could be described completely by unvarying physical laws; at some point at Glasgow he seems painlessly to have jettisoned all need for the supernatural. Although, as I said, there is no dramatic Victorian ‘deconversion’ here, one may nevertheless suspect that there may have been more here than Frazer allows us to see. Speculation aside, one may note that Frazer remained a dutiful son and brother throughout his life, which means at least that to spare his parents’ feelings he must have refrained from discussions in the family about the implications of his work. Although his father may well have hoped that James would succeed him in the family business, he respected, admired, and supported his son’s academic ability. The University of Glasgow had given Frazer what we might call today a good secondary education; to fulWl his intellectual promise he had to continue, which meant going south, to university in England. Although numbers of bright young Scots had beaten a path to Oxford over the years, the fervent Protestant Daniel Frazer was having none of it. Perhaps fearing some lingering Anglo-Catholic infection from the ghost of John Henry Newman at Oxford, in 1874 Daniel sent his son to Trinity College, Cambridge, where Frazer would spend more than half of his adult life. Trinity was then the most aristocratic of the Cambridge colleges, so James must have been somewhat out of place socially, but this would have mattered little to him; as one of the serious reading men, he would never have been interested in fast living. More germane is the fact that, only Wfteen years after the publication of The Origin of Species, the battle between science and religion for the hearts and minds of educated Britons was then in full swing. Ironically enough in view of Daniel Frazer’s motive for sending him there, Trinity College probably constituted the epicentre of rationalism in Britain at the time, and Frazer seems to have enrolled in the party of reason and science as soon as he arrived. It is impossible to be certain, but his library provides suggestive evidence: in a catalogue prepared in the early 1900s, we note numerous titles by Herbert Spencer, nearly all with publication dates in the 1870s, his undergraduate years; another early favourite was the rationalist


19

French biblical critic Ernest Renan. (Later, in an access of convenient amnesia, Frazer would airbrush Spencer out of his own account of his intellectual formation; his aVection for Renan, however, continued lifelong.) That Frazer continued to write to his tutor at Trinity, J. M. Image (1842– 1919), after having taken his degree shows that he valued Image highly, not so much for his scholarship but rather for his understanding and sympathy. The Wrst item—a list that Frazer drew up for Image of his classical reading at the end of his Wrst year—is astonishing in its length and breadth. Some of the late authors—Diodorus, Lucan—were hardly read even by scholars at the time and never appeared as set books anywhere, which means that Frazer sought them out on his own. Overall, the list is an impressive demonstration of his curiosity and industry.2 Frazer did well in the college examinations at the end of the Wrst and second years, and in 1878 was ranked second in the classical Tripos, which then as now entirely determined the class of one’s degree. Because those were the days of the undivided curriculum, in the Tripos the student was examined on the entire three years of undergraduate work. The Tripos extended over more than two weeks, and the test conditions—a series of three-hour papers, each consisting of twelve to Wfteen questions, many with sub-parts—placed a premium on speed and stamina as well as on intellectual mastery. There was no time to be original; nor was originality a desideratum. Without diminishing his achievement, his placement demonstrated as much as anything else that he had successfully internalized the examination’s peculiar constraints and adjusted himself to them better than all but one of the students in his year. He then won a six-year college fellowship with an essay on Platonic epistemology: that is, before he had even thought of anthropology and the history of religion, he was already oriented toward philosophy and psychology. During these Wrst years at Trinity, Frazer met several of the people who would determine the direction of his later life. The longest and most moving letter in this collection, written in December 1897, describes his Wrst encounter and ensuing friendship with the charismatic sociologist of Semitic religions and biblical scholar William Robertson Smith (1846–94), who simply 2 By way of instructive comparison, the set books at the time for the honours degree at the University of Glasgow (which admittedly expected and required less of its students than did Cambridge) were these: in Latin verse, the whole of Vergil and Horace and one of the following— Lucretius (four books), Juvenal (all but three satires), or Catullus; in prose, Cicero, Philippics, any Wve consecutive books of Livy, and Tacitus, Annals, I–VI. In Greek the verse texts were Homer, Odyssey, I–XII, and two chosen from Aeschylus, Agamemnon and Eumenides; Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus Coloneus; or Euripides, Phoenissae and Iphigenia in Aulis; and in prose, Thucydides, III–VI, and either two dialogues of Plato or three books of Aristotle, Politics, or two of the Rhetoric. Thanks to Mick Morris for this information.

20


swept him oV his feet. For Frazer, Smith’s advent caused a seismic shift; within months of agreeing to prepare a translation and commentary on the guidebook to Greece of the ancient traveller Pausanias, he simultaneously moved to the full-time study of folklore, anthropology, and the history of ancient and ‘primitive’ religion. (The classical and anthropological, it would soon emerge, were not so far apart as might have been supposed.) Like Frazer, Smith was a Scot and had been brought up in the Free Church; unlike Frazer, however, by the time they met (in the winter of 1883–4) Smith had been engaged in public controversy for years. As co-editor of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Smith had written the explosive articles on ‘Angel’ and ‘Bible’, in which he had delivered to Britain in summary form the results of a century of advanced German biblical scholarship. The ensuing uproar among the biblical literalists in the Free Church—Smith was a professor of Hebrew at the Free Church’s seminary in Aberdeen—precipitated the last important trials for heresy in Britain; in the end, after several years of controversy that produced much heat and little light, Smith had become so notorious at home that he availed himself of the chance to leave Scotland and become reader in Arabic at Cambridge. In those days the Encyclopaedia appeared a volume at a time, and by the mid-1880s had reached the letter ‘P’; thus it was that, after a few brief classical articles, Smith assigned Frazer the fateful topics ‘Taboo’ and ‘Totemism’. As already noted, Frazer was immediately taken with the subject matter of anthropology, understood by him as the history of religion from an evolutionary point of view; another attractive feature of the new Weld was its comparative emptiness, in terms of both theory and data, as compared to that of classics, whose texts had been the subjects of intense study since the Renaissance. Furthermore, his intellectual preparation was both useful and appropriate—in those pre-professional days, before it was possible to take a degree in the subject, writers on anthropological topics came from a variety of backgrounds (for example, medicine, natural history, law, theology), and Frazer was by no means at a disadvantage starting in classics. Frazer’s Wrst considerable piece of classical work was on the guidebook to ancient Greece composed by Pausanias in the second century ce. The Pausanias project began opportunistically as a portable two-volume guidebook intended for a new niche audience within the British reading public: the immense interest sparked by the discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s and the beginnings of railroad construction in Greece in the 1880s meant that educated tourists were now able to see for themselves the classical sites then being excavated in Greece. Starting in 1884, Frazer worked Wrst on the translation and then on the commentary on Pausanias, which started to grow dangerously under his hand, as would all his subsequent productions.


21

For Frazer his two areas of interest—classics and anthropology—were continuous and interpenetrating. To understand that continuity, one should be aware that Pausanias in his travels around Greece was also what we might call an amateur ethnographer, with a special interest in collecting stories and practices in the countryside that had long since vanished in Athens. At the same time as he was translating Pausanias and gathering materials for what would be a comprehensive commentary, Frazer was in daily contact with Robertson Smith, whose own special interest was the complex interplay of ritual and myth in ancient and ‘primitive’ societies. Smith had argued in his great work The Religion of the Semites (1889) that, contrary to received opinion, in ancient society the emphasis was not on abstract creed but always on concrete practice. What the congregants believed was distinctly less important than what they did to fulWl their cultic obligations.3 Although Frazer and Smith disagreed fundamentally about the meaning and value of religion (Smith was a convinced Christian throughout his life), there is little doubt that his inXuence on Frazer was strongest in the early years, when he was writing the Wrst edition of The Golden Bough; after Smith’s death in 1894, Frazer changed his mind about the relationship between myth and ritual (as the exchange in 1911 with R. R. Marett demonstrates). When he did so, he did not delete his earlier ideas but simply buried them, with the result that the second and third editions of The Golden Bough present a palimpsest of the evolution of his own thought. In 1889, after a break in the letters of about sixteen months, during which Macmillan must have assumed that his author was labouring away on the commentary, Frazer informed his publisher that in fact he had suspended work on Pausanias in order to write a book on ancient and primitive religion—The Golden Bough. If Macmillan was interested, he would be pleased to send it along for review. He was keen to have Macmillan’s decision on the manuscript because, if it was accepted, he would ask for an advance against royalties to go to Greece in the spring of 1890 to observe the excavations for himself, all in the service of the commentary, which continued to grow inexorably. After Smith, the next signiWcant Wgure of this period is Henry Jackson, the well-known Platonist. He was also vice-master of Trinity, which in his view meant that his door should be open to members of the college every night. Jackson’s rooms were the universally acknowledged social and moral heart of 3

This controversial thesis, known later as ‘ritualism’, would enjoy an afterlife in the midtwentieth century, when the thesis became the foundation text for a school of post-classical mythand-ritual literary critics in Britain and the United States. See Robert Ackerman, The Myth and Ritual School: J. G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists (New York: Routledge, 2002).


22

Trinity, but as a result he never wrote the great book on Plato that everyone expected and hoped for. As an undergraduate, Frazer had been Jackson’s student; his choice of subject for his fellowship essay—Plato’s epistemology—was an implicit homage to Jackson, so when Frazer won his fellowship, a signiWcant relationship already existed. Jackson, a man of many parts who was always interested in much more than ancient philosophy, touched Frazer’s life in many diVerent ways: the letters between them include exchanges on topics as diverse as the rules of hopscotch and ‘primitive’ beliefs regarding the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth. Fifteen years later, when Frazer received an unlooked-for oVer to lecture on comparative religion at a Methodist seminary, Jackson was among those whom Frazer sought out for wise counsel. The third important presence dating from this period is one whom Frazer met only on the page—Heinrich Heine. Frazer, who could never simply relax and enjoy himself but always had to have an intellectual project in hand, decided to perfect his knowledge of the language when his father gave him a holiday in Germany as a reward for his outstanding performance in the Tripos. In Germany he read Heine for the Wrst time, and was instantly smitten. Over time, Heine came to embody a complex of emotions too deep for Frazer to articulate clearly or directly, the main ingredients being sadness and longing. His name and poetry come up repeatedly, especially whenever Frazer is under stress or is otherwise deeply moved. Indeed, later, he broke away from Pausanias a second time to inquire of George Macmillan whether the Wrm might be interested were he to edit a selection of Heine’s verse for the Golden Treasury series; perhaps because Macmillan was unwilling to countenance yet another distraction, he rejected the oVer. I believe that Heine was instrumental in converting Frazer from an unthinking anti-Semite in his early days to a distinct philo-Semite later.4 The publication of The Golden Bough in 1890 launched J. G. Frazer as a scholar. Because of the interest that already existed among educated readers in anything bearing on the origin, meaning, and value of religion, because Frazer seemed to eschew polemic and stick to facts, and because he was the master of a clear if rather Latinate style that made his work eminently accessible, nearly everything he would write for the next thirty years would become necessary reading to an increasingly large educated public. 4

See Robert Ackerman, ‘J. G. Frazer and the Jews’, Religion, 22 (1992), 135–60.


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To J. M. Image,1 October 1875 Trinity College, Cambridge [In Image’s hand, ‘J G Frazer has read’ as superscription to the following list.] Greek Verse Homer (Iliad, Odyssey) Hesiod (except fragments) Pindar " " Aeschylus " " Sophocles " " Euripides " " Aristophanes " " Theocritus " " Theognis, Tyrtaeus, and the rest of the pœts in Bergk’s Pœt. Lyr. Gr. up to p. 569, part II, ed. 3d (XXIV in no.) Also a no. of the pœms of the Pseudo-Anacreon. Prose Herodotus Thucydides Xenophon (Hellenica, and between 3 and 4 bks (about) of Anabasis) Plato (Apol., Crito, Phaedo, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Republic, Protagoras) Aristotle (Politics) Aeschines (In Ctesiphontem) Demosthenes (Olynthaics, Philippics, De Pace, De Halonneso, Peri tvÐ n

e n Xersonhsv fi ; ProB t hn epistolhn, Epistolh Filippoy, Peri syntajevB, Peri tvÐ n symmorivn, Pro liberate Rhod., Pro Megalop., Peri tvÐ n pr oB Alejaydron synuhkvn, De Cor., De Fals. Legat.,

Advers. Lept., In Mid., In Androt., In Aristocratem, Avers. Phormionem, Pr oB t hn Lakritoy paragrawhn, Paragrawh pr oB Pantaineton, Adversus Bœotum de nomine, Aversus Bœotum de dote, Advers.

Dionysodorum) Isocrates (ad Demonicum, & Panegyric) Latin Verse Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, Juvenal, Persius, Propertius, Tibullus, Terence, Plautus (Mostellaria and Persae), Ovid (Fasti, Heroides 1–14, Metam. 1–5 and extracts)

24

Before The Golden Bough, 1875–90 Prose Cicero (Verrine, Philippic, and Catilinarian Orat., Pro Cluentio (except some chapters), a little of the De Nat. Deorum, and a few Epistles) Livy (I–X, XXI–XXIV) Tacitus (Annals, Agricola, Germanica) Caesar (some of the Gallic War, amount uncertain) Sallust (Jugurtha, between 60 and 70 chapters, probably; Catiline— amount uncertain) Pliny (Epistles) Augustine (De Civ. Deo lib I)

Many of these books I have read twice or oftener, e.g., Thucydides, Virgil, Horace. Besides these I have read a little of Diodorus Siculus, Lucan, Martial, Quintilian, and Tertullian. James G. Frazer Oct. 1875 [In Image’s hand: ‘He began residence Oct. 1874’.] TCC Add. MS b.17: 1022 1. Frazer’s tutor, J. M. Image (1842–1919), befriended the young man, who ever after valued highly his sympathy and support. 2. For an informative comparison of the reading that Frazer’s near-contemporary Ulrich von Wilamowitz-MoellendorV had done at the age of 21, see Frazer, 21. In many respects Frazer had read more than Wilamowitz at this point in their respective careers.

To J. M. Image, 9 March 1878 31 Trinity St Sir [J M Image], It is perhaps due to the examiners that I should let you know that I omitted the Latin verse composition yesterday not from carelessness but because I had been advised to do so by those who thought that any version I might have given in would have been worse than valueless.1 Had I been able, I should have gladly attempted the paper. I am, Sir, Yours respectfully J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.17: 103 1. Neither the identity nor the motive of the dissuaders is known.


25

To J. M. Image, 11 April 1878 17 Grosvenor Terrace, Glasgow Dear Mr Image, As I should like to be a little more independent of my father, and the only certain way of becoming so seems to be to take pupils, I should be obliged if you could send me some for next term. I write just now in case you should be making arrangements. I am also writing by the same post to Mr. Stanford to ask when he will be leaving his rooms, that I may know when my furniture may be put in. I wish to thank you for the kind help and sympathy you have constantly given me, and of which I am very sensible. Believe me, dear Sir, Very sincerely yours J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.17: 104

To J. M. Image, 30 June [1878] Veim Strohhause 14, St. Georg, Hamburg Dear Mr Image, You were so kind (if I remember aright1) as to wish me to write you to let you know what I have been doing in Germany. I have had a very pleasant time in Hamburg. It is a delightful city, the lakes, houses and gardens are very Wne. My friend Dr. Maass and his wife have been very kind. My time has been a good deal occupied in learning German, but my progress is slow. I have done little classical work, and I fear I must give up the thought of sending in a dissertation this year. Before writing about Plato, I should like to reread at least the most important parts of him. So I have been working at him, but I fear it will be quite impossible for me to read him and write about him before the 15th of August. It would be better, I suppose, not to send in a dissertation at all, than to send in a bad one. May one compete in the examination without having sent in a dissertation? I should be grateful for your advice on this point, and for any information as to the number of vacancies that there are likely to be.

26


As to modern philosophy I have done nothing to it here, but hope to work at it on my return home.2 I intend to leave for Scotland towards the end of July. Before coming here, I made a short tour up the Rhine with my brother.3 We got as far as Heidelberg, where we had some friends from Scotland spending the summer, and where we had an introduction to one of the Professors. With kind regards, Believe me, dear Mr Image, Yours very sincerely James G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.17: 105 1. The Wrst recorded instance of a continual lifelong mistrust of his memory. 2. Frazer did make a foray into philosophy, but it came to nothing: see Frazer, 41–52. 3. His younger brother Samuel was a source of lifelong worry. Samuel never found a profession, and the disparity between his seeming fecklessness and James’s academic success may have contributed to his tendencies to drink. He died in 1914.

To Henry Jackson, 15 December [1881] Rowmore House, Garelochhead, Dumbartonshire1 Dear Jackson, Your letter reached me just as I was leaving Cambridge. Please accept my warm thanks for your very friendly and impartial treatment of Postgate and myself.2 Though I have beneWted by your view of double testimonials, I know you will not misunderstand me when I say that I completely agree with it, and that if I ever were in a position to give testimonials, I would take the course which you have taken, and would try to act with the same impartiality. You have doubtless heard that Aberdeen has been already Wlled up. But one’s testimonials will not have been useless if they incite one to try to deserve better the good opinion of one’s friends, and lead one to hope that one’s work may be productive of some further good than the immediate pleasure to the worker. And there is at least one advantage in this failure, that I am not obliged to leave Trinity immediately.


27

Thanking you heartily for your very kind testimonial and for all your other kindness, Believe me, dear Jackson, Yours very truly James G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.30: 35 1. Frazer’s parents’ home. 2. John Percival Postgate (1853–1926), Latinist; fellow of Trinity. Jackson wrote testimonials for both Frazer and Postgate when they applied for the position of professor of humanity (i.e. Latin) at Aberdeen University. In the event, the post was Wlled by (Sir) James Donaldson (1831–1915), later principal and vice-chancellor, University of St Andrews.

To George A. Macmillan, 12 July 1884 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, I have to apologise for not replying earlier to your letter. The delay sprang from no unwillingness of mine to accept your oVer, which has given me much satisfaction. With regard to the size of the book I do not think it would be possible to include a translation and notes (at all adequate) within one volume. The translation alone must make a considerable volume, since the Greek text by itself Wlls two volumes of the Teubner text series or 850 pages. I should propose to issue the translation separately, to be followed by a volume of notes or perhaps a regular edition. Prof. Colvin,1 whom I consulted on the subject, is of opinion that an edition with a commentary is much wanted, more so indeed than a translation. But in case you do not care to undertake so extensive a work, the demand for which would probably be but limited, I will proceed with the translation, at the same time collecting materials for a commentary, out of which a selection of notes might be added at the end of the translation, if there was room, and the rest might be reserved for future publication either in the form of a commentary alone or of an edition. I am greatly obliged to our common friend Mr James Gow2 for having brought this matter before you and I sincerely share your hope that we shall succeed in arranging it to our mutual satisfaction. I am, dear Sir, Yours faithfully James G. Frazer

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[Macmillan notes: ‘Mr J. G. Frazer accepts oVer of 1⁄2 proWts for translation of Pausanias’.] BL 1. (Sir) Sidney Colvin (1845–1927), literary critic, art historian, fellow of Trinity College; later, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 2. Dr James Gow (1854–1923), classical scholar at Trinity and friend of both Frazer and George Macmillan; later, headmaster of Westminster School.

To George A. Macmillan, 6 August [1884] Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, It is now more than three weeks since I wrote accepting your oVer to publish my proposed translation of Pausanias and from your silence I presume that you agree to the suggestions made in my letter. Still as in your letter you placed some emphasis on the advisability of including the translation and notes in a single volume and as I said and still think that it would be scarcely possible to do so except by increasing the volume to an inordinate size, I should be glad to learn from you deWnitely that the need of two volumes (Prof. Colvin in conversation even spoke of three, but I hope two would be suYcient) will not be an obstacle to your undertaking the publication of the book. I may add that some maps and plans would be almost indispensable. By allowing the curtailment of topographical notes they would probably save space as well as contribute to clearness. Hoping to hear from you soon, I am, dear Sir, Yours faithfully James G. Frazer BL

To Francis Galton, 8 March 1885 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, I send by this post my paper addressed to you at the Institute 3 Hanover Sq.1 You will see that that the latter part of the answer (p.18 sqq.) is cut very


29

short. Though I have not read the paper aloud yet (having been working against time), I was afraid that it would be too long if I inserted the references in the latter section as fully as I have done in the preceding. However I intend to write out the latter part in full; if the paper proves to be not too long, I can read it, but if, as I fear is the case, it is already rather long, I shall at least have my references ready to answer questions. The points which especially require proof in this last section are 1) the custom of burying in eYgy, and 2) the habit of spirits to enter and depart by the roof. On both points I have evidence to adduce. I did not understand, though of course I ought to have done so, the purpose for which you wished the paper sent in as soon as possible. I thought it was to enable the assistant secretary to prepare an abstract for the paper, and as I sent him one and he apparently did not desire more, I thought it unnecessary to send in the paper itself. But even had I known, I fear it could not have made any diVerence as I have been working at it up to the last moment and could hardly have sent it on a post earlier. As the paper is already long, I have dropped completely the general question of the taboo, as too vast to be tacked on to a paper dealing with a subject which forms only a small part of the taboo system. The points to which I would invite your attention in my paper with a view to discussion are these: 1. The origin of puriWcation (my theory of ) 2. " " " mourning apparel " " 3. " " " fasting in mourning " " Whatever be the decision of the Council of the Geographical Society tomorrow, I shall always esteem it a high privilege and honour to have been allowed to read a paper before the Anthropological Institute. I am deeply sensible of the honour done me by the intention or wish of yourself and the other distinguished men whom you mention to hear my paper. That Herbert Spencer should be one of them is more gratifying to me than I care to say, for my intellectual debt to his writings is deep and will be life long. That I should be able even in prospect to interest one from whom I have derived such keen intellectual pleasure and enlightenment is to me almost aVecting.2 I certainly hope and expect to read my paper in person, and I will be careful to be at the Institute in plenty of time on Tuesday evening. Thanking you for all your kindness, I remain, dear Sir, Yours very gratefully James G. Frazer

30


I am writing out another copy of my paper, which will diVer probably only in a few verbal improvements from the copy (the Wrst) which I send you. UCL, Galton Collection 1. Frazer’s professional ‘debut’, a paper delivered to the Anthropological Institute, with the characteristic title, ‘On Certain Burial Customs as Illustrative of the Primitive Theory of the Soul’, JAI, 15 (1885), 64–101; repr. GS, 3–50. 2. For Spencer’s inXuence, see Frazer, 40–4.

To Henry Jackson, 31 May 1886 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, I wrote home about Hop-Scotch and give you the results of my enquiries.1 The game is called Peever or Pal lal, the latter being the old-fashioned name which I had never heard before. There are two shapes of ‘beds’ as they are called, oblong and round. 1

2

3

4

8

7

6

5

(the divisions are meant to be of the same size) This shape could be made with even more beds (apparently also sometimes with only six).

3

2

4

1

5 7

6

This might have either six or seven beds. When it was wished to make the game especially diYcult the middle was sometimes used as the 10th bed. (It seems that the number of beds in the


31

circular form varied; at least this is an inference of my own from the two circular Wgures sent me, which I copy as they were given to me.) Thus

6 7

5

8

10

4 3

2

9 1

But this form needed good players. You will see that all these forms diVer from those given by Crombie. There seem to have been no special names given to the separate beds. The ‘peever’ or stone used was circular. When a mistake was made, all the other players called out ‘Deeds deed(s) you’re deeds’ i.e. (probably) you’re dead. As to the mode of playing it, I copy out the description sent me. ‘‘The way we played it was to stand outside no 1 shoving the peever to that number, then hopping on one foot, moving the peever along all round. That must be done without putting down the left foot or allowing the peever or foot to touch any of the marks or go out of the regular beds. If these rules were transgressed, the next girl began. If one made the blunder at any of the beds, when she began again she stood outside shoving her peever on to the bed she had stopped at, if it went on a line she lost her chance. The game was sometimes three times without stopping. If a girl did that without a blunder, she won the game’’. The beds were made any size wished, usually perhaps about half a yard. They were scored on a pavement with a soft slaty stone. This is all, except that (as I mentioned) the game is a girls’ game in Scotland. We boys never played it. As to the modes of counting, I have not yet received an answer. Yours very truly James G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.56: 87 1. Frazer’s reputation being that of the archetypal ‘armchair anthropologist’, it is amusing to see him here as folkloric Weldworker; Jackson was keenly interested in anthropology and folklore, and in those days no sharp distinction existed between the disciplines.

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To Henry Jackson, 31 May 1886 (?) Trinity College, Cambridge Boy’s Own Book s.v. Hopscotch p. 34 (1885) where the woodcut suggests derivation from Bagpiper. The description there diVers from the common use here in the following respects: 1. We [in Scotland] call the game A-poddy. Another name in Devon is Clickstone. 2. The oyster shell is a stone called ‘‘Luckystone’’. 3. The Wgure is simpler:

3 1

2

5 4

4. No. 5 is called ‘‘‘Bounder’ or ‘Boiler’’’. 5. I have not been able to detect any diVerence between the law of hopping etc. here and that in the book, except that I have not heard here of the catching from the toe. The return in exact reverse is the principle here as in the book. 6. I have not yet found an interpretation for the cross; it is subject to the same rule as the other lines; but that is scarcely suYcient excuse for it. 7. I am told that there is a variant as to the Wgure, introduced by some who make side lines; but my professor evidently thought small beer of them. Cf. also Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes Bk IV chap. IV where several diVerences appear, notable because his date ‘‘in my memory’’ carries you (say) 30 years before 1801. My own recollection tallies far more with Boys Own Book than with the K.T. use, with regard to the Wgure; and I distinctly remember ‘‘Plum pudding’’ and the hop astride which seems unknown here. TCC (with TCC Add. MS c.56: 87)


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To George A. Macmillan, 18 July 1886 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, Now that the copy-right of Heine’s works has expired, it occurs to me that a volume of selections from his lyrics would make a charming addition to your Golden Treasury Series.1 Heine is a poet who would gain rather than lose by being subjected to the process of selection, for mixed up with his best pieces there is a certain amount of second-rate work, the omission of which would enhance the eVect of the remainder. To English readers he is chieXy known by the Buch der Lieder, but a good deal of that volume might be left out with advantage and much that is beautiful ought certainly to be added from his later poems. Heine is much read and admired in this country and a volume which should contain all his best poems would, I believe, be exceedingly popular. If you decide to publish such a volume, it would give me great pleasure to make and arrange the selection. As I am fairly familiar with his best poems (he being one of my favourite authors) I could very shortly furnish you with a list of the poems and the printing could proceed rapidly. It would be desirable to preWx a slight sketch of his life, since his poetry, being a reXection of his personality, cannot be fully appreciated without some knowledge of the circumstances in which it was written. However this would be a question for you to decide. I may add that I am working steadily and with much interest at Pausanias and hope to have the MS ready without too great delay, though I cannot as yet specify any exact time. I am, dear Sir, Yours faithfully James G. Frazer [Macmillan writes: ‘need not trouble about grammar notes except where absol. required by diYc. of constr. Otherwise mainly literary’] BL 1. The Heine anthology is one of the few projects proposed by Frazer to which Macmillan did not give his assent. His literary adviser thought that the volume would not attract a suYciently large readership.

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To Percy Gardner,1 18 August 1886 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Gardner, Accept my warm thanks for the new instalment of the Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias. I am delighted that it goes ahead so fast and look forward to its early completion. I appreciate more than ever the debt of gratitude which students of Pausanias owe you, for I am at present wading through journals and transactions and raking together the facts bearing on Pausanias which they contain. It is therefore a great satisfaction to feel that amongst the numerous subjects which I have to bear in mind in this process of selection numismatics is not one, it having been already so well done by you and your colleague. Of course I will, with your permission, make frequent references to your Commentary in my notes, but I feel that your researches have quite superseded the need for any attempts (necessarily feeble and abortive) in that direction by me. With very many thanks believe me, Yours very truly James G. Frazer Would that the specialists in archaeology would follow your lead by writing special commentaries on Pausanias. Thus there might be an epigraphical commentary, a ceramic, an architectural, etc. But I suppose this is too much to hope for. Bodleian Library, Eng. Lett. c.55 1. Percy Gardner (1846–1937), professor of classical archaeology at Oxford; co-author, with Friedrich Imhoof-Blumer, of A Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias (London: Clay, 1887).

To Spencer F. Baird,1 4 March 1887 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, Seeing that Mr H. C. Yarrow, in the Wrst Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology invites contributions from all persons interested in the mortuary customs of savages, I venture to beg, through you, his acceptance of a paper


35

on burial customs read by me before the Anthropological Institute (London) in 1885. I have since collected a good many more customs, which I hope to publish at some future time. I also venture to send a paper by me on the customs of maintaining perpetual Wres.2 As that custom has been found among the Pueblo Indians etc. of the United States, it is possible that my paper may interest some of the workers in the Weld of American ethnology. I am at present working on the article Totemism for the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and have been extremely interested by the very important paper by Mr. Dorsey on Omaha Sociology in the 3d Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.3 I hope that we may look for more such contributions from Mr. Dorsey. If pecuniary diYculties stand in the way of the publication of his results, I think that some subscriptions might be forthcoming from persons in England interested in these studies. May I beg you to send me through the agent of the Smithsonian Institution, the Annual Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, so far as published? Also Mr. Lewis H. Morgan’s Systems of Consanguinity in the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, and the work by the same author on the Houses and House Life of the American Aborigines in the 4th volume of the Contributions to North American Ethnology (in the United States Survey Publications). I have unfortunately been unable to see all or even procure a complete list of the volumes on the Contributions to North American Ethnology; but if, as I infer from one of the Reports, the series includes a volume or part of a volume by Mr. Stephen Powers on the Californian Indians, I should like that volume to be sent with the others I have mentioned. If I am out of order in addressing this application to you, I trust you will pardon my error and transmit my application to the agent for the Institution. I will pay by cheque or otherwise as you or he may direct. I am, dear Sir, Yours faithfully James G. Frazer Smithsonian Institution Archives Record Unit 30 1. Spencer Baird was secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The letter sheds light on the Cambridge University Library’s (lack of ) holdings on American anthropology at the time. 2. Frazer, ‘The Prytaneum, the Temple of Vesta, the Vestals, Perpetual Fires’, Journal of Philology, 14 (1885), 145–72; repr. GS, 51–76. 3. Revd J. Owen Dorsey, ‘Omaha Sociology’, Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution (1884), 211–370.

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To Francis Galton, 7 September 1887 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Mr Galton The Times of yesterday reported a paper read by a Mr Sanborn at the British Association. It was on the Seneca Iroquois and to judge from the summary of its contents given by the Times must have been of great interest. As these papers are often so scantily reported in the regular Reports of the Association, I venture to suggest that perhaps Mr Sanborn might be induced to contribute his paper in full to the Anthropological Institute. I believe it would be valuable. My article on Totemism, written for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has run to such a length that it is to appear separately, only an abridgement of it going to the Encyclopaedia.1 If you will allow me, I will send you a copy of the separate article when it appears. I have in hand several articles, one on Pythagoras and another on some Greek myths. I have got together a certain amount of material and hope to have them out soon. The Dutch East Indies are, I Wnd, a great storehouse of anthropological lore.2 The Weld has been well worked by a number of able men and the people seem to be in a very interesting stage, just at the point where animism has been carried to its highest pitch, as a theory and in practice. Unfortunately the works are in Dutch, of which I have as yet only a scanty knowledge so that reading them is rather slow and diYcult. Yours very truly James G. Frazer UCL, Galton Collection 1. Frazer’s Wrst book, Totemism (Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1887), marked the Wrst time he dealt with this subject, which continued to receive immense attention throughout the Wrst quarter of the twentieth century; he returned to it later several times. It is also the only major title not published by Macmillan, although it was reprinted by incorporation in Totemism and Exogamy (1910). 2. The Wrst mention of Frazer’s attention to Dutch East Indies materials. This would become relevant in his controversy in 1898 with E. B. Tylor.


37

To Henry Jackson, 25 October 1887 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, Many thanks for your criticisms which greatly help to clear and sharpen one’s ideas. I reply: (1) I do not think it is necessary to draw the line so sharply as you do between consummation and subsequent intercourse. The eVusion of blood proves that there is a demon in the woman wounding her; but this demon is not permanently (if at all) driven out at consummation; menstruation is a proof of his continued presence in the woman. Hence as women are always possessed by a devil, there must at any time be a danger in sexual intercourse, though the danger is greatest at consummation and at menstruation, because it is then that the demon visibly stabs. But he may be there with his knife always; hence the need of abstinence on special occasions (war etc.) which are dangerous enough in themselves but the danger of which would be greatly increased by sexual intercourse. So far is consummation from laying the devil in a woman that death itself cannot always lay it. Witness the following custom, which occurs, observe, among the very same set of people among whom the custom about widows occurs which I mentioned in my previous letter. I give the original words: ‘‘stirbt eine Kikamba Frau und Wndet aus ingend einer Ursache BlutausXuss statt, so muss—horribile dictu—ein fremder Mann die na¨chste Nacht beider Leiche liegen. Morgens Wndet er keine Milchkuh in der Na¨he angebunden’’ (as a reward for his services).1 There clearly the devil survives the death of the woman and must be layed [sic] by intercourse with a stranger; from which we must infer that it would be unsafe for a kinsman or neighbour to do it, so a man from a distance has to be got for the purpose. This seems to square excellently with my view of exogamy. (2) As to the limitation of the eVusion of blood, the answer seems simple. The less blood, the slighter the wound, the slighter the wound, the weaker the hand that inXicted it. By fasting, you have therefore weakened the devil and so far made him less dangerous, he can still strike, but not so deep. Surely treatment of the patient aimed, not at the man or woman himself or herself, but at the devil in his or her inside, is thoroughly in accord with savage ideas. Gubernatis (Usi Nuziali, 2nd ed. p. 214) quotes an ancient Indian author as saying ‘‘tempo opportuno per la copula e` il momento in cui alla sposa che si trova nel mese e` appena cessato il sangue.’’2 Exactly: the devil has exhausted


38

himself and the husband seizes the opportunity before he (the devil) can recruit his strength. As to the ‘eVusion of blood desired’, it is of course common, but in all the cases, I believe, so far as my memory goes, the object professed or rather Xaunted openly is the proof of virginity. But virginity only gets a value late in the social development; the idea of virginity in itself having any value is one, I would venture to swear, which a savage is unable even to grasp. Therefore all customs based on the value of virginity must be late and may be entirely omitted in discussing the origin of marriage laws. As to your explanation (from your point of view) of the desire of the husband to have the blood shed by some one else, the fact that in both the examples the substitute must be a stranger (this point being particularly insisted on) tells against you, as you said. But two cases are not enough; more evidence is wanted. Your explanation of ‘‘eVusion of blood not desired,’’ if I understand it rightly, seems to involve the contradiction of both desiring eVusion of blood and not desiring it—desiring it as a proof of virginity (which by that time, you say, may have been valued) and not desiring it, because the absence of blood would be the ‘‘form of the form’’ of capture. I think I have parried your objections to my view or rather conjecture; but if you see an opening, pray smite and spare not. The discussion is to me very stimulating. Yours ever J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.30: 40 1. ‘If a Kikamba woman dies and for whatever reason bleeding occurs, then—horribile dictu—a male stranger must lie with the corpse on the next night. In the morning he Wnds no milkcow tied up in the area’. However, the sense would seem to call for the cow indeed to be tied up in the area (‘as a reward for his services’). 2. ‘The best time for copulation is the moment when the wife’s period has just Wnished’.

To Henry Jackson, 27 October 1887 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, There is abundance of evidence that women at menstruation are regarded as most dangerous; they are secluded at these times amongst almost all the


39

lower races and all contact with them carefully avoided. Whatever they touch contracts pollution. There is another class of facts which must be looked sharply after—the use of the blood of victims to expiate sins of unchastity. Examples are rare, but they occur. I am inclined to put aside all other work in order to devote myself to following up this line, and I hope I might have a volume out in a year. Pausanias, I fear, must stand aside. You will use your discretion in speaking about these facts and ideas. Having got, as I think, on the track, I should like to follow it out for myself. But do as you think right of course. Yours ever J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.30: 41

To Henry Jackson, 9 November 1887 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, Please accept a copy of Totemism. I should be extremely glad to hear any criticisms you may have to make on it and to discuss them with you. May I also ask you to read, mark and inwardly digest the following? ‘‘The interest taken by spirits of the dead in mundane aVairs seldom extends beyond the limits of the tribe to which they belong. Hence, persons taken in war and carried away as slaves by another tribe cease from that moment to be under the care of any Atua. The Atua of their own tribe trouble themselves not to follow them among a hostile tribe and hostile spirits; while the Atua of the tribe whose slaves they are never give them a thought. They are therefore independent of the law of tapu, as far as they are individually concerned—a fortunate circumstance for the comfort of the female portion of the community; for it is owing to this belief that male slaves are able to assist them in a variety of menial oYces connected with carrying and cooking food, which they could not in their free state have meddled in without incurring the anger of their Atua, and its consequence— sickness, and perhaps death.’’ (Shortland, Traditions & Superstitions of the New Zealanders, p. 82 sq.)


40

Nothing more is wanted for the explanation of exogamy. You will keep it dark. Yours ever J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.30: 42

To Henry Jackson, 9 November 1887 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, A mare’s nest, I fear it was after all. A few minutes or rather half a minute’s conversation with R. Smith burst my bubble exogamy.1 I wrote hastily; having just seen the passage and being in the act of sending you a copy of Totemism, I put it in a letter, but I don’t think it amounts to much. Do not think that I have any theory of exogamy based on such facts as I have mentioned to you; all I hold is that such facts have not been properly investigated and that they deserve to be so. In my book which takes shape more and more I do not mean to propound any theory of exogamy, perhaps not even to refer to the subject.2 It will only deal with special points, not with a broad theory of society! Yours ever James G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.30: 43 1. This letter and the one preceding give a sense of Frazer’s, and Trinity’s, liveliness at the time— something he sees in a book makes him think he has plumbed the mystery of exogamy. He tries it out on Robertson Smith, who promptly punctures his bubble. He then bounces back, ready for more. He seems to have had nearly as intense a friendship with Henry Jackson. 2. The book must be The Golden Bough—Frazer was working on nothing else (aside from Pausanias) at the time—but it certainly doesn’t sound like it because the Wrst edition of the work has virtually nothing to say about exogamy. As the letter says, it was always Frazer’s custom to plan his books carefully in his mind; once he began writing, the words Xowed quickly. The implication is that this letter was written in the early stages of the book’s planning.


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To H. Montagu Butler, 21 January 1888 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Master, Since I have been on the Library Committee I have realised, what I had not realised before, the necessity of specialising the Library in certain departments and the impossibility of maintaining it eYcient in all. It seems obvious that this specialisation should take place in directions in which the Library is already strong, not in those in which it is weak. Ethnology is very weakly represented in the Library and is therefore not likely to be one of the select subjects. As it is the only subject in which I can lay any claim for special knowledge, it seems to me that I cannot hope to be of much use on the Committee, and that my place would be better Wlled by one who had made a special study of one of those subjects in which it might be considered desirable to strengthen the Library. Further I confess that experience and reXection have led me seriously to doubt the utility of College libraries. A system which gives us in Cambridge eighteen very imperfect libraries and not one really good one, seems both wasteful and ineYcient. For these reasons I desire, with your permission, to withdraw from the Library Committee. Believe me, dear Master, Yours very faithfully James G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 4

To H. Montagu Butler, 23 January 1888 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Master, I have delayed answering your very kind letter in order to reconsider the matter with the attention due to the decided opinion you expressed in your letter. I have also consulted a friend in whose judgment I have much conWdence, and in deference to your and his advice I have decided to remain

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on the Committee. I should have less hesitation in doing so, if the questions brought before the Committee simply related to books, but practical questions necessarily form part of the business of the Committee, and in practical matters I must confess I distrust my own judgment.1 However I must trust to my deWciencies being remedied by the greater wisdom of others, for whose judgment I have a sincere respect. The very kind opinion of me which you express is to me a fresh motive for deserving it. Thanking you for your letter and apologizing for having troubled you with my doubts I remain, dear Master, Yours very faithfully James G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 5 1. Along with doubting his memory, another constant note in Frazer’s letters is distrust of his own judgement.

To Henry Jackson, 1 May 1888 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, I have just received from Australia fresh evidence as to the prohibition of sexual intercourse (as distinct from marriage) within the clan. My correspondent is Mr Samuel Gason, Police trooper, Beltana, South Australia, and the best living authority on his tribe (the Dieri).1 He says that persons of the same clan (totem) do not marry ‘‘nor do they have sexual intercourse with each other as it is an abomination in the eyes of the tribe and strictly against their laws and customs. To have sexual intercourse with the same branch or totem it (sic) would be equal to incest and would be called ‘BooyoolooParcham’ which would be a terrible accusation and the word would only be made use of in [a] state of frenzy or in a dreadful quarrel. Punishment of the above case would be death on the man’s part and the woman severely punished. There is no doubt that men and women of the same branch or Totem, i.e. a man Rat having sexual intercourse with a woman Rat in a secret way, but incest is unheard of and I cannot believe that such a case ever happened.’’


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From this I infer that though such sexual intercourse (between persons of the same totem) does sometimes occur, it is regarded as an abomination, almost or quite equal to incest. This is of course, so far as it goes, against not only your old theory but also the one sketched by McLennan in the Historical Review, which would lead us to expect intercourse but not marriage within the clan.2 Yours ever J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.30: 44 1. The names of many Aboriginal tribes are now spelled somewhat diVerently: this group is now known as the Dieriyee. 2. John Ferguson McLennan (1827–81), Scottish sociologist of religion, who, in Primitive Marriage (1875) and Studies in Ancient History (1876), pioneered the analysis in Britain of social systems among ‘primitive’ peoples. The article was ‘The Origin of Exogamy’, English Historical Review, 3 (1888), 94–104.

To Henry Jackson, 31 May 1888 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, Will you accept a copy of my Questions on the manners and customs of savages?1 They are meant for distribution among travellers, missionaries, etc. If you should happen to know of any person likely to be able and willing to answer them from Wrst hand knowledge of any set of savages, I should be much obliged if you could let me have his address. I intend sending copies to the Geographical and Anthropological libraries to be given to any traveller who will take them. In time I hope also to make use of the missionary societies and perhaps some of the great trading companies (e.g., the North Borneo company—though I think they deny they are a trading company—but that is no matter); also I am not without hope that some of the Colonial Governments may be induced to give help by distributing the questions to those of their oYcials who are in contact with savages. Perhaps the Smithsonian Institution will take it up. It was through it, I think, that Morgan sent out his inquiries, the results of which he embodied in his Systems of Consanguinity.2 I am in correspondence with some of the Smithsonian people, who may help to push it. But until I get out my book (with which I am in travail) I do not expect to do much in the way of sowing the questions broad cast.

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What suggested drawing up the questions was this. I had begun to correspond with one or two people on these subjects and found it laborious to write an elaborate letter each time. So the thought suggested itself to print a set of questions which could be sent out with no further trouble than that of wrapping a newspaper wrapper round them and writing the address. For South Africa I have secured the help of an energetic missionary who was in the heart of the KaWrs for twelve or thirteen years. He is going to collect information from all the chief people in South Africa, in addition to putting down all he knows himself. I add copies of my Taboo and Thesmophoria. Theseus and Thespiae are also mine but they are insigniWcant.3 So too perhaps are the others, but I think you wished to see Taboo, and Thesmophoria cost me a good deal of trouble. Yours ever J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS 289.c.85/315: 15 (tipped into presentation copy in Wren Library) 1. The genesis of his questionnaire is given here. It was reissued twice, in 1889 and 1907, each version representing a considerable expansion on its predecessor. 2. Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–81), American anthropologist, pioneer in the study of kinship and kinship systems. 3. Articles that he wrote for the 9th edn. of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

To Francis Galton, 1 June 1888 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Mr Galton I beg that you will accept a specimen copy of my Questions on the manners and customs of savages. I found that the Anthropological Notes and Queries of the British Association would hardly answer my purpose. They are so full and elaborate as to form a book, and the expense of distributing copies of them on the scale which I contemplate would be far beyond my means. Again, even from the point of view of the receiver of the questions, it appeared to me that this fulness and elaboration might be an objection, the very number of the questions deterring perhaps all but very enthusiastic persons from attempting to answer them. I have therefore drawn up a comparatively short list of questions the printing and circulation of which will cost very little and which will not I hope be too long to deter even unscientiWc people from answering some of them.1 I am taking the liberty of


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presenting 50 copies to the Anthropological Institute in the hope that they may thus Wnd their way into the hands of travellers and others who have a Wrst hand knowledge of savages. If you approve of this, I shall be glad to supply the Institute with as many additional copies as may be from to time to time required. I am also sending copies to the Geographical and Zoological Societies and to Kew. Believe me, Yours very truly James G. Frazer UCL, Galton Collection 1. Frazer used the replies to his questionnaire in various of his books, but never published them; no reply as such has survived. His attitude toward the results of the survey varied; occasionally he would express pique because the copies, which he distributed freely, elicited so few responses; at other times he acknowledged that some of the responses were valueless.

To George A. Macmillan, 7 June 1888 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, My translation of Pausanias was Wnished (but not revised) more than two years ago, namely in the spring of 1886. I have also gone through most of the foreign archaeological journals, making references in my interleaved Pausanias to everything in them which I judged of importance for Pausanias. Lastly I have collected a considerable quantity of ethnological parallels illustrative of the Greek myths and customs described or referred to by Pausanias. I should add that my commentary on a large part of the Attica is written out in the form of lectures which I delivered in the May term of 1886.1 These lectures however would not form more than a foundation for the more exact and elaborate commentary which I propose to publish. From working at Pausanias I was diverted at the close of 1886 by other work and have not since returned to him. For the work on comparative mythology to which you refer I have collected a good deal of material and am still collecting, my usual plan being to have gathered and arranged all my materials before I begin to write.2 The writing then takes comparatively little time. As I have not yet begun to write the book, I have not seriously contemplated the question of a publisher. I should certainly be glad to publish with you, the more so that I feel something is due to you for the

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delay of Pausanias. But until the book is in a more advanced state than at present, I do not wish to negotiate for its publication. For the present therefore I hold myself quite free, but when the time comes for deciding I shall certainly remember your proposal. I am, Yours very faithfully James G. Frazer BL 1. The Wrst instance of what would become regular procedure: Frazer would lecture in Trinity from the proofs of his latest book. He never supervised students, however, and was never what is today called a University Teaching OYcer. 2. The Wrst explicit allusion to The Golden Bough.

To Henry Jackson, 22 August 1888 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, Many thanks for your suggestive letter which I will try to answer. I did not mean to compare metaphysics and superstition in the sense you seem to propose. As usual your horse seems to be my cart and vice versa. You speak of superstition as a conjectural explanation of recognised institutions, and add that superstitions are similar all over the world because in the same state of society there are similar utilities and therefore similar institutions. At least you say that this seems to follow from a comparison of metaphysics and superstition and you seem to accept this view. According to you, then, men start institutions on a strictly utilitarian basis but afterwards invent absurd (superstitious) reasons to account for a sensible practice. Why should they do so? If they were rational at Wrst, why should they ever be irrational afterwards? You suppose that the world suggested simple and correct ideas of utility to the earliest men, who shaped their practice according to these correct ideas. Afterwards, retaining the correct practice, they abandoned the correct ideas with which they had started and on which their social structure was reared, and gratuitously and (so far as I can see) causelessly exchanged the gold of primitive truth for the base metal of superstition. Why? Your position in regard to savage practice (institutions) seems to me exactly that of the ‘disease of language’ people towards savage theory (mythology).1 The ‘disease of language’ people say that the Wrst men described natural phenomena in


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simple and correct language, because these phenomena presented themselves to primitive man in a simple and correct fashion, being seen through the clear light of natural reason instead of the blinding haze of superstition. But afterwards their descendants, misunderstanding their language, were led to entertain absurd and phantastic ideas about those natural events which primitive man had regarded as simply and rationally as an average decently educated man in the nineteenth century. Both you and they (Max Mu¨ller & Co.) make what seems to me the fundamental mistake of supposing that the world must always appear to any unprejudiced man, at any stage of human history, exactly in the way in which it appears to us in the year 1888. You do not see, what I think is the case, that our way of looking at the world is not the simple direct reXection of the facts that it seems to us to be. It is a vast complex, slowly elaborated through countless generations, in the course of which many philosophies (explanations of the world) have been tried and rejected, wholly or in part, our present way of regarding the world being the net result of this endless process of Xux of opinion. And if we are to judge the future by the past, our present way of looking at the world, natural and correct as it seems to us, is probably only transitional and will perhaps one day appear as remote, absurd, and unnatural to our descendants as the worst extravagance of anta reÐi kai o yden 2 is as true of man savage opinion now appears to us. P (and therefore of his mind, for the mind is the man) as it is of nature. You seem to think that man stands for ever on the same spot in the river and sees it speeding past him. It is not so, he is borne along on the current. There is no absolute way of looking at the world. The whole course of opinion (savage, philosophical, scientiWc) is only a perpetual approximation ever nearer and nearer to what we call the facts, but never by any possibility to reach them, for ‘‘All experience is an arch wherethro’ Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when we move’’3

However this is a question rather for a psychologist—not of course one of the old school, with his mental faculties and capacities all labelled, and docketed.4 But I feel pretty sure that any one who has studied psychology from the physiological side would agree with me that the further we go back, the more unlike ours was the attitude of man to the world; and further that the more we could project ourselves into the future, the more we should Wnd that the view of the world taken by men in the future will diVer from that taken by us at present.

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My view then is, not that superstition is invented to account for an institution, but conversely that the superstition gives rise to the institution. I hold not, as you seem to do, that superstitions are similar all over the world because institutions are similar, but on the contrary—that institutions are similar because superstitions are so. With you, superstition is a parasitic growth on the tree of custom; with me, it is the root from which custom springs. The world, I take it, suggested certain ideas to the primitive man; on these ideas he acted and could not help acting. But his actions were diVerent from ours because the ideas which he received from the world were diVerent from those which we receive. You ask me how I account for the prevalence of similar superstitions. Because the facts of nature are everywhere pretty much alike and the savage mind is pretty much alike. The impression made by the former on the latter is therefore everywhere pretty much alike, i.e. savage ideas are everywhere pretty much alike, from which it follows that savage practice or custom is everywhere pretty much alike, the practice being necessarily based on the ideas. That is how I look at it. But how do you explain the existence of superstition at all, after postulating a primitive nineteenth century rationalism? This I should like explained. And how do you explain mythology? Was primitive man rational in his practice but irrational in his theory? Or do you think, like the ‘disease of language’ people, that he was at Wrst rational in his theory (philosophy of nature) as well as in his practice and that mythology, like superstition, was a parasitic aftergrowth? On my view there is no such divorce between theory and practice as the Wrst of these suppositions involves, and no such relapse from reason to unreason as is entailed by the second. Myths are only ideas of the same type as those which gave rise to superstitious practices and savage institutions; but dealing with things beyond human reach they (the myths) could not have the practical consequences which were produced by the similar ideas about things within reach of man. If we use mythology in the sense of primitive man’s ideas in general, then superstition is only applied mythology—superstition is primitive ideas plus practice, mythology is primitive ideas minus practice. On this view, human progress or development has been steady and continuous. The Wrst incorrect ideas suggested by the world and the institutions based on them have been gradually corrected by the rise of truer ideas and hence of better institutions. Man has risen, not fallen. On your view, intellectual progress at least has not been continuous. Man began with reason, lapsed into unreason, and then struggled out of the quagmire back into reason. This is the Fall of Man. Really I think you might throw Adam and the apples into the bargain, and swallow the whole. Between one theory of degradation and another there is very little to choose.


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Might I ask you to keep this letter and show it to R. Smith if you think it worth while? I am always having little tiVs with him on these same lines but have never had a pitched battle. For my attitude to the philosophy of history is just the opposite of that of De Quincey to murder. ‘‘So far I will go— general principles I will suggest. But as to any particular case, once for all I will have nothing to do with it.’’ I on the contrary care chieXy for particular cases and am apt to regard discussion of general principles as nearly a waste of time.5 Yours ever J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.30: 45 1. The ‘disease of language’, a phrase made popular by the Oxford Sanskritist F. Max Mu¨ller and his followers, known as the ‘solarists’, to describe the mythology of the ancient Aryans. According to them, what we call mythology arose because Aryan was an underdeveloped language and therefore was an inadequate vehicle for the expression of the inchoate spiritual yearnings of its speakers. ‘Solarists’ because, according to Mu¨ller, most of these yearnings expressed themselves in terms of descriptions of heavenly phenomena. 2. The well-known remark attributed to Heraclitus: ‘Everything Xows’ (Plato, Tht. 182c). 3. Tennyson, ‘Ulysses’, lines 19–21. 4. This remark is unconsciously ironic in that Frazer did in fact assume just such an associationist psychology, although in the 1880s and 1890s he was learning at Wrst hand from his friend, the psychologist James Ward, of the anti-associationist reaction. Perhaps this letter may be seen as evidence that at least when he wrote this letter he had been attracted by what he heard from Ward. 5. This letter and the one following to Jackson illustrate clearly the importance of the latter as a sounding-board for ideas to Frazer at this time. Inasmuch as Frazer is usually portrayed as the arch rationalist, it is noteworthy that here he imputes precisely this position to Jackson, which implies that at least at this time he clearly saw its limitations.

To Henry Jackson, 24 August 1888 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, Your kind letter has quite relieved me of the fear which I confess I began to entertain that my Wrst letter might perhaps have oVended you. I was very glad it is not so. Please forgive me for having entertained the fear. I wrote under a certain amount of depression caused by an incident which annoyed me and this I dare say helped to give a gloomier colour to the recollection of my Wrst letter.1 I shall always value very highly the privilege of discussing our views together. The conversations we have had this week have beneWted me not

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only by the general stimulus they have given me but also by directly helping me to clear up points which were obscure before. There is hardly any one to whom I can speak on these subjects. Even R. Smith is so stern a utilitarian that to talk to him of ghosts and spirits is to venture on delicate ground. So if you will allow me now and then to open out my ideas to you I shall be grateful. I know the danger of pushing an hypothesis too far and shall be glad to have any tendency in this direction corrected by your criticism. We both believe, I think, that all institutions were ultimately suggested by external facts; our only diVerence is as to the way in which we suppose that this suggestion took place. It could only take place of course through the mind of the savage, and my position is that the mental attitude of the savage to the external world is so unlike ours that it is only by perpetually soaking oneself in descriptions of savage life and thought that one can to some extent realise that attitude. But when, having thus soaked oneself, one propounds explanations of life drawn from what one conceives to be savage ideas, these explanations sound so totally absurd to people of the present day that they are apt to think that no human beings ever could have believed in them and to fancy them mere cobwebs spun in a student’s brain. With the awful example of the ‘comparative mythologists’ before one, one ought not to be too sure that this condemnation is not just. Yours ever J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.36: 46 1. Unfortunately, no record exists of the ‘incident’. From the biographical point of view, however, the letter illustrates Frazer’s deep-seated aversion to giving oVence, which makes his later willingness to engage in scholarly polemic against Wilamowitz even more remarkable.

To William Robertson Smith, 18 November 1888 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear R. Smith,1 My righteous soul is vexed with the enormities of the College system. Seriously the more I think of it, the blacker it looks. I propose, as I said to you the other evening, to put the facts of the College and University Expenditure in parallel columns, so to speak, bring them forward at the next discussion, and make an open and violent (in the Sidgwickian sense) attack on the worst


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abuses of the College system, viz. the Heads and idle Fellows. Then having got the facts together I would suggest that we should lay our heads together (all the people who are for a thorough going reform and not for tinkering) and write an article or articles for the Monthlies and really stir up public opinion as to the state of this open sewer called a University. Will you come and dine with me some evening (I fear this is pandering to the system, but never mind) say Thursday, and talk it over and lay the train for the great explosion? I have had most interesting conversations with Rouse.2 He has suggested what seem to me most important extensions of my theory of totemism. The explanation he has started of exogamy (ask him about it) is to my mind the most plausible and consistent with savage ways of thinking that has yet been started. Yours ever J. G. Frazer UL Add. 7449c D236 1. Because Smith and Frazer saw and spoke to one another constantly, this is one of the few extant letters between them. 2. William Henry Denham Rouse (1863–1950), classical scholar, Sanskritist, and folklorist, fellow of Christ’s College; later, editor of the Loeb Classical Library.

To Francis Galton, 9 December 1888 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Mr Galton,1 With reference to the inability of poets to write poetry at certain seasons of the year, I have noted the following: In R. C. Browne’s edition of Milton’s Poems (Clarendon Press Series), vol. I, p. xxiv sq., it is said: ‘‘As to the composition of Paradise Lost, we have a curious fact related by Milton himself to his nephew Phillips, to account for his making no progress with his poem in the summer, ‘that his vein never happily Xowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal, and that whatever he attempted [at other seasons] was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much.’ ’’ Again, AlWeri says of himself: ‘‘I likewise experienced that my intellectual faculties resembled a barometer, and that I possessed more or less talent for

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composition in proportion to the weight of the atmosphere. During the prevalence of the solstitial and equinoctial winds, I was always remarkably stupid, and uniformly evinced less penetration in the evening than in the morning. I likewise perceived that the force of my imagination, the ardour of enthusiasm, and capability of invention, were possessed by me in a higher degree in the middle of winter, or in the middle of summer, than during the intermediate periods. This materiality, which I believe to be common to all men of a delicate nervous system, has greatly contributed to lessen the pride with which the good I have done might have inspired me, in like manner, as it has tended to diminish the shame I might have felt for the errors I have committed, particularly in my own art.’’ Memoirs of the life and writings of Victor AlWeri, written by himself, London 1810, vol. I. pp. 140–152, quoted by JeVrey in his essay on AlWeri. Wordsworth, like Milton, expresses a preference for winter as a season for poetical composition. Thus in the sonnet: ‘‘While not a leaf seems faded, while the Welds, With ripening harvest prodigally fair In brightest sunshine bask, this nipping air, Sent from some distant clime where Winter wields His icy scimitar, a foretaste yields Of bitter change, and bids the Xowers beware; And whispers to the silent birds, ‘Prepare Against the threatening foe your trustiest shields.’ For me, who under kindlier laws belong To Nature’s tuneful quire, this rustling dry Through leaves yet green, and yon crystalline sky, Announce a season potent to renew, Mid frost and snow, the instinctive joys of song, And nobler cares than listless summer knew.’’

In a letter to Haydon dated December 21st, 1815, Wordsworth says that the foregoing sonnet ‘‘records a feeling excited in me by the object it describes in the month of October last.’’ And elsewhere he says, with reference to the latter part of the sonnet (‘For me, who under kindlier laws’ etc.): ‘‘This conclusion has more than once, to my great regret, excited painfully sad feelings in the hearts of young persons fond of poetry and poetic composition, by contrast of their feeble and declining health with that state of robust condition which prompted me to rejoice in a season of frost and snow as more favourable to the Muses than summer itself.’’ See The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. by Knight, vol. VI, p. 60 sqq.


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Keble expresses the same poetical aversion to summer. ‘‘Dear is the morning gale of spring, And dear the autumnal eve; But few delights can summer bring A poet’s crown to weave. .... Her bowers are mute, her fountains dry, And ever Fancy’s wing Speeds from beneath her cloudless sky To autumn or to spring.’’ The Christian Year, S. Philip and S. James’s Day.

It is perhaps worth noting that AlWeri’s preference of the morning to the evening as a time for composition is not shared by all writers. According to Charles Lamb, ‘‘Night and silence call out the starry fancies. Milton’s Morning Hymn in Paradise, we would hold a good wager, was penned at midnight; and Taylor’s rich description of a sun-rise smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourselves, in these our humbler lucubrations tune our bestmeasured cadences (Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier watchman ‘blessing the doors’, or the wild sweep of winds at midnight.’’ (Popular Fallacies, no. XV). Goethe’s favourite hour seems to have been after the lamps were lit, to judge from the following: Ach, wenn in unsrer engen Zelle Die Lampe freundlich wieder brennt, Dann wird’s in unserem Busen helle, Im Herzen, das sich selber kennt. Vernunft fa¨ngt wieder an zu sprechen, Und HoVnung wieder an zu blu¨hn; Man sehnt sich nach des Lebens Ba¨chen, Ach! nach des Lebens Quelle hin.

But probably this should not be pressed. Nor, again, do all poets share Milton’s and Wordsworth’s dislike of summer. Keats, beginning ‘Endymion’ in the spring of 1817, hopes to Wnish it by autumn: So I will begin Now while I cannot hear the city’s din; Now while the early budders are just new, And run in mazes of the youngest hue About old forests; and the dairy pails Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year

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Before The Golden Bough, 1875–90 Grows lush in juicy stalks, I’ll smoothly steer My little boat, for many quiet hours, With streams that deepen freshly into bowers. Many and many a verse I hope to write, Before the daisies, vermeil rimm’d and white, Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas, I must be near the middle of my story. O may no wintry season, bare and hoary, See it half Wnished: but let Autumn bold With universal tinge of sober gold, Be all about me when I make an end.

The draft of the poem, written fairly out in a book, was Wnished on November 28th of the same year (Lord Houghton’s Memoir, preWxed to his edition of Keats’s works). It might be worth while to collect from literature and from living writers etc. evidence as to the seasons at which authors, artists, musicians, and in general men engaged in serious intellectual work, feel themselves at their best or their worst. A note on the subject in journals like ‘Mind’ and ‘Nature’ might help to elicit evidence. The work to which I referred the other evening was ‘The Ishi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast’, by Major A. B. Ellis, of 1st West India Regiment. It does not however seem to include the Krus, who are described at some length by E. Reclus in one of the African volumes of his great work Nouvelle geógraphie universelle. I should have been much interested in the paper and discussion at the Anthrop. Institute on Tuesday next, but I am unable to be present as I have promised to be at the dinner here on that evening in celebration of the conclusion of the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.2 Believe me, dear Mr Galton, Yours very sincerely James G. Frazer UCL, Galton Collection 1. An excellent example of Frazer’s broad literary culture harnessed to a desire to please a friend—in this case, Galton, his patron. One can easily imagine the question of the relation of poetry to the seasons arising in the common room or over the dinner table, with this letter the result a day or two later. 2. A splendid dinner, given in the hall of Christ’s College, Cambridge, by its publishers on 11 Dec. 1888, to mark the publication of the Wnal volume of the Encyclopaedia; for a description see J. S. Black and George Chrystal, The Life of William Robertson Smith (London: A. & C. Black, 1912), 499 V.


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To A. C. Haddon, 11 January 1889 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, Your letter has given me much pleasure and I look forward with very great interest to reading the results of your enquiries and those of Mr. Beardmore.1 By all means keep the answers beside you, in order to make them as accurate and full as possible. I will very gladly send you some more copies of the Questions. With regard to agricultural customs, there are some questions which I should like to put more fully than they are put in the ‘Questions’. Considering the great importance of agricultural customs and superstitions on the development both of religion and society, it is desirable to obtain very full information about them. Many primitive peoples seem to regard with fear the upturning of the soil (by hoeing, digging, ploughing, etc.) for agricultural purposes, believing that thereby the spirits of the earth (and of the forest or bush, if it has been cleared) are disturbed thereby and are angry with the disturbers. Hence a variety of ceremonies at the Wrst upturning of the soil. Are there any such customs amongst the people in your neighbourhood or in New Guinea? Are there any dances, leapings, songs, or sham-Wghts in the Welds at this time? Is the Wrst upturning of the soil entrusted to any special person, as to a chief or medicine-man? Are those who turn up the soil armed ? Is there any use of Wre on these occasions—as running with torches, leaping over a Wre, etc.? Also it is important to notice any cases of co-operation in agricultural operations, especially at ploughing (hoeing, etc.). Do they ever do in a body what they fear to do singly, thus distributing the risk over a large number? Have they any system of common Welds? If the Welds are divided amongst individuals how is this done? In large patches? Or in narrow strips? Is the whole of one man’s land all together? Or is it scattered in diVerent places in small pieces? Is the beginning of the year marked by reference to agricultural operations, as the end of harvest, the time of sowing? Is there at these times a special period of license when the ordinary rules are in abeyance and crime may be committed with impunity? Is this period of license at the end of the year terminated by the expulsion or sacriWce of a scape-goat (see question 156)? And is there about the same time a general extinction of the Wres and solemn kindling of a new sacred Wre, which is used to light all village Wres? Also, are strangers who happen to pass into or beside the harvest Welds interfered with or subjected to any special treatment? As by being seized and killed (and if so, how?) or being lifted up and then dumped on the ground? Are there any cases of intercourse between the sexes (as a custom or ceremony) on the Welds at special times of the year, as at sowing or harvest?

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These questions are only meant to direct your attention to points of importance which are hardly brought out in the ‘Questions’. Of course if there are no such customs amongst your natives, do not trouble to answer these questions with a string of negatives. I hope to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance in England either at the B[ritish] A[ssociation for the Advancement of Science] meeting or more probably (for I do not expect to be at the Brit. Assoc.) in Cambridge. I am very grateful for what you have done and are doing for anthropology. I wish that very many more might be stirred up to go and do likewise. Believe me, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer UL Haddon 3 1. Edward Beardmore, a zoological colleague of Haddon’s on the Torres Straits expedition.

To A. C. Haddon, 22 July 1889 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Sir, I am greatly obliged to you for the copy of Mr. Beardmore’s notes which you kindly sent me. I will send it to the Anthrop. Instit., and retain the original.1 I will make no alteration in the copy which you have sent me. I make it a rule to publish all Wrst-hand observations exactly as I receive them, except where the rules of grammar require some slight changes (one’s correspondents are not always educated men), but even there I touch the MS as sparingly as possible. One cannot be too careful in dealing with descriptions of manners and customs; an apparently insigniWcant alteration or omission might eVace an important piece of evidence. The notes of your own from the ‘‘Torres Straits Pilot’’ are very interesting. I have extracted some of them. You do not mention the marriage relations within the totem clans. May a man marry a woman of his own totem? If not, why not? From Mr. Beardmore’s notes it appears that a man may marry a woman of his own totem or of any other; but perhaps the rule in the islands is diVerent. In publishing your notes in full it would be well, I think, to give a list of all the totems you know, with any special rules (even the minutest) observed in respect of particular totems. At present we are absolutely ignorant of the


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reasons for selecting any particular animal as a totem. But perhaps if we had a suYciently large list of totems before us, we might arrive by induction at some conclusions on this point. In Australia I fancy that bird totems preponderate; but I have as yet made no statistics on this point. I have made no study of savage languages, so could make no use of the vocabularies. But I trust that you will publish them; no fragment of knowledge should be lost. The best man by far to consult on this head would be the Rev. Dr Codrington (Wadham, Sussex), author of ‘‘The Languages of Melanesia.’’2 He would doubtless be much interested in seeing your vocabularies. Your idea of working up what has hitherto been written on the Torres Straits natives seems a good one. In doing so I need hardly, I suppose, say that it would be necessary to sharply distinguish your own observations (and what you have ascertained by enquiry) from the previously published observations of others. This is probably a superXuous caution to give; but as an anthropologist one Wnds so often that a man mixes up what he has seen and heard with what he has read, with the result that he loses credit for what he has himself ascertained at Wrst-hand, since one can never know whether he is speaking from personal knowledge or only dishing up observations which were perhaps made hundreds of years before and which in the meantime may have lost all truth. The work of putting together the previous notices of the Torres Straits Islanders could be done, I think, very much better by you than by me. You might be able to correct or supplement previous notices from your own experience and would easily avoid mistakes into which a man might fall who has no personal knowledge of the country. Yours very truly James G. Frazer UL Haddon 3 1. Beardmore’s notes were not published in the JAI. 2. Revd Dr Robert H. Codrington (1830–1922), the leading authority on Melanesian languages in Britain.

To William Robertson Smith, 22 July 1889 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear R. Smith, With regard to lying on the ground instead of on a bed I will empty out some of my notes higgledy-piggledy, on the chance of them serving your purpose.

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No Hindu will lie on a bedstead during an eclipse (Panjab Notes & Queries II 567). Any person dying on a bed becomes a bhu´t or malignant ghost if a man, and a churel if a woman (a churel is a hideous demon). (Id. II 657). (Dying people are often taken from their beds and laid on the Xoor in Europe, the reason assigned being that they could not die easily if there happened to be feathers in the mattress.—This is from memory, I do not take my Alfred Davis for it.)1 During the Fire-festival in honour of the Darma Raja (in Bhutan I think) men vow to fast, abstain from women, sleep on the ground without a mat, & walk ‘‘sur un brasier.’’ (Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes Orientales I, 247). Sleeping on the ground during mourning is common, as in Tonquin (Baron’s Tonquin, in Pinkerton, IX 698), Panjab (Panjab Notes & Queries, II 559), Madagascar (Ellis, History of Madagascar, I.249—in mourning for King; also no one might sit on a chair or use a table or ride on a horse or be carried in a chair, etc.). At childbirth women are taken oV the bed & put on the ground. (Ibbetson, Settlement Report of the Panipat Tabail etc. p. 125), bride and bridegroom sleep on Xoor (Ibbetson op. cit. 132, 133). They have to continue to sleep on the Xoor until a particular ceremony is performed); dying man laid on Xoor (Ibbetson 136); the man who takes the bones of the dead to throw into the Ganges must sleep on the ground, not on his bed, on the way to the Ganges (Ibbetson 137); if a man dies on his bed instead of on the ground the house is impure for 45 days & must be puriWed by a special ceremony (Ibbetson 137); ‘‘the Ka´lu´ Saiyad, the family saint of the Kalia´r Rajputs at Panipat, is a great worker of wonders, & if one sleeps near his shrine, he must lie on the ground & not on a bedstead, or a snake will surely kill him. If a snake should, under any other circumstances bite a man in the Kalia´r’s ground, no harm will ensue to him’’ (Ibbetson 153). Proclamation at death of sovereign that no one may sleep on bed (Antananarivo Annual & Madagascar Annual, no. XI, p. 311). Mourners sleep on ground amongst Wanika, Eastern Africa (Featherman, Nigritians, 694). A Hindu on pilgrimage must sleep on the ground (Panjab Notes & Queries I, no. 5). Ibbetson, who contributes this note & is a good man explains it by the belief that spirits may not touch the ground. This he thinks is why ‘‘there are so many spots guarded by demons where it is safe to sleep on the ground only.’’ A Brahman must die neither on a bed nor on a mat; it is a common imprecation amongst the Brahmans to say ‘‘May you have no one beside you to set you on the ground at the moment of death’’ (Dubois, Moeurs et institutions des peuples de l’Inde, II 204). ‘‘Die durch die Grhyasu¯tra vorgeschriebene Nachfeier, dass das junge Ehepaar mehrere Na¨chte lang noch auf dem Boden liegen und Keuschteit bewaschren musst’’ etc. (Zimmermann, Altindisches Leben, p. 314).2 In Oldenburg’s transl. of the Gritiya Sutra, I, p. 384, though the rule of chastity is mentioned, the rule of sleeping on the ground is not.


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In China for 7 days after a death the widow & children sit not on chairs but on the ground, and sleep not in their beds, but on mats spread on the ground near the coYn (Gray, China 287). The priest of the Prussian god Potrimpo was bound to sleep on the bare earth for three nights before he sacriWced to the god (Hartknoch, Dissertationes historicae de variis rebus Prussicis, 163; Simon Grunau, Preussischer Chronike, ed. Perlbach I. p. 95). Besides these I Wnd a reference (for the custom of sleeping on the ground) to Massaja, I miei trentacinque anni di missione nell’alta Etiope, V 179; but what the particular case is I don’t know. Eheu jam satis est! Yours ever J. G. Frazer UL Add. 7449c D237 1. ‘Alfred Davis’: a facetious form of ‘aYdavit’: ‘I won’t swear to it.’ 2. ‘The subsequent celebration, required by the Grhyasu¯tra, that the young newlyweds must lie on the ground and observe chastity’ (reading ‘bewachren’ for ‘bewaschren’).

To F. J. H. Jenkinson,1 12 August 1889 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jenkinson, Middleton2 tells me that Conze, the head of the Archaeological Institute at hlai of which the Berlin people are Berlin, has been over here, looking at st hlh in our library (which going to publish a corpus. Conze says a certain st I am ashamed to say I do not know) is the Wnest he knows; but it is placed so badly that it cannot be seen to be photographed or even drawn, and it is getting chipped from things being placed on it or leaned against it. Middleton spoke to the Master, who referred him to you and me. As you have much more inXuence with Sinker and White than I have, would you speak to them about getting it placed so that it shall be well seen and be safe from injury? It is for the honour of the College that this should be done. Yours ever James G. Frazer UL 1. Francis John Henry Jenkinson (1853–1923), fellow of Trinity, later University Librarian. 2. John Henry Middleton (1840–96), archaeologist and architect, Slade Professor of Fine Art, Cambridge, 1886; director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, 1889–92; Frazer’s friend, designer of the cover ornament of The Golden Bough.

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From William Robertson Smith to J. G. Frazer, 18 August 1889 Trinity College, Cambridge Lane Modern Egyptians 5th ed 1871 vol 2 p 231 in the acct of the Cairene festival of the opening of the Canal when the Nile rises. Lane describes the large boat wh[ich] is vulgarly believed to represent a magniWcent vessel wh the Egyptians used before the conquest of their country by the Arabs, to convey the virgin whom, it is said, they threw into the Nile. Cf. p 229 where Macrizi is given as authority for this tradition. The sacriWce was made when the river began to rise to secure a plentiful inundation. A pillar or truncated cone of earth called the ‘bride’ is still set up near the dam. On its Xat top a little maize or millet is sewn. The tide washes it away as the river rises, a week or more before the dam is out. TCC Frazer 1: 56 (postcard)

From ‘Tiny’ 1 to J. G. Frazer, 15 October 1889 My dearest Jamie, This is Mum’s day for writing to you but I said I would do it for her today. She is troubled with a sort of heap on her skin and her clothes fret her, so we persuaded her to stay awhile in bed in the forenoon. She will be down by and by. Pere is not very well either, his rheumatism was very bad last night and he is out of sorts today, so is sitting quietly in a big chair snoozing and reading Lorna Doone. The east wind and horrid thick rain have come back after two or three Wne days, it tells on people’s aches and pains. My cough has no chance in this weather, it is much the same. I am very obedient and do everything the Dr. says and he says it will give way in time. We were very glad to hear you were to have a small outing to London. If we had had time we would have told you to stay all night and go to an entertainment. Perhaps you did so. Mr [J. H.] Middleton is kind and it is very nice for you to have him as a friend. I wish you had a photo of him, that we might know what he is like. It is Wne your book goes on so fast. What a relief and comfort it will be when it is done. It will be very nice if you get a good sum in your hand for it and we hope more to follow. No doubt our friend’s advice is the best. We don’t like to advise. Of course I think Macmillan lets his books be


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better known than [A. & C.] Black, still they are both good. I sent your p.c. to Mr Macfarland as I could not go myself and he kindly sent the enclosed. Archie too told us his early experiences which I scrawled down as soon as he went out. If I get the scrawl copied into my science book before post time, I shall send it to you. We must ask Mary sometime when she is in a good mood if she knows anything. She is quite pleasant again. The blowing up did her good. Poor wee Ninian has a bad cold and the Manse children now at the Lea are coughing too. Mrs Ireland and Annie are going to spend November at the Lea and they will see how it works before forming any other plans. We are going on and not thinking of other plans at present. I had a letter from Miss Brown last night, she has not been well I am sorry to say and the Dr. has been down from London three times, but she is getting better. Bestest love old boy. I must copy the Maiden! Oh Mr Marrick of Cummock was here at tea on Sunday night. He has just come home from the Holy land. He is a nice man. Ever dearest James, Your loving sister Tiny TCC Add. MS b.36: 148 (TS) 1. Frazer’s younger sister Christina, whose name within the family was ‘Tiny’. She never married and lived with their parents. This is the only extant letter in what is plainly a regular two-way correspondence.

To William Robertson Smith, 1 November 1889 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear R. Smith, Very many thanks for your kind present of your new book.1 It is a most handsome volume and teems with interest, as a very slight inspection is enough to show. I mean not only to read but to absorb and assimilate it as much as I can. As for the way in which you refer to me it almost takes my breath away and is enough to add an inch or even a cubit to my stature. I certainly could have had no idea that I had been of so much use unless I had your word for it. I came round this morning to say how much I liked the book both in appearance and, so far as I can judge as yet, in matter also. But when I have read more of it I shall be better able to talk to you about it.

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I am glad to see that you regard Adonis as a pig-god, a conclusion to which I had come, I think, independently. Also the view that the mourning for him was originally celebrated once a human victim (theanthropic man, to use your convenient phrase) is one which I have put forward in my book. We diVer in this that I am inclined to regard both the pig and the man as embodiments of a corn-deity or deity of vegetation. This view includes and reconciles your view of him as a pig with the old view of him as the dying vegetation. I hope the comparative evidence I will bring forward may induce you to admit at least the possibility of this view being right. With many thanks for your present, Yours ever sincerely James G. Frazer UL Add. 7449c D238 1. William Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (London: A. & C. Black, 1889; 2nd edn. 1894). In the preface (p. ix) Smith thanks Frazer for his ‘invaluable assistance’. He continues: ‘I have sometimes referred to him by name, in the course of the book, but these references convey but an imperfect idea of my obligations to his learning and intimate familiarity with primitive habits of thought.’

To George A. Macmillan, 8 November 1889 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, I shall soon have completed a study in the history of primitive religion which I propose to oVer to you for publication. The book is an explanation of the legend of the Golden Bough, as that legend is given by Servius in his commentary on Virgil. According to Servius the Golden Bough grew on a certain tree in the sacred grove of Diana at Aricia, and the priesthood of the grove was held by the man who succeeded in breaking oV the Golden Bough and then slaying the priest in single combat. By an application of the comparative method I believe I can make it probable that the priest represented in his person the god of the grove—Virbius, and that his slaughter was regarded as the death of the god. This raises the meaning of a question of a widespread custom of killing men and animals regarded as divine. I have collected many examples of this custom and proposed a new explanation of it. The Golden Bough, I believe I can show, was the mistletoe, and the whole legend can, I think, be brought into connexion, on the one hand, with the


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Druidical reverence for the mistletoe and the human sacriWces which accompanied their worship, and, on the other hand, with the Norse legend of the death of Balder. Of the exact way in which I connect the Golden Bough with the priest of Aricia I shall only say that in explaining it I am led to propose a new explanation of the meaning of totemism. This is a bare outline of the book which, whatever may be thought of its theories, will be found, I believe, to contain a large store of very curious customs, many of which may be new even to professed anthropologists. The resemblance of many of the savage customs and ideas to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity is striking. But I make no reference to this parallelism, leaving my readers to draw their own conclusions, one way or the other. The MS at present amounts to between 500 and 600 foolscap pages, and when completed will probably contain 700 pages or a little over. I hope to Wnish it either by the end of this month or early in December. In oVering you the book there are two conditions which I would propose for your consideration and, I should hope, acceptance. They relate to the ‘get up’ of the book. One is that there should be a frontispiece consisting of an engraving or mechanical reproduction of Turner’s picture of the Golden Bough. The other is that a drawing of the mistletoe or Golden Bough should be stamped in gold on the cover. A drawing of the mistletoe has been kindly made for this purpose by my friend Prof. J. H. Middleton. The title of the book will be ‘The Golden Bough; a study in the history of religion’, or perhaps instead of this, ‘The legend of the Golden Bough’. With regard to terms, I have special reasons which make it convenient and desirable to receive a Wxed sum in payment of the Wrst edition, rather than accept a royalty or half proWts, and I am advised by my friends that I should not accept, for the Wrst edition, less than £100. The copy-right I should certainly retain. I should be glad to hear whether you would be willing to accept the book on these terms. I may here add that as soon as the book is oV my hands I intend to go out to Greece and there Wnish the archaeological commentary on Pausanias, residing chieXy at the British School in Athens. I remain, dear Sir, Yours faithfully James G. Frazer BL

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To George A. Macmillan, 13 November 1889 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, I quite understand that before deciding to accept my book or not, you should wish to see it and I shall be happy to meet your wishes by sending you the MS either on its completion or in its present state. On the whole I should prefer the former, as in writing I have occasionally to refer to what has gone before, but it would put me to no serious inconvenience to send you the MS just now. About 570 pages are written. The book is in four chapters or books. The Wrst two amount to about 100 pages each; the third and most important chapter to about 400 pages; the fourth to about 100 pages, perhaps a little less. The titles of the chapters are 1. The King of the wood (Rex nemorensis, i.e. the priest of Aricia) 2. The perils of the soul. 3. Killing the god. 4. The Golden Bough. I give these details in order that you may judge whether you would like to see the whole MS or only a portion of it. My intention certainly has been to write a book which may be read by and may interest all intelligent persons, not merely professed students of mythology and anthropology. I remain, dear Sir, Yours faithfully James G. Frazer BL

To John Sutherland Black,1 27 November 1889 . . . It [The Religion of the Semites] is beyond doubt a striking and powerful book, full of original thought and abounding in fruitful views. Still, I am inclined to doubt whether simpliWcation has been carried too far, whether the elements out of which the history of the religion is reconstructed are not too few in number, and too simple and obvious. The latter object you may think a strange one. What I mean is that primitive man looks at the world from such a totally diVerent point of view from us, that what seems simple and obvious to us almost certainly did not appear so to him; and vice versa, what


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seems simple and obvious to him is almost always entirely remote from our ways of thought that we should never have dreamed of it. Accordingly any explanations of the origin of religion or society which commend themselves at once to us as entirely agreeable to reason and probability ought always, in my opinion, be regarded with the greatest distrust. Their inherent probability (from our point of view) is a strong presumption against them. Rousseau’s views (to take an extreme example) on the origin of society commended themselves to the most reasonable people last century, just because, if they had to reconstruct society from the foundations, they would have proceeded much as Rousseau supposes that primitive man did. But from a primitive man to a French Encyclopaedist is a very long interval. I do not say that Smith has fallen into the mistake of making the early Semites like nineteenthcentury people; all I would say is the very simplicity and obviousness of the deductions inspire me with a somewhat vague and perhaps unjustiWable distrust. Certainly on one subject—the original sanctity of domestic cattle— the conclusion which Smith reached, I believe, by examination of the Semitic evidence alone, is brilliantly borne out by the actual facts of pastoral life among primitive peoples elsewhere. This is a very striking proof of the truth of Smith’s intuitions, and is enough to make one distrust one’s distrust. He certainly may be right throughout; his insight is very great. . . . Extract published in J. S. Black and G. Chrystal, The Life of William Robertson Smith (London: A. & C. Black, 1912), 517–18. 1. John Sutherland Black (1846–1923), Scottish writer on religious subjects and biographer of William Robertson Smith.

To George A. Macmillan, 11 December 1889 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, I have just sent oV by bookpost, registered, the Wrst three chapters of ‘The Golden Bough’. The MS consists of 647 pages and is sent in two separate parcels. The last chapter I hope to complete by the end of the month. My reason for sending you the MS just now is that I am anxious to go out to Greece, with a view to Pausanias, as soon as possible. But I cannot go till I have run this book through the press or at least have revised the Wrst proofs. Accordingly it would save about three weeks if you could in the meantime decide whether you feel inclined to accept the book or not. If you decided to

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take it, the printing could begin, I hope, by the beginning of January and I should hope to leave for Greece in March. If my departure were delayed much later, it would hardly be worth while going out till the autumn, as I might have to return so soon for the summer. If you decide not to take the book, I shall have to look out for another publisher, and this would be a cause of fresh delay. May I hope, therefore, that you will be able to judge from the MS as it stands (which includes the great bulk of the work) whether you will take it or not? I need hardly say that I shall be greatly obliged for as speedy a decision as suits with your convenience. I should add that the Wrst chapter was written somewhat hastily and I should wish to revise it before it goes to the printer. Would you kindly mention this to the critic to whom you may possibly submit the MS? The rest of the work (that is, all but the Wrst hundred odd pages) will need, I think, very little change in the printing. May I also beg that you will be kind enough to acknowledge the receipt of the MS when it reaches you? I am naturally a little anxious about the safety of a work which has cost me a good deal of labour and thought. You will, I am sure, be pleased to learn that the Council of the Senate has made me a grant of £100 from the Worts Travelling Fund towards enabling me to travel in Greece for the sake of Pausanias.1 I remain, dear Sir, Yours faithfully J. G. Frazer BL 1. A university fund that made grants of £100 to graduates with academic projects that required travel.

To George A. Macmillan, 18 December 1889 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Sir, I have received your letter and considered the oVer which you make. I am ready to accept it on the understanding that I am not to bear any of the expenses of printing and publication, and that under no circumstances shall I be called on to repay the £100 or any part of it. The only other stipulation I should wish to make is that the second edition, like the Wrst, should not exceed 1250 copies. If you agree to this, I shall be glad to receive and sign a formal agreement drawn up in the sense of our united proposals.


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With regard to other points raised in your letter, I expect to make few corrections in the proofs, so that the expense on this head will probably be small. But before the MS goes to the printer, I should like, as I mentioned in my former letter, to revise the Wrst chapter. With regard to the subdivision of the subject I had myself contemplated it as advisable and what I propose to do is this. The argument of the book is massed, so to say, in four great blocks, and for the understanding of the argument it is very important that these four great divisions should be clearly marked. I propose therefore to preserve the division into four chapters or books, but to subdivide each chapter into numbered sections with or without headings, as you might prefer—with headings would probably be best. A break equivalent to a few lines of print would mark the subdivision of the argument, while the chapters or books (I rather prefer the less ambitious chapters) would mark the main divisions of it. I am unwilling to multiply the chapters. Even in the long third chapter the unity of argument is such from beginning to end, that it could not well be split into several chapters without loss of clearness. But the division into sections would, I hope, answer all purposes. A full table of contents is very desirable. By the help of diVerent types and spacings, I would arrange it so as to present in a short space a complete and clear conspectus of the whole argument. This would serve as a clue to the reader in following the progress of the discussion. Might not the division into sections be made in the Wrst proofs? If so, it would only be necessary to send back the MS of the Wrst chapter for revision. With regard to putting the book into two volumes, I doubt whether it is long enough to make two good sized 8vo volumes, and two thin volumes look ill, not to mention the increased cost of publication. Might it not be possible to get it into a single handsome octavo volume by the use of a smaller type than that in which McLennan’s Studies is printed?1 The style of volume I would suggest is that of Prof. W. Robertson Smith’s new book, ‘The Religion of the Semites’. The page contains 34 lines as against McLennan’s 30, and the type, though smaller, is handsome and very pleasing to the eye. But of course on questions of this sort I only make suggestions, leaving the decision to your superior experience. But I may say I should be glad if you could arrange to have the book printed by R. & R. Clark of Edinburgh, as I understand that their work is not surpassed by that of any other printer of the day.2 The last chapter will soon be ready, and will amount, I expect, to less than 100 pages of MS. I am glad that you agree to my suggestions about the frontispiece and cover. I cannot help thinking that they will distinctly add to the attractiveness of the book. Mr Dew Smith, of Cambridge, has kindly oVered to have the frontispiece prepared in his work shop here.3 The quality of his work is,

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I believe, well known to you, and it would be an advantage to have it executed in Cambridge, as I and still more my friend Prof. Middleton (who has taken a warm interest in the book) could superintend its progress. I remain, dear Sir, Yours very faithfully James G. Frazer BL 1. This is an early example, which must stand for many similar letters, of Frazer’s close attention to typography and general willingness to take pains over the appearance of his books. 2. All Frazer’s books published by Macmillan were printed by the Wrm of R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. 3. Albert George Dew Smith (1848–1903), Cambridge engraver.

To George A. Macmillan, 1 January 1890 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Sir, The change made in the Agreement answers all purposes, as it leaves you free to issue the editions either in one or two volumes as you may Wnally decide. I return one of the copies, signed, and retain the other. The specimen pages which you enclose and which I return, appear to me admirable, they are just what I should wish, with the exception of the change which you suggest. It would certainly be better, I think, to have notes in double columns. Many of the notes are quite short (often simply references to pages) and space would be saved by double columns. Besides I distinctly prefer the appearance of double columns. I should certainly be much pleased to have my book printed in so handsome and attractive a style. Still I leave myself in your hands and will accept the one volume if you prefer it. The MS now amounts to 713 pages. I can scarcely expect to Wnish it under 750 pages; then there will Index, table of contents, and preface. In the preface I propose to state brieXy my reasons for appealing to existing European folk-custom as evidence of prehistoric religion. I had said something on this head in the Wrst chapter, but it was a discussion, and I cut it out, reserving it for the preface. This may add a few pages to the book. I lately sent an article to the Contemporary Review in which my views on this subject were brieXy stated, with illustrations.1 If the article appeared before the book (the Editor has not even acknowledged it,


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however), I might simply refer to it in the preface, without restating my position. I mention all this that you may judge of the probable length of the total MS. I have spoken to Mr Dew Smith again about the frontispiece. We are to examine an engraving of Turner’s picture today, which will enable him to decide as to the best mode of reproducing it. I remain, dear Sir, Yours very faithfully James G. Frazer BL 1. The Contemporary Review never published anything by Frazer.


Part II Anthropology and the Classics, 1890–1900

In 1890 James Frazer was an unknown Cambridge don who had contributed a handful of classical and anthropological articles to the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, had written a slim volume (Totemism, 1887) that had brought together all that was then known about its obscure ethnographic subject, and had just published a well-received two-volume study of ancient and primitive religion called The Golden Bough. The Golden Bough itself had erupted unbidden in 1889 from the project that was supposed to be occupying all of its author’s waking hours, and on which he had already been engaged for Wve years: a translation and commentary on the text of the guidebook to Greece composed by the ancient traveller Pausanias. By 1900, however, he had published a substantially revised second edition of The Golden Bough that promoted him to the Wrst rank of students of the history of religion, as well as having managed, two years earlier, to Wnish what emerged as a six-volume translation and commentary on Pausanias, which in the end had justiWed the patience of his generous editor and publisher, George Macmillan. Although over the next thirty years Frazer would produce several other considerable works of classical scholarship, in all of which he was able to employ his ethnographic knowledge, his commentary on Pausanias is in the view of many his masterpiece.1 The deepest-lying reason for this judgement is a basic temperamental harmony between them. To the extent that it makes sense to compare an ancient and a modern, Frazer and Pausanias were made for one another. Both men were erudite, both tended to the encyclopaedic, the curious and out-of-the-way, and the digressive. Both had an abiding and 1 The reviews were universally favourable, and Frazer’s work became the acknowledged standard for the next seventy-Wve years. Only after decades of archaeological research had turned up much new information did scholars feel the need for a replacement. Perhaps needless to say, this new Pausanias is the product of the collaboration of a group of specialists; that one man, working alone, might redo Frazer’s work, was never a possibility.

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Anthropology and the Classics, 1890–1900

complex interest in religion. Both were essentially commentators, whose talent required for its fullest expression a large body of material to describe and a large canvas upon which to work; both tended to be impressive in the mass as well as in detail. In addition, because Pausanias’s guidebook gave Frazer a ready-made armature for his commentary, the latter’s tendency to expand and let his learning run riot at the expense of forward movement was kept largely under control.2 In many respects the decade of the 1890s was life-changing for Frazer. In those years he discovered his true subject: the study of the evolution of the human mind as it made its slow way upward from what a German scholar had called Urdummheit (‘primeval ignorance’) toward the light of reason. SigniWcantly, the subtitle of the Wrst edition of The Golden Bough was ‘A Study in Comparative Religion’, whereas that of the second edition was ‘A Study in Magic and Religion’. The amended subtitle reXects the new conceptual framework of the revised work in that it points to the three-part quasiComtean vision of a ladder of mental and/or spiritual development—in ascending order, magic, religion, and positive science—for which he is best known today. Only much later did some of his readers come to understand his covert purpose: to employ what seemed to be an objective, scientiWc method in order to hammer the last nail into the post-Darwinian coYn of religion, to show once and for all, by bringing together data on myth, ritual, and belief from all over the world and throughout recorded time, that religion was a noble but in the end misguided eVort on the part of primitive humanity to understand the nature of reality. In particular, literally at the heart of the second edition the reader Wnds a lengthy discussion of the cults of the ancient eastern Mediterranean, with much attention paid to the pattern of the god who seems to die only to return in the springtime, and who is, in Frazer’s view, the incarnation of the indwelling spirit of growth and vegetation. Although Jesus of Nazareth is never mentioned—Frazer had no stomach for religious polemic—only the slowest reader could fail to make the connection: if Attis, Adonis, Osiris, and Dionysus are now only barbaric reminders of a backward age, can Jesus be any diVerent? The conclusion follows that Christianity must also take its place on the same shelf as these outworn creeds. It is often futile or illusory to draw a sharp line between the intellectual and the personal elements in the life of a scholar: the same energies that create ideas operate, suitably modulated, in social relations as well, and the two spheres interpenetrate one another seamlessly. In any case, there can be no doubt that the decade of the 1890s was as momentous for Frazer personally as 2

This paragraph is adapted from Frazer, 127.


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it was intellectually. In April 1894 he suVered a crushing blow with the death of William Robertson Smith, for ten years his best friend and intellectual mentor who, as well as introducing him to folklore and anthropology, which changed his entire intellectual orientation, had also introduced him to many of those working in those Welds and in general greatly enlivened his existence. Without a doubt, Smith had been the single most powerful intellectual and emotional inXuence on him in the Wfteen years since he had left his childhood home, and subsequently Frazer would unvaryingly refer to him in print as the ‘ever lamented’ Robertson Smith, even after the substantial intellectual diVerences between the two men that had always existed had become manifest. Smith’s death sent him into a depression that lifted only when in December 1894 he met Mrs Elisabeth (Lilly) Grove, the French widow of an English master mariner and mother of two young children. Mrs Grove, whose husband’s sudden death thrust her into the position of family breadwinner, followed generations of intelligent women before her by seeking to make a living by her pen. Having secured a commission from the Badminton Press to write a book on dance (Dancing, 1895—now regarded as a pioneering work by dance historians), she came to Cambridge to talk to anthropologists there about dance among primitive peoples. Unable to oVer assistance on this topic, Frazer introduced her to those who could, but the meeting led to further meetings, and on 22 April 1896 Frazer astonished his many friends, who had probably assumed that he would remain forever a member of Cambridge’s large body of bachelor dons, by marrying Lilly Grove. Although Lilly Frazer would later take her place, by general agreement, among the academic dragon-wives of Cambridge, there can be little doubt that theirs was by and large a happy marriage, and that the widespread dislike she inspired came from her unwillingness to see her husband ignored or receive less than she believed to be his due. Although fellows of colleges had been allowed to marry since 1882 without being obliged to resign their fellowships, no provision existed for married fellows to live in the colleges. Therefore, if Lilly wished to see her husband during the hours of daylight, she had to sit with him in his rooms in Trinity while he worked, which he generally did twelve hours a day, every day. This unpleasant necessity sowed the seeds of her long-standing dislike of the college and of the university that would play an important part in their later domestic arrangements. One index of Frazer’s growing prominence as a scholar in this decade may be seen in the quality of his opponents. As a classical scholar composing a commentary on Pausanias, he had already encountered a redoubtable intellectual adversary in Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Mo¨llendorV (1848–1931), acknowledged by the entire world (except Frazer) as the premier classicist

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of the nineteenth century. The Wilamowitz aVair had had an all-too-human genesis, in embarrassment. In 1873 the aristocratic German scholar had agreed to lead a party of equally aristocratic German travellers on a journey from Olympia to Heraea, and reasonably enough he proposed to use Pausanias as his guidebook. Inexplicably he neglected to notice that Pausanias’s itinerary assumes that the traveller is proceeding northward, whereas his group was in fact moving in the opposite direction. Needless to say, nothing was where it was supposed to be, and Wilamowitz was humiliated in front of his peers.3 When he returned home, he began a campaign (conducted mostly via his students) to depict Pausanias as either a plagiarist or a fantasist. Thus, when Frazer innocently agreed to produce an edition for the use of British tourists, and therefore began by taking Pausanias’s text seriously rather than as a tissue of errors, he quickly found himself in embattled territory. As the archaeologists continued to dig, however, again and again Pausanias was vindicated, and so too was Frazer; the running battle with Wilamowitz and Company was conducted in Frazer’s notes to Pausanias. His opponents within the disciplines of anthropology and the history of religion—E. B. Tylor and Andrew Lang—were equally eminent. Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) was acknowledged by all to be the leader in the Weld. Appearing twelve years after the publication of The Origin of Species, his Primitive Culture (1871) constituted the Wrst comprehensive analysis of social institutions from an evolutionary perspective. Enlisting under the banner of science in the 1870s, as Frazer did, meant adopting evolution as the master key to the whole of creation, which deWnitely included human society. Thus Frazer, from the appearance of the Wrst edition of The Golden Bough onward, was seen as a follower of Tylor, and in the early years he freely acknowledged his debt to Tylor and seemingly remained on friendly terms with him. The break between them, which occurred in an exchange of letters and is documented nowhere else, came in 1898 when Tylor suddenly broached what seems to have been a long-simmering irritation on his part. Tylor had been the Wrst British anthropologist to realize the value of the large ethnographic archive that had accrued from the centuries of Dutch colonization in the East Indies, and he had taught himself Dutch in order to exploit that material. Frazer, made aware by Tylor’s example of this rich lode, had begun to do likewise in the late 1880s. In Tylor’s opinion, however, in the Wrst edition of The Golden Bough Frazer had used the work of the Dutch scholar G. A. Wilken without making due acknowledgement of his indebtedness. Frazer, having built his work on a mountain of footnotes, and thus as a scholar who took very 3 The story is told more fully in Christian Habicht, ‘Pausanias and His Critics’, in Pausanias (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), appendix 1.


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seriously the claims of what we today call ‘intellectual property’, was shocked as well as surprised by the accusation. He responded that if he had indeed transgressed in this way he had done so unintentionally, and immediately oVered to publish an apology in the Athenaeum and to repeat it at greater length in the upcoming revised edition of The Golden Bough. Tylor, however, implied that such an acknowledgement was too little too late. For his part Frazer felt that not only was Tylor impugning his scholarship but, worse, casting aspersions on his honour as a gentleman. Although no longer a Christian, Frazer certainly possessed a well-developed conscience; to be accused of plagiarism, which is to say of lying and stealing, was intolerable. He forced the issue, Tylor backed down, and matters were patched up. Things were never the same afterward between them, however. Perhaps the appearance of that great desideratum, a comprehensive biography of Tylor, may throw light on his motives in creating this rupture in their relations at this time. In this connection it is worth noting that only a few years later Frazer had a similar run-in with his friend and prote´ge´ A. C. Haddon, in which the positions were reversed. In an exchange of letters beginning 10 July 1902, Frazer makes it quite clear to Haddon that he is dissatisWed with what he viewed as Haddon’s cavalier use of some of his (Frazer’s) ideas without attributing them to him clearly enough. Like Tylor when challenged, Haddon backed down, the diVerence being that he and Frazer subsequently remained good friends, whereas the relationship with Tylor curdled permanently. In matters of honour such as these, the letters are an invaluable resource, because it was only on paper that they took place, and only on paper that they were settled. Considered overall, in the letters Frazer emerges as a person keenly sensitive to his ethical obligations, which meant in practice that he was scrupulous in crediting the work of others but equally diligent in demanding the same consideration from them. Frazer’s relations with Lang were an altogether more vexed aVair. Frazer always thought of himself as a soldier in the army of reason who had enlisted in the war against all forms of obscurantism everywhere, but especially against its most prevalent manifestation, religion. Lang never entertained anything like Frazer’s animus against religion, but at the start of his career would nonetheless have counted himself on the rationalist, progressive side. Lang once remarked that he wished that he could have been an anthropologist, but when he started out as a journalist and man of letters, the profession of anthropologist did not exist.4 Lang had been brought up in Scotland on the 4 R. R. Marett records that on one occasion, as he accompanied Lang back to Merton College after a dinner, Lang said to him: ‘If I could have made a living out of it, I might have been a great anthropologist!’ Marett continues: ‘So speaking in a most solemn way, and before I could protest

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Border Ballads, and his childhood love of folklore soon became a passion for ethnography as a result of his engagement in what would be a twenty-Wveyear-long struggle with the Oxford Sanskritist F. Max Mu¨ller (1823–1900), whose philologically based theories about the origins and meaning of mythology had held the Weld since the 1850s. Mu¨ller had claimed that myths were a direct consequence of the inadequacy of the language of the shadowy prehistoric Aryans, in their halting attempts to express their intimations of godhead and immortality. These feeble descriptions of deity, misunderstood, became the stories that we call myths (in Mu¨ller’s phrase, myths were the degenerate product of a ‘disease of language’). He therefore insisted that his theories of mythogenesis applied only to the Indo-European speech area. Starting in the late 1870s, each time Mu¨ller or one of his many followers published a philologically based book on mythology, Lang could be counted upon to review it in several journals, in which he would oVer numerous examples of similar traditional stories from parts of the world that had nothing to do with the Indo-European speech area. Lang argued that myths arose, not from linguistic degeneration, but from multiple universal impulses to be found among all ancient peoples, the principal one being the need to make sense of the world in all its variety and confusion. Although Lang was thus the champion of anthropology in the early struggle with the philologists, his ambivalence about religion and his distinctly more romantic temperament caused him to entertain a wider conception of consciousness than Frazer, a conception that appreciated the role of emotion as well as that of reason. In the late 1880s more comprehensive and reliable information about Australian Aboriginal beliefs began to become available, according to which tribal elders who had not been inXuenced by Europeans were nonetheless said (by some) to possess a concept of a High God. This was distinctly problematic from the evolutionary point of view— at least in Frazer’s version of it—because the Aborigines, who were universally regarded as standing at the foot of the human evolutionary ladder, a priori could not, and should not, have had any concept as ‘advanced’ as a High God. Frazer (and others, including Tylor) disparaged these reports; Lang did not. These quasi-‘romantic’ sympathies manifested themselves further in Lang’s lifelong interest in what we would today call the paranormal. He engaged in a lengthy series of investigations into spiritualism and other psychic phenomena, attending many seánces himself and exposing fakes when he found them, that his services to anthropology had been immense, he disappeared into the lodge door that the porter has just opened for him; and I fancied that I had been oVered a glimpse of the real man, beneath an exterior for the most part singularly guarded and ironic’ (A Jerseyman at Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), 169).


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but once again he emerged unwilling to condemn the entire enterprise as foolishness and fraud, which certainly was the position of Frazer and many others among the ‘hard’ rationalists. (In this connection, see the letter included here from William James of 25 December 1900. To mark the completion of the second edition of The Golden Bough in December 1900, Frazer and his wife took a well-earned holiday, the Wrst since their marriage, in Rome. By chance, the Jameses lodged at the same pensione as the Frazers, and as a result James and Frazer had a number of conversations about psychology and religion. In the letter James describes what he sees as Frazer’s blinkered approach to all seemingly non-rational phenomena.) For all their diVerences of temperament and opinion, Frazer and Lang were on cordial terms until late 1898 or perhaps early 1899.5 At that point Lang turned on Frazer, for reasons that remain unclear, and did so with a vengeance. From 1899 until his death in 1912, Lang could be counted upon to produce long, scorching reviews of each of Frazer’s books. Some of Lang’s witticisms gained currency even after their journalistic moment had passed, and Frazer was stung by what he saw as the uncalled-for ferocity of his relentless attacks. In the best known of his remarks he described Frazer’s focus on the vegetation gods of the ancient Mediterranean who died and revived with the return of life in the springtime as ‘the Covent Garden school of mythology’, Covent Garden then being the site of London’s principal vegetable market.6 Wisecracks aside, however, Frazer was even more hurt by Lang’s charge that he manipulated evidence, omitting anything from the sources that might tell against his point of view. The motive for Lang’s animus, at least so far as Frazer was concerned, was revealed when Lang, in The Making of Religion (1898), implied that he had returned to Christianity.7 Frazer seems to have been satisWed that Lang’s new religiosity explained everything; it is not so clear to an outsider. At best, his return to the fold may explain why he might have disagreed with Frazer’s ideas, but it does not shed any light on the source of the manic glee with which he assailed every aspect of Frazer’s work. Wilamowitz, Tylor, and Lang notwithstanding, it would be misleading to see the 1890s entirely as an embattled decade for Frazer. His astonishing industry caused Trinity College to renew his fellowship twice, which meant that the fellowship was now permanent. This change in status alleviated some of his worries about his Wnancial position, which had just changed dramatically with the new responsibilities he had assumed with marriage. In 5

In October 1898 Frazer wrote to Macmillan, ‘I quite share your wish to oblige Lang, who is a friend of mine’ (quoted in Frazer, 159). 6 Andrew Lang, Magic and Religion (London: Longmans, 1901), 239. 7 For more, see Frazer, 153.

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addition, he made one new friend who in an intellectual sense nearly Wlled the gap that had opened with the loss of Robertson Smith. This was the Australian zoologist and anthropologist W. Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929). Spencer had begun like Haddon as a zoologist who quickly came to see that the ‘primitive’ human societies he encountered required attention more urgently than even the strange Australian animals he had set out to study as the biologist attached to the Horn expedition to Central Australia.8 In 1897 Revd Lorimer Fison, an Australian anthropologist friendly to both men, forwarded to Frazer a letter from Spencer, who had just returned to Melbourne from a lengthy stay in the outback of Central Australia. Not only were Spencer and his long-time friend and associate Frank J. Gillen (1856–1912) outstanding Weld observers, but, it emerged, they were also great admirers of Frazer as a thinker and writer. For these reasons Frazer soon found himself in the unprecedented position of being able to put questions about Aboriginal belief and behaviour to Spencer and Gillen, who then went out into the Weld and tried to Wnd the answers and relay them back to him by post. Frazer was amazed by the information that Spencer and Gillen were reporting, especially regarding the Aborigines’ ‘totemic’ belief system and its relation to their complex rules concerning the classes of persons within the community from whom one was permitted to choose a mate, and he encouraged Spencer to write up his Wndings. Once the latter had done so, Frazer, acting as Spencer’s representative, secured an agreement from Macmillan to publish the book (The Native Tribes of Central Australia), and Spencer, twelve thousand miles away, was more than pleased to allow Frazer to act as his proofreader and agent-on-the-spot. The timing of all this was providential, because the epistolary relationship between Frazer and Spencer was developing at exactly the moment (1898–9) when Frazer was engaged in revising The Golden Bough. The long-distance postal dialogue with Spencer not only gave him much that was new and surprising, but also provided him with a friend on whom he could try out ideas freely and whom he trusted completely (as he had Robertson Smith). As will be seen in his relationship with Sidney Hartland and A. B. Cook in the next decade, Frazer did his best work when he had such a co-worker to act as an intellectual whetstone. Quite by accident, Spencer’s proofs also strained further the already uneasy relationship between Frazer and Tylor. As a conciliatory gesture, Frazer had asked Macmillan to print a second set of proofs and send them to Tylor. Tylor, who was much less entranced than Frazer by Spencer’s Wndings (probably because they did not support a theory of totemism that Tylor 8 W. Baldwin Spencer (ed.), Report on the Work of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia (Melbourne: Melville, Mullen, and Slade, 1896).


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had recently advanced), found the manuscript overlong and suggested a number of sizeable cuts to Macmillan. In particular, he asked that Spencer’s long, careful description of the intichiuma ceremony for the multiplication of the totem plants or animals that for Frazer was the high point of the book be dropped because it was full of ‘tedious and disagreeable details’. As Spencer’s representative, Frazer replied that only the author could agree to make such a change, but from his point of view such a deletion would be disastrous and he urged both Macmillan and Spencer not to comply. Macmillan published the book without emendation, and the matter ended there. The exchange between Frazer and Spencer is also important because only in it does one see how Frazer, normally undemonstrative, gradually opened up as each letter from Spencer was Wlled with amazing information. I regret that I did not have access to these letters when I wrote my biography of Frazer in 1987; had I seen them, I would have placed greater emphasis on the importance of the relationship between the two men. In fact, Spencer was not Frazer’s only new friend. Sometime in the 1890s Frazer made the acquaintance of Canon John Roscoe, an Anglican missionary, explorer, and ethnographer, who was home on leave from his mission station in Uganda. Frazer and Roscoe took to one another from the start, and Roscoe must have quickly become a steady correspondent, supplying Frazer with information about life in East Africa. Unfortunately, the earliest extant letter between the two men is dated May 1907, and in it (and subsequently) Frazer signs himself ‘Yours aVectionately’, a formula that he used with few of his correspondents, so it is reasonable to assume that they had been writing to one another steadily for some years. After Frazer’s ill-fated move to and from Liverpool (see Part III), he and Spencer seem to have drifted apart somewhat, if one may judge from the relative infrequency of their letters, whereas his friendship with Roscoe in the Wrst decade of the century seems to have deepened considerably.9 After the war, Frazer was instrumental in securing funding for Roscoe’s Weldwork in Uganda, and Roscoe dedicated one of his books to him. By 1900, then, not only had Frazer been ‘blooded’ in skirmishes with some considerable adversaries, but he had also achieved recognition, both at home and abroad, as a theorist on the sensitive subject of the evolution of religion. All told, the Wrst edition of The Golden Bough had received about twenty-Wve reviews, a distinctly respectable number in view of the fact that its author was an obscure don and its subject matter potentially ‘diYcult’. For the second 9 Frazer being a man who lived literally surrounded by his books, that he permitted Roscoe to handle them in preparing a catalogue of his vast library in 1907 must say something about the depth of their friendship.

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edition, however, the important professional journal Folk-Lore alone commissioned no fewer than eight reviews, and the work was noticed, often at length, in all the leading organs of opinion. Everyone agreed that Frazer’s three-step evolutionary ladder was memorably simple and clear, but his critics said that indeed it was too clear, depending as it did on excessively limited (or arbitrary) deWnitions of the key terms ‘magic’ and ‘religion’. Most of FolkLore’s eight critics found fault with some or all of Frazer’s ideas, but all agreed that the new Golden Bough was an impressive work, a major step forward from the Wrst edition, and (as always) written in a most agreeable style. Henceforth, for the next twenty years, each of Frazer’s publications would be greeted in the same fashion, with the great majority of his professional peers decidedly negative, at the same time that he was acquiring more and more readers among the educated public.

To A. C. Haddon, 18 July 1890 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Haddon, I have been in Greece for some months, and it was only on my return to Cambridge this week that I found the number of the Anthropology Journal containing your paper on the ethnography of the Torres Straits natives.1 Allow me to congratulate you on the splendid results of your stay in Torres Straits. This paper, with your papers on ‘‘Folk-lore’’ form a most valuable contribution to anthropology. Indeed, they are priceless, since the information they contain, if it had not been collected by you, would probably have entirely perished. It seems only the other day that you wrote to me, before going out, that you would not promise to do anything. I thought at the time that this caution was much more hopeful than eVusive promises would have been, and I have not been disappointed. Work like yours will be remembered with gratitude long after the theories of the present day (mine included) are forgotten or remembered only to be despised as obsolete and inadequate.2 I see that you reserve your notes on the language. Don’t you think it would be worth while to publish all your materials in book form? It would make an admirable monograph, and I am sure very many anthropologists would be glad to have it. I am sure that both the Anthropology Institute and the Folklore Society would be ready to let you reprint your articles in a book. Beardmore’s notes might also be incorporated in it. Think of this. I wish


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we could start an Anthropological Library for works both of collection and comparison. Yours would make an excellent volume to start with. The Library might also very well include reprints of old and scarce important works on ethnology. What do you think of this? I wonder if the University Press here could be induced to take up such a scheme. Yours very sincerely James G. Frazer UL Haddon 3 1. A. C. Haddon, ‘Ethnography of the Natives of Torres Strait’, JAI, 20 (1891), 60–84. 2. A note that Frazer sounds frequently in his letters as well as in his books.

To A. C. Haddon, 29 January 1891 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Haddon, I ought to have answered your last letter long ago, but I am a wretched correspondent. I was much pleased to learn that one of your missionary friends in New Guinea found my questions of use, and I look forward with great interest to reading his book when it is published. How do your many schemes progress? I hope you have not given up the idea of writing an article for one of the monthlies on the application of the Imperial Institute to anthropology. The idea is too good to be lost. Then about Irish anthropology, have you been digging up any more bodies at the risk of your life? Don’t fall a martyr to science if you can avoid it. Anthropology cannot spare any of its workers. I hope your book on anthropology is getting on. If there are any books here that you would like consulted, let me know and I will try to do what you wish. Your suggestion that the Smithsonian might be willing to publish my ethnological notebooks is a very taking one. Sometime perhaps I may sound them on that subject, but at present I am occupied with other work. Are you going to the Folklore Congress? Are you going to read a paper? They have put me down as president of the mythology section, but I think I shall back out of it. To preside at public meetings is not in my way and the prospect of doing so is ‘‘far, far from gay.’’1 Yours ever J. G. Frazer

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Risley paid us a Xying visit here.2 I had Jackson and Robertson Smith to meet him. He returned to India in December. He is full of his scheme for extending anthropological enquiries all over India. We got the University Council to memorialise Government in favour of the scheme, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh did likewise. UL Haddon 3 1. Frazer always had many friends, whom he enjoyed meeting in intimate surroundings, but already we begin to see his dislike of appearing in public that in the end became virtually complete withdrawal. 2. (Sir) Herbert Hope Risley (1851–1911), Indian civil servant and anthropologist.

To Gilbert Murray,1 15 August 1891 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Professor Murray, I have to thank you for your letter with its obliging reference to my book. The questions which you raise with regard to the passage in Pindar, Pyth. IV 263 sq. appear to be two. (1) How is the passage to be translated? and (2) What is the special reference of the expression ‘the winter Wre’? 1. On the Wrst head it is perhaps rather presumptuous of me to give an opinion, as I have not, like you, made a special study of Pindar. Your way of taking the passage seems a perfectly possible one. But on your interpretation of the passage, what is the moral that Pindar means to convey to Arcesilaus? The lopping of the boughs of the oak seems to refer to some political measures adopted or contemplated by Arcesilaus. It would seem most naturally interpreted of severe repressive measures levelled at the democracy or, perhaps rather, at the nobility. Had not Pindar in his mind the story of Periander and the poppies? And is he not hinting politely at the danger of such a policy as Periander recommended to his brother tyrant Thrasybulus? He says that though you may lop and mangle an oak, there is still in the tree a reserve of force which may support a mighty weight or burst into a conXagration. ‘‘Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus Nigrae feracis frondis in Algido, Per damna, per caedes, ab ipso Ducit opes animumque ferro.’’2


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All this is intelligible and even Wne. But your interpretation, I confess, seems to me to break the point of the moral entirely. ‘‘Even when the boughs are lopped, it may still be determined whether the tree should be burnt or used in building.’’ Then what is the use of saying ‘‘even when its boughs are lopped’’ (kai wuinokarpoB)? The tree could not be used either for burning or building until its boughs had been lopped. The words kai wuinokarpoB seem superXuous and meaningless on your interpretation. Again, the only moral to be extracted from the passage, taken as you suggest, would seem to be that Arcesilaus may safely cut and hack at the political tree as much as he likes, for by so doing he will not hurt the tree but rather shape it to the proper ends for which it exists. I hardly think that Pindar, the citizen of a free Greek state, would oVer such Machiavellian advice to a Greek prince. 2. With regard to the expression ‘‘the winter Wre,’’ it is possible that the reference may be to some such bonWres of oak-wood as we know from Pausanias (IX.3) were periodically kindled by many Boeotian towns on the top of Mt. Cithaeron. Such an interpretation is very tempting, to me especially. But the expression seems too vague and general to justify us in pressing this very special reference upon it. ‘‘The winter Wre’’ seems to be taken most simply and naturally of the household Wre, which in Greece, at least in the lowlands of Boeotia, would certainly not be kindled in summer, except for cooking. And if Pindar speciWes the oak as the tree lopped by the woodsman, it was probably not because it had religious signiWcance in his mind at the time, but simply because the rugged strength lent itself to the moral which he wished to inculcate, and because the tree was common in Boeotia. On the slopes of Helicon, looking toward Thebes, there are still great stretches of oak coppice. I must apologise for the length at which I have written. But as you were so good as to ask my opinion, I could not do less than give it, with my reasons. I am, dear Sir, Yours faithfully James G. Frazer Bodleian Library, Murray Papers, Box 91 1. (George) Gilbert Aime´ Murray (1866–1957), classical scholar, at the time recently retired on grounds of ill health from the chair of Greek at Glasgow; later, Regius Professor at Oxford. 2. Horace, Odes iv. 4, 57–60.

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To Gilbert Murray, 17 August 1891 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Professor Murray, Your second letter puts your interpretation of the Pindar passage in quite a diVerent light and seems to supply it with a most appropriate moral. I had not looked at the passage in its context and so missed the reference to Damophilus entirely. I now think that you are very possibly, if not probably, right. It certainly seems likely that the passage refers to Damophilus especially rather than to the nobles generally. With regard to the use of oak wood in architecture, may I remind you of two passages in Pausanias where he describes ancient buildings with oaken pillars. They are V.16.1 and VI.24.9. From the former passage, taken in connexion with the style of the existing columns, it has been, as you are doubtless aware, inferred that all the columns of the Heraeum were originally of wood. At present I am not working at primitive religion, but am writing a commentary on Pausanias, which I have had on hand for some time. I hope however before very long to return to my favourite subject. Yours sincerely James G. Frazer Bodleian Library, Murray Papers, Box 91

To H. Montagu Butler, 6 November 1891 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Master, Two days ago I received from Mr. W. Warde Fowler1 of Lincoln College, Oxford, a letter in which he points out that in my book ‘The Golden Bough’ I have mistranslated a passage in Pliny (XVI. 250) which, as I interpreted it, was of great importance for my main argument. Properly interpreted, as I now see, the passage not only does not support my argument but is positively opposed to it and consequently my argument, so far, falls to the ground. I have asked Mr. Warde Fowler to write a note to the Athenaeum pointing


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out my mistake and I have suggested that I should at the same time send a note to the Athenaeum acknowledging my mistake and pointing out how seriously it invalidates my main argument.2 I have not yet received an answer from Mr. Warde Fowler, but if he prefers not to publish his correction, I shall consider it an imperative duty to do so myself. As the Council in deciding to continue my Fellowship last year had regard, I believe, in part to my book ‘The Golden Bough’ and as the mistake in question not only seriously impairs the value of the book, but may also very naturally beget a doubt as to the accuracy of my work in general, I think it right that the Council should have an opportunity of reconsidering their decision. I therefore beg leave to intimate that they have my full consent to reopen the question from the beginning and that I will accept as just any decision at which they may arrive. If the Council think that it would facilitate their decision, I will submit to them the manuscript of the book I am engaged on and any other of my manuscripts that they may wish to examine.3 I am, dear Master, Yours very faithfully James G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 6 1. W. Warde Fowler (1847–1921), fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; historian of ancient Rome. 2. Frazer, ‘A Correction’, Athenaeum (21 Nov. 1891), 687. 3. R. Angus Downie, Frazer and The Golden Bough (London: Gollancz, 1970), 22, garbles this remarkable example of Frazer’s scrupulousness.

To ‘Tot’ [Isabella Frazer Steggall], 4 March 1892 Trinity College, Cambridge 1

My dear Tot, I am ashamed of having left your last letter so long unanswered. It was kind of you to write me from your bed. I was glad to hear since that you have been down stairs again. I hope you will soon be quite strong again. You have had a long time of weakness. How glad you will be when you are able to go about as usual. Have you any idea of all going away at Easter to Glen Prosen or some other place to recruit? The change would set you up, if you were able for it. I am afraid I have not much news to tell. Life jogs on in its usual humdrum Cambridge way. Term ends in about a fortnight. It has Xown past and one has as usual to lament that one has not done so much work as one had hoped and

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expected to do. Pausanias goes ahead steadily, but I do not expect to Wnish him before autumn at soonest. You will be glad to hear, and so will John, that Capstick’s experiments have recently turned out very well and yielded interesting and important results. For John’s beneWt I may say that, as Capstick explained them to me, they amount to this, that if from a molecule you detach an atom and substitute for it an atom of a diVerent element and a diVerent weight, the amount of energy absorbed by the molecule will still be the same. At least this is what I understand his experiments to amount to. To put it otherwise, the amount of energy absorbed by a molecule depends solely on the number of atoms in the molecule and not at all upon their weight. But I must apologise for introducing such stuV into my letter to you. J. J. Thomson and Dewar are much interested in Capstick’s results.2 He is going to publish them in the Transactions or Proceedings of the Royal Society. Middleton starts for Greece in about ten days. He has got a term’s leave of absence to enable him to write a book on the remains of ancient Athens, so he will be in Greece till June. I should like very much to go with him, but cannot aVord it. He is bringing out two books, a new book on Rome, double the size of his old one, and a history of illuminated manuscripts.3 They are both in type and will be out soon. Ridgeway’s magnum opus is not out yet but may appear at any time. The last time I heard from him it was nearly ready. Robertson Smith has suVered much from sciatica this term, but is now a great deal better. Henry Jackson too has suVered from the same complaint. The Master has recovered from the inXuenza and is going out to Greece in the vacation with his wife, though he is still far from strong. There have been a number of cases of inXuenza in the town and among married dons, but curiously enough hardly a single case in College. Indeed the Master’s is the only case I have heard of in Trinity. There was one death in St. John’s. I had an ordinary cold a good part of the term, but it has quite gone. At a College meeting last Saturday it was resolved to build an extension to the library, as the present building is quite full. The new building will be a one-storied structure at the back of Neville’s Court, where the Master’s stables now are. It is estimated to cost £4000 and to hold 85,000 volumes. It will be quite a plain building. The Master suggested a much grander scheme but it found no support. My old friend Alex. Scott, late of Durham, is settled in Cambridge once more as Prof. Dewar’s assistant. He occupies Dewar’s rooms at Peterhouse, as Dewar does not use them, being married and having a house. I dined with Scott at Peterhouse last Sunday. I had not dined in Peterhouse hall since the time when I dined in it as an undergraduate with Johnie Dick many years ago. Scott dined with me in hall last night. Today I had a walk with Horace


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Carslow, who is now a freshman at Emmanuel. He is mathematical and took honours in mathematics at Glasgow. So he should do well here. He is a pleasant young fellow. On Sunday morning next I am to breakfast at Jackson’s to meet Tylor the anthropologist who is to be staying with Jackson. Of course I have often met him before, indeed he has been very friendly to me. If you are in want of a good book to read, let me recommend Boswell’s life of Johnson. I read it through for the Wrst time lately, and it is delightful. A very interesting and very amusing book is the life of Wayne Young the tragedian, and a very interesting but very tragic book is the life of the painter B. R. Haydon. Have you ever read Macaulay’s history? It is one of the most readable books in the language. I have written a long screed after all and must stop. Tiny4 no doubt keeps you peaked up in the Glenlee news. The Mother seems getting over her cold steadily though slowly. I wish they could stay in Glenlee for a good while yet, but they have only a promise of it till the end of March. I hope John and the children are all very well. Give them all my love, and with love to yourself I am, my dear Tot, Your aVectionate brother Jamie Margaret, Viscountess Long 1. Frazer’s sister Isabella, wife of John E. Steggall, who was for half a century professor of mathematics in the University of Dundee. This one, like the earlier letter of 15 Oct. 1889 from his other sister Christina (‘Tiny’), appears to be part of a regular exchange. Only a couple of these letters survive. 2. John Walton Capstick (1858–1937), Cambridge experimental chemist; (Sir) Joseph John Thomson (1856–1941), Cambridge physicist, later Master of Trinity College 1918–40, Nobel prize 1906; (Sir) James Dewar (1842–1923), Cambridge chemist, Jacksonian professor of experimental natural philosophy 1875–1923. 3. John Henry Middleton, The Remains of Ancient Rome, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1892); idem, Illuminated Manuscripts in Classical and Mediaeval Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1892). 4. Frazer’s other sister, Christina (‘Tiny’). The Glenlee news refers to events in their parents’ lives.

To Baron Anatole von Hu¨gel,1 16 December 1893 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear von Hu¨gel, Your letter has just reached me and I lose no time in writing to say that I shall be delighted to subscribe £5 for so excellent an object. I will send you

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the cheque as soon as my dividend is paid into the bank, which will probably be early next week.2 But I thought it better to write to you at once, in case in the meantime the chance of purchasing the collection might be lost. Do not let it slip for the want of a few pounds. I daresay I could increase my subscription if necessary, say to £10. You may count on me to that extent. I am afraid I could hardly promise more. I share your hope that the new constitution of the Antiquarian Committee will help to put the Museum in a better position. The Vice-Chancellor wrote to ask whether I would allow myself to be nominated as a member of the Committee, but I had to decline, as I am (as you probably know) absolutely ignorant of all the material side of savage life, the arts, manufactures etc., with which alone a museum has to do.3 My studies have all been in the other branch of savage life, the mental and social side, the customs, superstitions, etc. I feel of course that in order to fully understand the mental and social side of savage life, one ought to know about the material side of it too, as the two sides dovetail into each other. But there is so much that one ought to know that one does not. And in my state of ignorance I should have been of no use on the Committee and should only have kept out some one who might really have been useful. I must try to look in some day at the Museum and see the specimens. With all Christmas good wishes believe me Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer University Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology 1. Baron Anatole von Hu¨gel (1852–1925), a leading Catholic modernist theologian in Britain; director of the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, 1884–1921. 2. The Trinity fellows’ annual dividend, or stipend, which then ranged from £200 to £250 per annum. 3. Frazer often mentions his total ignorance of the material side of ‘primitive’ culture.

To Arthur Everett Shipley,1 26 March 1894 Rowmore House, Garelochead My dear Shipley, I have to thank you for your letter and telegram, both received today. A letter from Black came along with yours. If you think I could be of the least


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use, please telegraph for me and I will come at once. Otherwise I shall stay here for the present. Will you or Black be so good as to let me know if any serious change takes place in Smith’s condition. It is well that he seems to suVer no pain. I understand that there is no hope. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer UL Add. 7449c D239 1. (Sir) Arthur Everett Shipley (1861–1927), zoologist, fellow, and later Master of Christ’s College; friend of both Frazer and Robertson Smith. They and John Sutherland Black (1846–1923) took turns sitting at Smith’s bedside as he lay dying. He died on 31 Mar. 1894. Rowmore House is the home of Frazer’s parents in Scotland.

To Baron Anatole von Hu¨gel, 1 December 1894 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear von Hu¨gel, A French lady, Mrs Grove, who is at work on a history of dancing, has asked me whether I could give her any information as to the dances still performed in the cathedral of Seville. I cannot, but it occurred to me that you, as a Catholic and anthropologist, might perhaps be able to do so. If you could direct her to any sources which would throw light on the history of the dances she would be grateful. So far as I have gathered from an interview (she is in Cambridge for a few days) she appears to study the subject in a comprehensive and philosophic way, taking in savage dances in connexion with war, death, hunting, initiation, etc. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

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To Baron Anatole von Hu¨gel, 3 December 1894 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear von Hu¨gel, Allow me to introduce to you the bearer, Mrs Grove, the lady of whom I spoke in my letter of Saturday.1 She is anxious to get information as to religious dances in general as well as the Spanish dances in particular, and if you could help her from your wide knowledge of savage and other dances you would be conferring a favour. Mrs Grove has herself travelled among savages and is interested in their ways.2 Excuse haste and believe me Yours very truly J. G. Frazer University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 1. Elisabeth (‘Lilly’) Grove (1855?–1941), a French widow with two children, whom Frazer married on 22 Apr. 1896. 2. As the wife of a British master mariner (Charles Baylee Grove), she had sailed with him to South America and other remote parts of the world.

To H. Montagu Butler, 1 March 1895 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Master, The news which your very kind letter has just conveyed took me by surprise. I did not think that the question of renewing my Fellowship, if it were to be raised at all, would be so till next term. I will not attempt to express my sense of what I owe to the Council, as representing the College, for this renewed mark of its conWdence and for enabling me to carry out work which I have much at heart. I will only ask you to tell the Council that I am deeply grateful and that it will be my endeavour to prove by my published work that I have deserved the conWdence with which now and always they have treated me. It is a matter of great regret to me that my Pausanias, on which I have been at work for some years, is not yet published. But I may say that two volumes of it are passed for the press, that the third volume is printing, and that the fourth and last volume will, I hope, be printed in the course of the


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summer.1 When this book is Wnished I have others to write, for which the materials are partly collected. Please accept my very grateful thanks for the kind and generous terms in which you speak of my work. Believe me, my dear Master, with gratitude and esteem, Yours very sincerely, James G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 8 1. In the event, Pausanias’s Description of Greece, when it Wnally appeared in 1898, ran to six stout quarto volumes.

To Edmund Gosse, 10 May 1895 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Gosse, I see that the Authors’ Society has been jumping on you with the whole weight of the Committee. Will you accept a few words of sympathy from me in your aZiction? As to ‘‘the unbridled greediness of the great authors’’ I can’t say that I know anything, as you are the only great author I know and I am quite sure that you are not greedy. But I do know that the general view of ‘‘The Author,’’ the organ of the Society, is simply disgusting, so disgusting and oVensive that I asked them not to send it to me (though of course they sent the Wlthy publication gratis). It is nothing but a roar for money and a vituperation of publishers. The only article in it which I read with pleasure was one on yourself in which (so far as I remember) you protested against the treating of literature as is if it were as much a business as stock-broking. It is not. A man takes up stock-broking or any other trade purely for the sake of making money, and if the trade ceased to bring him in money he would drop it. But a man of letters is what he is for the love of letters, because it is his greatest pleasure to do so, and he would do it if he did not make a half-penny by it. So that the profession of letters stands on quite a diVerent footing from the purely money-grubbing professions, and I entirely dissent from the position, assumed as an axiom by the Authors’ Society, that literature must be treated just like ordinary business. You will wonder perhaps why with these opinions I belong to the Authors’ Society. I joined it at the wish of a friend whom I did not wish to disappoint, and I continue to belong to it to please

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him. I think he would feel rather hurt if I withdrew. But if I had consulted my own inclination I never would have joined it, and having been reduced to join it I would, if I followed my inclination, have left it long ago. But if you will now retire from the Society, I will do so too. My relations with my publishers (I have had dealings with three diVerent Wrms) have always been most pleasant. I have never had any ground to suspect them of dishonourable dealing, and the abuse poured on the heads of publishers in ‘‘The Author’’ revolted me. It produced exactly the opposite of the eVect intended. It made me sympathize with publishers, and as nearly ashamed of my own profession as I could be. Besant’s assertion, repeated again and again, that publishers run no risk is on the face of it a monstrous absurdity.1 If you will form a Society for the Protection of Publishers I will join it like a shot. Forgive this long tirade and believe me, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. Walter Besant (1836–1901), English novelist, editor of The Author.

To J. Walter Fewkes,1 20 May 1895 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Sir, I ought to have thanked you before now for the copies of your valuable papers ‘The Tusayan New Fire Ceremony’ and ‘A Tusayan Initiation Ceremony’, which you were so kind as to send me. Pray accept my thanks for them now, as well as for the copies of the Journal of American Ethnology and Archaeology, which you sent me I am ashamed to think how long ago and which I was so remiss as not to acknowledge. My excuse must be that for some years I have been engaged in work other than anthropology, and have not been able to keep myself abreast of the literature of anthropology and folklore. I hope however to return to those studies before very many months are over, and I look forward to making myself better acquainted with your contributions to North American ethnology. I am particularly interested in the subject of one of your papers—the periodical rekindling of a new Wre. Nearly ten years ago I wrote a paper on perpetual Wres in ancient Greece and Rome, in which I touched on the subject of the ceremonial renewal of sacred Wres.2 Since then I have collected a good many more facts bearing on the


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subject, which I hope to publish some day. Meantime I beg you to accept a copy of my old paper, which may possibly interest you. With many thanks and all good wishes for the successful prosecution of your ethnological work, I am, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History 1. J. Walter Fewkes (1850–1930), American ethnographer, with special interest in the tribes of the American Southwest. 2. ‘The Prytaneum, the Temple of Vesta, the Vestals, Perpetual Fires’, Journal of Philology, 14 (1885), 145–72; repr. in GS, 51–76.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 7 June 1895 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Mr Hartland, It is one of my rules never to review any book. I certainly should not be tempted to depart from this particular rule in favour of any book by such a notoriously incompetent scholar as Thomas Taylor.1 It is a pity that any of his work should be reprinted. As for stirring up Cambridge to appoint a professor of anthropology, I fear I must confess to never stirring up anybody to do anything. The character of an agitator is not one to which I aspire. Besides, the University and colleges are miserably poor, and their scanty incomes are necessarily devoted to far more important objects, such as giving feasts, keeping up gardens and chapel services, and maintaining some hundreds of Fellows and Masters of Colleges in idleness. Or rather I should say that these are the prime objects to which the Colleges devote their energies, and that the small surplus which is left over when these essentials have been provided for is handed over to the University to be by it applied to the subordinate object of promoting science and learning. This small surplus is not suYcient to endow a professorship of anthropology. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 33 1. Thomas Taylor (1758–1835), writer on ancient philosophy and especially on Plato.

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To George A. Macmillan, 13 September 1895 Rowmore House My dear Sir, Allow me to introduce to you Mrs. Lilly Grove, F.R.G.S., author of a history of dancing, which will shortly be published in the Badminton Series.1 In the course of her researches, as well as of her travels in South America and elsewhere, Mrs Grove has collected a large mass of information on the dances of civilised and savage peoples, which it was impossible to bring within the compass of a volume of the Badminton Series. This collection of facts she has arranged in the form of a dictionary, which she proposes to publish with illustrations. She would be glad to submit the work for acceptance to your Wrm. I have read some of the proofs of her history of dancing, and can answer for it that though French by birth she has command of a good English style. It would give me great pleasure to learn that you had accepted the book.2 Believe me, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer BL 1. Lilly Grove’s Wrst book, the encyclopaedic survey Dancing (London: Badminton, 1895), is now regarded as a pioneering work of dance history. 2. Macmillan declined to publish this dictionary of primitive dance, although the company did bring out many of her later works.

To Baron Anatole von Hu¨gel, 28 February 1896 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear von Hu¨gel, Many thanks for your interesting paper on the Bataks. Like the rest of the Indonesian peoples they appear to be very interesting, especially from the point of view of religion and superstition. What a mass of valuable material on these subjects is buried in Dutch books and (still more) in Dutch periodicals. I sometimes think I should much like to dig in this vast mine, and compile a big book on the Indonesian peoples based on Dutch sources.1


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But life is short and work goes so slowly that I suppose one will die long before one has carried out a quarter of the work one would like to do. Yours ever J. G. Frazer University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 1. In fact Frazer did improve his Dutch and later used East Indian materials extensively. E. B. Tylor had made Frazer aware of the ethnographical riches produced by Dutch anthropologists. Frazer’s use of Dutch sources would become a source of contention between him and Tylor in 1898.

To Solomon Schechter, 17 March 1896 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Dr Schechter, Thank you for your most kind letter. It does one good to receive such a letter at such a time. You know how truly I am to be congratulated, for you know the worth of her who is to be my wife. It is a very great pleasure to both of us to think that here we shall have two such true and valued friends as yourself and Mrs Schechter. I hope we may all long be spared to help and cheer each other on our way through life. Your sincere friend, James G. Frazer Jewish Theological Seminary

To Edward Clodd, 1 November 1896 Trinity College, Cambridge 1

Dear Mr Clodd, The superstition you mention was unknown to me, but your explanation of it seems highly probable. As explained by you, the superstition is a very interesting example of the supposed sympathetic connection between a man and a tree. As you say, it bears very closely on my explanation of the connection between the priest of

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Diana at Aricia and the sacred tree, he having to be always in the prime of health and vigour in order that the tree might be so too. I am pleased to Wnd my theory (which I confess often seems to me far-fetched, so remote is it from our nineteenth century educated ways of thought) conWrmed by evidence so near home.2 It is one more indication of the persistence of the most primitive modes of thought beneath the surface of our civilisation. Thank you for bringing it to my notice . . . Yours very truly J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. Published in Folk-Lore, 8 (1897), 11–12. Thomas Hardy wrote a letter describing the superstition to the Folk-Lore Society that was read out at the annual meeting on 17 Nov. 1896 by Edward Clodd, in the chair. In the letter Hardy says that some believe that if you plant trees, you must not look at them ‘on an empty stomach’ or the malign inXuence of your hungry eye will cause them to wither and die. Clodd had sent the letter to Frazer, and his letter is in response. 2. A point Frazer often makes in his letters; ironically, the unspoken assumption of modern Western modes of thought by backward peoples is one of the charges frequently made against Frazer himself.

To E. B. Tylor, 4 December 1896 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Tylor, I am ashamed of having so long delayed to thank you for the copy of your paper on American lot-games which you kindly sent me.1 I delayed till I found time to read it, and then having read it delayed till I could Wnd time to write. Please accept my tardy thanks, they are sincere though late. The point you raise is an interesting one, but having made no study of games I don’t feel able to express an opinion on the question. There is a missionary from Africa, a Mr Roscoe, resident in Cambridge at present, who knows a great deal about Uganda, where he has spent Wve years. He has only been home about two months and goes out again next year. I have done what I could to interest him in the good cause, and hope to work him up to the point of contributing a paper or papers to the Institute. But he has already done much in this direction by stimulating the native prime minister to write down a history of Uganda, its traditions, customs etc. The native seems to be a man of intelligence for he collected his materials from the oldest men, whom he summoned from all parts to be questioned. The book is


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actually written and is to be published.2 An English translation is to be made and also published. It is being made by a Mr. Pilkington, a Cambridge man who took good honours in classics and works as the linguist of the mission in Uganda. So in spite of the deplorable ravages of Christianity and civilisation among the people, there is hope of putting on record a good deal of their old life. Mr Roscoe tells me that totemism is universal. The women of the same totem are regarded as sisters, and no impropriety between a man and a woman of the same totem seems conceivable to the natives. The totem descends in the male line. My wife, whom you knew as Mrs Lilly Grove, joins me in kind regards to Mrs Tylor and yourself. Believe me, Yours very sincerely, J. G. Frazer Pausanias still absorbs me, but the end is near. Most of it is already passed for the press. Pitt Rivers Museum 1. E. B. Tylor, ‘On American Lot-Games, as Evidence of Asiatic Intercourse before the Time of Columbus’, in Ethnographische Beitra¨ge . . . dem Professor Adolf Bastian, Internationales Archiv fu¨r Ethnographie, 7 (1896), 55–67. 2. The book, in Baganda by Sir Apolo Kagwa (1864–1927), prime minister of Buganda (pre-colonial Uganda), appeared in 1902 and was later translated into English as The Kings of Baganda. For more, see Benjamin C. Ray, Myth, Ritual and Kingship in Baganda (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), ch. 1.

To George A. Macmillan, 23 August 1897 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Mr Macmillan, In the praktik a t hB 0Arxaiologik h& 0 EtairiaB for 1896 there is a full report of the excavations at Lycosura accompanied by excellent plans. The excavations conWrm Pausanias’s description exactly. They have found the colonnade and three altars he mentions, as well as the temple and, of course, large portions of the sculptures. The plan of the temple published in my fourth volume (p. 369) is a mere sketch of the roughest sort. I hope you will a. consent to reproduce, on a smaller scale, the plan in plate I of the praktik

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It shows the colonnade, the altars, and the temple beautifully. The wall of the pariboloB in the left-hand part of the plan might be omitted. The plan would, if you agree, be inserted in the Addenda, where I shall give some account of these latest excavations. This would be better than to cancel the sketch plan in vol. 4 and substitute the new one for it. I have just received this morning from Australia two letters announcing that an anthropological work on some of the native Australian tribes, which promises to be of the very highest importance and quality, is nearly ready for publication, and that the author (Prof. Baldwin Spencer of Melbourne University) is on the look-out for a publisher.1 I know Prof. Spencer partly from his very valuable contributions to the anthropological side of the recent Horn expedition into Central Australia, partly from the letters of the well known and highly competent anthropologist, Mr Lorimer Fison, joint author of a very valuable book on the Australian tribal organisation (Kamilaroi and Kurnai). Mr Fison speaks of Prof. Spencer and his work in the highest possible terms, and I feel sure that his book will be of the utmost value to anthropologists. He has been initiated into one of the tribes, and last summer he spent four months among them witnessing their most secret ceremonies of initiation etc. The tribe lives in the very centre of Australia. He has taken a great series of photographs of the natives in ceremonial costume and engaged in their rites. Of these he has sent me a considerable number. They are admirable. He was introduced to the tribe by Mr Gillen, Sub-protector of the natives, who is also an initiated member of the tribe and possesses their complete conWdence. The enthusiasm and energy of Mr Gillen in pursuing his researches seem to be beyond praise. He seems to have no private means, but has refused two oVers of valuable posts in order that he may stick to his anthropological work and get everything that is to be had about the native customs and ideas before it is too late. He and Spencer are in constant communication. Would you feel inclined to publish Spencer’s book? The Wrst rough draft of it, Mr Fison tells me, is 495 f-cap pages. The book, Mr Fison frankly says, ‘‘will bring more kudos than proWt to all who have anything to do with it.’’ If you do not see your way to take it, I feel sure that either of the University presses would publish it. I should be proud to have any hand in bringing such a book to birth. If you like I will send you Spencer’s photographs. They ought to make splendid illustrations. Yours very truly, J. G. Frazer Prof. Spencer, in a letter answering some questions which I had put to Mr Fison, writes to me that an abstract of some of his recent researches was


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published in Nature for June 10th..2 I have not seen it. You might look at it to get an idea of the scope of his work. BL 1. The book by Spencer and Gillen in question here, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), would be followed by The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), The Native Tribes of the Northern Territory of Australia (1914), and The Arunta (1927). One of the two letters that Frazer has just received comes from the anthropologist Revd Lorimer Fison, to whom he had written about the joint work of Spencer and Gillen. Fison sent along the Wrst letter from Spencer to Frazer, in which he describes how their joint work had begun and their expedition to the Arunta tribe in summer 1896. He describes as well their method of working and responds to particular questions that Frazer asked regarding the totem and its traditions, its probable origin in cannibalism, and the churinga (incised wooden or stone boards containing symbolic representations of the ancestors who lived long ago, in the alcheringa, or ‘dream time’). He outlines the need for a great deal more research, says that he lacks time and Gillen lacks money, and says that they are looking for a publisher. 2. W. Baldwin Spencer, ‘The Engwurra, or Fire Ceremony of Certain Central Australian Tribes’, Nature, 56 (10 June 1897), 136–9.

To Baldwin Spencer, 19 September 1897 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Sir, Accept my very sincere thanks for your letter and the photographs. Both of them interest me deeply. The abstract of your paper on the totems, which you so kindly promise to send me, has not yet reached me. I look forward to reading it with much interest. At present I am so occupied with work that I cannot enter into the details of the questions raised by your letter. I will only say that the totem system among the tribe you describe seems to be very peculiar and to diVer in some respects from those of most other tribes known to us. It is all the more important that the system should be described as fully as possible. I hope to write to you at length before very long when the immediate pressure of work is over (I am bringing out a book next month). My object in writing just now is merely to thank you for your letter and the photographs, and to say that I have communicated with Messrs. Macmillan and that they are ready to publish your book on condition that it does not exceed about 500 pages and that the number of illustrations to be inserted shall be left to their discretion. If you agree to these terms, the matter is settled. Mr George A. Macmillan, the partner to whom I wrote, suggests that you should communicate direct with him. From my experience of Macmillan, I should say that they are excellent publishers to deal with, always


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ready to consider and agree to any reasonable proposals that an author may make to them. Mr G. A. Macmillan seems fully to realise the importance of your forthcoming book, and I do not suppose that they will stint you in the matter of illustrations or strictly limit you to 500 pages. The advantage of publishing with a Wrm with the standing of Macmillan is obvious. The terms he mentioned were, I think, the usual ones—the publishers to undertake the whole risk and expense and to share the proWts equally with the author. But I must not write more at present. Please remember me very kindly to Mr Fison and thank him for me for his letter which was, as usual, most interesting. I shall hope to write to him at length when I have leisure. With very many thanks, I am Yours very faithfully, J. G. Frazer I found your contributions to the report of the Horn expedition most interesting, but have not had time to do more than skim that book. Please say to Mr Fison that Dr [Henry] Jackson will, I am sure, read his letter with delight, conWrming as it does a theory he has long held. He is not in Cambridge just now, but I will show him the letter on his return. Pitt Rivers Museum

To Francis Galton, 10 October 1897 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Mr Galton, I trust that you will pardon me for intruding on you at present, in regard to a scientiWc matter. You will believe that I heard of your bereavement with sincere sympathy.1 You may remember that some two years ago I spoke to you of an expedition to New Guinea, which my friend Prof. Haddon and myself had some thoughts of making.2 That scheme has been for the present at least abandoned. But Prof. Haddon is taking out an expedition to Torres Straits next year. He did good work there some years ago, as you know, and is anxious to complete the materials he collected then. The statement which he has drawn up will explain all this. You will see that £300 are still needed, but that he is in hopes of getting it from the Royal Society.


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Last week he had a letter from an old Cambridge man who has been resident in Borneo for thirteen years and who, hearing of Haddon’s expedition to Torres Straits, has written to him asking him to go to Borneo with all his staV and oVering to pay all expenses of the expedition during their stay, to place a steamer at their disposal, and to take them about.3 He knows the natives and their languages well, and would accompany the expedition. This is obviously an oVer which it would be a great pity to have to refuse. Yet if it is accepted it will be necessary to raise more funds to pay for the passage to and from Borneo, and also to enable Prof. Haddon to pay a substitute to lecture for him during the winter of 1898–9 at Dublin, where he is Professor of Zoology at the Royal College of Science. He is a poor man with a small professional income (£200 a year from Dublin) and, I believe, very small private means. But he and Mrs. Haddon are prepared to make personal sacriWces in order to carry out this work. I write to ask whether you think that a grant or grants could be obtained from some of the learned societies, say the Geographical, and if so, what would be the best way to approach them. If you could help with advice in the matter I should be most grateful. I am sure you will appreciate the importance of the opportunity and that you will agree that it ought not be allowed to slip. I have not yet seen the letter containing the oVer but I hope to do so soon, and if you would like to see it I will send it to you. Failing other means I think we shall try to raise a subscription. Again begging that for the sake of the cause you will pardon me for intruding on you at such a time. I remain, dear Mr Galton, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer4 Royal Geographical Society 1. The recent death of his sister, wife of H. Montagu Butler, Master of Trinity. 2. The only known reference to Frazer’s ever having entertained the idea of undertaking Weldwork. His decision to marry rather than to join the expedition represents one of the more signiWcant roads not taken in the history of anthropology. In the face of the gritty and wayward nature of ethnographic reality, Frazer might well have been hard pressed to maintain his neat three-step ladder of mental evolution. On the other hand, that he spent only a few months in the Weld in Brazil half a century later did not prevent Claude Le´vi-Strauss from fashioning his equally neat binary theory of the workings of ‘the myth-making mind’. 3. Charles Hose (1863–1929), ethnographer, geographer, and judge of the Supreme Court of Sarawak. 4. In Galton’s hand: ‘Wrote Haddon Oct. 24, 97, asking him to say what geographical work he would be likely to do.’

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To John F. White,1 15 December 1897 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Mr White, You may be sure that if any reminiscences of mine should be thought by you likely to serve your purpose of keeping Robertson Smith’s memory fresh among his friends and of giving others who did not know him some notion of the man, they are heartily at your disposal. I wrote, as you are perhaps aware, a memorial article on him at the expressed wish of some common friends. It was published in the Fortnightly Review for June 1894.2 If you wish, I can send you a copy of it. But the object of the article was rather to give some account of his work as a writer and thinker than to describe the man himself. Your intention, as I understand it, is rather to put together such personal reminiscences as may serve to make him as a man, not merely as a writer, more alive to those who did not know him. The best I can do for you, it seems to me, will be to put down quite simply my recollections of him, leaving you free to make what use of them you think Wt. When he came to Cambridge he joined Trinity and had a very small set of rooms allotted to him in Whewell’s Court (then called the Master’s Court). I used to see him at dinner in the college hall and in the street for some time before I made his acquaintance. But one evening, I think in January 1884, when I had gone, contrary to my custom, to Combination Room after dinner he came and sat beside me and entered into conversation. It was the beginning of a friendship which lasted till his death. I think that one subject of our talk that evening was the Arabs in Spain and that, though I knew next to nothing about the subject, I attempted some sort of argument with him, but was immediately beaten down, in the kindest and gentlest way, by his learning, and yielded myself captive to him at once. I never afterwards, so far as I remember, attempted to dispute the mastership which he thenceforward exercised over me by his extraordinary union of genius and learning. From that time we went walks together sometimes in the afternoons, and sometimes he asked me to his rooms. In his little rooms in Whewell’s Court he once introduced me as ‘‘one of the Scotch contingent’’ to a great friend of his, the late professor of Arabic, William Wright, himself a Scotchman. Afterwards he moved to larger and better rooms on the kitchen staircase, which opens oV a passage leading from the Old Court to the Bishop’s Hostel. Here he staid [sic] till he left Trinity for Christ’s College, where he was elected to a Fellowship. On selWsh grounds I regretted his migration to Christ’s, as it prevented me from seeing him so easily and so often as before. While he was


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still living in Whewell’s Court he gratiWed me very much by asking me to contribute some of the smaller classical articles to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, of which he was then joint editor. My little articles pleased him and he afterwards entrusted me with a more important one, that on Pericles. I was Xattered by the trust, but when I came to write I could not satisfy myself and made great eVorts to get him to transfer the work to some one else. He did his best to relieve me, even telegraphing (if I remember aright) to a man at a distance to ask him to undertake it, and when all proved fruitless he actually came to my rooms and began writing the article with his own hand at my dictation or from my notes to oblige me to make a start with it. This may serve to give some faint notion of the endless trouble he had to endure as editor of the Encyclopaedia. In September 1884 I spent some delightful days with him at Dalwhinnie on the borders of Perthshire and Inverness-shire. We took long walks sometimes on the hills sometime on the roads. He loved the mountains, and one of my most vivid recollections of him is his sitting on a hillside looking over the mountains and chanting or rather crooning some of the Hebrew psalms in a sort of rapt ecstatic way. I did not understand them, but I suppose they were some of the verses in which the psalmist speaks of lifting up his eyes to the hills. He liked the absolutely bare mountains, with nothing on them but the grass and the heather, better than wooded mountains, which I was then inclined to prefer. We made an expedition in a boat down the loch and spent a night in a shepherd’s cottage. He remarked what a noble life a shepherd’s is. I think he meant that the shepherd lives so much with nature, away from the squalor and vice of cities, and has to endure much hardship in caring for his Xock. After returning from our long rambles on the hills we used to have tea (and an exceedingly comfortable tea) at the little inn and then we read light literature (I read French novels, I forget what he read), stretched at ease one of us on the sofa, the other in an easy chair. These were amongst the happiest days I ever spent, and I looked forward to spending similar days with him again. But they never came. He was at that time a light active walker. In climbing steep ascents he generally led the way. As a companion he was perfect, always considerate and kind, always buoyant and cheerful, always in conversation pouring out a seemingly inexhaustible stream of the most interesting talk on a great range of subjects. Yet he did not monopolise the conversation. He talked in such a way as to bring out the best talk of others. He was the best listener as well as the best talker I ever knew. I mean that he paid close attention to what was said, and took it in with electric rapidity. I used to feel as if it were almost needless to complete a sentence in speaking to him. He seemed intuitively to anticipate all one meant to say on hearing the Wrst few words. I used to think of him as a Wne

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musical instrument, sensitive in every Wbre and responding instantaneously to every touch. If the conversation touched on any subject above the common, if any hint of the poetical or heroic were dropped in passing, it seemed as if you could almost feel the chords vibrating in him. And this one felt sometimes more by a sudden and unusual silence on his part than by anything he said at the moment. Two little instances that happen to stick in my memory will illustrate this. I used at one time to underline words and passages in some of my books in red ink, and chancing to come across some of these marks in a book at which we were looking together I spoke of them as ‘‘the thin red line.’’ He said nothing, but I felt by his momentary silence that he thrilled at the words. The other instance was once when his friend the late Donald McLennan (brother of the well known anthropologist and himself a distinguished anthropologist) was spending the day with him in Cambridge. At Robertson Smith’s wish I rowed them up the river, he sitting in the bow behind me and McLennan in the stern facing me. As we neared Granchester [sic] we heard a rumbling sound. McLennan asked, ‘‘Is that a train?’’ I said, ‘‘No, it is the mill-wheel, Ich ho¨re sein fernes Gesumm.’’3 Robertson Smith, as I have said, was behind me so I could not see him, but I knew perfectly, by the sudden silence that fell on him and that lasted for a minute or so, that the rest of Heine’s beautiful verses were passing through his mind. Another feature in him that could not but impress all who knew him well was his courtesy. It never, in all my experience of him, failed under any circumstance for a moment. No one could indeed repress and rebuke anything like rudeness or impertinence more sternly than he. I do not, it is true, ever remember to have seen anything of the sort attempted in his presence. Very few, I think, would have dared to do it, and if they did it once I feel certain they would never do it again. No one, again, probably attached less weight than he did to mere rank and position, as it is called, in the world, or was more absolutely free from that vulgarity, so common in middle and (for all I know) upper class society, which leads many people to look down on others not for what they are in themselves, but for the occupations that they follow, however innocent and useful these occupations may be. His courtesy was extended to all under all circumstances. I remember noticing the sweetness of his manner to a clerk at the Union Society the very day he had received news of the death of one of his nearest friends, perhaps the most intimate of all. And when age was added to the other qualities that ensure respect in the persons with whom he was conversing, his manner was particularly beautiful. It was charming to see him with that Wne old man Sir Thomas Wade. Their esteem was mutual and high. Another old man for whom he had a great regard was the late Colonel Sir Henry Yule, but I never saw them together.4 I remember his indignation when that stately old soldier


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and scholar was made the object of a covert attack in one of the public prints. Again, the inbred natural courtesy of which I speak came out on more public occasions such as lecturing and addressing a large audience. I heard him give in Cambridge the lectures which he afterwards published in a fuller form in his work Kinship and Marriage in early Arabia, and I was particularly struck by his graceful delivery. It seemed to combine dignity with a certain respect and deference for his hearers, the two qualities or feelings being so blent [sic] as to make a sort of exquisite graciousness of manner which could be felt but not described. I observed with admiration the same beautiful manner in his speech at the dinner which celebrated the conclusion of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The dinner was held in the hall of Christ’s College, and Robertson Smith presided as editor. (He was then sole editor, his colleague Professor Baynes of St Andrews having died some time before5 ). In this case his hearers were most of them his colleagues and all of them his guests, and the feeling that they were so seemed to lend an additional charm to his manner of addressing them. The qualities I have already spoken of— the dignity and the becoming deference for his hearers—were there, and with them was something more, an indeWnable grace of hospitality. The result was an absolute perfection of manner and address such as I have never perceived in any other speaker. It is true I have not heard much public speaking, but I have heard both Bright and Gladstone speak, and I make no exception in saying that for simple beauty and grace of delivery I have never heard anything so Wne as Robertson Smith’s speech that evening. If those who did not know him should ever read these lines I hope they will not gather from them that there was the least trace of stiVness or formality in his manner. On the contrary no one was easier or less formal in his manner, no one set others at their ease more than he. While no one could have more innate dignity of nature, no one stood less on the mere outward forms and ceremonies which little minds mistake for true dignity. He was perfectly frank, natural, and unaVected. He had the keenest sense of humour and delighted to hear and tell good stories. And he could be playful too. I remember one summer day taking a long delightful ramble with him and another intimate friend on the shore from North Berwick to Iantallon Castle and beyond it in the direction of Dunbar. The day was warm and after walking a long way our companion, overcome by drowsiness, lay down to sleep on the dry sand. Robertson Smith saw his opportunity and immediately began softly to bury our slumbering friend in the sand. I helped him, and when our friend awoke from his nap he had to shake himself clear of a good deal of dry sand before he could get up. With a nature formed for friendship it was no wonder that he had many and devoted friends. He had the most sociable of dispositions. In Cambridge,

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where the climate renders daily exercise almost a necessity of life, he used to tell me that it was more necessary to see friends than to take exercise. In society he excelled and shone, sometimes with amazing brilliancy. I never made notes of his talk, and now it has faded from my memory, but sometimes I and, I feel sure, many others used to come away with a feeling of astonishment and wonder after hearing him pour forth, with the greatest readiness and nimbleness of mind, from the seemingly endless store of his knowledge on every topic that had been touched on. He seemed to know everything and to have every part of his immense knowledge at instant command. He had not to grope and fumble after the facts, to drawl and hesitate and correct himself. He pounced on them like lightning and had them out and held them up to you almost before the words of your question were out of your mouth. To question him was like touching the trigger of a loaded gun. The answer, like the report, followed instantly. And with great knowledge he had, what often does not go with it, wisdom and the most sober common sense in everything, from aVairs of state down to the most ordinary matters of daily life. After I knew him well I always thought that he might have had a great career as a statesman if he had thrown himself into politics. I had such perfect faith in his counsels that I got into the habit of carrying all my perplexities, in small as well as in great things, to him and of taking his advice almost as that of an oracle. His patience and kindness in listening and advising were inexhaustible. One thing that gave one a special conWdence in speaking to him was a feeling that he knew one inside and outside better than one knew oneself, and that though he must have discerned all one’s blemishes and weaknesses he still chose to be a friend. He was almost, if not quite, the only one of my friends with whom I have had this feeling of being known through and through by him. This gave one an assurance that his regard would be unalterable, because there was no depth in one’s nature which he had not explored and knew. With almost all other friends I have felt as if they knew only little bits of my nature and were liable at any moment wholly to misunderstand my words and acts because they did not know the rest of me. No doubt many of his other friends had the same feeling with him, and this, if I may judge from my own case, led them to repose an absolute trust in his friendship such as they could have accorded to very few others. But even deeper, perhaps, than his love of friends and society lay his love of study. In his inmost nature, so far as I could judge (I may have misjudged him, my knowledge of him was not to compare with his knowledge of me), he was a student. He once said to me of a Cambridge friend that he was ‘‘a true idealist.’’ By this he did not mean that he was an idealist in the philosophical sense of the word, but only that, like all students, he lived chieXy with ideas and found his greatest happiness among them. Robertson


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Smith himself was an idealist in this sense. His delight in ideas was intense and contagious. Perhaps the keenest moments of intellectual enjoyment in my life have been times when, after (led away by his enthusiasm) I had embarked on anthropological work, he used to come over from Christ’s to my college rooms burning with some new idea that he had just struck out. His Wre kindled mine, one idea suggested another, and a sort of electrical discharge of thought seemed to take place between us, while we turned up one passage after another in book after book, each new passage suggesting something fresh, till at last he went away, leaving my study table buried under a pile of books which we had taken down in our feverish haste, and my head throbbing with the new ideas he had sent through it. One little incident of a very diVerent sort I remember and I will mention it because somehow it has dwelt vividly in my memory while so much that was more important has been obliterated. It is only a triXe. He had gone down with me one day to the river to see the boat-races, and in his eager enthusiastic way determined to run beside the boats on the bank, no doubt (though on this point memory is not quite clear) beside the Christ’s boat, his college boat. He started bravely but by the time we got opposite Ditton corner he was out of breath and stopped to rest. As there was some danger of his being knocked down and trampled on by the mob of undergraduates who were rushing along cheering their college boats in the usual vociferous way, I interposed my pretty robust form6 between his slight Wgure and the crowd, and I have a vivid recollection of his standing on the bank looking gratefully at me and panting while the roaring multitude swept past us. I was with him on the day when the long illness that ultimately proved fatal Wrst declared itself. It came quite suddenly. All through the term (it was the October term of 1889) he had complained of not feeling able to work as well as usual, but I thought he was only tired and needed a rest. On the day I speak of (a day in December 1889, I think, but possibly early in January 1890) I was to have walked with him in the afternoon and went for him to Christ’s expecting no ill. He told me he had some disquieting symptoms, which he described, but was inclined to treat them lightly and to walk as usual. However I persuaded him to stay in his rooms and to see a doctor. When I returned from my walk to learn how he was he told me he was in the doctor’s hands. He was never well again. That evening I saw him in bed. The bed had been brought out of the small bedroom into one of his large sittingrooms, where he could have a Wre and see his friends more comfortably. One of them, the friend who was to be his most devoted attendant through years of illness, was with him.7 He spoke of books of travel which I was to bring him to read in bed. I suppose I tried to speak cheerfully (he himself hardly ever lost his cheerful serenity throughout his long and painful illness), but I

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had a dismal feeling of apprehension, which turned out to be too well founded. I remember in those Wrst evenings of his illness when I went to see him and was crossing the court in the dark to his rooms, the bell of a neighbouring church was tolling. It happened not once, I think, but several times and struck me as an evil omen. I felt half angry and wished I could silence it. Early in 1890 I went down with him to Edinburgh where he was to be treated by a distinguished surgeon, his personal friend. His conversation by the way was bright as usual, and his remarks on the natural features of the country gave it an interest which I had not taken in it before, having been before (as I have been since) too often in the habit of merely gazing at it listlessly in dull vacuity of thought in the intervals between somnolence and a newspaper. But to the last Robertson Smith touched nothing which he did not illuminate. The cloud that had fallen on us lifted a little while he was in Scotland, for he wrote to me that the operation had been successful and his language seemed to imply that he believed all danger to be past. But it was a false hope. Thenceforward his life was a struggle against failing health. But during most of the time he was able to go out for short walks or at least sit in the garden on which the windows of his rooms looked out and in which in happier days I had often played lawn tennis with him and bathed with him in the swimming pond. One little incident happened, I remember, while we were once sitting together on a seat in the garden. I will mention it because it illustrates that insensibility to musical sounds which (contrary to the dictum in Shakespeare) he shared with some men of great ability and goodness. A band in the distance was playing ‘‘God Save the Queen,’’ and from a remark that some one let fall (there were several of us sitting with him) Robertson Smith knew what the tune was. After a little, while the band was still playing the same tune, he remarked that now the tune was changed. He continued to work almost to the last. His chief task in these latter days was the revision of his Religion of the Semites, which he practically Wnished a short time before his death. I used to go to see him in the afternoons and generally found him at work over his books. He was always keenly interested in hearing what I had to tell him about my own work. Towards the end of his life he endeavoured to help me with a passage of a book which I was writing, but the eVort proved too great for his failing strength and had to be reluctantly abandoned. However within a very few months of his death he read a controversial paper which I had written and which required somewhat close attention to follow, and he gratiWed me by saying that he thought I had proved my case. One of the last little services I did for him was at a time when he was feeling too ill to work, to bring him a volume of Dumas from the


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library. In Wction, he was rather hard to please, but he took great delight in Dumas. He did not care for second-rate prose which aims at being Wne. Only the very best pleased him. One passage which he admired was Ruskin’s description in Modern Painters of the deaths of Moses and Aaron.8 He generally smoked cigarettes while at work (you see I am just jotting down my reminiscences of him as they occur to me). Hence, though I do not smoke myself, I used to keep a box of cigarettes specially for him on my mantel piece, and when he came in and wished to talk about any new ideas that had occurred to him he would go straight up to the mantel piece, light a cigarette, and then begin talking, walking up and down the room smoking all the time. He seldom alluded to the controversy he had had with a section of the Free Church in Scotland, and when he did so it was without the least trace of bitterness. He never once in my hearing uttered a word of complaint as to the treatment to which he had been subjected. On the contrary I received an impression, more from his expressive silence, I think, than from anything he said, that he was still deeply attached to the Free Church. I confess I never understood his inmost views on religion. On this subject he maintained a certain reserve which neither I nor (so far as I know) any of his intimates cared to break through. I never even approached, far less discussed, the subject with him. He confessed to being impatient with stupid people, but I do not remember ever to have seen him exhibit impatience or anger with any one. His temper was remarkably sweet, though one felt all the time that there were hidden Wres that could blaze up in an instant at meanness or wrong done to others. There was nothing in his face or Wgure to excite attention at the Wrst glance. He was small and slight with a sallow complexion and dark hair. His features were in no way striking, but they lighted up wonderfully in conversation and his smile was very sweet. When at all excited in talking his voice became shrill, rising sometimes almost into a scream, which may have jarred on those who did not know and love him. In all his movements he was very brisk and alert. His whole nature, physical and mental, was quick and eager. The last time I saw him was in the spring of 1894, about a fortnight or so before his death. I was going down to Scotland for the Easter vacation and went to bid him goodbye. I had no apprehension of immediate danger. He was seated or reclining on a couch in his study. His sister was with him. In shaking hands with him I said I hoped to Wnd him better on my return. I did not think that I was not to see him again. These are some of my chief recollections of Robertson Smith. I am sorry they are so few and perhaps, some of them at least, so trivial. Such as they are I should be very glad if they served even in a small measure to bring the man

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as he was and lived before those who did not know him. The value of his friendship to me I cannot estimate. It gave a new direction to my life, one which it will probably follow to the end. If you think it worth while to print any of these notes, may I ask you to send me proofs of them in order that I may have an opportunity of correcting and perhaps here and there of adding to them, should anything else that seems worth recording occur to me? My acquaintance with Mr Burkitt is rather slight, but if you do not care to write to him direct I will communicate your wishes to him and I feel sure he will do what he can to meet them. Other Cambridge friends who could contribute personal reminiscences are Dr Henry Jackson of Trinity, Professor A. A. Bevan, also of Trinity, and Mr R. A. Neil of Pembroke College, the last especially who travelled with Robertson Smith and knew him intimately. But you may have applied to all three already.9 I am afraid your kind expectations of Pausanias are too high and may be disappointed. The book will be out in a few weeks, I hope. I expect to be in Scotland in January, but it is hardly likely that we shall get to Dundee then. My wife sends her thanks for your kind message to her. Believe me, Yours very truly James G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 39 1. This is among the longest, and certainly the most personally revealing, of Frazer’s extant letters. Composed just as he was putting the last touches to his commentary on Pausanias, which had occupied him for nearly fourteen years, it is possible that authorial fatigue may have caused him to relax his customary restraint and made him more forthcoming than usual. Arriving when it did, the request by John Forbes White (1831–1904) for reminiscences of Smith obviously released a Xood of memories, memories that he may not have trusted himself to confront in the course of writing his rather impersonal, intellectual evaluation of Smith in the obituary he refers to in his Wrst paragraph. Especially noteworthy are the courtship metaphor in the second paragraph, in which the compliant Frazer yields to the more forceful Smith, and in the third paragraph the association of Smith and Heine, whose poetry would ever afterward be the talisman of deep emotion of him. After canvassing a number of those who knew Smith, White eventually produced a slender pamphlet of reminiscences, incorporating only a few sentences of Frazer’s letter: Two Professors of Oriental Languages (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1899), 19–34. 2. Frazer, ‘William Robertson Smith’, Fortnightly Review, 55 (1894), 800–7; repr. in GH, 278–90. 3. Heinrich Heine, ‘Mein Herz, mein Herz ist traurig’, in ‘Buch der Lieder’, in Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke, ed. Pierre Grappin (Hamburg: HoVmann & Campe, 1975), i/1, 209–10. 4. Sir Thomas Wade (1818–95), diplomat and Sinologist; Sir Henry Yule (1820–99), Indian civil servant and geographer. 5. Thomas Spencer Baynes (1823–87), philosopher, co-editor (with Robertson Smith) of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1873–87. For more on the dinner, see p. 54 n. 2.


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6. It is worth mentioning, regarding Frazer’s ‘robust form’, that he was 5 ft, 3 or 4 in. tall. Frazer having spent his life in the library, with any ‘action’ in his life being entirely of the intellectual kind, this memory is signiWcant because of the pride with which he rose to the challenge and protected his friend physically. 7. Probably John Sutherland Black, co-author (with George Chrystal) of the biography, The Life of William Robertson Smith (London: A. & C. Black, 1912). 8. Ruskin, Modern Painters IV, p. V, ch. 20. 9. Francis Crawford Burkitt (1864–1935), biblical scholar, Norrisian Professor of Divinity 1905–35; Anthony Ashley Bevan (1859–1933), Orientalist and biblical scholar, Lord Almoner’s Professor of Arabic 1893–1933.

To Baldwin Spencer, 13 January 1898 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Sir, I am much obliged by your letter of November 14th.1 It is a great satisfaction to me to have helped towards securing a publisher for the joint work of yourself and Mr Gillen. I feel sure that it will prove to be one of the most valuable contributions ever made to our knowledge of savage life, and I think I have succeeded in impressing this upon the Messrs Macmillan. They are ready, I gather, to give you a perfectly free hand in regard to the text, and I am glad to hear that you are putting everything into it. We cannot say of science as of law that it de minimis non curat. The details that in themselves seem most trivial and unimportant may turn out on a comparison with other facts to be of the utmost and far-reaching importance. In regard to illustrations Mr Macmillan says, naturally, that he cannot decide until he has seen them, but I trust there will be no diYculty about publishing most if not all of them. I will send him those which you sent me as specimens. You may be sure that I shall do all I can to induce him to publish all of them or, failing that, as many as possible. Even if he should refuse to publish all, I still think that it would be well worth your while to publish with him. The illustrations that were left out might perhaps in that case be published in an anthropological journal, say the Internationales Archiv fu¨r Ethnographie, with a short explanatory text in English. If you approve of this I would endeavour to carry it out, though I hope there will be no need for it. It would be much better to publish everything in a single volume. I much appreciate your kind conWdence in leaving the negotiations with Messrs Macmillan to a certain extent (especially as regards illustrations) in my hands, and I will try to do the best for the book I can, as if it were my own. If you like I shall be happy to read proofs of it. The delay caused by sending proofs to you in Australia would be serious. As the

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book is, I understand, to be type-written, and the type-written copy will doubtless be carefully revised by you or Mr Gillen, it would hardly be necessary for you to see it in proof. For the same reason it would be perfectly easy for me to read the proofs; I should only have to see that the printer reproduced your MS exactly. I should of course abstain from modifying or adding to your work in any form. My business would simply be to correct any mistakes made by the printer which had escaped the Reader and possibly here and there to correct a slip of the type-writer which had escaped your vigilance. I should not regard the time so spent as wasted even from the most selWsh point of view, as I have no doubt that it will repay me to master your monograph thoroughly. I am much interested in the description you send me of the ceremony of blood-pouring for the purpose of multiplying kangaroos. I should like to know whether for the purposes of multiplying totem-animals or game the natives resort to any pantomime of sexual intercourse. I am beginning to be struck with the evidence that in agricultural communities a sympathetic connexion is supposed to exist between the intercourse of the sexes and the productivity of the ground, the former being supposed to have a direct eVect in forwarding the latter. This suggests that in tribes that live by hunting similar means may be taken to ensure a good supply of game. If I remember right (I have not the book beside me) one gathers from Gason’s work on the Dieri that a good deal of this sort of thing is practised among that tribe. Have you met with any ceremonies of this sort? Another subject in which I am interested at present is the treatment of homicides, whether the killing has been done in war or in private quarrel. Is there in any case a puriWcation of the slayer? Is there any notion that he is pursued by the ghost of the slain and has to dodge or appease him? Is there any sort of sanctuary where homicides can seek refuge and be safe? And if there are, what is the idea at the root of such sanctuaries? Why is the homicide safe there and why may not the avenger of blood pursue him there? Is the homicide safe only so long as he stays in the sanctuary? Or if he once enters it can he come out again clear of guilt and snap his Wngers at the avenger of blood? This used to be the case with some Californian tribes, but I don’t see the meaning of the custom. Sanctuaries for homicides are found in many other parts of the world (West Africa and KaWristan in the Hindoo Kush, for example), and I should like to discover their origin. Does eating together constitute a bond of friendship among your savages? And if so, how long does the bond last? As long as the food is supposed to be in the stomach? Or how long? In this connexion the use occasionally of fasting or purges may be of interest. It might, e.g., be thought necessary to clear the stomach of food in one way or another before proceeding to


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hostilities with a person or tribe with whom one had been on friendly terms and with whom one had partaken of food. On the other hand to renew the bond it might be necessary to renew the ceremony of eating together. Are the Australians careful about the remains of their food, believing that they could be injured by magic ceremonies performed on these remains? This dread is obviously only another side of the belief in the sympathetic connexion between persons who have eaten together, the idea in the latter case being that no one would injure a man with whom he had eaten (at least while the food was in his stomach), since any injury done to him would be equivalent to an injury done to himself.2 Thank you for the additional copies of the abstract published in the Victoria R[oyal]. S[ociety]. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum 1. In that letter Spencer expresses his gratitude to Frazer for having found a publisher for his book, and he describes at length the intichiuma initiation ceremonies. 2. The letter clearly refers to some of the ideas (sanctuaries for homicides, the duration of sympathetic magical links) that Frazer was developing in his revision of The Golden Bough, then taking place.

To W. Aldis Wright,1 26 February 1898 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Aldis Wright, I was working at home yesterday, not in college. Hence my delay in answering your note. In answer to your questions: (1) I do not remember nor can I Wnd any mention in Pausanias of an altar dedicated to Bacchus (Dionysus) and Pallas (Athena) in common. In V.14.10 he mentions an altar of Dionysus and the Graces. It is hardly necessary to say that the inevitable German has enriched the world with a dissertation on altars dedicated to several gods in common (C. Maurer, De aris pluribus deis in commune positis, Darmstadt, 1885); but though he has raked literature and inscriptions with a smalltooth comb he does not seem to have brought up any instance of an altar dedicated to Dionysus and Athena in common. I think, therefore, you may take it for granted that no such altar is known. Perhaps

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Burton had in his mind Pausanias I.31.6, where after mentioning an altar hn d Ippian Auhn~ an of Athena surnamed Ygieia he goes on to say t onom azoysi, kai Di onyson Melpomenon, kai Kisson t on a yt on ue on. Here as often Pausanias has expressed himself in a crabbed indirect way. All that he means is that at Acharnae, of which he is speaking, there was an altar of Athena surnamed Health, and that the people there worshipped the goddess under another title also (namely Ippia), and further that they worshipped Dionysus under two diVerent titles, MelpomenoB and KissoB. He does not mean that Dionysus was worshipped at the same altar as Athena, though it is just possible that Burton may have so understood him. (2) The second passage in Pausanias about Delos to which Burton refers occurs not in the seventh book (on Achaia), but in the eighth (VIII.33.2); at least it seems to me highly probable that this is the passage Burton had in his mind, though he assigned it by mistake to the seventh book. I do not remember that Delos is mentioned at all in the seventh book. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer I have brought back spoil from Scotland in the shape of some autograph letters of Sir Walter Scott, Carlyle, Sydney Smith, Dickens, Samuel Rogers, etc., which I should much like to show you. May I walk some day with you and bring you back to tea, when you could look at the letters? My wife would be happy to make tea for you and we could shew you our treasures. One or other of us is engaged, I believe, every afternoon next week, but after that we are free, and any day you might care to come would suit us. TCC Adv. c.18.87: 57 1. William Aldis Wright (1831–1914), a literary scholar and among Frazer’s closest friends among the Trinity fellowship. He had evidently asked Frazer for help in tracking down Pausanian references in Robert Burton (1577–1640), The Anatomy of Melancholy.

To George A. Macmillan, 22 April 1898 13 Guest Road1 Dear Mr Macmillan, I am very glad to learn that the manuscript of Professor Baldwin Spencer’s book has come safely. I hope that you will be able to give all the illustrations he asks for, but if not I shall be glad to do anything I can to pick out those


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which could most easily be spared. Or Dr Tylor might be asked to make the selection. His anthropological knowledge is far wider than mine, and I feel sure he could make a better selection, if selection should be needed. As to reading the proofs I incline to think that this had better be done by the authors themselves. There might be a multitude of matters (spelling of native names, etc.) about which in cases of doubt or inconsistency in the manuscript I should be quite unable to judge. If I decided on my own responsibility in such cases, my decisions might be as often wrong as right. If I referred them to the author, the delay would be greater than if the proofs had been sent to them direct. It would be a pity if a work of this importance were marred by a number of inaccuracies, sometimes perhaps gravely misleading; so on the whole it seems to me that the delay caused by sending proofs to Australia would be more than compensated by the assurance thus gained that the book was in all respects as the authors would wish it to be. At the same time I should be very glad to look over a duplicate set of proofs, if they were sent to me. I might perhaps be able to detect an occasional slip or misprint, but would not of course make any substantial alteration in the text.2 In truth I am so anxious to see the book that I can hardly wait till it is published, and I should esteem it a privilege to be allowed to read it in proof. There may be important material in it which I should like to use for the new edition of The Golden Bough, and in his last letter to me (dated March 8/98) Professor Spencer says: ‘‘If anything in our work can be of use to you whether it be published or not, I hope that you will use it.’’ So I feel that I should be at liberty, if I thought it desirable, to use, with all due acknowledgements, any facts of importance I might meet with in reading the proofs. If Professor Tylor is willing to read proofs, so much the better. His supervision will be of great value. I think Professor Spencer and Mr Gillen are willing that I should arrange with you as to the publication of their book. At least Professor Spencer’s former letters have left that impression in my mind, though I have not got them before me for reference at the moment. So I will take on myself to sign the agreement on their behalf. But you are of course right to send a copy to the authors for signature. From the tone of Prof. Spencer’s letters I feel sure that they will readily acquiesce in the terms of the agreement. I trust the book will be put in the printers’ hands with as little delay as possible. I wish you could manage to bring it out in autumn, at the same time as the new edition of The Golden Bough. I am at work collecting some fresh material for the latter. Yours very truly, J. G. Frazer

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BL 1. A distinctly modest terraced house in Cambridge that the Frazers rented while they searched for more commodious accommodation. 2. One of many examples of Frazer’s scrupulousness concerning his obligations to others. His later break with Andrew Lang was probably due more to his conclusion that Lang was reckless with the truth than to the savagery of the latter’s reviews of Frazer’s work.

To Baldwin Spencer, 5 May 1898 13 Guest Road, Cambridge My dear Sir, I have to thank you for your very interesting letter of March 8th. On considering the matter and consulting with Messrs Macmillan we came to the conclusion that in the interest of the book it would be best that proofs of it should be read by Mr Gillen and yourself. I felt that with my ignorance of the native language, not to speak of the botany, zoology, etc. of the country, I might often be quite incompetent to detect mistakes which had slipt into the type-written copy and had escaped your eye. My decisions on such matters might oftener be wrong than right, and the result might sometimes be disastrous. It would be a thousand pities if what promises to be a most valuable book were disWgured by blemishes of this sort. Moreover it is very possible that in going over the book in type the authors might wish to make changes in the form or substance, which no outsider could make and which they themselves would be precluded from making if they did not see proofs. For these reasons I think, and Mr Macmillan entirely concurs, that, after all, the delay caused by sending out proofs to you will be more than compensated by the assurance thus gained that the book will appear in exactly the form which the authors would wish it to have. I think you will agree with us in this. At the same time I thank you heartily for the high mark of conWdence you have given me by expressing your willingness to accept my oVer of relieving you of all responsibility in the matter, as well as your willingness to acquiesce in any arrangement I might come to with Messrs Macmillan for the publication of the book. I trust that you will Wnd the terms of the agreement satisfactory. They are very usual terms—all expense and risk to be undertaken by the publishers and the proWts to be divided equally between publishers and authors. They are the terms on which my own books are published by Macmillan. Acting on Macmillan’s suggestion I ventured to sign the agreement on your behalf. I hope I did not exceed my delegated powers by doing so. A copy of the


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agreement has, I understand, been sent to you. If you and Mr Gillen sign it, the copy signed by me can be torn up. I have asked that duplicate proofs of the book may be sent to me. I have read the Wrst set with interest and forward them to you with a few triXing suggestions. Thank you very much for your permission to use your materials. It is quite possible that in reading your book I may meet with some facts which I should like to incorporate in the new edition of The Golden Bough which I hope to bring out before the end of the year. I understand from you that I may, of course with full acknowledgment and reference to your forthcoming work, cite from your book any facts that seem appropriate to my purpose. My book may possibly be out before yours, but I doubt it. I have some months (I expect) of reading before me before I begin to revise and add to the text of the Wrst edition, and after that there will be the printing. So the chances are, I think, that your book will be out before mine. Still even if mine came out Wrst I don’t think that references in it to your forthcoming book would injure the sale of your volume. So much for business, except that Macmillan write me that they expect to be able to give all the illustrations you want. Very many thanks for your most interesting answers to my questions. I hope to send Mr Gillen some questions on Totemism before long, but I have such a pressure of work of various kinds just now that I can’t put them together just now. I am writing to catch the mail. When does he leave his present post? I rejoice to hear that Mr Fison’s health has improved. I had been concerned to hear of his illness. Please remember me very kindly to him when you see him. I have been wishing to write to him for long, but never seem to have time to do so. The dedication of your joint book to Fison and Howitt is a compliment which they well deserve. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum

To George A. Macmillan, 14 June 1898 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Mr Macmillan, The enclosed is from Prof. H. Blu¨mner of Zurich, one of the two editors of the German edition of Pausanias.1 It is a very polite letter, and I trust that you

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will make no diYculty about acceding to his request to be allowed to use my plan of Epidaurus (in the Addenda) for his edition. Indeed I feel sure that you will not, and have written him to that eVect. I don’t know whether it is necessary to send him the cliche´. He seems to speak of making a new one, with German names instead of English. It is pleasant that all the Germans hitherto have been so civil about the book. I certainly wish to keep on good terms with them. Controversy is odious to me, besides being a great waste of time. My wife and I have very pleasant recollections of the party on Friday last. We both enjoyed it much. Please return Blu¨mner’s letter when you are done with it. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer BL 1. Hugo Blu¨mner (1844–1919), classical archaeologist and co-editor, with Hermann Hitzig, of Pausaniae Graeciae Descriptio, 3 vols. (Leipzig: Reisland, 1896–1910); for the story of how Frazer learned of his German competition and its eVect on his own work, see Frazer, 117–18.

To Baldwin Spencer, 13 July 1898 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Sir, Your letter of June 8th has reached me. I am happy and proud to be in any small way helpful in bringing to the birth (I mean in securing the publication of ) such a very valuable work as the joint work of yourself and Mr Gillen. I feel that all that I can do is little indeed, but I do it with all my heart. Works such as yours (I wish there were more of them than there are), recording a phase of human history which before long will have past [sic] away, will have a permanent value so long as men exist on earth and take an interest in their own past. Books like mine, merely speculative, will be superseded sooner or later (the sooner the better for the sake of truth) by better inductions based on fuller knowledge; books like yours, containing records of observation, can never be superseded. I congratulate Mr Gillen and yourself on having done a splendid piece of work. The labour involved in the collection of all the facts embodied in your book must have been immense. And the presentation of them is excellent. So far as I see, they could not have been put more lucidly than you have put them. The style is simple, clear, and Xowing, without


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anything superXuous or redundant, just in fact what the style of such a book should be. You are most well advised in eschewing comparisons. Nothing (short of gross inaccuracy) is apt to spoil a work of descriptive ethnology so much as an attempt to combine the description with comparisons. Descriptive and comparative ethnology should be kept most rigidly apart; to try to combine both is to spoil both. I think that all the Wnest descriptions of individual races that we possess are wholly free from the comparative element and are written (as they should be) just as if the writer was unaware of the existence of any race but the one he is describing. Similarly the descriptive writer should absolutely ignore the speculations of comparative ethnology. You are entirely right in doing so; the one exception to this rule which you have made (that of referring to the controversy between Maclennan and Morgan) could hardly have been avoided, and I think you have been judicious in making this exception to your very wise rule of avoiding comparisons. I shall be glad to pass the ‘revises’ in your stead. You will have seen from the proofs I have sent you that my corrections are extremely slight and wholly (I think) verbal or literal. You need not fear that I shall make any radical alterations in the revise. An author’s text, in all that concerns the matter, I regard as almost sacred, and your book is so well written that even in the form of it there is very little indeed that I should wish to see altered. So you may, I hope, rely on the conservatism of my revision. Probably the changes, if any, will hardly amount to more than the correction of printer’s errors. Your proposal to add a glossary of the native words used in the book is excellent and should by all means be carried out. The number of native words used, though probably inevitable, is rather a stumbling block to the English reader, and this would be to some extent removed by a glossary. The glossary should be complete, embracing even words of constant and familiar recurrence like Churinga. I am glad Mr Gillen is not leaving Central Australia for some time yet. I shall hope to send him out some more questions when I have time. With my kind regards to him and you and to my other Australian friends Fison and Howitt (when I think of you all I feel inclined to say Bravo Australia! I wish that the other colonies would only go and do likewise). I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum

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To Baron Anatole von Hu¨gel, 19 July 1898 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear von Hu¨gel, I wish I could help to get some of the Admiralty Islands specimens for the Museum, but I am afraid that at present I am not in a position to do so. You will understand I hope that it is not the good will that is wanting but only the power. It is not so easy for me to give to such objects now as it was a few years ago. Perhaps sometime in the future (who knows?) I may again have the power as well as the wish to do something for the Museum. Thank you for your kind invitation. I hope to avail myself of it before long and to pay you a visit at the Museum. But like you I feel how time slips away before one succeeds in doing what one wishes and intends to do. And then, to tell the truth, which indeed you know already, I am so ignorant of ethnological specimens of all sorts that I feel a sort of impostor or humbug in looking at them, since as an anthropologist of a certain sort I am expected to know about them, though as a matter of fact I do not. However when I come it will be not to impose upon you but to learn of you. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

To Baldwin Spencer, 26 August 1898 [no address] Dear Sir, I send you by this mail the last batch of Wrst proofs. Your letter of June 30th has reached me. In passing the ‘revises’ for the press (which I very willingly undertake to do) I will attend to your directions as to the use of italics for the great majority of native words (apart, of course, from proper names). My attention will chieXy be given to seeing that your corrections made in the Wrst proofs are embodied in the ‘revises’ and that the additions are correctly printed. I will also take it on myself to correct any slight verbal slips that may have escaped you, as well as to mark any printer’s errors that the reader


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may have overlooked. To judge from the Wrst batch of revises that has reached me, along with your corrected Wrst proofs, I do not anticipate that the work of passing the book for the press will be heavy or will demand more time than I can spare. You may rely, I hope, on the caution and discretion with which I will use the powers you entrust to me. In cases of doubt I shall prefer to leave the word or words unaltered. You say there are some general questions which you would like to have treated at greater length. I am not sure that it is advisable to mix up the discussion of general questions with the account of particular tribes. Indeed, I incline to think that the usefulness and value of books like yours is rather impaired by the importation of general theories and discussions. What we want in such books and what you and Mr Gillen have given us is a clear and precise statement of facts (as far as they have been ascertained) concerning the particular people described—that and nothing else. All general theories should, in my opinion, be reserved for treatment in separate works dealing exclusively with general questions by the method of comparison and induction. In other words the purely descriptive side of anthropology should, in my judgment, be kept entirely separate from the comparative and theoretical side. One of the great merits of your book, as it seems to me and as I have already said in a letter, is that you have recognised the importance of this distinction and have rigidly excluded comparisons and speculations. But there is no reason why you should not discuss such general questions as Australian totemism, marriage systems, religion, etc. Such discussions by authorities so competent as yourself and Mr Gillen would, I feel sure, be of the highest value and interest. Only they ought, in my opinion, to be reserved for another work. Why not undertake such a general work? Do think of it seriously. Could you not cooperate with Fison and Howitt to produce a general work on the Australian aborigines? If you do not see your way to writing another book, you might publish the results of your enquiries in a series of papers contributed, say, to the Journal of the Anthrop. Inst., which already contains so many valuable papers by Howitt on these subjects. Would you not add vocabularies and concise sketches of the grammars of the various dialects of the Central tribes to your present book? It would enhance the value of the work, especially to philologists. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum

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From E. B. Tylor1 to J. G. Frazer, 6 September 1898 Linden, Wellington, Somerset Dear Frazer, Just leaving here I have received your letter which cannot be answered except with the books before me, and I am sorry to say that cannot be for some weeks. The matter about Wilken’s paper on Animal and Plant Souls will have to be looked carefully into, lest I should have done you any wrong by connecting this argument on the external soul with yours. I merely compared his paper with The Golden Bough. Do you remember when your communication with Wilken began? I knew him in Leyden a good many years ago. I have been writing to Macmillan about the sheets of Spencer’s book. I have been reading pp. 180–220 and while admitting the necessity of preserving matter of scientiWc value was rather troubled by so much being indigestible and wondered whether compression was possible. You will no doubt hear from G.A.M. [George Macmillan]. Yours truly Edward B. Tylor Pitt Rivers Museum (TS) 1. This letter from Tylor precipitated the Wrst important quarrel between Frazer and a British scholar (he had already decided that, at least on Pausanias, Wilamowitz was not to be trusted). Tylor’s accusation that he was plagiarizing the work of earlier Dutch scholars wounded Frazer deeply, both because of the sensitivity of his Calvinist conscience and because Frazer’s kind of library anthropology depended upon gaining the reader’s trust that all the statements contained in the books were accurate and correctly attributed. As the ensuing exchange demonstrates, Tylor was convinced that Frazer was appropriating the work of others, and he prevailed to the extent that Frazer acknowledged that he had not fully documented his debt to Wilken and in later editions made that debt more explicit. The quarrel was exacerbated by Tylor’s desire to suppress the detailed descriptions of the intichiuma initiation ceremonies, which for Frazer were among the most valuable parts of Spencer and Gillen’s book. Certainly on this latter point later anthropologists would concur that Frazer was right.

To George A. Macmillan, 13 September 1898 Rowmore House, Garelochhead My dear Macmillan, Your letter of 7th September enclosing one of Tylor’s only reached me last night, too late for the English mail. It had been pursuing me over England and France. Hence the delay, which I regret, in answering it.


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Tylor’s proposal to compress part of Spencer and Gillen’s book comes too late. It should, as you say, have been made in the slip proofs, in which case it would in due course have come before the authors, who alone have the right to decide on such a proposal. I have no such right. The authors have entrusted me with the task of seeing the book through the press; they have not given me authority to compress, abridge, or in any way to alter the substance of the book, and if I did as Tylor apparently proposes that I should do, I should be exceeding my powers and, in my opinion, betraying the trust committed to me by the authors. You will therefore, I feel sure, not be surprised if I refuse, as I do, in the most absolute way to entertain the proposal. More than this, even had I full authority from the authors to abridge, compress, or cut about in any way I chose with their work, I would decline quite as positively to exercise that authority in the present case. The part to which Tylor takes exception as containing ‘‘tedious and disagreeable details’’ (the chapter dealing with the Intichiuma ceremonies) appears to me the most interesting and important in the whole book. It sets the system of totemism, at least as it exists among these tribes, in an entirely new and wholly unexpected light, and it furnishes the Wrst well-attested case of what appears to be a real totem sacrament—a thing which hitherto had been only inferred from a few very uncertain examples. The whole chapter is, in my opinion, of the highest importance for the history of religion, and opens up lines of inquiry which it will now be most desirable to prosecute in many parts of the world. I am about to write to Spencer to see if he cannot obtain more of the details which Tylor Wnds so ‘‘tedious and disagreeable’’ that he would like to omit them. Why Tylor should call them disagreeable I really cannot imagine. In one of the ceremonies a man drains blood from his arm and lets it drop on a stone; in another an old man hits a number of men on the stomach with a stone. No doubt these ceremonies would be disagreeable to go through; but even a girl at a boarding school would scarcely feel a qualm at reading of them. And these are, I think, the worst in the chapter. Sexual matters do not enter into any of the ceremonies, from which indeed the women are excluded. I have therefore to beg that after this needless and regrettable delay you will instruct the printers to proceed without further stoppage till the book is printed oV. I am especially desirous that the printing should be done now for my own sake as well as that of the authors, because I can correct the proofs on my holiday without encroaching on the time which in Cambridge I should wish to devote to work of my own. I will write to Tylor telling him why I cannot possibly accede to his proposal. You need hardly trouble yourself to write to him again on the subject. I trust that Mrs Macmillan and yourself are enjoying a very pleasant and refreshing holiday in Yorkshire. My Wife has been in her native France with

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her daughter, and is now on her way to Switzerland. They have had great heat but hope to escape it among the mountains; I am at home with my people. My Mother is far from well; that is my chief reason for being here at present. We have had a good deal of rain, and not much of the heat from which people in the South have suVered. With kind regards to Mrs Macmillan and yourself, I am, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer If you agree with my decision there is no need for you to answer this letter. The appearance of a fresh batch of proofs from the printer will be a suYcient and very satisfactory answer. I know how odious it is to have to write business letters when one is rusticating, and probably you are pursued by too many such letters even in the wilds of Yorkshire. So don’t let me add to your burden by exacting an answer to this. BL

To Baldwin Spencer, 15 September 1898 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Sir, In going through the second proofs of your book I have been more than ever struck by your account of the Intichiuma ceremonies. Such ceremonies for the multiplication of the totem plant or animal have not been (so far as I know) reported from any other part of the world, and taken in conjunction with other facts that you mention seem to set totemism in an entirely new light, at least so far as the Central Australian tribes are concerned. It almost looks as if among these tribes totemism were a system expressly devised for the purpose of procuring a plentiful supply of everything that the savage regards as desirable—food, water, sunshine, wood etc. The means of attaining this desirable end appear (if I may pursue hypothetically the line of thought suggested by the facts) to have been to take all the desirable things in nature and distribute them among the people, each group of people to whom a particular class of objects was assigned being specially charged with securing the multiplication of that particular object, or rather species. One group of people had to see that kangaroos abounded, another that grubs were plenti-


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ful, etc. and the method in each case adopted to secure the multiplication of the species was the identiWcation of the human group with the species of animals or plants etc. assigned to them. The people who had to multiply kangaroos must themselves be kangaroos etc. because by being so they would know all the secrets of the kangaroos, how they multiply, how they may be caught etc. For of course the ultimate object of the whole system (on this hypothesis) is to catch and eat the kangaroos, emus, grubs etc.; it is not a purely disinterested desire to secure the Xourishing of plant and animal life on a large scale. Hence the duty of a Kangaroo man is not merely to see that there are plenty of kangaroos; he has also to catch and kill, or at least to help others to catch and kill them. In the Arunta tribe originally,1 to judge by the traditions, a man was quite free to kill and eat the animal with the multiplication of which he was specially charged (his totem); and if the theory of totemism which I am developing hypothetically should turn out to be of general application, we may suppose that among many tribes there never was any objection to a man catching, killing, and eating his totem. But among many tribes a feeling against killing and eating the totem (I mean of course only a man’s own totem) may either have been felt from the outset or may have gradually sprung up, and the train of thought which led to the taboo on killing and eating a man’s own totem may have been something like this. ‘‘I am, e.g., a Kangaroo man, and want to make as many kangaroos come and be eaten as I can. Now if I kill and eat them myself, the kangaroos will regard me with fear and distrust as a dangerous creature, not as a genuine kangaroo at all. I must therefore be very kind and gentle to my brothers and sisters the kangaroos. I must never injure them myself, and then I shall be able to induce them to come quickly and conWdingly to be injured (in fact to be killed and eaten) by my fellow tribesmen. It is a pity certainly that I am debarred from eating roast kangaroo while my fellows are feasting on it; but they make it up to me in other ways. The Grub men bring me grubs to eat which they may not touch themselves; the Emu men bring me emus etc. etc. And if occasionally I take a bite or two at a joint of kangaroo when no kangaroo is looking, no great harm will be done, especially if I take care not to eat the best of the Xesh, but only the inferior parts. Indeed in order to be (as I am) a real kangaroo, it is necessary that I should occasionally eat kangaroo; for unless I have real kangaroo Xesh and blood in me, how could I be a kangaroo? I should be only a sham kangaroo, and that would never do. The other kangaroos would know at once that I was an impostor and not one of them would come near me when I wanted to catch them.’’ What do you think of this as an hypothesis to explain totemism as it is among your tribes? The general line of conduct assumed—the conciliation of animals with a view to more easily catching and killing them—is clearly

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analogous to that pursued by hunting tribes towards animals which they live by but which are not their totems (Golden Bough, II p. 110 sqq.). The diVerence between the two systems is this, that whereas among the Aruntas the propitiation of the animals is limited to one group, the totem group (who in general may not kill and eat the animal), among the hunting tribes referred to in my book the propitiation is practised by everyone, and no one is debarred from killing and eating the animal, provided he goes through the necessary helping men of other totems to catch and kill kangaroos etc. You quote at least one case of this, but to establish the theory Wrmly many more would be needed, and if possible from other parts of the world where totemism is practised. I would suggest that enquiries in this direction should be made all over Australia. A diYculty which occurs to me in the way of accepting this theory as a general explanation of totemism (though the diYculty does not apply to the Arunta tribe) is this: Why are men and women of the same totem so commonly forbidden to marry or even have sexual intercourse with each other? On the hypothesis that totemism exists for the multiplication of the totem plants and animals, it would seem to be most natural that a Kangaroo man should mate with a Kangaroo woman, and that by their union the number of real kangaroos should, by sympathetic magic, be supposed to be increased. I can only state this diYculty without solving it. Anyhow if my new theory of totemism (it may have occurred to you independently) is correct, it seems to follow that the original and fundamental side of totemism is the religious, not the social; in other words, it is ‘the superstitious relation of the man’ to his totem animal or plant that is the original element of totemism; the social element (the prohibition to marry a woman of the same totem) has been tacked on to it subsequently, and not in all cases. The absence of the exogamous rule among the Aruntas is a further argument in favour of the same view. If you think there is anything in the theory I have sketched, I should be glad if you would submit it for criticism to my friends Fison and Howitt, as well as of course to your colleague Mr Gillen. Any remarks you or they might make on it would be carefully and respectfully considered by me. If you were to give it a general or provisional approval, I might state it brieXy and tentatively in the new edition of The Golden Bough which I have in hand. How far the new theory is consistent with the one propounded by me in the Wrst edition of my book (viz. that a man keeps his life or part of it in the totem animal) is a matter for consideration. The two are not obviously contradictory of each other. The identiWcation of a man with his totem, which is a part of the new theory, was the main part of the old one. At a meeting of the Anthropological Institute in May, Tylor proposed a theory of totemism based partly on some facts mentioned by Codrington in his


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Melanesians and partly on your evidence as to the way in which a man’s totem is determined among the Arunta.2 He has probably sent you a proof of his paper, but I may say that his explanation is brieXy this—the souls of ancestors animate the totem animals or plants and therefore those animals or plants are sacred to their descendants. There is certainly something to be said for this theory (which occurred to me independently as a consequence of reading your evidence). It is not necessarily inconsistent either with my old or my new theory; it might quite well be combined with both. It might be that the group charged with the multiplication of a particular species of animal or plant kept their spirits (or one set of their spirits) in the animals or plants during their lifetime, and transmigrated into them at death with the whole of their spiritual baggage, part of which had been retained in their human bodies during their lives. Tylor, to whom second proofs of your book have been sent by mistake, has proposed to Macmillan and me that the part of the book dealing with the Intichiuma ceremonies from p. 180 onwards should be abridged by the omission of what he called ‘‘tedious and disagreeable details.’’ This proposal I absolutely refused to entertain, and that on two grounds. First, I have no authority from you to make any such change, my duty being limited strictly to seeing the book through the press; and I pointed out to him that if I were to exercise such an authority without your leave expressly given, you would have just ground of complaint against me. Second, I said that even if you had given me the fullest authority to excise and compress, I would not have exercised it in the present case, as I regard the chapter to which Tylor takes exception as of the utmost importance, indeed as the most valuable in the book. I added that what we want is not less but far more details of the same sort, and that I was about to write to you asking you to prosecute enquiry on these lines. I hope that you and Mr Gillen will approve of my action in the matter. If Tylor thought compression desirable, why did he not say so in the Wrst proof which he sent out to you (I suppose) with his corrections and suggestions? You and Mr Gillen would then have been able to do your own compression, if you thought it desirable, which I fervently trust you would not. Nothing in the book, in my opinion, can be spared. You need not fear any compression or squeezing or mutilation of your book so long as I am charged with seeing it through the press. If anything of that sort is to be done, it will be done over my dead body. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum 1. ‘Arunta’ is now spelled ‘Arrernte’.

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2. Robert Codrington, The Melanesians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1891). Codrington introduced into anthropological discourse the concept of mana, the dynamic power that lay at the heart of Melanesian religious experience.

From E. B. Tylor to J. G. Frazer, 8 October 1898 Museum House Oxford Dear Frazer, The passage of Wilken about totemism which I refer to is that in his ‘‘Animism’’ from which you copy out part in your letter. The reason of Wilken’s name only, without the title of the Papers, appearing at the foot of page 60 of the proof sent you, was that it was forwarded to the printer from abroad, where I could not give the full reference. Still, I cannot see how what I said could convey the idea of my having originated the notion of transmigration as a great factor in totemism, which I took some care to ascribe to Wilken. But I shall try to put it more clearly if I can. As to Spencer’s book it must rest its claims on the intrinsic value of its contents and not on its suitability for a Circulating Library. No doubt it is right that it should go through as it began. Yours very sincerely Edward B. Tylor Pitt Rivers Museum (TS)

From E. B. Tylor to J. G. Frazer, 14 October 1898 Museum House Oxford Dear Frazer, While away from here I have not had the means of examining further as to Wilken’s paper De Betrekking &c and even now can tell no more than that it appears to have come out in the Indische Gids for 1884 probably in the same volume with Het Animisme but I cannot hear of any complete copy of this periodical in England. You will no doubt be able to compare it for yourself with your argument on the ‘‘external soul,’’ and may be able to


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Wnd the clue to their close resemblance. In sending the proof of my paper to the printer some days ago, I thought it best to alter one or two passages with the view of keeping out personal controversy, while making it clear that your argument, and evidence on the question had been preceded by Wilken in his papers, the Betrekking and Haaropfer as well as the Simsonsage.1 Yours sincerely Edward B. Tylor Pitt Rivers Museum (TS) 1. George Alexander Wilken (1847–91), professor of geography and ethnography of the Netherlands East Indies in the University of Leiden, 1885–91; the publications in question are ‘Het Animisme bij de Volken van den Indischen Archipel’, Indische Gids, 5 (June 1884), 925–1000; 6 (July 1884), 19–100; ‘De Betrekking Tusschen Menschen—Dierenen Plantenleven het Volksgeloof ’, Indische Gids, 6 (Nov. 1884), 595–612.

To E. B. Tylor, 16 October 1898 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Tylor, I hope that in ‘‘altering one or two passages’’ in your paper you have not made the statement of my indebtedness to Wilken less clear and explicit than it was in the Wrst draft. To the statement in the Wrst draft, as I have already told you, I have no objection to make except that the paper of Wilken’s from which I derived the argument and much of the evidence in regard to the external soul was De Simsonsage, not De Betrekking. If your paper, as it now stands, makes the reality and extent of my debt to Wilken at all ambiguous, I shall feel bound to make it perfectly clear and explicit in one of the public prints, and I intend to insert a note to the same eVect in the new edition of The Golden Bough, in addition to references to De Simsonsage contained in the Wrst edition. At Wrst sight you may wonder why, acknowledging as I do most fully my obligations to Wilken, I attach so much importance to making it quite clear that it was his paper De Simsonsage on which I drew and not De Betrekking. The reason however is simple. In my [something garbled] De Simsonsage by referring repeatedly to it as one of my authorities, but I have acknowledged none to De Betrekking and could not acknowledge any, since the very existence of De Betrekking was unknown to me when I wrote my book.

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Therefore any account of my relations to Wilken which might lead the reader to suppose or infer that I had used De Betrekking in writing The Golden Bough would do me a serious injustice by pointing to the conclusion that, by not referring at all to that paper of Wilken’s I had purposely concealed my obligations to it. After reading the proofs of your paper I procured in September last a copy of De Betrekking. I had no diYculty in doing so. I merely copied out your reference to it and sent it with an order to A. D. Nutt, and the paper reached me in a few days. It is contained, as you rightly mentioned, in De Indische Gids for November 1884. Wilken’s other and perhaps best known paper Het animisme, which I used and referred to in The Golden Bough, is contained in the June and July numbers of the same periodical in the same year (De Indische Gids, 1884). I bought copies of these two numbers (June and July) many years ago. Had I known of the existence of De Betrekking I should have probably bought the November number at the same time. My series of separate reprints of Wilken’s papers, presented to me by the author, began, as I told you, with Das Haaropfer in 1886. Before that date, or rather before the publication of my paper on ‘Burial Customs’ in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute for 1885,1 which furnished Wilken, as he generously acknowledged in his preface, with the starting-point of Das Haaropfer, I was unknown to him and my set of his papers published before that date is incomplete. I go into these details in order that you may understand how it was that when I wrote The Golden Bough I possessed a copy of Het animisme but not of De Betrekking. The resemblance between De Betrekking and my treatment of the external soul is, as you say, close, but it is explained quite simply by the fact that, as you are aware, the argument and much of the evidence of De Betrekking were reproduced by Wilken in De Simsonsage, which I used and referred to in The Golden Bough. My copy of De Simsonsage was presented to me by the author on its publication in 1888. I trust that your silence as to the direct question which I put to you in my last letter does not imply any hesitation on your part to accept my word in regard to a simple matter of fact which is necessarily within my knowledge. If it does have any such implication (and your continued silence on this subject will be regarded by me as a tacit admission that it does), it will be necessary for me to break oV the friendly relations which have hitherto existed between us. I should greatly regret this, but I could not consent to meet or correspond with one who has any doubt as to my veracity.2 I am under great obligations to you, obligations which no change in your opinion of me will ever, I trust, lead me to deny or extenuate. In case therefore that


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this should be the last time that I shall address you I should like to sign myself, as I now do, Yours gratefully and respectfully J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.37: 312 (TS) 1. Frazer, ‘On Certain Burial Customs as Illustrative of the Primitive Theory of the Soul’, JAI, 15 (1885), 64–101; repr. GS, 3–50. 2. Here the battle is truly joined, and Frazer faces Tylor with the challenge direct. If the latter will not accept his word that the mistake was unintentional, then he is implying that Frazer was not a gentleman, which in earlier times might have occasioned a duel. Tylor backs down.

From E. B. Tylor to J. G. Frazer, 19 October 1898 Museum House Oxford Dear Frazer, I am sorry that a remark in my last letter has been understood by you as an imputation on your truthfulness. It might have been better worded, but it contains no such imputation. My experience is that in such cases (as has happened to me before now) a passage is remembered or a note written without recollection or memorandum of its origin, so that comparison of documents becomes the only test. Thus as to this matter of the ‘‘external soul,’’ you agree that I am right in supposing that the idea and much of the evidence came from Wilken. Yet I take it that you had forgotten this when you wrote the chapter in ‘‘The Golden Bough,’’ for you make no acknowledgement to this eVect. Had you written there what you now write to me, the present unpleasant discussion would have been unnecessary. That Wilken is twice mentioned in foot-notes, as authority for the story of Bidasari and for a passage in Valentijn, does not give the reader the required information. On making a comparison of passages from your Golden Bough, vol. II, pp. 296–334 with Wilken’s two papers, it seems quite reasonable to agree that your memory is correct as to the Simsonsage and not the Betrekking being your source. But as the one paper repeats from the other, this makes no material diVerence. Having said this much, I may as well go a step further, and say what is in my mind as to the relation of ‘‘The Golden Bough’’ to Wilken’s works. I am quite satisWed to have got as clear as might be of this personal question in my

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paper on Totemism, the problem of which is best treated apart from such matters. But as you are preparing a new edition of ‘‘The Golden Bough,’’ I think you would do well to go into it again. Wilken was a friend of mine, by whose practical experience as an anthropologist I have greatly proWted as well as by his vast book-knowledge. I consider that your way of using his writings is not in some respects satisfactory, and I have been spoken to in Holland about it. Just lately I opened upon a letter written to me years since by a Dutch anthropologist, and which I bound up in a volume of Wilken’s papers. It contains the following: ‘‘Ik laat daar, of de manier waarop deze schrijver werken van Prof. Wilken gebruikt heft, volkomen ‘fair’ is, de.’’1 I leave it to your consideration whether the remark in your Preface that Wilken’s works ‘‘have been of great service in directing me to the best original authorities on the Dutch East Indies’’ is an adequate recognition. I will not trouble you to answer this letter, as I think that all that can be proWtably said on the subject has now been said. Yours sincerely Edward B. Tylor TCC Add. MS b.37: 313 (TS) 1. ‘I put to one side whether the way this author has used works of Prof. Wilken is entirely fair.’

To E. B. Tylor, 20 October 1898 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Tylor, I must write just one letter more to thank you for your last and to say what great relief it has given me. It distressed me, I confess, that you seemed unwilling to accept my assurance as to De Betrekking. I am therefore extremely glad to learn that there was really no such unwillingness on your part and that I was mistaken in thinking that there was. We are now quite at one in regard to my indebtedness to Wilken. Whether the extent of my debt in regard to the external soul was present to my mind when I wrote The Golden Bough, I cannot now say; my memory does not serve me so far. But, as I have already told you, I had only to examine De Simsonsage cursorily for the extent of my debt to ‘‘jump to my eyes,’’ and I quite agree with you that it is not adequately conveyed to the reader by the references in my book. I will certainly make this clear in a note to the new edition (you will have


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seen by my last letter that I had decided to do this before I got your letter this morning). And I will of course add references to De Betrekking, with a word of thanks to you for calling my attention to it. There seems no doubt that this is the paper in which Wilken Wrst put forward the idea and evidence which through the medium of De Simsonsage have passed into my book. I thank you also for saying quite plainly what you think of my relations to Wilken in general, apart from the special matter of the external soul. Candour in such matters, indeed I think in all matters, is best, for then honest men know exactly how they stand with regard to each other, which they cannot do while anything is kept in the background untold. I thought that the nature of my obligation to Wilken was correctly stated in the preface, but it may not be so. As you know, it is often diYcult or impossible to ascertain exactly the extent of one’s intellectual debt to any man, whether writer or personal friend. The outstanding fact about Wilken in my mind was and is that his writings opened up to me a new Weld of ethnological research in the Dutch East Indies. The books and journals he referred to were, most of them, unknown to me before; I noted them carefully and bought and studied for myself a large number of them. This was necessary as the University Library here was and is very scantily provided with Dutch ethnological literature. Of the great periodicals (Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal &c.; Bijdrage tot de Taal &c.; Tijdschrift voor Nederland’s Indie; Tijdschrift der Nederlandsch Aardrijksundig Genootschap; Mededeelingen van Wege het Nederlandsch Zendelingsgenootschap &c. &c.) it had, when I began working at these subjects, none at all with the exception perhaps (of this I am not sure) of a few of the later volumes of the Wrst mentioned. It has now complete sets of the Wrst two, and I am going to try to induce the library to get the remaining three. Of all these periodicals (and of other Dutch periodicals too) I have bought separate numbers or whole volumes and gone through them laboriously marking and extracting them. Of some of them (the Wrst and third) I have long series of separate numbers. Years ago Robertson Smith used to ask me every now and then if I was still at the East Indies, and again and again I had to confess that I still was. At the present time I am engaged day by day in going through the back volumes of the Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal &c. published within the last ten or twelve years, and when that is done I intend to treat the back volumes of the Bijdrage tot de Taal &c. in the same way—all this for the new edition of my book. Only yesterday I received from Nutt Calisch’s big Dutch dictionary, because I foresee how much Dutch I shall have to read in future. The little dictionary I have used for years is inadequate. Forgive me for troubling you with these details. I only wish to show that I have made and am making a serious independent study of the literature connected with the

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Dutch East Indies, and that the chief debt, in my opinion, that I owe to Wilken is the one I have acknowledged in my preface, that of opening up to me this vast and fruitful Weld of research. Thanking you again for your letter, I am, Yours cordially J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.37: 314 (TS)

To George A. Macmillan, 27 October 1898 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Macmillan, I am glad that you see your way to send Lang proofs of Spencer and Gillen’s book. It had not occurred to me, stupidly enough, that his book would probably not be out till after theirs, so that there could be no objection to his seeing the proofs. From another letter of his this morning I gather that his book will as a matter of fact not be out till after theirs. So it is all right. I quite share your wish to oblige Lang, who is a friend of mine.1 I will try to let you have proofs of the G. B. before long. You may believe, however, that the book is gaining by the delay, as I am gleaning fresh material for it daily. This gleaning (necessitated by my long neglect of anthropological literature while I was working at Pausanias) will soon be over, and the actual revision will not be diYcult or tedious, I think, anyhow I am working steadily at the subject. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer I really think that the interest and value of the book will be increased in the new edition. BL 1. Lang, in the process of updating his Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1887; 2nd edn. 1899), asked to see the proofs. In the light of Frazer’s subsequent quarrel with Lang, it is worth noting this and other unsolicited expressions of friendship for him.


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To Baldwin Spencer, 28 November 1898 13 Guest Road, Cambridge My dear Sir, Your very interesting letter of October 20th reached me last evening.1 Though I hope to discuss the matter of it with you personally very soon I will make one or two remarks on it now. But Wrst of all I write to ask whether it would suit your plans to stay with us in Cambridge from Saturday Dec 10th to Monday Dec 12th? It would give my wife and myself much pleasure if you would do so. My friend Dr Henry Jackson, whom I am anxious that you should meet, leaves Cambridge for the vacation on the 12th, but he is disengaged on the 10th and 11th, and would greatly like to meet you. I should also like you to meet my friend Prof. Ridgeway, a man of remarkable ability who is much interested in these matters. I know how much occupied your time will be, but I trust that you will be able to spare two days to Cambridge. If the 10th suits you, pray come at any hour that may be most convenient to you. I will put myself at your disposal during your stay. I hope that you will at least arrive in time for dinner in hall at 7.45, but if you could come a few hours earlier so much the better. Since I have read your letter it seems to me very desirable that you should publish your views on the origin of totemism, in a more or less provisional form, as soon as you conveniently can, if possible during your stay in England. I would suggest that the publication should take the form of a letter to Nature or the Athenaeum or of a paper read before the Anthropological Institute. For the latter a special meeting of the Institute would have to be called and the only practical day for it would seem to be the 13th December. I am going to write to Mr Fr. Galton and see if he could arrange for such a meeting. Your time will be so short that I think it would save you time and trouble if the arrangements were made at once. They can easily be countermanded if on consideration you would prefer not to state your views to the Anthropological either because they are not yet deWnite enough or for any other reason. The reason why I venture to urge you to publish at once is this. The facts which you have collected seem to oVer a plausible, perhaps probable, explanation of the origin and meaning of totemism—an origin and meaning such as no one had hitherto dreamed of. The inference from your facts seems so easy and obvious (though both Tylor and Lang—to whom at his desire Macmillan sent proofs—have failed to see it) that I can hardly but think that on the publication of your book, the solution of the mystery which has puzzled anthropologists so long will occur to thoughtful persons,

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who will hasten to publish their discovery if you have not already done so. You will have observed from my letter of Sept. 18th that I was working towards a conclusion in some aspects agreeing with what I take to be your own, and since writing that letter and reading a second time more carefully your account of the Arunta traditions I have reached independently and have stated as an hypothesis to various friends (including Jackson and Ridgeway) a theory of the origin of the exogamy of the totem clans which is precisely identical with the one described in your letter. Now what has occurred to me may well occur to many others, and it would be a great pity (it seems to me) if the honour of Wrst publicly stating what is probably the true explanation of the origin of totemism should fall to any one but its true discoverer, I mean yourself. For these reasons I hope you will consent to publish at least an abstract of your conclusions as to the origin and meaning of totemism without delay. From what I have said you will see that I agree with you (as against Fison and Howitt) in inclining to think that the religious side of totemism is the fundamental and original one, and that a fully developed system of totem clans or groups probably existed before there was any idea of exogamy. We have only to assume that a community consisting of a number of totem groups decided to bisect itself into two exogamous divisions and to put one half the totem groups in one division and the other half in the other division—and at once we have the exogamy of the totem clans. The same principle of bisection progressively carried out would split the community into exogamous quarters Wrst and eighths afterwards, such as we Wnd in so many Australian tribes, which would carry with it a narrowing of the number of the totem clans into which any one man or woman might marry, such a narrowing or restriction as again we meet with in Australia and elsewhere. This progressive bisection of a community into exogamous halves, quarters etc. may be regarded, not as a mere hypothesis, but as a well attested fact established by Australian and American evidence. In Melanesia, as you doubtless remember, division has almost everywhere remained stationary after the Wrst bisection—there are in general in Melanesia only two exogamous divisions, and totem clans are practically non-existent or present only in germ; so that this principle of bisection into exogamous divisions appears to be quite independent of totemism. All this points to totemism having existed at Wrst as a purely religious (or as I should now prefer to say magical) system, and exogamy having been afterwards, as you say, tacked on to it more or less accidentally. Thus totemism may quite well exist (and probably in some places has always continued to exist) without exogamy; and conversely where we Wnd exogamy by itself we are not justiWed in assuming that there ever was totemism. In short totemism and exogamy are two entirely distinct things that may and have existed quite independent of each other.


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So far I think we are agreed. It is when we come to the reason for not killing the totem animal that I am inclined to dissent from you. You suggest that the taboo was originally on eating men of the same totem and was afterwards by analogy extended to eating the totem animal. To this I object that many Australian tribes continue to eat their relations as a mark of aVection after they have given up eating their enemies. See my Totemism p. 79 sq. To the examples there given I could now add others. Indeed I am not sure but that it might be plausibly maintained that the eating of dead relations is the last (not as you assume the Wrst) side of cannibalism to be given up. Your theory would obviously be upset if any of the many Australian tribes who eat their dead relations do at the same time refrain from eating their totems. I have not yet investigated the cases, but I fancy it would not be diYcult to Wnd cases contradictory of your theory. What is the rule of descent in the Dieri? Gason misled me about it, and I have not Howitt’s correction (in the Journ. Anthr. Inst.) to hand at present. Among the Dieri children regularly eat of their dead mother, and the mother eats of her dead children. If the Dieri have female descent and don’t kill their totems, that would seem to be a nail in the coYn of your theory. As to my own explanation, I meant to suggest that a man refrains from killing and eating his totem animal in order that the animal may not fear and avoid him. I did not suppose that the Australian fears his totem, as the elephant hunter and the bear hunter fear and propitiate the animals they hunt and kill. Nor did I mean to say that wherever you have propitiation of animals killed for food or for other reasons you have totemism. I do not suppose for a moment that the elephant-hunter or the bear-hunter is, so far forth, a totemist (if I may use that abominable word, which by the by you rightly avoid). All I meant was that in the propitiation of animals by the hunters and Wshermen who catch [something omitted] a more primitive method of securing a food supply than propitiation. Thus I am greatly pleased that the result of your researches is to conWrm my view on this subject. In fact I am coming more and more to the conclusion that if we deWne religion as the propitiation of natural and supernatural powers, and magic as the coercion of them, magic has everywhere preceded religion. It is only when men Wnd by experience that they cannot compel the higher powers to comply with their wishes, that they condescend to entreat them. In time, after long ages, they begin to realise that entreaty is also vain, and then they try compulsion again, but this time the compulsion is applied within narrower limits and in a diVerent way from the old magical method. In short religion is replaced by science. The order of evolution, then, of human thought and practice is magic—religion—science. We in this generation live in a transition epoch between religion and science, an epoch which will

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last of course for many generations to come. It is for those who care for progress to aid the Wnal triumph of science as much as they can in their day. But this has carried me far away from totemism. I hope we shall talk these matters over when you come. I shall be particularly interested to know what you think of my theory of a magical age preceding in order of time a religious age, at least in Australia. My wife and I look forward with pleasure to the visit which we hope you will pay us. If the time I have mentioned (Dec. 10–12) does not suit you, please name any other. All days (except Dec. 6th) are equally convenient to us. Yours very truly James G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum 1. In it Spencer commented on the theory of totemism that Frazer had outlined in his letter of 15 Sept. 1898, as well as Tylor’s theory that the souls of ancestors animate the totem animals and plants.

To Baldwin Spencer, 16 December 1898 13 Guest Road, Cambridge My dear Spencer, On thinking the matter over I have decided not to expand my notes on totemism into an article for a magazine, but to print them as they stand in the Journal of the Anthrop. Institute at the end of your paper. As the view of totemism put forward in these notes was entirely suggested by your facts (a suspicion of it never having crossed my mind before), I think I ought not to anticipate you in stating the general conclusion which you had drawn from the same facts before me. It will be honour enough for me to be allowed to publish my views simultaneously with yours. I enclose my paper for you to glance over, if you Wnd time. If you Wnd anything in it to object to, please let me know and I will see if I can alter it. I will omit or modify the argument I drew from the supposed fact of the totem animals not eating each other. With regard to my old theory of the totem containing the soul or part of the life of the man, I incline to think that though it does not hold true of your tribes at present, it may have done so in the past. If the object of totemism is to control and direct the various departments of nature, it might be thought that this could be best eVected by each group of men and women having


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portions of their life deposited in the totems. This would supply a sympathetic link between the men and the totems and thereby give them power over the latter. The traditions and customs of your tribes in regard to their Churingas and Nurtunjas seem to me to point back to a system of this sort. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum

To Baldwin Spencer, 28 December 1898 13 Guest Road, Cambridge My dear Spencer, I would not have bothered you with my telegram last night if I had not thought that you were sailing for Australia today and that it was my last chance to catch you. Write at your convenience. Talking the matter over with Ridgeway since I wrote to you last I have come to think that there is something to be said for my writing an article on your book in one of the magazines. 1) Our theory of totemism (if you will let me associate myself with you in it) is now published by having been stated at the Anthropological. Any one is now free to discuss it, and possibly some may do so as soon as the book appears. Their version might be a mere travesty of the theory, and it would be a pity if this were to pass uncorrected for months. The Journal of the Anthrop. Inst. may not be out for six months or more. I have reason to think that Jevons (who has an absurd theory as to totemism being a primitive form of monotheism! of all things in the world) was present at the meeting, and as he is down for a paper on the signiWcance of totemism in the history of religion, to be read before the Folklore Society, he may possibly use what he heard or fancied he heard at the Anthrop. Inst., long before our views are printed in the Journal. 2) In an article in one of the magazines I could speak more at large of the importance of your book, and thus call public attention to it better. The Anthrop. Journal is read only by anthropologists. I have not the least doubt that your book will make its own way on its own merits, but at least no harm could be done by emphasising those merits in a public way and at an early date. Jackson suggested to me independently (before the meeting) that

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I should write an article for one of the Quarterlies. This would give me more scope. I could touch on other points such as the McLennan–Morgan– Westermarck controversy, but there would be more delay in getting this out than in publishing a shorter paper in one of the monthlies. What do you think? For some reasons I am unwilling to write an article. I am working hard at the new edition of the G. B. and don’t wish to be interrupted. Moreover I intend to deal with your evidence not only in the body of my book but also in the new preface, which will probably be of some length, dealing with general questions, particularly the relation of magic to religion. So I am unwilling to pull out any plums that there may be in my book and to put them in the magazine. In short there is something to be said both for writing an article and for not writing it, and I feel undecided. Let me know what you think. If I wrote it I would not commit you to my conjectural explanation of the taboo on eating the totem, to which you may still feel objections on the ground that the Australians show no other trace of conciliating animals. I admit the force of the objection, but don’t yet see how the taboo is to be otherwise explained. If you are done with your letter to me (the one I returned to you), could you let me have it back? What you said in it about the Intichiuma ceremonies being specially prominent in the more desert parts of Australia seems important, and in an article (if I wrote one) I might call special attention to this, of course giving you the credit of the observation. I wonder whether I might further state your opinion that group marriage or sexual community was an essential step in the evolution of human society out of an earlier stage in which pairing and isolation of the pairs were the prominent features, as among the large apes? The idea was quite new to me and struck me a good deal. It would come in very a` propos in referring to the Morgan–Westermarck question, but you might very likely prefer to reserve this point to be stated directly by yourself more at large elsewhere. Forgive me for inXicting this long letter on you when you are so busy. My wife joins me in very kind regards and in all good wishes for the New Year. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer The MS of Miss Howitt’s book has not come yet.1 I will look at it and write to you about it soon. Pitt Rivers Museum 1. Mary Howitt (later Mrs Mary Howitt Watts) was the daughter of A. W. Howitt. The MS Frazer mentions did not achieve publication and appeared later, much abridged, as ‘Some Native Legends from Central Australia’, Folk-Lore, 13 (1902), 403–17.


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To Baldwin Spencer, 6 February 1899 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Spencer, Your letter from Colombo, with the enclosure, reached me on the 4th. I will of course send on your paper to the Anthropological Institute. It ought certainly to appear in the Journal. After I got your letter from Marseilles, in which you approved of my proposal to write an article for one of the journals, I oVered to the editor of the Fortnightly to write an article on the origin of totemism, explaining to him the circumstances. He accepted the proposal, so I wrote the article and sent it in a week ago. I have not seen it in proof yet. It is practically an expansion of what I said at the Anthropological, but I have so far developed the theory as to include an explanation of sub-totems or pseudo-totems (as Howitt calls them) and a suggested explanation of Roth’s taboos on animal food. You will readily see of course that the sub-totems Wt in beautifully with our theory. If the object of the system was to control the whole of nature for the good of man, and the totem clans were few in number, it is obvious that each clan would have to undertake the charge of many departments of nature in addition to its own proper totem; these additional departments of nature under the special charge of each totem clan are the sub-totems or multiplex totems, as they might also be called. We may conjecture that Intichiuma ceremonies are practised also in regard to sub-totems. Evidence of this should be looked for also of their practice by Roth’s tribes. We may conjecture that each exogamous division had to perform Intichiuma for all the animals it was forbidden to eat. As to the question of soul-transference (a really subordinate matter, as you say) I am inclined to stand by my guns, in spite of your Wre. In regard to the legend of the Wild Cat men who hung their churinga on the nurtunja when they went out hunting you say: ‘‘It does not seem to me that this at all implies that they had any idea of placing the soul in the totemic animal. In fact when they went out hunting it was usually in search of their totemic animal and with the express idea of catching and eating it, which does not look much as if they had any idea of transferring the soul to the beast.’’ Certainly it does not look much to us as if they could have any such idea, but the matter may have presented itself otherwise to the savage. May he not have thought that by transferring a part of his life, including his will or a part of it, to the animal he could make it come and be killed instead of running away? I take it, this was a sort of primitive mesmerism. And when the savage killed and ate the animal

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which he had thus mesmerised, he would of course recover, in its Xesh and blood, the portion of his own vitality which he had put into the creature, so that he would suVer no harm by his temporary life-transference; on the contrary, he would have procured himself a good dinner. The risk would only arise when the beast was killed and eaten by somebody else. When that other was a friend (a member of the same group or tribe, though not of the same totem) he would have to perform some ceremony for the purpose of restoring the human life or soul in the beast to its proper owner. This may have been in part the intention of the totem sacrament. And I conjecture that in killing an animal which is known to be a friend’s totem the hunter performs a ceremony of some sort for the purpose I have indicated. Look at the remarkable ceremonies with bull roarers etc. performed over dead turtles by the Torres Straits Islanders, among some of whom the turtle is a totem (Haddon, in Internationales Archiv fu¨r Ethnographie, VI p. 150 sq.). Again, a Brazilian tribe performs ceremonies at the killing of all those animals into which the souls of their medicine-men transmigrate at death; the ceremonies have for their object to make sure that there is no more life in the animal; none of the animals of this sort may be eaten till the ceremonies have been performed over them. Ask Gillen to make careful enquiries as to what is done by men in killing an animal which is a totem of their friends, though not their own. On these lines I have in my paper for the Fortnightly defended the idea of soul transference as forming the complement of the totem sacrament. The great principle by which the magical inXuence over the totem is obtained, whether for the purpose of multiplying or of catching and killing or gathering it, is the identiWcation of the man with his totem, and this is eVected by a double process, 1) by transferring the life of the animal or plant to the man in the totem sacrament, and 2) by transferring a part of the man’s life to the totem by means of the two magical implements, the churinga and the nurtunja. As to conciliation of the totem by not eating it, you say that this could not apply to plants. I am not sure of that. Some peoples think that plants can be frightened and deceived just like human beings. I have got fresh and striking evidence of this (which will be used in the new edition of my book) from the Malay region. But the Malays have worked out the animistic theory more completely than the Australians, so perhaps we are not justiWed in attributing similar ideas to the latter. This is a point on which we want more evidence before deciding. But the point I made in my original letter to you as well as in my remarks at the Anthropological, namely that animals do not as a rule live upon their kind and hence that an Emu man living on emus would be detected as a humbug by the real birds, applies equally to plants, in regard


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to which I suppose the rule is universal that they do not live upon their kind, and hence that a grass-seed man stuYng himself with grass-seeds convicts himself of imposture. You say: ‘‘What seems to me more likely is that the idea is that too freely eating and killing produces an estrangement between the man and his totem so that he loses his inXuence over it and cannot eYciently perform Intichiuma.’’ This seems to me to be merely saying in a negative form what I have said in a positive form. I say, ‘‘You must conciliate the totem’’; you say, ‘‘You must not estrange it.’’ What is the diVerence? How is estrangement avoided except by conciliatory conduct? Change your idea into the positive form, and I think you will Wnd it diYcult to distinguish it from mine. What I suppose the totem man to avoid by not eating the totem is precisely an estrangement between himself and the totem and a consequent loss of inXuence over it, which is just what you suppose him to avoid by the same conduct. Observe that the physical union of the man with his totem is promoted by eating the totem; the more of the totem he eats, the more of its substance he will have in him, the more completely therefore will he actually be the totem. The refusal to eat the totem weakens the physical bond between the man and the totem; it must therefore surely be thought to strengthen the mental tie, the bond of good feeling and friendliness; in a word, it must be a measure of conciliation. The diVerence between us, such as it is, seems to be not so much in the idea of conciliation, as in its application, you thinking mainly of its application to the Intichiuma ceremonies for the multiplication of the animal, I thinking mainly of its application to the magical ceremonies for making the animal come and be caught. Probably it applies to both. I have stated the theory in my article so as to cover both. There seems to me to be little or no real diVerence of opinion between us on this head. Since I saw you I have been thinking over the exogamy question. The conclusions to which I have been coming are brieXy: 1) that the segmentation of a tribe into two exogamous divisions was intended to avoid the marriage of brothers with sisters; 2) that the subsequent segmentation of each of those divisions into two exogamous subdivisions with a rule of descent such that children always belong to a diVerent subdivision from their parents and a subdivision moreover into which their parents may not marry, was intended to avoid the marriage of parents with children; 3) that the subsequent segmentation of each of those four subdivisions into two exogamous subsubdivisions was intended to prevent the marriage of grand-parents with grand-children; and 4) that the reason why the rule of exogamy was never applied to the totem clans of the Arunta and similar tribes was that if so applied it would not have served the only object which the rule was intended to eVect, namely the prevention of marriages between brothers and sisters and between ascendents and descendents. I had thought of writing

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an article on exogamy setting out these conclusions and showing the thorough weakness of McLennan’s theory when tested by Australian facts (absence of special female infanticide, absence of system of capture of wives, absence of permanent state of hostility between the groups). But in looking up Howitt’s article ‘Further notes on the Australian class system’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. XVIII (1889) to see whether he gave the rules of descent in tribes where eight exogamous subdivisions are found, I saw that he had practically anticipated my conclusions 2) and 3); and as conclusion no. 1) is of course Morgan’s there is no particular need for me to write an article on the subject, and I may content myself at least for the present with stating conclusion 4) in a note to my article on totemism. I don’t know how far you agree with these conclusions. If they are well founded, it seems that the root of the whole system of exogamy is an aversion to marriages between brothers and sisters (as Morgan supposed). Now, what is the savage reason for that aversion? Put Gillen on the track of this. I conjecture that it is some superstition which we have not yet fathomed. If so, the whole marriage system of mankind stands on a shaky foundation, unless it can be proved that the close interbreeding, which the marriage system prevents, has been on the whole a beneWt to the race. I understand that biologists are not agreed as to the evil or other eVects of close interbreeding. Have you views on the subject? I hear you are not standing for the Oxford chair. ScientiWcally speaking, I am glad, though personally I am sorry. Amicus Plato etc., so I am, or ought to be, more glad than sorry. The anthropological work still to be done in Australia is, so far as I can judge, of more importance for the early history of man than anything else that can now be done in the world. So I do not think you will ever regret giving yourself to it, and future generations will rise up and call you blessed! How I wish we could get Howitt relieved of his oYcial work for a year or two in order to give himself to the work of completing and putting together his materials. Can you think of any means of attaining that most desirable object? Would a strongly worded and signed memorial to the Victorian Government by the University or scientiWc societies here at home be likely to have eVect? Let me know. I would do all I could to promote such a memorial or anything else likely to secure the object. I oVered Miss Howitt’s MS to Macmillan, but they again refused it. Then I sent it to A. Lang, asking him to use his inXuence with Longmans. He did so, but they also declined it. At present I am thinking of oVering it to the Cambridge University Press. Jackson, who is on the Press Syndicate, is reading it. At present he thinks it would be better published in the Anthrop. Journal; but I shall probably be able to give you his Wnal opinion (when he has read it all) before I Wnish this interminable letter. Jackson raised a diYculty; he


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pointed out that I have no direct authority from the authoress or her father to negotiate for the publication of the book. Probably Tylor has such authority, so I wrote to him a few days ago to ask him whether he has authority, and if so whether he would consent to my oVering the book to the University Press. He has not answered yet. I fancy he may be a little sulky about totemism, especially the Intichiuma side of it. I may hear from him before I close this letter. I have received from Macmillan a copy of the book. Very many thanks for it. It is a very handsome volume, not unworthy of the excellence of the contents. A friend to whom I lent it is reading it with great interest, though he is not an anthropologist at all. My wife joins me in very kind regards. She thinks it kind of you (as it is) to remember about the dances, when you have so much else to think about. Please give me best regards to Fison and Howitt. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer P.T.O. 9th February. No word from Tylor yet. Perhaps he does not intend to answer. Would you be so good as to learn from Miss Howitt or her father what they wish me to do with the MS? Jackson has not Wnished reading it yet, but seems to adhere to his view that it would be better published in the Anthrop. Journal than in the form of a book. Would Miss Howitt agree to this? Or shall I oVer it to the Folklore Society? They might publish it as a volume, or if not as a volume certainly in ‘Folklore.’ I might also try A. and C. Black, the publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They published ‘Totemism.’ I am on good terms with them, but of course I should not like to recommend a volume to them unless it was likely to pay. Pitt Rivers Museum

To H. Montagu Butler, 7 May 1899 Inch-ma-home1 My dear Master, Will you allow me to ease my mind of a little matter that has been on it for some days?2 At the meeting of the Library Committee last Monday I did not on entering the room pay my respects to you. The reason was that I had been

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told that you would not be present, being occupied with adjudicating the Winchester Reading Prize. Accordingly when I entered the room I did not look for you, but seeing what I regard as the lowest seat at the table unoccupied I made straight for it without looking about me, for at all more or less public meetings I invariably, if left to myself, gravitate by instinct and taste to a back seat. It was not until I had thus found my natural level that I perceived you were in the room, when you came towards me from a group at the further side of the room, and I had only time to rise and bow when you passed me. The whole matter may have entirely escaped your attention at the time or your memory since, but I feel that I cannot rest easy under the faintest suspicion of seeming to be wanting in respect for you without oVering an explanation of my conduct. Any such appearance would not only be contrary to my duty, but would entirely belie my real feeling. Believe me, with much respect Yours very sincerely, J. G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 11 1. The Wrst letter from Inch-ma-home, a large house on Adams Road, Cambridge, where the Frazers lived until their departure for Liverpool in 1907. 2. Yet another example of the tenderness of Frazer’s conscience. He was unable to rest until he had unburdened himself of this fear that the Master might have misunderstood his lack of salutation, which, it is safe to say, Butler probably did not notice.

To A. W. Howitt, 10 May 1899 Inch-ma-home My dear Sir, In accordance with your wish I am returning your daughter’s MS to you.1 I am very sorry that our eVorts to secure its publication have proved unsuccessful. Mr Lang quite agrees with me in thinking that the work certainly deserves to be published, and I earnestly hope that it will be so ultimately, in one form or another. It could be easily published in the form of an article or rather series of articles in the Anthropological Journal or Folklore, where it would be more likely to fall into the hands of anthropologists generally than if it appeared in the form of a small book. I hope that Miss Howitt will seriously consider this mode of publication. The Anthropological Journal would, in my opinion, be preferable to Folk-lore for this purpose. Or


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it might be oVered to the Folk-lore Society to be published by them as a separate volume. If Miss Howitt prefers this, I would use what inXuence I have with the Society to induce them to accept it. I have copied out for my own beneWt some of the passages in the work which interested me especially. Might I be free to use the material, with all due acknowledgement, in my published writings? I should be grateful for the permission to do so, but would not urge my request if the authoress feels the least reluctance to grant it. I am sorry to learn that the disappearance or at least dissolution of the Australian tribes is proceeding so rapidly. It is much to be hoped that Spencer and Gillen may succeed in rescuing more valuable information before it is too late. I trust that you contemplate publishing the results of your long researches and enquiries in a collected and deWnitive form. You would render a great service to anthropology by doing so. Please remember me very kindly to Mr Fison and Prof. Spencer. Believe me, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer State Library of Victoria MS 9356 1. The work mentioned above, p. 140 n. 1. Macmillan felt that some of Frazer’s recommendations were academically worthy but did not sell well. Although he was willing to consider seriously any book recommended by Frazer, he did not want Frazer to think of the Wrm as a university press.

To H. Montagu Butler, 2 June 1899 Inch-ma-home My dear Master, May I ask you to be so good as to submit to the College Council two questions as to the interpretation of Statute XV section 10?1 The Wrst question is whether a Fellow to whom this section applies is at liberty to engage in work other than research or (in the words of the statute) ‘‘the systematic study of some important branch of literature or science.’’ To me it seems that were he to do so, at least to any considerable extent, he would be contravening, not perhaps the letter, but certainly the spirit and intention of the statute, which seems designed to ensure that the Fellow shall devote the whole, or at least the greater part, of his time to research. The most stringent interpretation of the

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statute might exclude permission to engage in any work other than research, and in the interests of the College and of learning, to which the Council will no doubt give due weight in arriving at its decision, the most stringent interpretation might be the best. A lax interpretation might open the door to serious evils and abuses, especially when we consider the possible decrease in the number of Fellowships open for competition from year to year. The other question which I would ask leave to submit to the Council is whether a Fellow who has retained his Fellowship for Wfteen years under section 10 of Statute XV is bound to continue to devote himself to research to the same extent as before, or whether he is at liberty thenceforth to occupy the whole or any part of his time, as he may think Wt, with work of a diVerent kind. The decision of the Council on these two points may have a practical bearing on my own case, as I hold my Fellowship under Statute XV section 10. I mention this merely because it is my reason, and perhaps may be my excuse, for troubling the Council with these questions at what may be an inopportune time. Believe me, my dear Master, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 14 1. Frazer is inquiring about whether the college statutes restrict fellows from engaging in nonacademic remunerative work. At this time he was seriously overdrawn at the bank and was facing what was to him the awful prospect of having to stop his research and do something else, or something more, to bring in needed money. He was saved from this fate only by the providential intervention of his well-placed friend, Edmund Gosse, who procured for him an annual Civil List pension of £200 and the Wrst of what would be three grants from the Royal Literary Fund. For an account, see Frazer, 143 V. I wish to thank Jonathan Smith, archivist at Trinity, for assistance with this query.

To H. Montagu Butler, 7 June 1899 Inch-ma-home My dear Master, Thank you very much for your kind letter conveying the answer of the Council to my questions. I am greatly obliged to the Council for taking the matters I submitted to them into their consideration. I thought it best to put the questions in a general form, so that the Council might discuss them on


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their own merit without being swayed by merely personal considerations. But I can understand that to formally interpret the statute might be diYcult, and I acquiesce in the decision of the Council that it is not necessary to do so at present. So far as the statute applies to my own case, I am deeply grateful to the Council for leaving me in future, as they have always done in the past, free to work as I think best. Hitherto my work has been that of my choice and has also, I think, been such as falls within the scope of the statute. I hope it will always be so, but I cannot be sure of it. Contingencies might arise (they have not risen yet and I hope never will) which might oblige me to seek work of another sort, and it was the fear—a distant fear I think I may say—of this contingency which induced me to raise the general question of how far the undertaking of work other than research might be a contravention of the statute. Perhaps I should not have raised it. It would always be possible for me to ask the opinion and permission of the Council before undertaking any particular piece of work which I might contemplate. After the very liberal interpretation which the Council has given of the statute in so far as it concerns myself, I shall not be too hasty in occupying their time with questions of this sort. But the very conWdence they have so freely reposed in me—never once having so much as asked a question as to the disposal of my time during the fourteen years that have passed since my Fellowship was Wrst renewed under the statute—lays me under a special obligation to consult them whenever I have doubts as to whether I am spending my time in a way they would approve of. If only I continue free as hitherto to follow my own bent, I venture to believe that I shall be conforming to the statute and thereby to the wishes of the Council. This letter is not meant to be read to the Council. I have only to ask that you will be so kind as simply to express to them my grateful thanks for their answer to my questions. I am truly sorry to have taken up so much of their time and of yours. Today I received a kind note from Mr Galton congratulating me on the Oxford degree. With many apologies for the trouble I have put you to, I am, my dear Master, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 15

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To Francis Galton, 7 June 1899 Inch-ma-home Dear Mr Galton, Your kind letter of congratulation has given me much pleasure. Thank you for it sincerely. I know that the pleasure you express at the great honour which Oxford is doing me is real.1 You have always been most kind in interesting yourself in me and my work ever since you took me up fourteen years ago when I was a candidate for the librarianship of the Geographical Society. Such interest is a great help and encouragement to a young man, as I was then (alas! I am no longer young now), and I hope I have not given you any cause to regret the helping hand you held out to me then. I always think with gratitude of the share that you and Dr. Tylor had in the renewal of my Fellowship in 1885. My wife and I will feel much honoured if you will come to see us in our new house when you are next in Cambridge. We were glad to see you, though only for a moment, in the crowd at the Fitzwilliam the other evening. It was indeed a wonderful gathering and one to make even the meanest Cambridge man proud of his university. Believe me, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer UCL, Galton Collection 1. Frazer was awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford in 1899.

To A. W. Howitt, 24 July 1899 Inch-ma-home Dear Mr Howitt, I am preparing a new and enlarged edition of my book ‘The Golden Bough’. When I had the privilege of reading your daughter’s valuable and interesting work on the Folklore and Legends of Some Victorian Tribes I took the liberty of copying out some passages that specially interested me, and I should very much like to be allowed to make use of some of them, with all due acknowledgement, in the new edition of my book. I therefore make bold to ask whether Miss Howitt will kindly accord me permission to do so? If she will,


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I shall be very grateful. I do not think that by citing a few facts from her collection I should be forestalling the interest of her book when it is published, as I hope it will be before long. Indeed my occasional citation of her work, by calling attention to it and giving some specimens of it, might help perhaps to open the eyes of publishers and the public to its value. If Miss Howitt graciously grants my request, will you be so good as to send me a note to that eVect? The printing of my book will begin very soon, but as I am to be allowed to keep it all in slip till near the end, I shall be able, on hearing from you in some three months’ time, to strike out the references to Miss Howitt’s work which I have provisionally introduced into it, in case her answer should be unfavourable. I had a long and interesting letter from Mr Fison lately. I heard with concern of the serious operation he had to undergo, but I trust that he is greatly beneWted by it. If you see him, will you kindly say to him that I will try to write him before very long and to meet his wishes with regard to writing a short paper for the Australian Association. But he must not expect much. I am so busy with the new edition of my book that only my personal regard for Mr Fison leads me to attempt what otherwise I would hardly at present undertake. But I fear the paper, if I succeed in beating out one at all, will be short and slight. I shall be curious to learn what you think of the new view of totemism suggested independently to Spencer and myself by the Intichiuma ceremonies etc. of the Central Australians. You will probably have seen my articles on the subject in the Fortnightly. Spencer may demur to my attempted reconciliation of the new facts with my old theory, but as to the rest I hope agrees with me. Lang has Xamed out against me in the Fortnightly for June, but I only glanced at his article.1 It seemed full of misunderstandings, which began indeed with the title by attributing the theory to me alone. Do you know anything of Mrs Langloh Parker, of whose Australian evidence Andrew Lang makes use?2 The tap of folk-lore seems to run freely in her neighbourhood, which, after what you told me lately of the dried-up springs of folklore, can hardly be anywhere in Victoria or New South Wales. Please give my very kind regards to Mr Fison and Prof. Spencer when you see them. Believe me, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer State Library of Victoria MS 9356 1. Andrew Lang, ‘Mr. Frazer’s Theory of Totemism’, Fortnightly Review, ns 65 ( June 1899), 1012–25. 2. Catherine Stow, writing as K. Langloh Parker (1856–1940); her Australian Legendary Tales (1896) and More Australian Legendary Tales (1898), though initially intended for children, were highly regarded by anthropologists and folklorists.

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To A. C. Haddon, 28 October 1899 Inch-ma-home My dear Haddon, Thank you for your letter. There was no need to apologise for it. On the contrary I am glad (as well as sorry) to have it. I mean that I am glad to have so clear and temperate a statement of the circumstances (to use a politely vague expression) which have led to Duckworth’s appointment.1 What you say exactly conWrms what I had heard independently and separately from Ridgeway and Langley. I am more sorry than ever at the appointment, sorry for your sake but still more sorry for the sake of the University. It has ill requited your services and acted ill, as I believe, in the interests of learning, which would, in my opinion, have been better served by your appointment. Probably most of those who are responsible for the appointment acted in ignorance of the circumstances; but mistakes made through ignorance do not on that account escape their natural consequences. I do not believe that the University can appoint inferior men to posts, as it has done (so far as I can judge) at least twice this very year, without suVering for it. It is disheartening to see it throwing away its chances and appointing dull mediocrity or worse where it might have had something far better, and it does not console one to think, as I cannot help thinking, that some of those who have been responsible for the appointments have been actuated, I will hope unconsciously, by personal interests and personal feelings rather than by single-minded thought for the interests of the University and of learning. I should like, if I may, to show your letter to a few men, such as Langley, Jackson, Darwin, and Hill, but I will not do so without your consent. It seems right that the circumstances should be known, if only to make the repetition of similar circumstances as diYcult as possible by bringing them to the knowledge of people generally. I told Jackson in conversation yesterday, and it was all quite new to him. He had been puzzling over the appointment. I told him I had heard of the matter from Ridgeway and Langley as well as from you (I think I mentioned you, but I certainly mentioned the others), and I advised him to talk to Ridgeway about it, who knows the outs and ins of the case and holds very strong views on it. I can hardly help thinking or at least hoping that if the case were known it might quicken the University towards doing an act of justice to you and of advantage to itself by creating a chair or readership of anthropology or ethnology to which you would be appointed. Perhaps I may say, without impertinence, that I would not stand against you for such a post here or elsewhere, not only because I do not wish to teach, but because


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I think you have better claims and would make a more useful and eYcient teacher than I should. Don’t trouble about Schmeltz’s book on the bull-roarer. I have decided not to write on that subject for the Australians, but to send them my paper on gender instead.2 So I have no occasion for Schmeltz at present. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer UL Haddon 21 1. Wynfrid L. H. Duckworth (1870–1956), physical anthropologist. Frazer was disappointed not only because he hoped that the next opening in anthropology would go to his friend Haddon but also because, given the paucity of resources for anthropology, he thought the emphasis on physical anthropology was misplaced. For the context of Duckworth’s appointment, see George Stocking Jr., After Tylor (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 115 V. 2. In the event he published his gender paper later—‘A Suggestion as to the Origin of Gender in Language’, Fortnightly Review, ns, 67 (Jan. 1900), 79–90; repr. GS, 183–97. For the Australian conference he sent ‘On Some Ceremonies of the Central Australian Tribes’, in Report of the Eighth Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science Held at Melbourne, Victoria, 1900 (Melbourne: The Association, 1901), 312–21; repr. GS, 198–204.

To Edmund Gosse, 2 December 1899 Inch-ma-home My dear Gosse, Thank you for your most kind letter. I cannot but be deeply gratiWed by the mark of appreciation of my work which the Council of the public body you speak of proposes to bestow upon me. The Council is right in believing that my writings do not yield me a livelihood. ‘‘The Golden Bough’’ brought me in annually about £30 for several years (the last year it brought in over £46), but for a year or more it has been out of print, and some little time must elapse before the new and enlarged edition, on which I am at work, can be published and begin to yield a return. From Pausanias I have as yet had nothing, though there is a fair prospect that in another year it will begin to bring in something annually. At the same time it is to be remembered that for many years my College has allowed me to hold a research Fellowship, so that I am in a sense paid for my work even if my writings brought me in nothing. Owing, however, to the depression from which my college, like many others, is now suVering, the dividend has fallen to an extent which makes a serious diVerence in my income. In

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these circumstances I accept most gratefully the help so gracefully and delicately oVered me by the public body on whose behalf you write.1 It will be a very real and welcome help towards enabling me to carry on my work without those pecuniary anxieties and distractions which might otherwise press upon me in the near future. Believe me, my dear Gosse, Most gratefully and sincerely yours J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. The ‘public body’ that Frazer’s delicacy prevents him from naming is the Royal Literary Fund, of which Gosse was the secretary and most inXuential member.

To Edmund Gosse, 15 December 1899 Inch-ma-home My dear Gosse, I received today the generous and muniWcent grant of the Royal Literary Fund. From what I have told you you will understand how great and how welcome is the help thus timely given me. I can now look forward to the coming year with a perfectly easy mind, knowing that I have enough and far more than enough for my wants (which are not very numerous and I hope not extravagant) and that thus I shall be able to go on giving the whole of my time to study and research, the only thing that I care to occupy myself with. I have done so for many years and my great wish, so far as I am personally concerned, is to be able to do so to the end of my life. There is a fair prospect that this great wish may be fulWlled. My wife and I will always remember with gratitude your personal kindness in the matter. It was most kind of you to relieve the anxiety, which I confess we felt, by writing and telegraphing twice to me. The anxiety, as you may know without my saying it, has now given place to rejoicing and gratitude. I am glad to say that my wife is now so much better that we do not need to go away, so I am staying at home and going on with my work, which is much better. My wife desires me to express to you her gratitude for all your great kindness, and to say that she and I hope you will Wx a day to come and see us, when we shall be able to thank you personally.


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Pray excuse the haste in which I write as I have to go out immediately and wish to catch tonight’s post. Once more accept my warmest thanks and believe me, my dear Gosse, Most gratefully and sincerely yours J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University

To George A. Macmillan, 8 May 1900 Inch-ma-home My dear Macmillan, I think you will like to see the enclosed letter from Do¨rpfeld. Considering how often and strenuously I have controverted his views, his testimony to the usefulness of my book is very generous as well as very valuable. Please let me have the letter back. I feel sure you will agree with me in my wish that a copy of ‘‘Pausanias and Other Greek Sketches’’ should be sent to Do¨rpfeld. I will therefore ask you to direct that this be done. I need hardly observe that his recommendation of my big book to the young German students, who accompany him on his annual tours, is the very best introduction that my book could have to the learned circles in Germany. If I remember aright, your Wrm published some years ago a work on the health resorts of Europe, which was highly spoken of by the reviewers. Would you kindly let me know the name of the author, which has escaped me? My wife and I have some idea of wintering in the south, and we might Wnd some useful hints in the book, though our place of residence will not be exclusively determined by considerations of health. I hope my little book will be out soon. I am getting rather impatient to see it. The G. B. goes ahead. I am getting within sight of port. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer BL

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To George A. Macmillan, 13 May 1900 Inch-ma-home My dear Macmillan, Forgive me troubling you again, but will you kindly direct the printers to send to Miss Jane E. Harrison, Newnham College, Cambridge the copy of ‘‘Pausanias and Other Greek Sketches’’ which I had destined for Dr E. B. Tylor? Miss Harrison has been so kind and generous in her expression of her appreciation of my book (an appreciation all the more generous because the book comes into competition with her own), as well as so cordial and friendly in her personal relations to my wife and myself, that I should like to mark my sense of her kindness by presenting her with a copy of my new book.1 On the other hand ever since our correspondence (which you will remember) about Spencer and Gillen’s book, Professor Tylor has treated me with less than courtesy.2 I am very unwilling to be on unfriendly terms with one to whom I, in common with all other anthropologists, am deeply indebted, and with whose views I am, I believe, in substantial agreement. Accordingly I proposed to send him a copy of my new book to show that on my side there was no wish that our relations should be anything but cordial, but since I wrote to ask you to send him the volume he has committed (not for the Wrst time) the discourtesy of leaving a letter of mine, on an important anthropological subject, unnoticed and unanswered. It is therefore my wish that no copy of my book be sent him. The subject which Prof. Tylor appears to regard as unworthy of his attention is a proposal to memorialise the Governments of Victoria and South Australia to grant Spencer and Gillen leave of absence for a year to enable them to do for the tribes of northern Australia what they have already done for those of the centre. If the work is not done now and by these two men, it will probably never be done at all, and the loss to science will be irreparable. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer BL 1. Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928), the Wrst Englishwoman to gain an international reputation in classics. A member of the Wrst generation of Englishwomen to gain a university education, at this point she was living independently in London, lecturing and writing on classical subjects. Harrison’s book (written with Margaret MerriWeld) is Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens (1890), which in a sense was the guide to the ruins that Macmillan had in mind when he Wrst commissioned Frazer to translate and edit Pausanias. For a taste of Harrison’s relations


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with the Frazers, see the postscript to a letter from her to Gilbert Murray’s wife, Lady Mary Murray, dated from Rome Feb. 1901 (i.e. during the Frazers’ long Italian holiday taken after publication of the 2nd edn. of The Golden Bough): ‘P.S.—Mrs Frazer (your double!) has been sitting on my bed for two hours, telling me ‘‘who not to know’’, i.e. who has not paid Mr Frazer ‘‘proper attention’’! This is the price I pay for a few shy radiant moments under the Golden Bough—Good conservative tho’ I am I am ready for any reform in the Game Laws for the Preserving of Eminent Husbands’ (J. G. Stewart, Jane Ellen Harrison: A Portrait from Letters (London: Merlin, 1959), 37). 2. Like many people, once his relations with anyone go sour, Frazer rarely changes his mind; henceforth, his private comments on Tylor in the letters are unremittingly negative.

To Baldwin Spencer, 4 June 1900 [no address] My dear Spencer, How am I to apologise to you for having left your letter so long unanswered? Forgive me if you can. I have no excuse to plead but more or less incessant work and an almost invincible repugnance to writing letters. However, believe me that I was very glad to get your letter expressing your approval of my statement of our joint theory of totemism (or rather of the totemism of the Central Australian tribes) in the Fortnightly. Of course as we both, I believe, recognise, the theory is merely an attempt to formulate the conclusions to which the new evidence, collected by you and Gillen, seems to point. It may be conWrmed or upset by later investigations. Some little time ago Fison sent me a letter of yours in which you expressed a wish that the Government would order you to go and work among the tribes who still remain to be examined (whose name, if not legion, is something like it, I fancy) and Fison suggested that we at home should get up a memorial praying the Government to send you out to do Weld work among the niggers.1 The suggestion seemed to me admirable, and I am acting on it. I drafted memorials (of which I enclose copies) to the Governments of Victoria and South Australia asking them to grant you and Gillen leave of absence for a year in order to investigate the tribes of northern Australia. The drafts were approved by Ridgeway and Jackson and we are now having them signed by people whose names are likely to carry weight. At this stage of the proceedings I am seized by a ghastly fear: what if you and Gillen don’t want to go after all? Perhaps it was very rash and wrong of me to rush into the matter without consulting you both. If I have done wrong, I can only ask your forgiveness. But I hope I have been right. Had I written to you Wrst, time would have been lost, and when your answers (if favourable) came I might

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not have been able to move in the matter, as we have let our house and are going abroad for the winter. So I trust all has been for the best, but I would ask you to relieve a certain anxiety which I feel on this point as soon as you conveniently can. What will Mrs Spencer and Mrs Gillen say to me? My rejoicing is mixed with trembling when I think of them. But it is a grand piece of work we are asking you and Gillen to do, probably the Wnest piece of anthropological work that could be done in the world just now, and you and he are the very men to do it. If I should have been in any measure instrumental in getting it done by poking up your governments in the matter, it will be the best thing I ever did in my life. As for Fison, I can see him chortling in his joy. I do hope it will come oV. I am hard at work at the new edition of the G. B. which will be twice the size of the old one. It will be out, I hope, sometime about the beginning of winter. Copies will be sent to you, Fison, and Howitt. Please give my kindest remembrances to them and accept the same for yourself. My wife would join in them if she were beside me. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum 1. One of the few explicitly racist epithets in Frazer’s letters. It should be recalled that ‘nigger’ remained in ‘polite’ discourse through the Wrst half of the twentieth century. Epithets aside, that the entire corpus of his work rests explicitly and implicitly on ideas of Western racial superiority is obvious.

To George A. Macmillan, 6 July 1900 Inch-ma-home My dear Macmillan, Very many thanks for Mau’s book on Pompeii which you were so kind as to send me.1 I have his German book on the subject, but had not seen it before in its English dress. It is a very handsome volume in all respects, and is, I should think, by far the best book of the same size on the subject. I am also much obliged to you for your kind proposal that I should write a corresponding volume on Athens for the Macmillan Company. I quite agree that there is room for such a work, but I am not the man to undertake


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it. My main interest is in anthropology, especially the early history of religion and institutions; and my intention is, if health and leisure are continued to me, to devote myself to this line of work for at least a good many years to come. I have made large collections for a book or rather series of books on the subject, and I shall hope, granted the same conditions, to write them and to oVer them to you as they are ready. To work at archaeology (which is not really my subject at all) would be to turn aside from this line which I have marked out for myself and which I am determined (if the circumstances of life allow me) to stick to till I have carried out the series of researches which I have planned. The work seems to me far more important than any mere archaeological investigation; since if properly accomplished it ought to inXuence the course of thought on some of the most important subjects, which a mere description of ruins, however beautiful and interesting, could never do. I regret the years I spent on Pausanias. I think they might have been better employed. But I am resolved not to commit the same sort of mistake again, if I can help it. If I may venture to suggest a name, I would say that Ernest Gardner seems to me the very man to write such a book on Athens as is wanted.2 His residence for years in Athens, his thorough knowledge of archaeology, his good sense and taste, and his excellent literary style seem to mark him out as the very man you want. He would make a far better book of it than I should. But I am greatly obliged to you for giving me the Wrst oVer. I hope to begin returning the corrected proofs of The Golden Bough in a few days and will do all I can to Wnish my part of the work by the Wrst of October, though I doubt whether I shall quite succeed. The last batch of copy for the last chapter was sent to the printers some little time ago. The book is very greatly enlarged; I am afraid it cannot be in less than three volumes. I hope you will let me have the same kind of paper as in the Wrst edition—a smooth, thick paper, not a rough paper such as Mr Skeat’s book and the small Pausanias are printed on. I know that this rough paper is admired by many, but personally I do not like it; it does not take ink, which is a serious defect for a student’s book. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer BL 1. August Mau, Pompeii, Its Life and Art, trans. F. W. Kelsey (London: Macmillan, 1899). 2. Ernest Gardner (1862–1939), English classical archaeologist.

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To George A. Macmillan, 6 August 1900 Inch-ma-home My dear Macmillan, My book is now going into pages, and in a few days I shall have Wnished revising the proofs in slip. So the printing oV may begin pretty soon. It becomes desirable, therefore, to consider the size of the new edition. That is a question which I leave entirely in your hands, but I think it well to let you know what occurs to me on the subject. An author is probably too sanguine, but my impression is that in its new form the book will attract much more attention than it did at Wrst, and that therefore a fairly large edition, say not less than 1500 copies, should be printed. Another reason for a large edition is that I do not wish to have to prepare a new edition for many years, having plenty of other projects of work to keep me busy in the meantime. In the unlikely event of there being a really rapid sale, it would of course always be possible to reprint the book without revision, but there are obvious objections to that. Would it be worth while to consider the advisability of stereotyping? I don’t know what the cost of that would be compared to ordinary printing, and I should be unwilling to debar myself from revising and correcting the book whenever I wished to do so. I am obliged to you for agreeing to my wish that the book should be printed on thick smooth paper which will take ink. As to the binding, I think we should follow the Wrst edition, except that there ought to be gold bands across the sides enclosing my friend Middleton’s device of the mistletoe. He had intended that the device should be so enclosed, and was horriWed when it appeared as a mere patch on one side of the cover. His friend William Morris commented on it unfavourably, and no wonder. Middleton’s idea was to have the same printed on the side of the book also, in semi-ornamental letters, ‘‘The Golden Bough’’ above the mistletoe’s device, and ‘‘by J. G. Frazer’’ below it. About this I am not particular, it might perhaps be rather gaudy; but the bands seem quite necessary. If you agree, will you direct the binders accordingly? Do you think there would be room for a new translation of Augustine’s Confessions? I have been turning over the leaves and have been struck by the extraordinary beauty of the thought and language. It would be a real pleasure to try to put the book into worthy English, and I might amuse some of my leisure hours with it next winter when we are abroad. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer BL


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To George A. Macmillan, 18 August 1900 Inch-ma-home My dear Macmillan, I am glad that you would be willing to publish a translation of Augustine’s Confessions, if I make one. Whether I shall do so is uncertain; you will understand that I do not pledge myself to undertake the work, but I may Wnd it an agreeable occupation for some of my leisure hours next winter. I need hardly add that the terms you oVer (half proWts) are quite satisfactory.1 Of course I wish the engraving of Turner’s picture to be preWxed as a frontispiece to the new edition of the G. B., as it was in the Wrst edition. But please give instructions that the name of the picture ‘‘The Golden Bough’’ be engraved (not printed) below the picture, and further that beneath one corner of it the words ‘‘J. M. W. Turner pinxit’’ be engraved in small letters. I particularly wish that the title and the artist’s name should be engraved not printed. Printed letters below a plate look mean. As to the style of the letters, I suppose that must be left to the engraver. But I think I should prefer capitals in this style THE GOLDEN BOUGH but of course a good deal smaller. The painter’s name would be in the sort of letters I have put it in above. Forgive me for being meddlesome about details, but I like to have everything down to the least detail, well done and in good taste. I wish the book to be beautiful as well as good. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer BL 1. He never did. The letter bears a note, in Macmillan’s hand: ‘J. G. Frazer, St Augustine’s Confessions. Does not pledge himself to do the work, but if he does, accepts terms of half proWts.’ The sudden appearance of St Augustine amid the publishing details of The Golden Bough illustrates how Frazer always thought of himself as a literary man as well as a scientiWc researcher; he frequently broke away from scholarship to indulge in belles-lettres as recreation.

To Solomon Schechter, 22 September 1900 Inch-ma-home My dear Dr Schechter, I was very sorry this afternoon, when I called at your house, to Wnd that you had gone to Ramsgate. I much wished to see you to hear from yourself how you are and to say goodbye, for we start in a week or less. I am afraid we

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shall not see you till after our return next year. But we shall hope to get news of you from time to time either from you or Mrs Schechter. I was truly sorry, as you may know, to learn of your illness and to hear that the doctor thinks it may be better for you to winter in the south. But I understand that he considers this would probably set you quite up, as it did himself, when he was troubled with a similar complaint. It would be well worth going away from an English winter if you came back perfectly cured, as there would seem to be every prospect of your doing. I know that the expense is a serious consideration, so forgive me for saying that if a hundred pounds would be a convenience to you it is heartily at your service, and you need have no scruple in making use of it, as we can well spare it and could not use it better than to help a friend and a scholar. So do not hesitate. I know perfectly that you would be quite as ready to help me if I needed help and you could give it. I trust that you are progressing steadily in the Wne air of Ramsgate. Please write me in any case and tell me your plans. I would have been over to see you sooner, but have been hard pressed with passing my book through the press. It is nearly oV my hands, but some of the Reader’s queries will have to follow me to Switzerland. A copy of the book will be sent you as soon as it appears, which will not be before November and may be as late as December. I trust you will approve of the book in its new and enlarged form. There are things in it which are likely to give oVence both to Jews and Christians, but especially, I think, to Christians.1 You see I am neither the one nor the other, and don’t mind knocking them both impartially. But they will hardly thank me for it. I was sorry that I had not any of Burton’s books to lend you. I have never possessed any of them. If we had been staying in Cambridge over winter and you are to be absent from it, my wife and I would have missed you both, for we know that we have not truer friends in Cambridge than you and Mrs Schechter. My wife is not in or would join me in kindest regards. Your aVectionate friend J. G. Frazer Jewish Theological Seminary 1. Frazer was not merely ‘not a Christian’, but in truth actively anti-Christian. The prime exhibit in this regard is his reinterpretation of Purim in the 2nd edn. First, he proposes Purim as a member of the set of festivals based on the death-and-resurrection fertility pattern that he sees as the primary motive force in the religions of the ancient eastern Mediterranean. Having thus oVended the Jews, he then moves on to the Christians. On the basis of his reconstruction of Purim, he conjectures that at Passover the Jews were in the habit of drafting two prisoners to enact the roles of Haman (the mock-king who is killed) and Mordecai (the true king who is enthroned) in the passion play that lies at the heart of the festival. He then suggests that Jesus is both the king who is killed and also the king who returns. Not surprisingly, this discussion elicited angry comment


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from both Jewish and Christian reviewers. In the antepenultimate volume of the 3rd edn., The Scapegoat (pp. 412–23), Frazer, in a characteristically ambivalent gesture, retracted the passage (‘The CruciWxion of the Christ’) as based on insuYcient evidence, but reprinted it none the less.

To Baldwin Spencer, 12 November 1900 Hotel Beau-Se´jour, Gersau, Lake of Lucerne My dear Spencer, I am delighted to hear from your telegram and your letter of October 4th1 (which has just reached me) that all the arrangements for the expedition are progressing so well.2 The two Governments have behaved well, and Mr Syme’s liberal oVer seems to show that the Australian public is taking the matter up.3 The news will be welcome in scientiWc circles in England, where our appeal to support the petitions met with an even wider response than I had expected. By the same post which brought your letter this morning I received from Dr Hill (Master of Downing College) some extracts from the Australian press referring to the expedition. I quite understand that you will both be working under much greater diYculties than before, and that it would be unreasonable to expect such full information about the tribes whom you will visit as you obtained about the Central tribes among whom Gillen had resided so long and whom he knew so intimately. But the introductions you will get from your old friends will doubtless be a great help to securing the conWdence of their neighbours, and your knowledge of the customs and ways of thought of the natives will stand you in good stead. I have no doubt the results obtained will be most valuable and will be well worth the exertions and hardships undergone in securing them. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are rendering an immense service to science; this work is probably, without any exception that I can think of, the most important that could be undertaken in anthropology at the present time. It would be impertinent in me to tell you what to look for. You both know that well enough. Everything is important. As you know, even apparently trivial details may turn out to be of great signiWcance. So get everything you can and despise nothing. Remember your conjecture as to the reason of subincision and look out for anything in that direction that may throw light on that and similar mutilations, which all probably hang together. The explanation of one such custom might furnish, or at least lead to, the explanation of all. The connection of initiation ceremonies with puberty, and of both with totemism are things to be kept in mind. Some of the Americans

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think that the personal totem, acquired in a dream at puberty, may be the origin of totemism in general. Any evidence of this in Australia? I hope the new edition of the G. B. may reach you before you start. It should be out next month, and as it contains much fresh matter it might possibly suggest to you some fresh things to look out for.4 Compared to you and Gillen, I feel shamefully indolent and idle, spending a whole winter away from my work. But the doctor has recommended it for my wife’s health, and I have brought a good many books with me and hope to get through a fair amount of reading. We have been six weeks in Switzerland. Tomorrow we start for Rome, where we think of spending the winter. I shall Wnd plenty there to interest me at least, if not to study. But I Wnd mere archaeological remains, even of Greece and Rome, comparatively uninteresting beside the study of human beliefs and customs. My wife joins me in very kind regards, and with our united best wishes for your success in all respects. I am yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum 1. Either a letter of 4 Oct. is missing or else Frazer has misdated Spencer’s letter of 4 Sept. On 4 Sept. Spencer was mainly concerned with the costs of Wnding a replacement for himself at the university for the year and the costs of the expedition itself. 2. The second Spencer–Gillen expedition, to the tribes of north central Australia. 3. David Syme (1827–1908), a leading Australian newspaper proprietor, who had supported Spencer’s work and invited the public to contribute to help defray the costs of the expedition. 4. From this and other similar references, there can be little doubt that Frazer had assumed the position of the guiding intellectual spirit behind the expedition, and that Spencer and Gillen, his great admirers, had willingly accepted it.

Part III The Third Edition, 1901–15

It is now a truism among historians that the quarter-century in Europe before the First World War was the seedbed for the various artistic and intellectual movements that are now known, in shorthand, as modernism. Within this cultural complex, one common element or characteristic of that generation is the personal courage of many of the pioneers (Freud, Picasso, Scho¨nberg, de Saussure, Frank Lloyd Wright, Isadora Duncan) in pushing into artistic and conceptual territory that went beyond the boundaries of what was then regarded as the decent, the thinkable, or the doable. Although it would be absurd to claim that Frazer was personally ‘transgressive’, it is nonetheless undeniable that he was regarded by artists and intellectuals as well as ordinary readers among his contemporaries as a subversive thinker. Especially after the First World War, his inquest into the origins and meaning of the spiritual foundations of Western civilization was read as a corrosive and far-reaching indictment of religion as a pillar of social authority. (Because Lilly Frazer had diligently overseen the translation of the second edition of The Golden Bough, Frazer was well known and well regarded in France as well as in the Anglophone world.) Even if one dismisses his sometimes simplistic rationalism and his relatively uncritical use of the comparative method, at a minimum one may argue that the lasting value of his work is to be found in the reverberant images and metaphors—the dying god, the king of the wood, the wasteland—that have become part of the vocabulary and feeling-tone of educated discourse.1 The 1 His keenest, indeed most extravagant, advocate by far was the American literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, who in The Tangled Bank (New York: Atheneum, 1962) installed Frazer in the top tier alongside Darwin, Marx, and Freud as one of the prime architects of modern consciousness. Another staunch defender, if not one willing to go quite so far, was the Canadian intellectual historian and philosopher of science I. C. Jarvie in The Revolution in Anthropology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964).

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The Third Edition, 1901–15

use made of The Golden Bough by T. S. Eliot in ‘The Waste Land’ (1922) is only the best-known example of the fact that in the 1910s and 1920s he was taken seriously by all the leading creative artists in the English-speaking world.2 The period 1901 to 1915, the interval between the second and third editions of The Golden Bough, then, represents the fullest development of his thought; the sad fact is that most of his post-war books merely recycled the ideas of his earlier work in diVerent forms. The two years following the publication of the second edition in December 1900 mark something of a lull in Frazer’s normal life of non-stop industry. Indeed, they are not merely quiet, but they seem to show Frazer, ordinarily the most focused of men, at something of a loss as to where to go and what to do. On the one hand, we Wnd him writing to George Macmillan saying that he is eager to get back to work after the holiday in Rome, with the task at hand of course a further revision of The Golden Bough in the light of new information that was continuing to appear. (Macmillan was not well pleased, because as soon as a third edition was mooted, sales of the second were bound to suVer.) On the other hand, we also Wnd him at the same time suggesting other projects that are seemingly light-years away from The Golden Bough in genre and tone. Thus, in July 1900 (that is, when Frazer was reading Wnal proofs of the second edition), Macmillan sent him the German archaeologist August Mau’s descriptive book on Pompeii and suggested that Frazer might wish to write a companion volume on Athens. On the face of it this seems plausible: Pausanias had appeared only two years earlier, and the archaeological material was still fresh in Frazer’s mind. In reply Frazer thanks him for the volume and the suggestion but says that his abiding interest is in anthropology, ‘especially the early history of religion and institutions’; in the postscript to this very letter, however, he casually proposes that his next project be a translation of Augustine’s Confessions. The list of Frazer’s publications shows a pattern of periodic excursions from anthropology and the history of religion into either eighteenth-century belles-lettres or else to classical texts in which his anthropological knowledge could be employed to advantage. Augustine’s Confessions, however, Wts into neither of these categories. The proposal having been made, it languished, to be heard of no more. 2

See John B. Vickery, The Literary Impact of The Golden Bough (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). In the second and third decades of the twentieth century, (Sir) William Rothenstein drew portraits of those British artists, writers, and thinkers who in his view represented the keenest minds of the age. Frazer sat for him in 1916, and his portrait appears in Twenty-Four Portraits, First Series (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1920). Among the other twenty-three are Max Beerbohm, Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, Edward Elgar, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells.


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Two years later, however, in October 1902, although he continues to gather material steadily for the third edition, he implies to Macmillan once again that the new Golden Bough can wait because he has decided that his next book should be neither classical nor anthropological but historical: a translation of a series of accounts of early encounters between French and Spanish travellers and explorers and the North American Indians. Although Frazer had certainly read these contact narratives years earlier (because he read everything of an ethnographic kind), it is also true that the subject of all his work to this point had been threefold: the folklore of the European peasantry (especially in the Wrst edition), the religions of the ancient eastern Mediterranean, and the beliefs and behaviour of the Australian Aborigines (especially in the second edition). Comparatively speaking, the Americas had received only glancing attention. This idea was not as evanescent as the Confessions because Frazer went so far as to sign a contract to prepare the book, and then it too simply dropped oV the publishing map, to be heard about no more.3 It is at this time (1902) too that the letters mention a visit to the Wiesbaden clinic of the well-known German ophthalmologist and eye surgeon Dr Hermann Pagenstecher (1844–1932), the Wrst intimation of the worrying eye trouble that would beset him increasingly in the years to come. Another feature of Frazer’s life during the years on either side of the turn of the century is a marked philo-Semitism.4 This is not to say that he had been particularly anti-Semitic in his earlier years—his admiration, already noted, for Heinrich Heine as a Jewish writer is evidence of that—only that he had probably shared unthinkingly in the endemic prejudice against Jews that disWgured British life throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this case it is possible to point to a speciWc source of Frazer’s positive turn toward the Jewish world: namely, his close friendship with Solomon Schechter (1847–1915), the distinguished Jewish scholar who was then lecturer in Talmudic at Cambridge. He had met Schechter in the early 1890s through Robertson Smith, both of whom were Semitic scholars attached to Christ’s College. It was thus a great loss to Frazer when Schechter decided to leave Cambridge in 1902 to become the Wrst chancellor of the new Conservative rabbinical seminary in New York, the Jewish Theological Seminary. Perhaps characteristically, in view of his lifelong immersion in text, Frazer’s expression of interest in Judaism took the form of the study of the Hebrew language, his goal being the ability to read the Hebrew Bible. In furtherance of this aim, in 1904–5, he enrolled as one-quarter of a select private beginners’ class, taught by the Regius Professor of Hebrew, Revd Robert H. Kennett, the 3 4

The contract was discovered in the Macmillan corporate archives, in Basingstoke. See Robert Ackerman, ‘J. G. Frazer and the Jews’, Religion, 22 (Apr. 1992), 135–50.

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other students being Jane Ellen Harrison, F. M. Cornford, and A. B. Cook. His classmates soon dropped out, but Frazer persevered; reading the Hebrew Bible soon became his standard recreation, and later led to several major publications, most notably the three volumes of Folk-Lore in the Old Testament (1918). He may have continued to think highly of contemporary Jews and Judaism, but the ancient variety soon became grist for his ethnographic mill. His Hebrew classmate Arthur Bernard Cook (1868–1952) came to Wgure importantly in the middle of the Wrst decade of the new century. Cook, a classical archaeologist generally regarded as among the most erudite men in Cambridge (though only a lecturer at Queens’ College), had been a friend for some time. The two men came together as a result of a long, acute, and strongly critical review of the second edition of The Golden Bough that Cook published in 1902.5 At that point in his life at any rate Frazer was open to receiving new ideas, and he always thought of himself as the servant of the facts, even if such service meant that from time to time a long-held theory had to be discarded. On the other hand, in view of the sensitive territory on which he was treading, with some justice he saw most of his critics as either prejudiced from the outset and therefore unable or unwilling to give a fair hearing to his ideas, or else self-seeking and/or vindictive, which is to say that there was usually good reason to take no notice of them. Cook, however, was none of these and could not be easily dismissed. Despite the serious objections raised in the review, Frazer thought that he might be able to change Cook’s mind by explaining his ideas more fully. Over the course of a number of long face-to-face meetings starting in December 1902, this is exactly what happened. Remarkably, not only did Cook come round to Frazer’s point of view, but he then proceeded to display the ardour of a convert in his advocacy of the Frazerian position. This about-face led to a stream of articles that in time came to constitute the germ of his three-volume encyclopaedic Zeus (1914–40), in which he brought together everything— historical, archaeological, epigraphic—that had come down to us from the ancient world about the father of the gods.6 Just as the collaboration with Frazer gave Cook the occasion and impetus to do his best work, so it furnished Frazer—unfortunately for the last time in his career—with the intellectual whetstone that he needed, and led to the book that represents the 5

See A. B. Cook, ‘The Golden Bough and the Rex Nemorensis’, Classical Review, 16 (1902), 365–80. 6 ‘Zeus, Jupiter and the Oak’, Classical Review, 17 (1903), 174–86, 268–78, 403–21; 18 (1904), 75–9, 325–8, 360–75. ‘The European Sky God’, Folk-Lore, 15 (1904), 264–315, 364–426; 16 (1905), 260–332.


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furthest development of his thought, Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship (1905).7 To understand what the Lectures represent, it is worth rehearsing brieXy the substance of Cook’s critique.8 His criticisms were essentially of two kinds. The Wrst was formal: he thought it a serious error on Frazer’s part to have tied his analysis of ‘primitive’ religion to the strange rite that took place in the grove outside Nemi. Because he chose to insist on that connection and to use the rite as a rhetorical device to hold together the loose structure of The Golden Bough, Frazer, even given his tendency to extend his argument generously by speculative association, could and did discuss only those matters that were raised at, or could be inferred from, Nemi. Cook believed that Frazer would have been better advised to put forward a general theory of religion and discard the admittedly picturesque scene in the grove. The second category of objections was substantive. Unlike so many of Frazer’s critics, Cook was not put oV by the fact that The Golden Bough was an extended tissue of conjecture. For him, this was bound to be the case in view of the fact that the book’s subject was essentially the ‘primitive’ worldview—how prehistoric peoples thought and felt—and that hard evidence was therefore always going to be at a premium, with inference and speculation Wlling in the many blanks. Any attempt of this kind at reconstructing the mental outlook of primitive people, however, should have two in-built limits. It had to be internally consistent, and it could not be based on assumptions that were themselves inherently improbable. He thought Frazer had erred on both counts, and the second half of his review was devoted in detail to substantiating that claim. When Frazer laid before him the information that he had gleaned from books, journals, and letters from Australia during the three years since the completion of the second edition, however, Cook changed his mind. There does not seem to have been a single epiphanic moment, but once he came round, then a great deal of evidence suddenly cohered to make it likely that the tree in the grove was indeed an oak and that the god indwelling in the oak was Virbius (a local version of Jupiter), to mention two propositions he had singled out for criticism. Once on board, Cook proceeded to contribute a large number of philological speculations about words and names to back up Frazer’s ethnographically derived thesis. To prevent themselves from getting carried away with enthusiasm, they submitted these guesses to their friend 7 Curiously, perhaps because the contents of these lectures became the nuclei of chapters in several of the volumes that would make up the 3rd edn., this book seems to have escaped the notice of virtually all writers on Frazer. Only Hyman (Tangled Bank, 203, 205, 236, 263) not only mentions it but appreciates its importance. 8 The discussion that follows is derived from Frazer, 198 V.

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Robert Conway, professor of Latin at Manchester, who dispatched a good number of them but, to their pleasure, supported others. Needless to say, both Frazer and Cook later used some of those that had received Conway’s approbation, but only in the letters is it possible to gain a sense of their exhilaration at the time. Frazer had delivered the substance of both editions of The Golden Bough as courses of lectures to limited intramural audiences at Trinity. This time, however, in keeping with his new if decidedly modest ‘celebrity’, he wrote a new book explicitly to be presented as lectures to the educated laity, this time at the Royal Institution, in London, before publication. In them he advances a new speculative theory concerning the origins and evolution of kingship. Once again we are in the sacred grove outside Nemi, but now the discussion is markedly diVerent from that of either the Wrst or second Golden Bough. The diVerences are obvious: he has dispensed with both the bough itself and the connection between the Norse god Balder and the mistletoe. (To abridge drastically, Frazer had argued that the bough itself was mistletoe, and that the weapon that killed Balder was a club fashioned from mistletoe.) That neither is required shows that they were essentially literary devices employed to hold the sprawling argument together. Their absence demonstrates that not only had Cook shifted his position towards Frazer, but that movement had taken place in the opposite direction as well. As he had laboured to get Cook to change his mind, so Cook had done likewise. Forced to justify his position to someone whom he respected, Frazer had been compelled to rethink the entire theoretical and rhetorical structure of The Golden Bough. Along with Cook, another scholar-friend who enters the narrative at this time and who could be relied upon to review Frazer’s books as they appeared, was the Oxford anthropologist R. R. Marett (1866–1943). From 1904 onwards, as Marett reviewed each of Frazer’s books, his constant theme was the shortcomings in Frazer’s psychology. Marett was one of a number of scholars in Britain and on the Continent engaged in developing a new critical social psychology, one based on something other than the old Lockean association of ideas, and applying it to primitive religion. They all rejected Tylor’s and Frazer’s intellectualist assumptions—that the primitive worshipping community should be understood as an assemblage of discrete minds, each independently thinking its own fully formed thoughts, and that the individual members of the congregation carried out an evaluation of religious doctrine to which each gave rational assent. Instead, their focus was on collective rather than individual phenomena, one that insisted on the importance of the interaction of the individual and the group, and one that took non-rational states of mind seriously rather than dismissing them as evidence of hysteria or simple foolishness. This is the background for the revelatory exchange of


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letters between them on the subjects of myth and ritual, and of Frazer’s relationship with Robertson Smith, an exchange which began on 11 May 1911. The other important event in Frazer’s life during this decade was an illfated move to Liverpool. As a foreigner and a person of cosmopolitan tastes, Lilly Frazer had never liked Cambridge, which she regarded as provincial and petty, and her increasing deafness isolated her still further from those around her. She especially disliked the rigid protocol of the university, which to her mind did not permit adequate recognition of her husband, who was low down on the status ladder—a mere college fellow, albeit an extraordinarily productive one. Thus, when he was approached in 1907 by the up-andcoming University of Liverpool and asked whether he would accept appointment to a new chair of social anthropology (the Wrst of its kind in Britain), she pressed him to say yes. Because Frazer loved Cambridge in general and Trinity College in particular, it must have taken a great deal of persuading to get him to agree to leave, but she did prevail, and leave they did. Virtually as soon as they arrived, however, he experienced an overwhelming wave of homesickness that did not lessen with the passage of time, and so, to his wife’s everlasting regret, they returned to Cambridge after less than a year. The double move was Wnancially ruinous, and while they lived in Liverpool his unhappiness prevented him from working; his professorial inaugural lecture is the sole product of the sojourn there. Not only was the brief sojourn in Liverpool an expensive personal folly, but the principal intellectual rationale for the move came to nothing as well. That was his notion that the professorship in the University of Liverpool, situated as it was in a cosmopolitan commercial city, would be an ideal platform from which to gain support for funding anthropological expeditions to study the fast-vanishing primitive peoples of the Empire. He had two speciWc ideas in mind, which he presented in his inaugural lecture: a third venture by Spencer and Gillen, this time to Western Australia, and an expedition by his friend, the Anglican missionary-ethnographer John Roscoe, to Uganda. But Spencer and Gillen were unable to go, and in any case the wealthy men of Liverpool were not interested in producing the necessary cash. The reference to the state of Frazer’s Wnances points to an aspect of his life that assumed increasing importance over time. Although he would, from time to time, oVer a course of lectures at Trinity that consisted of reading the proofs of a forthcoming book, Frazer had no students of his own, and was never a university teaching oYcer at Cambridge. His academic income was always and only that of a college fellow, whose stipend rose and fell depending upon the fortunes of Trinity’s investments but generally ranged between £200 and £250 a year. In addition, his shares in the family business in Glasgow brought in approximately the same amount. These two sources together

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probably paid for little more than his annual expenditure on books, so plainly he needed a good deal more. Although he thought of himself as both a scientist and a man of letters, in mundane terms he was throughout his life the latter, depending principally on the income from the sale of his books. For this reason he had reason to be eternally grateful to his friend Edmund Gosse, the literary critic and, more relevantly here, secretary and prime mover of the Royal Literary Fund, who managed to secure a life-saving grant for him three times (as well as an annual Civil List pension) in the Wrst decade of the century. Had Gosse not been so providentially situated, it is hard to see where Frazer might have turned or what he might have done, wholly unWtted as he was by background and temperament to engage in the press of worldly aVairs. Happily for him, Gosse’s intervention and the upturn in his sales made this prospect moot. The move to Liverpool had been a costly failure, but the Frazers, with some diYculty—not many houses could accommodate his immense library— managed to reinstall themselves at relatively short notice in Cambridge. J. G. (as Lilly invariably referred to him in her letters) immediately set to work with a vengeance, doubtless spurred on by the time that he had lost during his virtual paralysis in Liverpool.9 The eruption of his pent-up scholarly energy reached its peak between 1908 and 1913, as the third edition seemed to cascade from the press. The year 1911 alone saw the publication of the two volumes of The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings (in March), Taboo and the Perils of the Soul (in May), and The Dying God (in October), followed in the next year by two volumes of Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, and then The Scapegoat and the two volumes of Balder the Beautiful in 1913. During these same Wve years, Frazer also found time in 1910 to produce four large volumes that surveyed and summarized all that was then known about Totemism and Exogamy, along with, in 1912, as a belletristic divertissement, an edition in two volumes of the Letters of William Cowper, his favourite English poet. Finally, during the academic year 1911–12 he wrote and delivered the GiVord Lectures in St Andrews, which were then published as the sizeable Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead in 1913. If one puts aside for a moment the combined intellectual and physical eVort involved in writing, with a steel pen, the approximately million and a half words or eight thousand pages that these volumes contain, the proofreading alone involved in this stupendous project would defeat most writers. (There are virtually no typographical errors in any of Frazer’s books, due in large part to the outstanding competence of the Wrm that printed all his books, 9 More accurately, relative inactivity; he did deliver and publish his inaugural address, The Scope of Social Anthropology (London: Macmillan, 1908).


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R. & R. Clark, of Edinburgh.) R. R. Marett’s encomium, already remarked, hailing Frazer as ‘an athlete of the study’, was no idle rhetorical Xourish. Once The Golden Bough interrupted and displaced the commentary on Pausanias as his intellectual focus, for the rest of his life Frazer seems to have regarded it in the same way as the knights of the Round Table regarded the Grail quest—as a task that, once assumed, one was not then free to reject. Thus, for him the psychological meaning of the day in December 1900 when the second edition was Wnally published may well have been that the task of revision leading to the third edition could now begin. Frazer had in fact started to rework the second edition even before the move to Liverpool, in the form of Adonis Attis Osiris (1906), an updated and expanded version of the discussion of the cults of the ancient eastern Mediterranean that had appeared as part of the second volume in 1900. In this sense, Adonis must always have been intended as part of the new, larger work, even if that third edition had only a shadowy existence in his mind at the time. Because Frazer started to rewrite the second edition in medias res, however, and then continued revising and expanding both backward and forward from that point, the question of the overall shape of the new edition, and speciWcally the place of Adonis within it, soon became pressing. It did so because, in 1907, he reissued Adonis, augmented by about 100 pages devoted to replying to the criticism that the Wrst edition had received, and included in it a cancel half-title page announcing it as a part of the third edition of The Golden Bough. But, in view of the fact that even Frazer himself by this point rather ruefully acknowledged the tendency of all his books to grow uncontrollably, the question arose about the volume number to be given to Adonis within the larger framework when no one knew or could know the Wnal dimensions of that framework. Lilly Frazer came up with the solution, suggesting that the new edition be divided into numbered parts rather than volumes, so that the new volumes, as completed, needed only to be assigned to the appropriate part. Thus, the title page of the 1907 revised Adonis described the book as Part IV of the third edition. Along with Adonis and the inception of the third edition, another notable feature of 1907 was the long essay entitled ‘Folk-Lore in the Old Testament’ that Frazer contributed to the Festschrift volume in honour of E. B. Tylor.10 It represented the Wrst fruits of his immersion in the Hebrew Bible, which seems to have occupied every moment of his leisure time—that he had any leisure at all is remarkable in itself—since he had begun to study the language in 1904. Frazer’s Hebrew Bible, now in the Wren Library at Trinity College, contains 10 ‘Folk-Lore in the Old Testament’, in N. W. Thomas (ed.), Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1907), 101–74.

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his notations each time he succeeded in traversing the entire text, only to begin again.11 Although he acknowledged his status as a novice in the ocean of Hebrew biblical scholarship, this did not stop him from speculating about the mentality of the ancient Hebrews, based on his immense comparative knowledge of myth and folklore. As already noted, he was undoubtedly philoSemitic so far as contemporary Jews and Judaism were concerned, but this did not mean that he suspended his anticlerical agenda. The Tylor essay shows that he had marked for special attention those elements that to him, at any rate, demonstrated that the ancient Hebrews were just as ‘primitive’ in their mind-set as their Semitic neighbours who worshipped Adonis, Attis, and Baal.12 The essay became the germ of Folk-Lore in the Old Testament of 1918, to be discussed below. When Frazer’s homesickness reached the point where Lilly felt that she had to relent and agree to return to Cambridge, she seems to have extracted a promise from her husband that once the third edition was published, they would at last leave the town and the university that she so disliked. She got her wish, for in December 1913, with the publication of the two volumes of Balder the Beautiful, the third edition was at last complete, and in the halcyon months before the outbreak of war the Frazers left Cambridge and moved to London. True, the important twelfth volume, containing the bibliography and index, remained to be completed—this was duly accomplished in April 1915—but when Frazer turned 50 on New Year’s Day 1914, he must have regarded the long shelf of volumes in green boards that represented twenty-Wve years of work with some satisfaction. The Golden Bough was Wnished. The larger intellectual world agreed that Frazer had achieved something monumental, and demonstrated that recognition with public acclaim. On 22 June Frazer received a knighthood. Ten weeks later the war broke out, and everything changed.

To George A. Macmillan, 23 December 1900 Hotel Printemps, Rome My dear Macmillan, I am much pleased with the outward form and appearance of my book in its new shape. It is in all respects entirely to my mind, and I wish to thank you for enabling me to clothe my thoughts in so very handsome a dress. The work 11

Frazer’s Hebrew Bible is TCC Adv. c.21:20–3. For a modern study of this theme, see Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, The Savage in Judaism (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1990). 12


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seems to me eminently worthy of Messrs Clark’s high reputation as printers. When you write to them, you might mention, if you please, how thoroughly satisWed and pleased I am with the way they have done their part. I look forward, as you know, to writing many more books, and I desire nothing better for them than they should be published by Messrs Macmillan and printed by Messrs Clark. I trust that for both our sakes my book in its new form may prove a Wnancial success. Professor William James of Harvard is staying at our hotel and we have the pleasure of seeing a good deal of him and his wife.1 Having seen the book (The Golden Bough) he has expressed himself much interested in it and proposes that we should exchange our works, he giving me his Psychology and I giving him The Golden Bough. He proposed indeed to give me all his works in exchange for my one book, but naturally I could not consent to such generosity. Will you therefore be so good as to direct a copy of my book to be sent to Professor William James, Hotel Printemps, Via Veneto B, Rome, and to charge it to my account? I have seen Mr Rushforth several times and am glad to hear that he has secured good rooms for the British School. I have made the acquaintance of Signor Boni, who is excavating the Forum with such remarkable results.2 He is a man of wonderful energy and enthusiasm, and of a very simple and amiable character. I wonder if you could get him to write a work on the history and topography of the Forum? As the centre of Roman life the Forum interests so many classes of students, and our knowledge of it has been immensely extended and in some respects revolutionized by Signor Boni’s discoveries. I don’t know whether he would undertake such a work, but if he would, I think you would be well advised to publish it. It might perhaps form one of your series of archaeological handbooks. However, I much doubt whether Signor Boni would consent to write a systematic work on the subject until he has completely excavated the Forum, and that cannot be for a good long while yet. I was very glad to hear from Prof. Baldwin Spencer that his book has more than paid its expenses already. He and his colleague Mr Gillen will start in February to explore the unknown tribes further to the north, for which they have received leave of absence for a year. Spencer writes to me that he expects to collect as much new material as there was in his former book, and he hopes that your Wrm will publish it. I heartily hope so too. With all good wishes to Mrs Macmillan and yourself for Christmas and the New Year, I am, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer

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P.S. If you decide to approach Signor Boni on the subject I have suggested, it would be better not to do so through Prof. Lanciani,3 as the relations between them are strained. BL 1. Here are William James’s comments, part of a long, gossipy letter to his friend Frances Rollins Morse, of 25 Dec. 1900: ‘Our neighbors in rooms and commensaux are the J. G. Frazers—he of the ‘‘Golden Bough’’, ‘‘Pausanias’’, and other three- and six-volume works of anthropological erudition, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a sucking babe of humility, unworldliness and molelike sightlessness to everything but print; she is a deaf and lebenslustig cosmopolitan Frenchwoman, clever in all sorts of directions, a widow with a motherly heart, who has adopted him and nurses him. She is actually making him sit up, smile and take notice. He, after Tylor, is the greatest authority in England on the religious ideas and superstitions of primitive peoples, and he knows nothing of psychical research and thinks that trances, etc., of savage soothsayers, oracles and the like are all feigned ! Verily science is amusing! But he is conscience incarnate, and I have been stirring him up so that I imagine he will now proceed to put in big loads of work in the morbid psychology direction’ (I. K. Skrupskelis and E. M. Berkeley (eds.), The Correspondence of William James, 9 vols. (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2001), ix. 392–3; James’s emphasis). 2. Giacomo Boni (1859–1925), leading Italian classical archaeologist. 3. Rodolfo Lanciani (1847–1929), director of excavations and professor of Roman topography, University of Rome.

To Hermann Usener,1 4 January 1901 Hotel Printemps, Rome Dear Sir, I thank you for your kind letter and am glad that you were pleased to receive my book in its new and enlarged form. It gives me much satisfaction to learn that you hope soon to devote yourself entirely to the history of religion. The subject is of very great interest and importance, and the writers who treat of it are not always adequately equipped either with learning or judgment. I shall look forward with interest to your future contributions to a study which you have already done so much to advance and which, as it seems to me, hardly receives its due measure of attention in Germany at present. In saying this I refer to the early history of religion viewed from the comparative point of view. When you return to these studies, I hope that you may occasionally Wnd my book of some use in your researches. It is always a matter of surprise to me how German professors can combine so much teaching with so much original work. You in Germany seem to possess a power of work far surpassing that of our English scholars. For myself I am in


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the fortunate position of being able to devote all my time to research. Were I obliged to lecture, I should probably Wnd no time to write. Again thanking you for your kind letter, I am dear Sir, with much respect, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer I am spending this winter very pleasantly with my wife in Rome. The excavations now being carried out in the Forum are most interesting. My future address in Rome will be care of Miss Wilson 118 via Sistina. Universita¨tsbibliothek, Bonn 1. Hermann Usener (1834–1905), German classical philologist and historian of ancient religion.

From E. Sidney Hartland to J. G. Frazer, 23 February 1901 Highgarth, Gloucester Dear Dr Frazer, Very many thanks for your postcard. The letter I have received is from Dr Roth, who wrote that book on the Queensland aborigines.1 The two principal points in which I thought you would be interested were these. He announces the discovery of another tribe, ‘‘the lowest of the lowest blacks he has hitherto met,’’ who believe in parthenogenesis, or practically so. ‘‘Conception by the male is not generally recognised among human beings, but is among animals.’’ And he has a theory of the origin of taboo in the will of the strongest: a crude theory, perhaps, though it may be applicable to some of the numerous subjects we include under the general term taboo. I have had several letters from him. He will not allow me to make use of the information in print, for the suYcient reason that he is an oYcial of the government and that all his information is the property of the government and to be published by it. But there is no reason why you should not read this letter, and when you return I will send it to you. I need not say with what interest I have read the new Golden Bough, or how glad I am that you have ‘‘spoken out’’ in your preface and other passages. The chapter on the Saturnalia is fascinating in the extreme. But are the Acts of St Dasius within measurable distance of authenticity? I suspect all martyrologies. I am venturing to reiterate in Man my views of the ceremony in the cella Jovis, the Sin-Eater etc.2 But I think you have made a good case about

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the cairns. I am much honoured by your adoption of my suggestion as to the distinction between sympathetic and mimetic magic. It is often diYcult to draw the line between the two, yet there would seem a substantial diVerence of method, though sympathy may be the foundation of both. Yes, Haddon will make an excellent President for the Anthrop. Institute. But I wanted him for the Folklore Society. However, I hope he will not disdain that later on. You are much to be envied in passing a winter and spring in Italy; but you are having a good dose of cold. The last time I was in Rome I went to see the sacred Wre kindled on the morning after Good Friday at St Peter’s. You probably know that it is now done with a match! But the Xint and steel are put on the table, an interesting survival. I dare say you have seen it. Yours sincerely, E. Sidney Hartland TCC Add. MS b.36: 34 1. Henry Ling Roth (1855–1925), Australian anthropologist and man of letters. Roth’s book is Ethnological Studies among the North-west-central Queensland Aborigines (London: Macmillan, 1897). Roth also wrote the standard work on the Aborigines of Tasmania. 2. See the abstract of the presidential address which Hartland delivered to the Folk-Lore Society in Jan. 1901, in Man, 1 (1901), 27–8, no. 21.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 18 March 1901 Inch-ma-home Dear Mr Hartland, Thank your for your letter with its account of some of Roth’s discoveries. I should be glad to read his own letter and will carefully return it to you. I am obliged to you also for calling my attention to the two points in the G.B. We have returned unexpectedly and unwillingly from Italy to England.1 The weather is detestable. Baldwin Spencer writes to me on Feb. 4th that the start of the expedition has been delayed through a terrible drought in Central Australia, which makes the country inaccessible. He and Gillen are hoping and praying (?) for rain. What is the Good Spirit about? Ask Lang to put in a good word with him in his prayers. I am sure that the Good Spirit would turn a deaf ear to the like of you and me, but the eVectual fervent prayers of a righteous man like Lang might do much.2 If the drought continues, Spencer proposes to go


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north by steamer to Port Darwin and start southwards (I suppose to gain time and let the deity get his water-works in order), though this would entail the disadvantage of working from the unknown to the known, instead of vice versa. I have received an interesting paper from E. Tregear on the animistic notions of the Maoris in regard to the sweet potatoe (sic) and its cultivation.3 The beliefs and customs are closely akin to those described in the G. B. The paper was meant to be used in the new edition of my book, but came too late. I hope to publish it in the Anthrop. Journal or in Man. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC b.36: 35 (TS) 1. They returned because their tenant in Cambridge suddenly decided to terminate his tenancy, three months early. 2. Frazer’s sardonic tone arises from the fact that Lang had already begun to show more sympathy to religion in general and Christianity in particular, and in his last years he admitted that he was once again a Christian: see Frazer, 153. 3. Edward Tregear (1846–1931), New Zealand anthropologist. His paper is ‘The Spirit of Vegetation’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 36 (ns 4) (1901), 157–9.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 27 March 1901 Inch-ma-home Dear Mr Hartland, I return Roth’s letter with many thanks. I am very glad to hear that he has so much fresh material and that he wishes to publish it soon. Do all you can to keep him to that resolution. In case the Queensland Government should make diYculties about the publication, we might memorialise them on the subject. I suggested this to Haddon, and he is going to move the Anthropological Institute to do it, and at the same time to ask the Queensland Government for copies of the unpublished anthropological reports on New Guinea. Roth’s theory of the origin of tabu seems to be identical with the one which my friend Henry Jackson of Trinity has maintained for years. I have argued against it with him, but perhaps there is something in it after all. He explains totemism in the same way—the totem is the mark which the strong man puts on the people whom, and the things which, he appropriates to himself. I am

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not sure that I represent his theory exactly, but I think that roughly speaking it amounts to this. I have to thank you for your kind and courteous review of my book in ‘‘Man.’’1 A few observations on it suggest themselves to me. What you say as to the argument (I should prefer to say the evidence) for the main theory hardly being advanced at all is quite true if by that you mean that no fresh evidence directly bearing on the Arician priesthood and conWrming my theory has been advanced. This could not be otherwise, since we know no more about the priesthood now than we did then, and it is hardly likely that we ever shall know more unless the fresh and more thorough excavations on the site of the temple, which my friend Comm[endatore]. Boni hopes to induce the Italian Government to undertake, should throw some unexpected light on the origin and meaning of the rule of the priesthood. In my book, both in the Wrst and second edition, I pointed out at the outset that in the absence of such new and direct evidence no explanation of the priesthood could ever be regarded as proven. So while you politely ‘‘hesitate to admit’’ that my main theory is proven, I say bluntly and without hesitation that it is not proven and from the nature of the case probably never will be. But a more or less probable explanation of the Arician custom may be sought for by means of the comparative method, and in this respect I consider that the probability of my explanation has been considerably strengthened by the fresh collateral (not direct) evidence given in the new edition, especially by the new evidence as to the Saturnalia aVorded by the Acts of St Dasius (as to the authenticity of which I shall speak presently). The new document proves, in my opinion, that the custom of annually putting to death a man as an embodiment of the spirit of vegetation was known and practiced [sic] by the ancient Italians, and the rule of the Arician priesthood was, according to my theory, simply one particular case of this custom. You misapprehend my Australian argument for the priority of magic to religion. That argument is not based on the customs of the Central tribes alone. My argument is that magic is everywhere in Australia and religion (as deWned by me) nowhere; hence regarding the Australians as the lowest savages known to us, I infer that magic precedes religion in the evolution of thought. You probably admit the universality of magic in Australia. Do you deny the absence of religion in the sense in which I use that word? The marks of religion, in my view of it, are prayer and sacriWce. Do you know of a single case of prayer or sacriWce reported, on trustworthy authority, from Australia? I cannot call one to mind. If you cannot, you are bound (it seems to me) to admit that magic and religion are not coextensive in the world, but that magic may and does (or rather did) exist over a continent without any admixture of genuine religion. A few Wrst approaches towards religion are reported from


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some parts of Australia and are reported too in a note of mine (which maddened Lang), but the thing itself (prayer and sacriWce oVered to spiritual beings) appears to be unknown. As to the Roman custom of nail-knocking you say that I have ‘‘neglected the important point that the wall into which the nail was fastened was that of a sacred building.’’ Now I have pointed out in my book that no ancient writer, so far as I am aware, says a word as to where the nail was knocked. It may have been knocked into the wall of the temple where the laws prescribing the custom was [sic] aYxed, or it may not. We simply know nothing about it. The view that it was knocked into the wall of the cella Jovis is merely an hypothesis, perhaps rather a misunderstanding, of modern writers. So far as I know, I was the Wrst to point this out. Previous writers down to Mr Warde Fowler had followed each other in the usual sheep-like manner, some of them perhaps without looking at the passages for themselves. In the circumstances I think you should hardly have again stated as if it were an unquestioned fact what is at best only a more or less probable hypothesis. As to the custom of nail-knocking in general, I have given no explanation which would cover all the cases, because it seemed to me that no such explanation was possible. The custom appears to be practised in diVerent places, with diVerent intentions, and I have only attempted to explain some, not all of them. To use your own words, but to apply them to you instead of to me, ‘‘It is forgotten that we cannot assume that the same motives have in all circumstances led to actions which bear an outward likeness to each other.’’ Again you say: ‘‘DiVerent trains of thought have produced similar rites.’’ I am so far from denying these excellent maxims that for the truth of them I am ready to go to the stake. But in my opinion you have forgotten them when you attempt to force (as it seems to me) a great mass of heterogeneous customs into a single mould; you have tried to open many and totally diVerent locks with the single key ‘‘communion.’’ This (forgive me for quoting you again) seems to me ‘‘a weakness which runs through much of ’’ your excellent work. I on the contrary appear to myself (how diVerently we strike each other) to be true to your principles on limiting my explanation to a certain number out of the whole mass of similar rites and leaving the others to be explained on a diVerent principle. As to the sin-eater, I did not discuss your funeral sponge-cake, Leichennudeln, &c., because here again I think you have treated disparate customs as if they were identical. This indeed you have practically admitted with regard to one of the instances in which you have laid particular stress, I mean the funeral at Market Drayton, where the sponge biscuits seem to have had just as much to do with the cannibalism as the Huntley and Palmer biscuits have, which are handed round at afternoon tea. In fact I can hardly regard your

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theory seriously. It appears to me rather a caricature than an application of the anthropological method, and I consider that I treated it in the most lenient manner possible when I described it mildly as ‘‘improbable.’’ I was strongly tempted to say something else, but I refrained. As to the closing up of the split in the ash-tree after the ruptured child has been passed through it, this seems to me precisely analogous to the Bornean custom of binding up the split in the wand after the mourners have passed through it; and as the latter custom is certainly not intended to impart the strength of the wand to the mourners, but rather to rid them of an evil (namely the ghost) which is clinging to them, so I take it was the former. The closing of the split in both customs is merely the shutting of the door in the case of the pursuer. I regret that in my book I did not give details as the date &c. of the MSS of the Acts of St Dasius. Two of the accounts (including the principal one) are found in the MSS of the eleventh century; the date of the third is not mentioned by Prof. Cumont.2 But the narrative is obviously a clumsy translation from the Latin, so that the original account is older (how much older we cannot precisely say) than these MSS. Prof. Cumont, after discussing the narrative, adds: ‘‘Ces derniers de´tails [as to the date], comme l’ensemble de la narration, me paraissent rendre indubitable que celle-ci a pour source premie`re, des documents oYciels. Je n’oserais cependant aYrmer que le re´dacteur de notre texte s’en soit directement servi, quoiqu’il semble avoir veću en Me´sie, et vraisemblablement a` Durostorum, certainement avant et sans doute longtemps avant la Wn du VIIe sie`cle. Il faut probablement admettre comme interme´diaire un texte ećrit peu de temps apre`s l’e´ve`nement, en latin.’’ After mentioning the new details as to the Saturnalia furnished by the document and noting how well they tally with the indications of classical writers, Cumont adds: ‘‘Toutes ces donneés [viz. the new data as to the Saturnalia] de notre rećit sont donc d’une authenticite´ indiscutable.’’ As to the narrative of the martyrdom itself he says: ‘‘La suite du rećit ne paraıˆt pas en geńe´ral moins digne de creánce que le de´but.’’ On both points I agree with Prof. Cumont, whose learning and judgment will probably be questioned by no one who knows his great work on Mithraic worship. As however you have questioned (gratuitously, as it seems to me) the authenticity of the Acts of St Dasius I shall write to Prof. Cumont and suggest that he should answer you himself in Man. He can naturally do this with an authority to which I can lay no claim. I am afraid that what I have said will as little alter your opinion as your criticisms have convinced me of the error of my ways. In fact I have probably wasted both your time and my own by writing this long letter. That is the usual result of controversy. It is not that I have no reply to make to criticism


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but that I do not think it worth while making it. My plan is simply to state my conclusions together with the facts on which they are based and to leave the matter there. Where writers of authority have adopted diVerent views and it might seem discourteous to pass them over in silence, I note them as brieXy as possible, sometimes adding (and sometimes not) my reasons for dissent. But I have a strong and I think growing dislike of controversy (apart from my opinion of its futility), and I try to reduce it to a minimum in my writings. Forgive me for being so tedious. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 36 (TS) 1. Man, 1 (1901), 57–60, no. 43. 2. Franz Cumont (1868–1947), Belgian historian of ancient religion and the great authority on Mithraism and the penetration of Eastern cults into Roman life. His note is ‘Note on the Acts of St Dasius’, Man, 1 (1901), 66–7, no. 53.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 30 March 1901 Inch-ma-home My dear Mr Hartland, How dangerous it is, speaking for myself, to trust to one’s memory and to write without one’s authorities open before one! My letter to you was written without having my book (the G. B.) beside me. As it happened, my copy of the book was in our luggage which was dispatched after us from Florence and only reached us last night. On looking into the G. B. this morning I learn, what I had forgotten, that Festus distinctly says that the Roman nail was knocked into the wall of a temple, and this with the coincidence of date mentioned in my note (vol. III p. 37) makes it so probable that the nail was knocked into the wall of the temple of Jupiter that I think you were justiWed in referring to the custom without alluding to the slight uncertainty which exists on the subject. When I wrote to you, I was thinking specially of Livy, and had forgotten Festus.1 Forgive me for my reproach; it was unmerited and recoils on myself. My memory is so bad that I never trust it, so to say, out of my sight. In writing for publication I never trust it at all, but always consult my authorities on every point before committing myself to paper. I did not like even writing a private letter to you without verifying my references to my own book at every step; but after waiting a while in vain for the luggage and

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the G. B. to arrive, I made bold to write about my book in its absence. This is the result! If you should detect more inconsistencies between my book and my letter, I think you may safely set them down to the same cause. I have received another lesson to shun controversy (even in a friendly letter) as I would the Devil (if I believed in him). With very many apologies to you, I remain, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 37 (TS) 1. Frazer deals with this in The Scapegoat (¼ The Golden Bough, ix), p. 67 n. 1–3.

From E. Sidney Hartland to J. G. Frazer, 31 March 1901 Highgarth, Gloucester Dear Dr Frazer, Very many thanks for your long and interesting letter of the 27th, and for the subsequent one which I received this morning. I take your friendly castigation in a meek and humble spirit; for I must confess to have written to some extent without reference to every single item as I wrote, but relying on my memory, having just completed the reading of your book. The allusion to the Australian evidence is an example. If I had looked at the passage while writing I should have seen that you relied on the general absence of religion in Australia, and not merely in the case of the Arunta. I have not had time, since receiving your letter, to look very far for evidence of religion in your sense among the Blackfellows. SacriWce of course is unknown. But is prayer? Mr Howitt quotes Gason as saying: ‘‘In times of severe drought I have witnessed them [the Dieri] calling upon Mura Mura to give them power to make heavy rainfall, crying out in loud voices the impoverished state of their country and the half-starved condition of the tribe in consequence of the diYculty in procuring food in suYcient quantity to sustain life.’’ XX Journ. Anthrop. Inst.: 91 and on the next page: ‘‘In the rare seasons which are too wet, the Dieri also have recourse to supplications to Mura Mura to restrain the rain, and Mr. Gason has seen the old men in a complete state of frenzy, believing that their ceremonies had caused Mura


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Mura to send too much of it.’’ If this be not prayer, what is it? Note too that this does not relate to the advanced south-eastern region, but to the dry central country, where the tribes are more backward.1 However, it may be admitted that on the whole magic is more developed than religion in your sense. But I am not sure that you are right in so limiting your deWnition. Prayer and sacriWce are worship: a more advanced form of what we Wnd in a rudimentary condition wherever man believes that he has relations with other beings than man, whether altogether imaginary, or much as what we call the lower animals, or the heavenly bodies. That rudimentary condition I think we Wnd in Australia. But the subject is too long for a letter. Then I have to confess, too, that I have myself tried to open too many locks with one key. I hope I may plead in extenuation that it is very tempting to do so, and that if nobody framed hypotheses that would not cover every case they were meant to do we should never ‘‘get any forrarder.’’ Of course this is no justiWcation: it is merely an excuse for my mistakes. I will not attempt controversy with you. I have the same wholesome sense of its uselessness as you have; though I should hardly regard a friendly discussion in a letter of points on which we are both anxious to reach accurate conclusions as a controversy. I will leave the cella Jovis, or whatever was the sacred wall, and the ash-tree ceremony to your consideration in the hope that the points I have put may sooner or later commend themselves to your judgment. But I must mildly protest against being thought to have questioned the authenticity of the Acts of St Dasius ‘‘gratuitously.’’ Those martyrdom legends are in general so utterly unworthy of belief that I should have thought they were regarded in general with universal suspicion, by everybody except devout fools, who swallow anything that tends to ediWcation. The story of St Dasius must be admitted to be an extraordinary one; and Prof. Cumont himself, from what you say, has doubts about part of it. In these circumstances I think it is asking no more than is fair to be put in possession of the grounds for accepting the authenticity of the main and essential incident. That is all I asked, as I think you will see if you refer again to my words. I am the more anxious to have the authenticity established beyond dispute, as so much of your Saturnalia chapter hangs on it. If it be established it will be a curious corroboration of that Abruzzian custom mentioned by Canon Pullen (?) to Grant Allen, or at least a curious coincidence.2 You will probably remember that Clodd got into hot water for repeating the statement in one of his Presidential addresses. Dr. [name omitted] was indignant, and Britten and the Catholic Truth Society (as if Catholicism and Truth were not mutually exclusive terms) waxed into a perfect fury. Grant Allen, telling me of that alleged custom long before

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Clodd mentioned it, expressed his suspicion to me that the Passion was a piece of periodical ritual in Judea. I don’t remember whether he mentions it in The Evolution of the Idea of God. But you will be interested in it as a guess at what you have now so fully worked out. Please caution Haddon. I don’t think it would be wise to memorialize the Queensland Government to publish Roth’s collections speciWcally. We have no business to know that he is making collections. If any memorial be sent, it should be couched in the most general terms. Ask for the publication of any information about the blacks and refer to the great value of Roth’s published work. But don’t allude to the fact which he has communicated in private letters that he has made and is making further collections. With kind regards, I am, Yours sincerely E. Sidney Hartland TCC Add. MS b.36: 38 (TS) 1. Samuel Gason was a trooper (policeman) in the Aboriginal areas who, starting in the 1880s, became interested in native rituals and ceremonies. His description of the natives pleading with ‘Mura Mura’ to send rain raised the question of whether their so doing could be construed as ‘religious’ or ‘magical’, in Frazer’s restricted sense of those terms. If Mura Mura was anything like a High God, then the natives seemingly had religion rather than magic, and could therefore not be placed at the foot of the evolutionary ladder. Not surprisingly, Frazer and Spencer dismissed Gason’s testimony, whereas Lang made much of it. It should be noted that Frazer had valued Gason’s testimony rather more highly when he was writing the 1st edn., before he had come to the clear distinction between magic and religion that he asserted starting with the 2nd edn.: compare the letter to Henry Jackson of 1 May 1888. 2. Grant Allen (1848–99), rationalist publisher and propagandist, author of The Evolution of the Idea of God (London: Grant Richards, 1897).

To E. Sidney Hartland, 2 April 1901 Inch-ma-home My dear Hartland, Shall we drop the formal Mr. and Dr? By the way I hate to be doctored. Many thanks for your frank and friendly letter, with the general principles and drift of which I cordially agree. I am glad you do not regard our correspondence as controversy. Neither do I. We are both anxious, I know, to get clearer views and a better grip of facts. You have helped me in your letter in both ways. The cases of prayer among the Dieri which you call my attention to are undoubted and extremely interesting. I had quite forgotten


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them (though I had read Howitt’s important article on the tribe), but I note them for reference in a new edition.1 Also what you say as to the distinction between religion and worship is very much to the point and helps to clarify my ideas on the subject. The excuse you give for trying to open too many locks with the same key is a good one, and I hope I may be allowed the beneWt of it when my own sins in that direction are reckoned up against me. Your caution as to the Acts of St Dasius was perhaps allowable and even laudable, considering the general discredit which attaches to such documents. But I do not think (and here I have the support of Prof. Cumont) that there is any reason to doubt the substantial accuracy both of the martyrdom and the custom described in the Acts of St Dasius. The account is so simple and circumstantial, so absolutely free from any tinge of the miraculous or (so far as one can judge) of exaggeration, that it makes on one a clear impression of truth. The particularity as to the day (both of the calendar month and of the moon) and the hour of the martyrdom is especially important as evidence of authenticity. The year is not mentioned, unless the expression [something omitted] be taken to signify the consulship rather than the reign of Maximian and Diocletian. But Cumont Wnds that the chronological indications apply exactly to the 20th November 303 A.D., a year in which Diocletian and Maximian were not only on the throne but held the consulship. I am much interested to learn that Grant Allen threw out a suggestion that the Passion may have been a piece of periodical ritual in Judea. I don’t know whether he has put this in his book The Evolution of the Idea of God, which I have not read, though he sent it to me. His kind, indeed almost enthusiastic appreciation of my work, was always grateful and encouraging to me, even though I could hardly help regarding it as exaggerated. It was ungrateful of me perhaps not to return his kindness by reading his book. Sometime I hope to do it. As to survivals of paganism in Italy, I got some curious information in Rome from Miss Roma Lister, who has helped Leland in collecting Italian folklore.2 She told me she had worked amongst the lowest and most ignorant peasantry of the mountains and found them thoroughly pagan with only a thin veneer of Christianity. She said it is certain that children have been murdered in order that their spirits should guard buried treasures. She referred particularly to one spot in the Campagna where this is known to have been done. I was told some little time ago that human sacriWces are said still to be secretly oVered in a cave in one of the Greek Islands. Stupidly enough I did not make a note of it at the time and am not sure who my informant was. I think he was a Cambridge man who had been travelling and studying with a scholarship in Greece. I will try to get the particulars from him. Of course he only reported the custom on hearsay. Our religious friends

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do not change their principles. They are only prevented at present from carrying them into practice by the police. Will they always be so prevented? I hope so, but do not feel sure of it. With kind regards and very many thanks for your letter, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer I will certainly caution Haddon in the way you suggest. I think you are right in what you say on the subject. P.S. If you read Lang’s last tirade against me in the Fortnightly for April3 I would ask you to mark particularly my words in vol. III p. 159 sq. compared with vol. II p. 26 and III 198. Of course on my theory the Zoganes represented both the king and a god, since the king was divine. The inconsistency which Lang Wnds between the view of the Zoganes as the king’s proxy and the view of him as a god does not exist. What the particular god was whom the king represented is a matter of detail on which I do not dogmatise. The same divine powers of generation and fertility seem to have been worshipped under many diVerent names both male and female all over Western Asia, and it was as embodiments of these powers that, on my hypothesis, both the king and his substitute were at diVerent times put to death. Please note also that on p. 159 (vol. III) I have quoted No¨ldeke4 to show that he assents to the plausibility or at least the possibility of Jensen’s theory of the Babylonian festival as the ultimate one. And my whole discussion shows that I regard Purim as having been in its origin (whatever it may be now) an essentially religious festival. Is it fair then of Lang to accuse me of entertaining contradictory propositions because No¨ldeke calls Purim secular and I call it religious? On the other hand I am inclined to think that he is right in saying that the CruciWxion even on my theory would not have contributed to the deiWcation of Christ, the original divinity of Haman being probably forgotten in the time of Christ. No doubt his execution would give more publicity to his teaching and by investing him with the dignity of a martyr would tend to gain many adherents. But that is quite a diVerent thing. So I am disposed at present to think that what I have said on this subject (vol. III pp. 195–98) should be struck out in a new edition. But this is a matter that requires reXexion, and perhaps discussion. When we meet (don’t trouble to write about it), I should be glad to know what you think about it.


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TCC Add. MS b.36: 39 (TS) 1. A. W. Howitt, ‘The Dieri and Other Kindred Tribes of Central Australia’, JAI, 20 (1891), 30–104. 2. Charles Godfrey Leland, Legends of Florence (London: David Nutt, 1895). 3. Andrew Lang, ‘Mr Frazer’s Theory of the CruciWxion’, Fortnightly Review, 69 (Apr. 1901), 650–62. 4. Theodor No¨ldeke (1836–1930), Orientalist at the University of Strasbourg. For more on this controversy, see Frazer, 248–50.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 19 April 1901 Inch-ma-home My dear Hartland, Cumont has sent me a very satisfactory note on the Acts of St Dasius for insertion in Man. He defends both the antiquity of the narrative and the probability of the Saturnalia custom by strong arguments. He is of course perfectly courteous to you. Indeed he begins by saying: ‘‘Je comprends d’autant mieux les doutes exprimeés par M. Hartland dans le Man que je les ai d’abord partageés moi-meˆme.’’ He also confesses that he had long hesitated to believe that a human victim could have been sacriWced in the fourth century A.D., but refers to some of the evidence which overcame his doubts. I did not know that Lang was going to publish a book on magic and religion, in which he will repeat his attacks on me.1 Had he written to me privately before publishing his criticisms I might have prevented some of the misapprehensions and consequent misrepresentations of my views which disWgure his articles, and which will probably disWgure his book. But though he used to write to me very often, I have not heard a word from him since the publication of my articles in the Fortnightly. On the whole I am not sorry for this, for controversy in letters might run away with as much time as controversy in print and perhaps be as fruitless in the end. If my book should go into a new edition, I shall probably try to express my views, where he has misunderstood them, more explicitly so as to guard against a similar misapprehension in the future. But it is probably impossible to Wnd language which somebody may not misunderstand and misrepresent. Jevons has not sent me his article in the International Monthly nor had I heard of it.2 Does he also regard me as a publican and a sinner who must be kept at arm’s length? By the way Tylor has not written to me, not even to acknowledge the receipt of the presentation copy of my book which I sent him. Is Saul also among the prophets?

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I could not of course vouch in any way for the accuracy of Miss Lister’s information. She wished to introduce me to a native witch, and I was anxious to be introduced, but it did not come oV. She could not Wnd the proper person. The best witch had unfortunately died shortly before my arrival. Miss Lister is the niece, I think, of a countrywoman of mine, a Baroness Rosenkrantz, in whose house I met her. The Baroness seems to dabble in spiritualism and to study crazy books on the universal sacred language and such like. There is absolutely no need for you to say anything in print about your review of my book. A reviewer may make a slip as well as an author, and only an unreasonably exacting person would wish him to go down on his knees and make a solemn recantation of every petty mistake he may have been guilty of. Pray don’t think of doing so in my case. I should not wish it. It would be making far too much of a triXe. With kind regards, Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 40 (TS) 1. Andrew Lang, Magic and Religion (London: Methuen, 1901). The book is a collection of his controversial pieces on the history and meaning of religion, with chapters directed against others of his adversaries besides Frazer. Nearly two-thirds of its 300 pages, however, are given over to a scorching critique of every major contention in the 2nd edn. of The Golden Bough. The entire work is measured and found wanting in its every particular. 2. Frank B. Jevons was a Christian modernist who tried to argue that the Wndings of the new science of comparative religion did not undermine Christianity. Although he was a member of its editorial board, he did not publish anything in the International Monthly or its successor, the International Quarterly.

To Theodor No¨ldeke, 11 May 1901 Inch-ma-home Dear Sir, Will you pardon a stranger for addressing you? My excuse, or one of my excuses, for intruding on you is that you lately did me the honour (which I sincerely appreciate) of reading my book ‘‘The Golden Bough.’’ Another excuse is that I have the good fortune to be a friend of your pupil, Prof. A. A. Bevan, of this University, and that I had the honour and high privilege of being a friend of W. Robertson Smith, whose death I shall never cease to lament. His loss to me is irreparable.


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With your kind permission my friend Prof. Bevan shewed me the two letters which you wrote to him about my book. I greatly value the kind things you say about it, and I thank you for your outspoken criticisms, which have not oVended me in the least. On the contrary I am very glad that you wrote quite freely without any thought that I should see your letter. I will not occupy your time by replying to your criticisms. I will only say that I have made a record of them and shall hope to proWt by them if a new edition of my book should be wanted. My friend Dr J. S. Black (joint editor of the ‘‘Encyclopaedia Biblica’’) has sent me a recent discussion of the Book of Esther by H. Winckler (Altorientalische Forschungen, Dritte Reihe, Band I, Heft I). There is a point in it which interests me much, and I venture to ask your opinion on athB it. On p. 4 Winckler says that the Persian deities Vmano´B and Anad mentioned by Strabo pp. 512, 533 (ed. Casaubon) have been identiWed by atoy F. C. Andreas with Haman and his father Hammedatha (reading Amad for Anad atoy on p. 512). Winckler does not mention where (if anywhere) this identiWcation has been published, but Prof. Bevan tells me that you are acquainted with F. C. Andreas and correspond with him, so that perhaps you may be able to inform me on this point. If the identiWcation is correct (about which I should greatly like to have your opinion), it seems to me to furnish a conWrmation of the theory of Purim which I have put forward in my book. For observe that Strabo is speaking of the great sanctuary at Zela in Pontus, which stood upon a ‘‘mound of Semiramis,’’ whose identity with Ishtar (Esther) was made highly probable by Robertson Smith. The Persian goddess Anaitis who was worshipped at Zela in Strabo’s time had doubtless succeeded to the position formerly occupied by Ishtar at this place; probably the old worship went on as before with nothing but a change of name due to the Persian conquest. Now, if Andreas is right in his identiWcations, it seems to follow that at Zela both Esther (Ishtar) and Haman were worshipped down to the time of Christ, and as we know from Strabo that the Sacaea was celebrated at this very sanctuary, the identiWcation of Purim with the Sacaea becomes almost certain. Further, one of the strongest objections which has been made to my theory of the CruciWxion and its eVects would be removed. It has been objected that even if Christ had been cruciWed as Haman, this could not have helped to spread his religion in Asia Minor, since no one then any longer regarded Haman as a deity. But if Andreas is right, Haman was worshipped as a deity down to the time of Christ in that very part of Asia Minor (eastern Pontus) where we know from Pliny that Christianity had struck Wrm roots by the end of the Wrst century. This, you will see, squares exactly with my theory that the cruciWxion of Christ in the character of Haman materially


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contributed to secure his recognition as a god among those Asiatic peoples who were already familiar with the conception and the ritual of the death and resurrection of a god, whether he was called Tammuz, Adonis, Haman or what not. I should be deeply interested to learn your opinion on all this, and very grateful if you would honour me by communicating it to me. With many apologies for troubling you, believe me, dear Sir, With great respect, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer Tu¨bingen Universita¨tsbibliothek Md 782/A70

To Edward Clodd, 22 June 1901 Inch-ma-home My dear Clodd, You see I am taking the liberty of dropping the ‘‘Mr,’’ and bet that you will not ‘‘doctor’’ me any more. I write to ask, on behalf of Aldis Wright, whether you happen to know in what year an old Danish ship was found near Aldeburgh, and where exactly the remains of it are now to be seen. Fitzgerald alludes to it in an unpublished letter of 1882, which Aldis Wright is including in the new volume of Fitzgerald’s letters which he is bringing out.1 He is anxious to be able to mention in a note the exact year in which the ship was found, and the exact place (not merely town or village, but house) where the remains are preserved. If you could furnish him with this information he would be much obliged. The volume is otherwise ready for publication, but the publication has been delayed by the diYculty Aldis Wright has found in clearing up these two points. I thought it just possible that you might be able to help him, so undertook to write to you. Yours very truly J. G. Frazer I see that [Clement] Shorter’s new magazine is to be called the Tatler after all. Good luck to it and to him!


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What did you think of the shower of brickbats hurled at me in Folk-Lore?2 I am given to understand that the thing was intended as a compliment. An odd sort of compliment! The fewer I get of such, the better I shall be pleased. However, I will not retort in kind. In the words of the poet ‘‘Nor should the scientiWc gent who happens to be meant Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.’’3

Though I confess it is rather trying to be set up as a sort of Aunt Sally for other scientiWc gents to heave their half-bricks at. However, I propose to give a practical example of the Christian virtues of meekness and patience under persecution, or rather I will try not to be too much puVed up by the compliments so delicately disguised under the form of censure and vituperation. Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. William Aldis Wright (1831–1914), literary scholar and fellow of Trinity, was in the process of editing the letters of his friend Edward Fitzgerald: More Letters of Edward Fitzgerald (London: Macmillan, 1901). 2. Frazer is referring to the fact that the journal commissioned no fewer than eight reviews by leading anthropologists and folklorists of the new Golden Bough: Folk-Lore, 12 (1901), 219–43. 3. Bret Harte, ‘The Society upon the Stanislaus’, in Poems by Bret Harte (London: Routledge, 1908), 41–3. Thanks to Chris Stray for this attribution. These two lines of doggerel were written between 1896 and 1901, which shows that Frazer somehow found time to read all sorts of other things besides anthropology while writing The Golden Bough.

To Theodor No¨ldeke, 26 June 1901 Inch-ma-home My dear Sir, I am ashamed of having left your kind and courteous letter so long unanswered. One reason for my delay was that I have been waiting to obtain fresh light, if possible, on the point about which I consulted you. I have consulted Professors Cowell, Cumont etc., but without obtaining any very deWnite results. Still this does not excuse me for not writing sooner to thank you sincerely for your letter. The kind words you say about my book are much valued by me, and go far to console me for a good deal of adverse criticism bestowed on me in the English press. There was a friendly notice of my book in the Literarisches Centralblatt of April 20th by Prof. H. L. Strack of Berlin.1

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I am greatly obliged for your opinion as to Andreas’s identiWcation of ’VmanoB and ’Anad athB with Haman and Hammedatha. The doubts you

express as to the identiWcation are shared by J. H. Moulton, a friend and pupil of Prof. Cowell, who is contributing the article on Zoroastrianism to Hastings’ new Bible Dictionary. What he chieXy insists on is the great diVerence in character between Vohumanah and Haman, the former being a sort of personiWcation of the abstract idea of wisdom and goodness, while the latter is quite the contrary. He Wnds a further diYculty in the association of atoy may be Haman and Hammedatha. He says: ‘‘Granted that Amard restored in Strabo [the Vatican MS, according to Siebenkees, seems to read Anandr atoy —J.G.F.], that is not unlike Amurdaˆd, the late form of Ameretaˆt or Immortality. But Vohumanah is the Wrst of the six Amshaspands or archangels, while Ameretaˆt is the last of them, and is never linked with V. at all.’’ On the whole the diYculties in the way of Andreas’s identiWcations seem, in the judgment of experts, to be so great that in the absence of further conWrmatory evidence it would be very unsafe to lay any stress on them. Prof. Cumont of Ghent tells me that he visited Zela last year and that the ‘‘mound of Semiramis,’’ on which the sanctuary of Anaitis, Omanus and Anadates stood, is still to be seen; further that some fragmentary sculptures have been found there. He thinks that very slight excavation might bring to light inscriptions and sculptures which would throw light on the deities worshipped there as well as on the mode of celebrating the Sacaea. Prof. W. M. Ramsay is at present in Asia Minor, and I have written to him suggesting that he should dig at Zela. I thank you sincerely for your criticisms of my suggestion that the cruciWxion of Christ in the character of Haman (if it took place) may have contributed to the deiWcation of Christ and the spread of his worship in Asia Minor. I give much weight to the objections you make to that suggestion, so much indeed that I am at present inclined to withdraw the suggestion entirely. Perhaps before a new edition of my book is called for, some fresh and decisive evidence may turn up to conWrm or refute my theory. From your article ‘‘Esther’’ I gather that you think the Haˆmaˆn worshipped by the heathen of Harran in the month Tammuz (Chwolsohn, Ssabier, II.27) was quite distinct from the Haman of Esther. If he were the same, it would to a certain extent support my theory by showing that the worship of Haman as a god, far from being extinct in the time of Christ, survived for centuries afterwards. The fact of his worship being celebrated in the month Tammuz would square with my theory that Haman was originally a deity of the Tammuz type. But of course the resemblance of names may be a mere chance coincidence. If you have any observations to make on this point, I would receive them with respect and gratitude. But I do not wish to put you to the


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trouble of writing unnecessarily. I know how valuable your time is, and I highly appreciate the honour you have done me by sparing so much of it for my book. Believe me, with renewed thanks, Yours very respectfully and gratefully J. G. Frazer Universita¨tsbibliothek Tu¨bingen Md 782/A70 1. Hermann L. Strack (1848–1922), German historian of Semitic religion.

To Lorimer Fison, 14 July 1901 Inch-ma-home My dear Fison I am glad to see your handwriting again after a rather long interval. As a dilatory correspondent, however, I am far more to blame than you are, for I have not your excuse of ill-health and excessive occupation. I am concerned to hear that you have been so ill and that two more operations were necessary. But I trust that the root of the troubles has been eradicated, and that you will now enjoy much better health.1 Thank you very much for your interesting notes on the new edition of my book. I hope to incorporate them into a third edition, if I live to see one through the press.2 The orthodox here have been dragging me over metaphorical coals (and some of them I daresay would like to drag me over real hot coals in the good old style) for my theory of the CruciWxion.3 Yet I was at some pains to put it in a form which should not give oVence, and rashly Xattered myself that I had succeeded, but the event has proved that I was wrong. Lang in particular has been charging at me here, there, and everywhere like a mad bull, and has now published his bellowings in a book, which I have not yet seen. But like Brer Rabbit I lie low and say nothing, which I imagine heats the furnace of his wrath sevenfold. I believe that what has enraged chieXy is that I have absolutely ignored his Making of Religion, on which he seems to pride himself, but which I have always thought a bad book.4 The head and front of my oVence is probably the note on the beginnings of Australian religion (vol. I, p. 72), where I have given, on your authority, Mr Siebert’s exposure of Gason’s mistake as to the Good Spirit of the Dieri. On this point Lang tries to discredit Siebert’s evidence and

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to uphold Gason’s, which, he seems to imagine, is still accepted by Howitt. What do you and Howitt think of this? I should particularly like to know what Howitt thinks of the capital Lang has made out of his evidence as to the Australian belief in a moral creator of the world. I was delighted to hear that after the delay caused by the drought Spencer and Gillen had made a successful start on their great expedition. Spencer wrote to me from somewhere in the centre, after they had crossed the Macdonald Range. They were then both in capital health and full of energy and zeal. I trust Howitt is making progress with his great book. We look forward to it with the greatest interest. Roth seems to have collected a large amount of fresh material in Queensland, which the government is going to publish from time to time in the form of bulletins. It is an inestimable boon to science that Australia should have produced such workers as yourself, Howitt, Spencer, Gillen, and Roth. Future generations will rise up and call you blessed. Have you heard of the GiVord lectures? Under this name the four Scotch universities annually expend a sum of about £2000 in purchasing arguments for the existence of God, and in accordance with the great law of supply and demand the stream of arguments has been steady and copious in quantity, amongst the contributors being Max Mu¨ller, Tylor, and Lang.5 Last winter they invited me to undertake the contract for Edinburgh, but I declined. Last winter my wife and I spent between three and four months very pleasantly in Rome, where we visited the galleries diligently, and heard a good deal about the seamy side of the Vatican from the Times’ correspondent and others.6 We have let our house for a year, from the end of August, and I am moving most of my working library into a set of rooms in College which have been granted to me by the College, though as a married Fellow I have strictly no right to them. I shall do my work there, and we shall live in rooms on the market-place. This arrangement will relieve us of the trouble of housekeeping and enable us to leave Cambridge easily for a longer or shorter time, whenever it suits us to do so. In a week or so we start for Wiesbaden, where my wife will take the baths and I will consult Pagenstecher about my eyes, having had some trouble (no great matter, I think) in one of them lately. I shall be very grateful for any further notes which you may be so kind as to send me on my book, and will treasure them for future use. With very kind regards and all good wishes for your health and prosperity, I am, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer


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I am quite ashamed to say that we have not yet had the pleasure of making your sister’s acquaintance. We have intended doing so for long, but something always has come in the way. We were away from Cambridge all last winter, and since coming back we had a great deal to occupy our thoughts, what with the change in our plan of life that we are about to adopt, etc. etc. But I hope that when we return from Germany (and Pagenstecher lets me oV easily) and are comfortably settled in our new rooms, we shall have more time for social duties, which have been much neglected by us of late. Australian National University MS 7080/89 1. In his last letter Fison had written that he had had a tumour removed. 2. When this letter was written, the 2nd edn. of The Golden Bough had been published only seven months earlier; plainly, Frazer never stopped writing The Golden Bough. 3. In this speculative reconstruction, the CruciWxion demonstrates that the Hebrews too participated in the ritual common around the eastern Mediterranean in which the king is put to death. The model for the ritual is that of Purim (Book of Esther), in which Jesus takes the role of Haman, the scapegoat who is scourged and dies for the transgressions of the community. 4. Andrew Lang, The Making of Religion (London: Longmans, 1898). In it he proposed a new explanation of the existence of high gods among low ‘savages’. He argued that their existence implied the possibility that the primitives had begun with some form of monotheism, which later became degraded by the introduction of beliefs about ghosts and ghouls. 5. Less tendentiously, the prestigious GiVord Lectureship had been founded at the end of the nineteenth century by a bequest from Adam GiVord (1820–87), a wealthy lawyer and later a Scottish law lord, who proposed that each year a speaker deliver a course of ten lectures on a subject pertaining to the evolution of religion, considered historically or philosophically. 6. Henry Wickham Steed (1871–1956), then foreign correspondent for the The Times, later its editor (1919–22).

From E. Sidney Hartland to J. G. Frazer, 20 September 1901 Highgate, Gloucester My dear Frazer I have been away in Switzerland for the last seven weeks with my Wife, who has been far from well, and have only just returned and read tonight your communication to Man embodying a quotation from Theal’s Records of South-Eastern Africa.1 He conWrms the suggestion I ventured to make in my Presidential Address last January on the connecting link between Totemism and ancestor-worship.2 His summary professes to be partly an abstract of information contained in Portuguese Records and Early Histories and partly material already published by himself: and it is much to be regretted that he nowhere gives any authority for his statements. Can we depend upon them?

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They go beyond what at all events recent travellers have observed in reference to this question. Ought we not to press him for his authorities? Have you had any correspondence with him? Or what would you suggest? The point raised is a very important one, and the evidence ought (not) to be allowed to rest on a summary. Haddon wrote me some weeks ago that you had gone to Germany to consult a doctor about your eyes. I hope you have had a reassuring opinion. I have to be so careful of my own that I heartily sympathize with any trouble of that sort. More than once I have had to lay aside work temporarily on account of these feeble organs. While away I read Lang’s ferocious onslaught. Of course it is clever. But it is overdone. He makes some points: but after all what the Chronicle said in reviewing the book is true: ‘‘No nagging at minor details can upset the cardinal theory of the G. B.’’ The attack will do it no harm in the long run. Those who have read both (and that will include every serious student) will appreciate pretty accurately the force and the weakness of Lang’s arguments; and they will not forget that much of his hammering is wasted on subjects quite aside from the main question and only put forward tentatively and as mere conjectures. Yours sincerely, E. Sidney Hartland TCC Add. MS c.58: 15 (TS) 1. Frazer, ‘South African Totemism’, Man, 1 (1901), 135–6, no. 111; G. McCall Theal, Records of South-Eastern Africa, Collected in Various Libraries and Archive Departments in Europe, 9 vols. (London: Government of Cape Colony, 1898–1903). Frazer’s extracts from this work are reproduced in toto in his Anthologia Anthropologica: The Native Races of Africa and Madagascar (London: Lund Humphries, 1938), 14–38. 2. E. Sidney Hartland, ‘Presidential Address’, Folk-Lore, 12 (1901), 15–40.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 22 September 1901 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Hartland, Decidedly we ought to get Theal’s authority for his statement as to South African totemism. It is a point of great importance. I have had no correspondence with him, and abhor correspondence in general and above all correspondence with a stranger. Will you write to him? I wish you would,


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but if you won’t, I suppose I must. Somehow I had quite overlooked your last Presidential Address, and have just been reading it since you called my attention to it. As I understand you, you make transmigration the link between totemism and ancestor-worship, not the origin of it, as Tylor (after Wilken) does. Your having broached this theory before the appearance of Theal’s book would give you a good reason for writing to him on the subject. You see how artful I am in Wnding reasons why the trouble of writing should devolve on you rather than me. But I will throw myself into the breach if need be. I have had two letters from Baldwin Spencer on the totemism of a new tribe (the Kaitish) which they were then (June–July) investigating. He does not wish his letters published, but allows me to refer to them. The facts he mentions seem, in his own words, ‘‘to show that in their [the natives’] minds at present the one idea is that the men of the totem are responsible for its persistence, and what we have not had before[,] the other men keep them up to the mark by ‘boning’ (killing with the magic bone) them if they do anything which will impair their capacity for preserving the totemic animal.’’ In other words, the inference I drew from Spencer and Gillen’s former facts (inferences which Lang ridiculed and you, if I remember aright, treated with polite scepticism) are established for the Central Australians by the new evidence. Totemism, with these people, is a system of magic designed to supply the community with the necessaries of life, above all with food; and when the magician is incapacitated (by eating too much of his totem) for the performance of the magical ceremonies necessary for its reproduction he is put to death. This is substantially in accordance with my theory of the reason for putting the head magician or man-god to death when his powers begin to fail, barring the transmission of his powers to his successor. In a postscript Spencer writes: ‘‘I did not much like the article by Lang in which he referred to and made much of the supposed anthropomorphic being who sits up aloft and inculcates moral ideas in the young men. He reads too much into what Howitt has said and Howitt quite agrees with this.’’ I think we ought to get Howitt to express in public his opinion of the use Lang has made of his evidence. Roth also (if I remember aright) protested in private to you against the twist Lang has given to his evidence. I have not read Lang’s book yet, and I doubt whether I shall. Since the publication of The Making of Religion I have ceased to attach much importance to his utterances on these subjects, and his articles in the Fortnightly (out of which, as I gather, his book is mainly made up) showed that he is capable of misapprehensions which indicate, to my thinking, an actual obtuseness of mind. I was struck by the same obtuseness when I was in correspondence with him about the new facts of Central Australian totemism revealed by Spencer and Gillen’s book, and before the publication of my articles on the subject. It


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seemed to me that even a blind man might have perceived that the intichiuma ceremonies gave the key to the whole business; but he could make nothing out of it at all, and confessed plainly that he could not. But Tylor ‘‘went one better.’’ He read proofs of Spencer’s book, and actually proposed to George Macmillan and me that we should curtail the chapter on the intichiuma ceremonies by the omission of ‘‘superXuous and disagreeable details,’’ and that too without consulting the authors. I peremptorily refused to accede to so monstrous a proposal, and was supported in my refusal by Macmillan. Spencer thanked me for it afterwards when he heard of it. I beneWted by my visit to Wiesbaden. Pagenstecher told me I need not be anxious about my eyes, and gave me practically unlimited permission to work. I ought to have thanked you long ago for sending me Jevons’s two articles on ‘‘The Science of Religion.’’ I passed them on to Haddon, who, I hope, returned them to you. I did not read them very carefully, indeed I did not Wnish the second. The general impression I got was that he felt the ground had been cut from beneath his feet by the discovery that totemism is probably at bottom not a religion at all, but a system of magic, which, by his own theory, is quite distinct from religion. He had built his whole scheme of religious evolution on totemism as a basis, and now with this basis removed, or at least undermined and threatening to collapse, he had to feel about for another surer foundation on which to prop up his toppling structure. Nothing better presented itself to him than Lang’s moral creator of the Australians, and this he laid hold of with a sort of despairing grasp. For observe that if he assigned totemism (as he seemed formerly to do) and nothing but totemism as the religion of the lowest savages, and if it turns out that totemism after all is only magic, then he has to accept one horn of a dilemma. If totemism is not religion, then, on his original hypothesis, the lowest savages are destitute of all religion. Or if totemism is religion and magic at the same time, then magic and totemism are not distinct. Which of these two conclusions would be the more distasteful to him, I can’t say. Both of them contradict his previous opinions, and one or other he seems bound to accept. If I had been given to controversy I might have put Mr Jevons in an awkward Wx. In writing my articles on totemism, and again in my reference to the totem sacrament (which of course is a magical ceremony, not a religious rite), I was quite aware of the knock-down blows I was giving to Mr Jevons’s house of cards, though I made no reference to that Ximsy structure. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 42


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From E. Sidney Hartland to J. G. Frazer, 23 September 1901 Highgate, Gloucester My dear Frazer, Many thanks for your letter. My position with regard to totemism is this: At present I don’t think we have enough evidence to say what is the origin of it. It may be transmigration (or rather transformation), or it may not. But I think that in Africa at least under the inXuence of the patriarchal system the original totemism was merged in the direct worship of ancestors, or was lost and supplanted by such worship, in human form. There are remains of totemism in African ancestor-worship, but the animal into which the dead man goes, or turns, becomes more and more uncertain. Throughout the south-east it is almost always a snake now. Of course if Theal’s summary is accurate, Tylor and Wilken are right. But I should like to have his authorities. I am, I need not say, much interested in the extract from Baldwin Spencer’s letter. I did not remember that I had expressed any opinion as to the theory that totemism was a system of magic designed to supply the community with the necessaries of life. My mental operations are slow, and to use a favourite phrase of Boyd Dawkins I had put that theory ‘‘to a suspense account’’ awaiting further evidence. I had, when your letter was brought in, just laid down the American Anthropologist for April–June last. Have you seen it? It contains an article by Fewkes on the Owaku¨lti Altar at Sichomovi Pueblo, in which he tries to Wnd an explanation of the butterXy totemic worship of the community at that pueblo, by the aid of Spencer and Gillen’s investigations, and suggests that it is a magical ceremony to hasten the advent of that season of the year longed for by agriculturists, such as the Sichomovi people are.1 It is perhaps only a guess, but I hope he will publish his more extended account of the ritual before long, and then we shall be in a better position to judge. At any rate, both this and Spencer’s new facts seem to point in favour of your theory. What I boggle at, however, is the separation of magic from religion. I cannot believe in a clear line of demarcation between them. Are they not both from one root, from one stem? Throughout history they have been inextricably intertwined, and I Wnd it diYcult to believe that the one ever existed apart from the other. It is true that the Arunta seem destitute of religion, through proWcient in magic. But have we the whole of the facts? Howitt certainly ought to make his position clear in the book which he is preparing. He has placed it in Lang’s power to Xourish his name about in the

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faces of all who object to a version of Australian religion which makes the Blackfellows simply the lost tribes. Write and suggest his putting this right. Roth, too, was very incautious in making up a sentence which he never heard from the ‘‘niggers’’—a sentence on which Lang, like a clever advocate, fastened, and of course made a mountain out of something less than a molehill. Well, if you have not read Lang’s book, don’t, until you are preparing a 3rd edition. He is happily not so boisterous as in the magazine articles, the tone of which was utterly uncalled for and indefensible. Still, he is Lang, and you know what that means. I am astonished at Tylor’s suggestion with regard to Spencer and Gillen. Is he becoming too respectable? Lang attacks him too, and challenges him to reply in the GiVord Lectures when they are published, which will perhaps be about the millennium. What you say about Jevons is quite true. He is in a diYculty because he generalized too soon. But the whole orthodox party is in feverish haste to accommodate the worn-out theological dogmas to the new discoveries. Anthropology cannot be ignored. Hence it must be shewn that we never rightly understood the Bible before, that it does not mean what it says and what we have always taken it to mean, that inspiration isn’t inspiration but something quite diVerent, and that when we have understood all this we shall Wnd that anthropological and other scientiWc discoveries fully conWrm all that is left. Only the other day I had a letter from an old and intimate friend who has become a High Churchman. Lately he has through me become greatly interested in these questions, and he has read the G. B. with close attention. Among other things he takes entirely your view about the essential diVerence of magic and religion, which he has reached independently. Writing about the pagan survivals in Christianity he says: ‘‘Christianity is true not because it excludes, but because it includes all other religions as far as they contain higher elements, i.e., those Wtting to survive in the purer environment.’’ Note how he puts it: not ‘‘because it excludes the higher elements of other religions,’’ for this would practically exclude the superstition the inclusion of which he is defending. And he sums up by saying: ‘‘Only one religion has ever been possible to man and that is Christianity in germ—in seedling—in plant—in blossom—and foliage—and fruit.’’ So that everything is Christianity, fetishism, totemism (so far as it is a religion), the bloody rites of Huitzilopochli, and all. There is a sense in which you and I may agree with him; but then, what becomes of Christianity? But such is the orthodox dilemma.


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It is good news that you have unlimited freedom to work again. You must have felt relieved of much anxiety. I will write to Theal, Wrst putting a note in Folklore (in reply to N. W. Thomas in this new number) and sending him a pull.2 Yours sincerely, E. Sidney Hartland TCC Add. MS c.58: 16 (TS) 1. J. Walter Fewkes, ‘The Lesser New-Fire Ceremony at Walpi’, American Anthropologist, 3 (1901), 438–53. 2. N. W. Thomas, ‘The Transition from Totemism to Ancestor Worship’, Folk-Lore, 12 (1901), 341–3.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 31 October 1901 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Hartland, In the Wrst and third vols. of Theal’s ‘‘Records’’ there is some matter of anthropological interest from early Portuguese works, but not nearly so much as in the seventh volume where Dos Santos’ history and Theal’s ‘‘Summary’’ are both very valuable. From vols. I and III I have extracted only seven pages as against Wfty-two from vol. VII. This may give you a rough idea of the relative importance of the volumes. At present I am doing nothing but reading and extracting, and am enjoying myself accordingly. How interesting facts are in themselves, quite apart from theory! At least I Wnd them so; but perhaps my taste is peculiar. I hope you are Xourishing. Remember I shall take it very ill if you should ever be in Cambridge without coming to see me. I have got rooms in college again and do my work there, so it is always easy to Wnd me. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 44 (TS)

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To E. Sidney Hartland, 16 December 1901 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Hartland, Thank you for sending me Theal’s letters. I return them. They are unsatisfactory. He does not say a word as to how he came by those statements of his as to South African totemism. Still he appears to have had ample opportunities of acquiring information, and his work gives me the impression of being sound and good. Further his statement as to the totem animals is quite in accordance with what good authorities almost unanimously say as to the serpent in particular. See my note on this subject, G. B. III p. 410 note. So I incline to think that Theal is probably right. If he is right, South African totemism squares with the Wilken–Tylor theory, and not with mine, which was precisely my chief reason for giving publicity to Theal’s statement. I continue to get very interesting letters from Baldwin Spencer as to the totemism of the new tribes he is investigating. But I understand that he does not wish the letters published, as his statements in them are provisional and liable to subsequent correction. So I refrain from rushing into print with them, like Mr. What’s-His-Name in the last number of Man.1 He says that magical ceremonies for multiplying the totems seem to be the leading feature of the totemism of all the tribes as yet met with; but in the Warramunga there is a very interesting totem of a diVerent kind from any yet recorded, so far as I remember. It is a mythical water-snake of gigantic size, almost 100 miles long, and the ceremonies connected with it are designed, not to multiply it, but to appease and propitiate it and prevent it from coming out of its hole and doing mischief. Here then is the beginning of a religion, in my sense of the word, to wit, an imaginary being and ceremonies designed to prevent him from doing harm.2 Howitt sent me a chapter of his forthcoming book to read.3 The chapter deals, among other things, with the burial of the dead, and with Daramulun & Co. You will be delighted with his treatment of this latter topic. Daramulun & Co., according to Howitt, are neither gods nor spirits, but simply magniWed men, embodying the native’s ideal of a tribal headman, with all the savage virtues and failings. He is conWdent that the conception is indigenous, not imported, and he believes it to have been reached by the action of elementary savage thought. His exposition is, to me at least, convincing, and I believe that all the pother that has been raised about these headmen in the sky will die a natural death on the publication of Howitt’s book. To knock


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down the European myths that have been built over these Australian myths will be quite superXuous. They will collapse of themselves. Siebert has furnished Howitt with a large number of stories about the Mura-Muras (men, women and children) among the Dieri. These stories will be published in full by Howitt both in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute and in his book. Siebert has settled the hash of the Good Spirit among the Dieri once for all. With all good wishes for Christmas and the New Year. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 45 (TS) 1. ‘Mr. What’s-His Name’: Frazer is referring to the Hon. Auberon Herbert, who published two letters in the Times in Sept. 1901 in which he described with great enthusiasm numerous objects unearthed in gravel beds in Hampshire that he regarded as products of primitive humans. He even went so far as to say that these objects were evidence of totemic practices in prehistoric Britain. Haddon then wrote to Man (1, no. 124, p. 159), properly rejecting Herbert’s loose use of the term ‘totemism’ and asking that it be used strictly: ‘Totemism has too long been a ‘‘blessed word’’, and the time has arrived when strong protest must be made against the misuse of the term.’ 2. In the long-running controversy about whether religion arose from love or fear of the deity, Frazer is clearly a partisan of the latter viewpoint. 3. A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (London: Macmillan, 1904).

To A. C. Haddon, 8 January 1902 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Haddon, Thinking over the matter again I have come to the conclusion that it will be better for me not to reply to Powell’s paper.1 He is excessively muddle-headed and seems to be almost wholly ignorant of what has been done in anthropology outside of America. In exposing his confusion, self-contradictions, and ignorance I should only enrage myself and waste my time without amending him. Any clear-headed man with a knowledge of the subject can see for himself that Powell is merely drivelling. To such persons an exposure of the drivel is unnecessary. To others it would be useless. So I prefer, and have quite decided, to pay no attention to him and to go on with my own work. As I said yesterday, I think you should give the old man2 another chance not to make a fool of himself in public. Tell him to read Spencer’s interpretation

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of the Arunta totemism in the Journal of the Anthrop. Inst.3 As for me, you may, if you like, say that I refer him to my books Totemism and The Golden Bough and my article on ‘‘Taboo’’ in the Encyc. Brit., all of which he seems to have overlooked.4 Had he read them attentively, he could hardly have written as he has done. It is for you and him between you to decide whether his article is to be published in Man. I wash my hands of the whole business. My wife and I are looking forward with pleasure to taking tea with you on Friday week, when I hope we shall talk a good deal more shop. What a capital thing shop is, not least of all an anthropological shop, which you and I keep. Yours ever J. G. Frazer P.S. As my wife is not quite herself yet (she had a very severe attack of sickness some days ago and we had to call in Dr Bradbury), she asks me to thank Mrs Haddon for her kind note and to say that we shall be very glad to come to you on Friday the 17th at 4.30, as Mrs Haddon proposed, unless it should prove to be the day of Miss [Jane Ellen] Harrison’s Wrst lecture. In that case we will let you know and will ask to be allowed to come on Saturday 18th instead. UL Haddon 3054 1. The paper in question by the leading American archaeologist and explorer Major John Wesley Powell was ‘An American View of Totemism’, Man, 2 (1902), no. 75, 101–6, arguing entirely on North American evidence. 2. The ‘old man’ must be Tylor. 3. W. Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, ‘Some Remarks on Totemism as Applied to Australian Tribes’, JAI, 28 ns 1 (1899), 275–80; the same issue of Man contained yet another response, by his friend Sidney Hartland: ‘An American View of Totemism: A Note on Major Powell’s Article’, Man, 2 (1902), no. 84, 113–15. 4. Frazer, ‘Taboo’, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edn. (Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1888), xxiii. 15–18; repr. GS, 80–92.

To A. C. Haddon, 10 January 1902 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Haddon, A thousand thanks for your book, which reached me this morning.1 I have been looking through it, and it seems to me capital, full of anthropological interest, and written in a clear, simple, attractive style, neither unduly


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technical nor on the other hand ‘‘written down’’ to hit the vulgar taste. It ought, I think, to be popular in the good sense of the word. I congratulate you most heartily on such an excellent piece of work. The illustrations are very good, and the general form and appearance of the book pleasing. It will make anthropologists eager to read the full reports of the expedition. It gives me a special satisfaction to read your titles on the title-page, for they show that Cambridge has done something to recognise the value of your devoted services to anthropology.2 I hope to live to see the time (may it come soon) when the University will do much more for you, and thereby for itself, than it does at present. Meantime it is a great thing to have you here, stirring us all up and putting new life into the old body. I had a great talk with [Canon John] Roscoe yesterday. What a Wrst-rate man we have got hold of in him! We have cleared up, past a doubt, the mystery of those extraordinary ceremonies about twins in Uganda, which till yesterday were an absolute puzzle to us both. They are nothing more or less than charms to secure the fertility of the bananas through the agency of the woman who has shown her unusually proliWc nature by giving birth to twins. The thing comes out in the clearest possible way. It is a magniWcent instance of quickening the fruits of the earth sympathetically through the human sexes. The key to the whole thing was given by a marriage rule mentioned to me by Roscoe on our walk, namely that barrenness in a wife is a ground of divorce because it prevents the banana trees from bearing fruit. As soon as he mentioned the rule I saw as by a Xash the meaning of the ceremony performed on the mother of twins in the grass. If you remember the details you will see this. We have probably got at the same time the clue to a number of other customs which were obscure before, as the disposal of the placenta and umbilical cord among the banana trees, those of girls being placed on ‘‘female’’ trees, and those of boys on ‘‘male’’ trees, etc. Do you remember also the Baganda custom of multiplying locusts (which the people use as food) by means of the intercourse of the human sexes? Roscoe tells me that the locust is a Baganda totem; so we both expect to Wnd (he does not yet know) that the ceremony for the multiplication of the locusts is conWned to members of the locust clan. If this should prove to be the case, and if the other Baganda clans should be found (as I expect will be the case) to perform similar magical ceremonies for the multiplication of edible plants and animals, for the propitiation of dangerous animals (as lions and leopards), for the making of rain, etc., then in my opinion the explanation of totemism which Baldwin Spencer and I reached from a consideration of the Central Australian facts, conWrmed as it appears to be by your Papuan evidence, will be practically established. We shall have plenty to speak about when we meet next week.


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Please give my kind regards to Mrs Haddon and congratulate her from me on the appearance of your book. My wife is not in or would join in all kind messages. Yours ever J. G. Frazer UL Haddon 3 1. A. C. Haddon, Head-hunters: Black, White, and Brown (London: Methuen, 1901). 2. Haddon’s titles: fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and lecturer in ethnology, Cambridge.

To A. C. Haddon, 10 July 1902 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Haddon, Thank you for sending me your Address.1 I have read it with interest. You ask me to criticise it, and I began to do so, but it raised so many questions that my remarks threatened to run into a dissertation, which I have neither the time nor the inclination to write. There is the less need for me to do so that my views on totemism are clearly stated in my articles on the subject in the Fortnightly. Since they were published, no facts, so far as I know, have come to light which tend to alter these views, and a good many have come to light which conWrm them. I am glad to see from your Address that you accept some of the most important positions maintained by me in the papers referred to. Such are 1) the essentiality of the magical ceremonies for the increase of the totem (when that is an edible animal or plant); 2) the explanation of the reason for adopting mischievous or dangerous totems (namely that it is the function of men of these clans to restrain or suppress their totems); 3) the entire absence of religion from these essential ceremonies (p. 24 of your Address, where you, prudently perhaps, omit the words religion or religious); 4) the probability of a stage in the development of totemism, when men regularly ate their own totems and married women of the same totem clan. But while I am pleased that you should have adopted so much of a view of totemism which, when it was Wrst put forward three years ago, excited something like a storm of adverse criticism, I confess I am surprised that you should be entirely silent as to your agreement with me in some essential points, while you are careful on the other hand, as it seems to me, to mention a number of other less important points (turning chieXy on words and deWnitions) on


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which you or others diVer from me. To speak quite plainly, I consider that your view of totemism has been deeply inXuenced by mine, and that it would be proper that you should make some acknowledgement of your agreement with me, instead of absolutely ignoring that agreement and emphasizing our diVerences. It is of course for you to decide whether you will make that acknowledgement or not. If you do not, I shall retain a very decided opinion of your treatment of me, and I shall not feel bound to keep it to myself.2 Please let me have Spencer’s letter when you are done with it. You understand of course that when I send you Spencer’s or other anthropological letters, they are for your own use, and that I would rather they were not passed on to others without my consent. Yours truly J. G. Frazer UL Haddon 3054 1. A. C. Haddon, [Presidential Address], Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science . . . 1902 (London: Murray, 1903), 738–52. The published version amply acknowledges Frazer and Spencer. 2. A piquant reversal of the recent barbed exchange with Tylor: there Frazer was taken to task for not adequately acknowledging his debt to another scholar (G. A. Wilken); here he is the one levelling the charges. In human terms, what is surprising is that the substantial diVerence in his relationships with the two men—Tylor was never more than a highly respected older colleague, whereas Haddon was a close friend—seems to have counted for little here. Frazer seems to have been just as willing to drop Haddon, had the latter been unwilling to admit his error, as he was to drop Tylor for doubting his veracity. Fortunately, as the response of 13 Aug. 1902 below indicates, Haddon supplied the requisite apology, and all was forgiven.

To Baldwin Spencer, 14 July 1902 4 Park Side, Cambridge My dear Spencer, Your letter of June 7th came yesterday and was most welcome. As you will have seen from my last letter I was beginning to wonder at not having heard from you for so long. Your previous letter was of November 12th of last year! But I did not allow suYciently for the tremendous pressure of work you must be under since your return from the dreary Australian wastes of the torrid zone to a lecture room and laboratory in a great city. Let me say again how truly glad I am that everything on the expedition went so well, that there was no mishap, and that you both came back hale and hearty. I hope that Mrs Spencer and Mrs Gillen will now regard me more favourably and not think

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me merely a wicked and slothful man, who sits at home at ease, while he sends his friends out on laborious and dangerous expeditions. I agree with the substance of your criticism of Crawley’s ‘Mystic Rose’.1 He overdoes the notion of taboo, and indeed extends the word to cover things which are not taboos at all. A taboo is always negative; it is merely a prohibition to do certain things; he applies the term to positive duties— ‘‘Thou shalt,’’ instead of restricting it to ‘‘Thou shalt not.’’ It was also my impression, derived from reading and conWrmed by your knowledge of living savages, that he greatly exaggerates the dangers supposed, in certain cases, by savages to arise to men from women. His theory would logically lead to an absolute separation of the sexes, and so (like the extreme systems of asceticism) to the extinction of the human race in a single generation. I put this to him in a letter, and he admitted that this was the conclusion to which the line of thought traced by him logically led. He seems to have quite overlooked the mass of evidence which goes to show that among many (if not most) savage races the relations of the sexes before marriage are perfectly free and unrestricted. This fact alone seems to knock the bottom out of his theory. On the other hand there are some good things in his book, particularly the explanation of the twofold and fourfold exogamous divisions of the Australians as deliberately adopted to prevent the marriage, Wrst of brothers and sisters, and secondly of parents with children. But he was not the Wrst to perceive this. I indicated it very brieXy in a note to one of my papers on the Origin of Totemism.2 And if I remember aright, Morgan clearly perceived the reason of the twofold division; and Howitt writes to me that he and Fison pointed out the reason of the exogamous classes long ago. Again, Crawley seems to me entirely to underestimate the strength of the converging lines of evidence that something like sexual communism preceded the rise of exogamy. These lines are indicated, as it seems to me, conclusively by you and Gillen in ‘‘The Native Tribes of Central Australia,’’ and Crawley merely follows Westermarck blindly in putting aside the evidence with a simple assertion that it amounts to nothing. By the way I have not seen Westermarck’s last edition, and don’t know how he deals in it with the facer that you and Gillen gave him.3 In all this question of primitive communism Westermarck’s book gave me (when I read, but did not Wnish it, I confess, many years ago) the impression of being a special pleading for the social proprieties, instead of a strict and impartial inquiry into the facts. In this respect it seemed to me to rank with the books written to please the religious public by discovering a high ethical religion, if not the essential truth (so-called) of Christianity, among the lowest savages. Such books have their vogue for a time, so long as they chime in with the tone of current orthodox opinion. When that changes, they are forgotten, or remembered only as obsolete


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historical curiosities. Let us try to look the facts straight in the face and damn public opinion! I am deeply interested by all that you tell me about the results of your last expedition. It is particularly gratifying to me to Wnd that our theory of Australian totemism has been so strongly conWrmed by the new evidence, and further that (as I maintained, and have been attacked for maintaining) the Central tribes are the most primitive of all. I am delighted to hear that in the midst of all your other work you Wnd time to go on with the writing of your book. I pant for the time when I shall be allowed (as I hope I shall be) to read it in proof. Remember I expect to be allowed the privilege of reading your proofs. If you allow me, I should like to do just as I did for the former book—look out for printer’s errors and for occasional obscurities or awkwardnesses of expression, of which I might sometimes suggest amendments to be approved or rejected by you at your discretion. As to omitting or cutting out a single fact or opinion, however apparently unimportant, I hope I would rather cut oV my hand. It is a great satisfaction to me that Howitt has retired from his oYcial work and is giving himself wholly to completing his book.4 It will be grand if he Wnishes it this year. The work will of course be of primary importance and will be an anthropological classic from the day of its publication. He is very kindly sending me type-written copies of the chapters as he Wnishes them. I have not Wnished reading the last batch that he sent me (having been, like you, desperately busy in moving into a new house, shifting and rearranging my books etc.), but I hope soon to be able to write to him any remarks that may seem worth making. Though I feel that the work of such an expert, dealing with the subject he has made his own, is really beyond the reach of eVective criticism by an outsider like me. I note what you say as to the Anthropological Institute in connection with him, and will lay it before Haddon, the President, who I am quite sure will take it up warmly. My wife joins in kindest regards to you. She would like much to come out to Australia with me, but I doubt whether that will ever come oV. Please give all kinds of kind messages to Fison when you see him. I trust that he keeps fairly well. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum 1. A. E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose: A Study of Primitive Marriage (London: Macmillan, 1902). 2. Frazer, ‘The Origin of Totemism’, Fortnightly Review, ns 65 (1899), 647–65, 835–52; the note in question is p. 841 n. 2. 3. Edvard Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, 3rd edn. (London: Macmillan, 1901). 4. Howitt was a senior civil servant in Australia: in 1889 he became acting secretary of mines and water supply and in 1895 a member of the board of audit.

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To A. C. Haddon, 13 August 1902 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Haddon, I do not for a moment think you capable of wilfully doing injustice to me or to any one. The mere fact of your sending me your Address to criticise would be enough to show me (even if I did not know you) that you intended no such thing. But one may be unjust without intending it. I am afraid that happens to us all only too often in judging of each other. In this particular case I certainly think that you would do less than justice to Spencer and myself if you did not explicitly mention (among other views which you consider worthy of notice) the view which Spencer and I reached independently and with which your own agrees in some very important particulars. Subsequent researches (including your own) have conWrmed our view; and I believe that, despite the uproar raised when it was Wrst put forward, the adhesion of anthropologists in general to it is a mere question of time. The facts (of which plenty will soon be coming from Australia and probably elsewhere) will speak for themselves. Of course a number of subordinate questions in connection with totemism will still await solution, for instance, the origin or mode of formation of the totem groups. But the meaning of totemism (in my opinion) we know already: it is a co-operative system of magic designed to provide the community with the necessaries of life, especially with food. Your account of the transition of totemism into hero-worship is excellent and very instructive. The facts are of great value and (so far as I know) unique, and I heartily congratulate you on the discovery. Your account of the segregation and localisation of the totem clans in certain districts is also good though not so novel as the other. Cases of the localisation of totem clans were known before (Totemism, p. 90). This suggests an answer (a possible answer, I mean) to your question as to the South African system. The tribes may be localised totem clans. It is diYcult, I think, to deny totemism to the Bechuanas, and amongst them, as I pointed out long ago (loc. cit.), the clans seem to be localised. But of course I am not concerned to maintain the totemism of the Bantu tribes of South Africa, though it is signiWcant that their kinsmen the Baganda have the system in full. I only called the attention of anthropologists to Theal’s evidence because it seemed to conXict with my own theory of totemism and to support a rival theory (the Wilken–Tylor one). By the way, what is


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Tylor’s theory of totemism?1 He seems to have committed himself to at least three distinct and apparently inconsistent theories:—1) that the totems contain the souls of dead ancestors; 2) that the totem is merely the crest of an exogamous clan; and 3) that the Arunta totemism is the only clearly intelligible system, although it neither has exogamy of the totem clans nor (pace Tylor) the transmigration of souls (see Journ. Anthr. Inst. XXVIII p. 280). The solemn warning which Tylor here gives to anthropologists, not to frame theories prematurely as to the origin of totems, is amusing, when one remembers that a few months before he had been propounding a theory of totemism in the same room, without waiting to read through Spencer & Gillen’s book, of which he was actually receiving proofs at the time he propounded the theory, without the least regard for their facts. If this is not being premature or ‘‘previous,’’ I can hardly imagine what would be so. Your suggestion that the totem clans may have originated through the particular kind of natural products prevalent in special districts appears to be certainly worth considering. But in the absence of positive evidence it can only be a conjecture, and one can frame so many conjectures on that subject. I return you Spencer’s letter. Please keep it as long as you have occasion. Of course you are free to make any extracts you like for your own use, but do not publish them. I understand that to be Spencer’s wish. I send you a copy of S. A. Cook’s paper ‘‘Israel and Totemism’’.2 It contains some remarks I sent him. If you already have a copy of the paper (perhaps I sent you one), you can give this copy to some one else. We shall be glad to see you and Mrs Haddon whenever you call. I should like to show you my new study. But just at present we are living between house and college, and it is not easy to catch us in. Next week early we go away for a month or so. My wife is still suVering from the fatigue and worry of the move, and needs a rest and a change. I hope you will have a most successful meeting at the British Association. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer UL Haddon 3054 1. Relations between Frazer and Tylor never recovered from the breakdown in 1898. The sniping at Tylor makes it clear that the reconciliation between them was never more than superWcial. 2. Stanley A. Cook, ‘Israel and Totemism’, Jewish Quarterly Review, 14 (1902), 413–48. One may reasonably suppose that Frazer liked this paper because Cook was Robertson Smith’s intellectual heir, his essay extending Smith’s application of the anthropological approach to biblical Israel.

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To George A. Macmillan, 7 October 1902 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Macmillan, Many thanks for your letter. I am very glad that you approve of my scheme of a book on the American Indians, consisting of translations of early accounts by French and Spanish writers which are now accessible to very few students.1 The title would be ‘‘Early Accounts of the American Indians by French and Spanish writers (Thevet, Arriaga, Simon, etc.), edited by and translated with notes by J. G. F.’’—or something of that sort. It will interest me very much to put the book together, and the labour of the translation and annotation will not be very great. I feel sure that I can make it valuable and acceptable to anthropologists, whatever the public in general may think of it. My wife desires me to thank you for the cheque for two guineas which you were so good as to send her. I am glad you have had such a splendid holiday and have beneWted by it. We both are much refreshed by our holiday in Yorkshire and Scotland, and feel full of work and energy. With kind regards, I am yours sincerely J. G. Frazer BL 1. Although Frazer signed a contract (found in the Macmillan corporate archives) to write this book, it seemingly was a phantom from the start, and sinks beneath the waves unremarked and unlamented. In the context of Frazer’s life and work the entire project is strange. Because of his own classical background and his heavy use of European folklore, the Wrst two editions of The Golden Bough were heavily Eurocentric (with Australian Aboriginal material important in the 2nd edn.). Until this moment he had never expressed any interest in early North American ethnography.

To A. B. Cook,1 19 October 1902 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Cook, Thank you for your kind letter, which I highly appreciate. I hope and believe that, far from your criticism making a breach between us, we shall be


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better friends than before. Certainly you have done me a service, and I am grateful for it. If you think I can be of any use to you at any time in your researches (as by indicating parallels or books where they might be found), be sure to apply to me. Looking at your recent work (the article on ‘the Gong at Delphi’ and your criticism of me), I cannot help but regretting that your time is so much taken up by teaching and that you have so little time for research, for which you are well Wtted. When I have got my revised theory into shape, I shall probably put the small heads of it (with some other observations suggested by your paper) into a letter, and shall be grateful if you will consider and criticise it as keenly as possible. I do not mean to trouble you to write about it. We can meet and talk it over in a friendly way, when you have digested it at leisure. At the same time we might look over the Nemi photographs together. Our friend Roscoe told me that you were interested in the question of the Australian Daramulun etc., over which such a pother has been raised of late. The enclosed letters of Baldwin Spencer deal in part with the question, so you may like to read them. You know that along with Gillen he has been on another anthropological expedition into the heart of Australia. These two men, I think I may safely say, know more of the mind of the truly savage Australian (uncontaminated by contact with whites) than any other men alive. Their opinion on the subject is therefore entitled to the greatest weight. Along with Spencer’s two letters I enclose one of Miss [Charlotte S.] Burne, the editor of ‘‘Folk-lore’’. Howitt himself wrote to me in regard to Siebert’s evidence, which will before long be published in ‘‘Folk-lore’’ and will set the question of the Murra-murra among the Dieri at rest for ever.2 When you are done with the letters, please return them to me. But I am in no hurry for them. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 57 1. Arthur Bernard Cook (1868–1952), classical archaeologist, fellow of Queens’ College, Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology, 1931–4. Cook’s review was ‘The Golden Bough and the Rex Nemorensis’, Classical Review, 16 (1902), 365–80. This paper marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between Frazer and Cook: see Frazer, 197 V. Cook’s article that Frazer refers to below is ‘The Gong at Dodona’, Journal of the Hellenic Society, 22 (1902), 5–28. 2. In The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, Howitt invokes the authority and testimony of the German missionary Otto Siebert several dozen times regarding the behaviour and beliefs of the Dieri.


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To E. A. W. Budge,1 9 November 1902 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Dr Budge I hope you will pardon me for presuming on our slight personal acquaintance to put one or two questions to you. Tylor, I believe, interpreted certain well-known Wgures on the Assyrian reliefs in the Brit. Museum as the King fertilising the palm-tree. Can you tell me whether this interpretation is generally accepted by Orientalists? Where did Tylor publish his paper?2 I should be glad to have a reference to it. Then what did he make of the eagle-headed Wgures who are represented in the same attitude? They can hardly be the King. Prof. Strong mentioned to me in conversation that they were supposed to be the spirit or god of the palm. Is this interpretation sound? What is the object which all these Wgures hold in their hands? Is it the male fruit of the palm? It looks like a Wr-cone. If it were the latter, one would think of the sacred pine of Cybele. Was the pine a sacred tree with the Assyrians? Does it grow in Assyria? I should have thought the climate of Assyria was too hot for it. If the Assyrians worshipped it, can it have been that they brought the worship with them from an old home among the mountains that border Assyria? Some species of pines produce an edible nut, which is still eaten by the poorer classes in Italy; and Pliny mentions that a sort of wine was made from the nuts. Do you happen to remember whether pine-nuts or pine-wine were used by any Oriental peoples? By the way, the pine-tree appears in the worship of Osiris in Egypt, as I have noted in my book (G.B. II. p. 143 sq); so there seems no reason why it should not have grown in Assyria also. If you will be so very kind as to answer my questions on these points, I shall be grateful to you. Pray forgive me for troubling you. Believe me, Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer BL 1. E. A. Wallis Budge (1857–1934), British Egyptologist. 2. E. B. Tylor, ‘The Winged Figures of the Assyrian and Other Ancient Monuments’, Society for Biblical Archaeology, 12 (1890), 383–93.


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To Francis Galton, 19 November 1902 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Mr Galton, It was only today I heard, with very great pleasure, that your old college [Trinity] has done itself the honour of asking you to become one of its Honorary Fellows. We are proud of the distinction which you confer on the College, and we trust that you will not refuse to accept this mark of our sense of the great services you have rendered to science. To me the act of the College gives a personal pleasure, for I shall never forget your kindness to me [at] a critical time of my life, and I am happy and proud to think that I have enjoyed the privilege of your friendship ever since.1 Let me take this opportunity of congratulating you on receiving the Darwin medal. It is a high distinction, and I am sure you have richly deserved it. Believe me, dear Mr Galton, Yours most sincerely J. G. Frazer UCL, Galton Collection 1. The ‘critical time of my life’ was the moment in 1895 when his fellowship was up for renewal at Trinity; Galton was one of his referees. On 23 July 1929 Frazer wrote to Karl Pearson, Galton’s biographer, reiterating his indebtedness: an extract may be found in Karl Pearson, The Life, Letters, and Labours of Francis Galton, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914–30), iiia. 239a.

To A. B. Cook, 21 December 1902 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Cook I should be very glad to discuss your review of my book, if you can spare time to do so. My Wrst intention was to put the main points in a letter to you, but I am afraid the letter might run to great length, and as the whole of it would have to be gone through again between us, I think it will save time if we simply speak it over, taking your article as the base of discussion. As I may have books or papers to show you (e.g. Boni’s account of the temple of Vesta),


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it might be more convenient if you come to me. I would suggest therefore that you should come and take tea with me in college any day that suits you, about four o’clock. After tea we could have our talk and I could show you the Nemi photographs. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer I need hardly say that I do not wish to press you to discuss the matter, if you would rather not. TCC Frazer 1: 58

To Solomon Schechter, 22 December 1902 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Dr Schechter, I have been intending to write to you for a long time. Your kind letter reached me when we were away from Cambridge, and I put oV writing until my return. Then one thing and another came in the way. The last of them was a fortnight’s absence from Cambridge, of which ten days were spent at Berlin. But no more of excuses. I feel sure that we forgive each other for the delay on both sides in writing. I daresay I shall often have to ask you to forgive me for the same cause, for I am a very dilatory correspondent. We rejoice to hear from you and Mrs Schechter of your welfare. It makes us happy to think that the great change has proved for the best, that you are all in good health and spirits, and that you have found congenial work and a greatly enlarged sphere of usefulness.1 I am afraid that here in Cambridge you were more or less cramped and conWned. In America, with the position that you hold, you will, I believe, expand and Wnd full scope for energies which here could hardly have an outlet. You can and will exercise a wide inXuence for good. It is most gratifying to your friends to know that you are appreciated as you deserve in America. As to ourselves, we are both very well and full of work. We had an excellent and refreshing autumn holiday in Yorkshire and Scotland, after which we worked for about three weeks in the British Museum. My wife is kept busy by her publishers (both Macmillan and Black), and there is some prospect of her getting an English play put on the stage. Three weeks ago we went to Berlin,


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to see Grenville, who is studying there and taking pupils.2 Our Cambridge friends gave us introductions to various people at Berlin, and we found every one very friendly. We heard lectures by PXiederer, Paulsen, Diels, and Wilamowitz, and were introduced to all these eminent men.3 I also attended a Winckelmann’s Fest of the Archaeological Society. Diels suggested that my book (the G. B.) should be translated into German and oVered to help in making arrangements for the translation. I found two men able and willing to undertake the work, and Macmillan is now negotiating about it. The weather was intensely cold during our stay at Berlin, but everything there is so well warmed that we never felt the cold except in the streets. My wife will soon write to Mrs Schechter and give her the Cambridge news much better than I can. You will have seen that [J. B.] Bury (the editor of Gibbon) has succeeded Lord Acton. Nothing very startling, I think, has happened since you left, and there is no burning question at present before the University. All your friends, so far as I remember, are well. We said goodbye to Mr Roscoe in London. He arrived safely in Uganda and is hard at work. I had a letter from him the other day. Moulton is settled in Manchester and is also very busy, but has more time for study than he had in Cambridge. He writes to me that the best book on the Iranian religion will shortly be published in Jastrow’s series; the author is Jackson of New York. Do you know him? I gather from Moulton that he is a great swell in his subject.4 Have you seen the new Hibbert Journal? Most of the articles seem of the talky-talky sort, but there is a really Wrst-rate one by F. C. Conybeare.5 He shows very strong grounds for holding that two most important texts in the New Testament (one on the virgin birth, the other on the Trinity) were forged by the Church to support their doctrines. He must be a sad thorn in the Xesh to our theologians. I made the acquaintance lately of the Assyriologist Johns of Queens.6 He seems to have good stuV in him. How are the Americans progressing in the publication of their great discoveries at Nippur? What interesting revelations may be in store for us among the unpublished tablets! Johns tells me that there are great masses of unpublished tablets in the British Museum, and that the authorities throw obstacles in the way of their publication. How does your book on Jewish theology go on? I suppose you have been too much occupied with other work to Wnd time for writing.7 I also have only been reading for some time past, but I hope to begin writing again before long. My wife wishes me to say that she received Mrs Schechter’s kind letter and will answer it immediately after Christmas. She joins me in every kind

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message to you all and in heartiest good wishes for your health and prosperity in the New Year. Your sincere friend J. G. Frazer Jewish Theological Seminary 1. Schechter had recently left Cambridge to become the Wrst chancellor of the new rabbinical seminary for the Conservative movement within Judaism, the Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York. 2. [Charles] Grenville Grove, Lilly Frazer’s son. 3. Otto PXiederer (1839–1908), historian of religion; Friedrich Paulsen (1846–1908), philosopher; Hermann Diels (1848–1922), historian of early Greek philosophy. 4. James Hope Moulton (1863–1917), Methodist theologian and scholar of Iranian religion. For more on his relationship with Frazer, see Frazer, 188 V. 5. F. C. Conybeare, ‘Three Early Doctrinal ModiWcations of the Text of the Gospels’, Hibbert Journal, 1 (1902), 96–113. 6. Claude H. W. Johns (1852–1920), Assyriologist; later, Master of St Catharine’s College. 7. Schechter did continue with his scholarship: among the major works published after his departure for the United States were Studies in Judaism, Second Series (1908) and Some Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (1909).

To R. S. Conway 1 19 January 1903 4 Park Side, Cambridge My dear Conway, Thank you very much for your kindness in answering the queries so fully, and forgive me for being so long of answering.2 I am a shockingly dilatory correspondent, I mislaid your second letter (before I opened it) for several days &c. Above all, the stream of Cook’s etymologies and (as it seems to me) brilliant combinations Xows on unbroken, and I make bold to bring some of the chief ones before you for criticism. (Please note that all the etymologies suggested in my last letter were Cook’s, not mine. I now take a back seat, and observe the once incredulous Cook unmasking oak-spirits right and left in the greatest profusion. I write to you on his behalf only in order to save his time, as he is desperately busy with teaching and examining, while I as a mere ‘literary gent’ am comparatively at leisure. If you like, you could reply to him direct.) Well, here goes for a few of his recent speculations. 1. Can Egeria be for Aegeria and that mean oak-goddess? Acc. to Schrader (Reallex. p. 164) aesculus ¼ aeg - sculus and goes with aigilvc, aigianh (oaken spear) aigiB (oaken shield). May we add aigeiroB (Schrader, p. 207),


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Aigikor hB, Aigeidai, etc. For Aegeria—Egeria cp. Aesquiline (?)—Esquiline.

?Aegina ¼ oak island? N.B. the Saronic Gulf is from saronis a hollow oak, so that Artemis Saronis is ‘Artemis of the Oak’. 2. Acca Larentia ¼ Mother Oak? Skt. Akka ¼ mother. Cp. Dr ÐyB, darylloB, Lat. larix, larch. See Schrader, p. 164. (Sabine L for D). Note that on coins of Gens Accoleia we have obv. head of Acca Larentia. (rev. Nymphae Querquetulanae) Babelon. Further? Lares ¼oak spirits? Cp. Varro, L.L.V. 49 Larum Querquet. ulanum sacellum? Lares worshipped at hearth because fire was of oak. ?laurel ¼ oak? Cp. Lindsay, Lat lang., p. 206. 3. Angerona ¼ ‘goddess of thralls’? Cp. ancilla, anculus, Ancus Martius, Ancar, &c. Ancile ¼ the thrall’s shie[l]d? 4. Portunus masculine of Fortuna? 5. ?Manus cerus (hymn of Salii) or Duonus Cerus from cerrus ‘a kind of oak’ (Plin. N.H. XVI.17). 6. Robigus (Robigo) from robor, robustus? 7. DvÐ riB from dr ÐyB? Cp. Schrader Reallex. p. 164. 8. Triops ¼ Dryops? Cp. Trywakton for drywakton, ArtamitoB ( ArtemidoB) and Homeric drion. The change would be helped by popular etymology, dryops being confused with triowualmoB ¼ triops. 9. Ixion from Ixos (viscum) ¼ Mistletoe-man? 10. Asklaipios from askra (oak)? 11. DionysoB ¼ the Zeus of trees, Tree-Zeus. Cp. Schol. on Aristides Panath., 185.3, p. 313 Dind. NysaB (v. l. nyssaB) e kalo Ðyn ta dendra. The trees, perhaps especially nut-trees, nyssai for nykiai, cp. nuc-es. Are the Caryatides of the Erechtheum the survivals of divine walnut-trees? Cp. Artemis karyatiB in Laconia. If so, they may have been sacred to Zeus originally; witness the very ancient cult of Zeus Polieus (vegetation deity) on the Acropolis and cp. the rites of the Dirpolia in honour of Zeus with rites at Tenedos in honour of Dionysus. Cook’s theory (a very ingenious and plausible one, it seems to me) is that Zeus in his double character of tree-god and sky-god was in Greece ultimately bisected into Zeus of the sky and Zeus of the trees (i.e. Dionysus). When the Greeks came in contact with nut-trees of various sorts, they dedicated them to Zeus on account of the resemblance of the nuts to acorns (the edible character of both being the connecting link, cp. whgoB from wageiÐ n?). Hence the old cult of Zeus of the Walnut-trees on the Acropolis may have led to the worship of Dio-nysos at the foot of the Acropolis (where there may have been walnut-trees also). hnai ¼ tiuhnai? Perhaps the Caryatides (divine walnut-trees) were 12. Au conceived as the nurses of Zeus. Cp. the Euboean Athenae Diades, ‘nurses of Zeus’?

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13. moriai (scil.) e laiÐ ai ¼ the olives of fate (moroB)? Thus they would be ‘life-trees’, because the fate, or life, or death of the Athenians, or of particular families or of individuals were supposed to be bound up with them. Cp. the Edgewell tree near Edinburgh, &c. (G. B. III. p. 391 sqq.). 14. Cook asks whether mel- in Meleager may not ¼ ‘mistletoe’? He mentioned in conversation that there is an old word for mistletoe with this syllable in one of the Northern languages(?). He probably got it from Schrader, Reallex. s.v. ‘Mistel’, which I have not here at home. He points out as perhaps significant that a frag. of Sophocles’ play Meleager has i joworoyB dryaB. If he is right, the life of Meleager was in the mistletoe, exactly as (on my theory) the life of the Rex Nemorensis was in the mistletoe or Golden Bough. These are only crumbs from the rich feast which Cook is providing me with. He supports his etymologies with ingenious arguments drawn from mythology and archaeology. Almost all these confirmatory arguments I have omitted for brevity. At my suggestion he is working out the whole thing for a paper or papers in one of the classical periodicals. He is in constant consultation with Giles, who will lop off too extravagant philological theories. If you will help to do the same, we shall both be very grateful. I hope you will not waste time in refuting any obviously impossible things, and that you will not be angry with us for taking up so much of your time with these matters. But I think they will interest you. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer You seem not to find the disappearance of C in Quirinus (from quercus) to be a serious difficulty. Moulton seems to think it fatal, or nearly so. TCC Add. MS b.35: 215 1. Robert S. Conway (1864–1933), professor of Latin at the University of Manchester. One of the results of the fruitful collaboration between Frazer and Cook was a lengthy series of philological conjectures on Cook’s part. They turned to Conway for critique, which he supplied in succeeding letters. 2. In an earlier exchange Frazer had sent Conway another set of Cook’s philological conjectures, to which Conway had replied.


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From R. S. Conway to J. G. Frazer, 26 January 1903 Llanishen My dear Frazer, Forgive my delay—I am very busy. Here are some brief answers. But as Cook is taking this matter so seriously, ought he not to learn to use Brugmann’s Grundriss (vol. I, ed. 2)? It wants really very little work to get into, and when once you understand how to use it, it is a delightfully easy book to find your way in. I return your letter to save time. 1. I know of no evidence for Aegeria, and the form is less likely than E-geria. If aig- ¼ ‘oak’ is well attested in Greek—and you can judge this from the words as well or better than I—then aig-eiro& will no doubt be connected with it, and if it was very oaky. Esquiline, Esquiliae I think come certainly from ex-quel-iae ‘out-lying-posts’. 2. Larentia seems to contain a participial stem, therefore lar- is more probably verbal than nominal. It cannot ¼ lar or lares, who in Sabine as in Old Latin were lases. 3. Angerona cannot be connected with anc- save that both may contain the prefix amb-. The deriv. of ancilla, Paelign. anaceta is not clear to me. Ancile, as Livy says, is from amb and caedo-. 4. No, of course not. 5. Cerus must go with Ceres, who is certainly in historical times, only corn. The oak cerrus acc. to Pliny is unknown in the greater part of Italy, and one cannot discuss the same without knowing what language it was first at home in. 6. Robigo for roub- goes with ruber. The deriv. of robur ‘oak’ I do not know, precisely, but it can hardly be separated from the roof Gr. e rrvsmenoB, tho’ the history of that is not clear. 7. I know no reason why DvÐ riB should not come from a form of the root of dory, dr ÐyB, but it can hardly be called a derivative. To justify the -vr from -er- or -or-, it would have to be final (like wvr wer-v) which would give you dvr. There is no such word in Greek, but DvrieeB etc., if they come from dor at all, can only draw as derivative of dvr. 8. No, Triops cannot ¼ dryoc. If you can bring evidence of a popular belief which would lead to its conscious change to trioc, that of course is another matter and of course possible. 9. I like the connexion of Ixion with i joB; it seems to explain the ‘wrestling’ rather nicely.


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10. I do not know to what language askra ‘oak’ belongs, so I can hardly judge of its connexion with AsklapioB (?Aisk-). Where was he most at home? 11. Even accepting the derivn. suggested for -nysoB (which ought however to be -nyssoB in all dialects), Dion. would mean ‘the nut (tree) of Zeus’, not ‘Z. of the nut-tree’. KaryatiB certainly ought to mean ‘clothed in nut shells’. I suspect you are on the right track here, but the origin of DionysoB is a mystery to me. The single -s- ought to come from -ui- or -ti-. What does the -t- of Eng. nut Germ. nuss come from? Properly it would be IE nud- and -dsometimes varies with -dh-. Both are common as ‘determinative’ i.e. sounds added to roots. 12. Good heavens! 13. moriai may well be connected with moroB, moira, meroB but the meaning of ‘part, lot’ has so many sides that one cannot safely be a derivative down to one of them without clear evidence. 14. I am ignorant, alas, of Northern languages. But if MeleagroB has to do with a tree, melinh is nearer at hand. 15. The resemblance of quirinus to prinoB is so strong that it inclines me to analyse quer-cu-s so as to identify pr- and qur8 r to connect with quer-. But of course -cu- is not a common suffix, though I believe you could find a case or two of it by hunting. I am sorry not to be a better Balaam-ite. Always yours most truly, R. S. Conway TCC Add. MS b.35: 218

To Hermann Diels, 6 February 1903 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Sir, I am greatly obliged to you for all the trouble you have taken in regard to the proposed German translation of my book. The interest you have taken in it is most gratifying to me and goes far to compensate me for the disappointment. I am only sorry that you should have sacrificed so much


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of your valuable and much-occupied time in carrying on the negotiations with the publishers. There is no doubt great weight in the reasons given by Messrs Teubner for declining the proposal, and these reasons will apply with still greater force to the third edition, which will probably be a good deal larger than the second, as I have much fresh matter to incorporate in it. It would no doubt have been a great pleasure and pride to me if my book had appeared in a German translation, but I must content myself with hoping that German scholars, or some of them, will read it in the original. You may have seen the criticism of my book by Mr. A. B. Cook in the Classical Review for last October. He is a personal friend of mine, and in discussing his criticism with him I have had the good fortune to bring him round to my opinion on some at least of the principal questions. Not only that, but he is now diligently engaged in collecting evidence in favour of the views he lately attacked. He will probably publish before long an article or series of articles in which I believe he will throw a good deal of fresh light on traces of the worship of the oak in ancient Italy and Greece.1 He is a man of great learning and acuteness, and I think you will find his essay worthy of your attention. It may appear in the Journal of Hellenic Studies. I am glad that you are to be in England this summer, and I hope that we shall have the pleasure of seeing you in Cambridge. My stepson C. G. Grove much appreciated your kindness to him, and both his mother and I are grateful to you for it. Thanking you again for all the trouble you have taken on my behalf, and with very kind regards, in which my wife joins, I am, dear Sir, with great respect, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer I hope you received the copy of the Hibbert Journal which I sent you. It contained an interesting article by F. C. Conybeare. Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1. Cook’s collaboration with Frazer resulted in a lengthy series of articles that in turn served as the germ of his massive Zeus: ‘Zeus, Jupiter and the Oak’, Classical Review, 17 (1903), 174–86, 268–78, 403–21; 18 (1904), 75–9, 325–8, 360–75; ‘The European Sky God’, Folk-Lore, 15 (1904), 264–315, 364–426; 16 (1905), 260–332. For a full discussion, see Frazer, 197–200.

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To Baldwin Spencer, 21 June 1903 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Spencer, Many apologies for having kept these two sheets so long.1 But, apart from being busy with other work, I found the account of the relationships very hard reading, though I daresay it could not be made plainer than you have made it. But I would strongly advise the addition of m or f to each of the names respectively in the order of descent, in order to distinguish the sexes. In some parts you may think I have got rather muddled, and perhaps I have. If so, forgive my scrawls, but I have done my best, which may be bad. There is a certain trifling lack of uniformity in the spelling of some of the native words, which I have called your attention to—e.g., Chupila and Tjupila. It does not matter which form is adopted, but having adopted one it is best to stick to it. Again as to such trifles as capital letters, do you prefer Alcheringa, Intichiuma, Churinga or alcheringa, intichiuma, churinga? I think I prefer the capitals, as more distinctive, marking out these important native words from the English context and in Native Tribes of Central Australia capitals have, I think, been adopted throughout. So perhaps for the sake of uniformity we should keep to them. But that is of course as you like. I learn from reviews of Lang’s book ‘‘Social Origins’’ that he supposes the patriarchal family to have been the unit of society since man emerged from the lower animals, and the classes and subclasses to have been formed, not by subdivision of a larger unit, but by the accretion of a number of smaller units.2 This is a pretty specimen of progress and discernment in anthropology. The rest of the proofs I hope to send at very short intervals. Don’t you think it might be useful to give a complete list of all the totem clans you met with (among the Arunta etc. as well as among the new tribes), with a brief statement as to the use made of each totem object by the natives? E.g., when the snakes are edible (as perhaps they all are), this might be mentioned. Ordinarily we in England don’t think of snakes as food, and so might wonder why ceremonies are performed for their multiplication. Considering the important part which totemism plays in the economy of your tribes, it is of interest to know what exactly is the economic use of each totem. My wife joins me in very kind messages. We trust you are flourishing. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer


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Pitt Rivers Museum 1. The ‘sheets’ Frazer is reading are proofs of Spencer and Gillen’s new book, which would be called The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (London: Macmillan, 1904). For the origin of the title, see the next letter. 2. Andrew Lang, Social Origins (London: Longmans, 1903).

To Baldwin Spencer, 21 August 1903 Trinity College, Cambridge How would ‘‘The Northern Tribes of Central Australia’’ do for a title? It would be quite exact, and as short as ‘‘The Native Tribes of Northern Australia,’’ which is inexact. On the other hand it would not range so well with your former title, ‘‘The Native Tribes of Central Australia.’’ But it would not be so liable to be confounded with it. On the whole I incline to recommend ‘‘The Northern Tribes of Central Australia’’ as the best title for the book. I trust that all goes well with you on your new expedition. Yours ever J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum (postcard)

To Solomon Schechter, 4 October 1903 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Dr Schechter, It can only be to your kindness that I owe the volume which reached me the other day from America—Curtiss’ Primitive Semitic Religion Today. It was most kind of you to bear my wish to have that book in mind and to search for it till you found it, for I know it has been out of print for some time. Accept my grateful thanks for it and for the trouble you have taken to procure it for me. I am glad to have the book, as I think the writer has struck a fresh and interesting line of work, which may prove fruitful. I trust you had a good passage across the Atlantic and that you found Mrs Schechter and the children in good health. I was very glad to hear from

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Mr [Israel] Abrahams last night (when I met him at St John’s) that you have secured an efficient helper, who will relieve you of much of the routine work and leave you more leisure for your researches.1 Are your various literary works progressing? I hope that you came to a satisfactory arrangement with Macmillan as to your book on Jewish theology. I had three weeks with my wife and stepdaughter in Yorkshire, and then a fortnight with my sister at Moffat in Scotland. My wife and her daughter returned to London and are there still, but they hope to return to Cambridge next week. Miss Grove is better, but still far from strong. I had a letter from Mr Roscoe the other day, in which he spoke of you. His health, I am afraid, is again not good. I wish he could return to England and Cambridge. I met Dr Haddon a few days ago, and dined with Ridgeway at Caius last week to meet Flinders Petrie, whom I had not met before. I am now busy with a new edition of my book, as the second edition is nearly or quite out of print. If my wife were here, she would join me in all kind messages to you, Mrs Schechter, and the children. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Jewish Theological Seminary 1. Israel Abrahams (1858–1925), Schechter’s successor as reader in Talmudic in Cambridge.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 23 October 1903 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Hartland, I enclose a letter and postcard which I received today from Mr. Salomon Reinach.1 They may perhaps interest you. Please let me have them back. Have you heard any more from Mr. Hill-Tout as to totemism? Of course you would understand that the doubts I expressed as to the value of his negative evidence did not reflect in the smallest degree on his perfect good faith. I only suggested that the Indians he questioned may have been shamming, as savages have been known to do. But it is quite possible that amongst some of these tribes totemism as a living institution may be extinct, though they may retain some totemic fossils in the shape of totem posts and so forth.


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Their culture is comparatively so advanced that I should expect to find totemism everywhere decadent (where it is not dead) amongst them. To look for the origin of totemism among them would be, in my opinion, hardly more profitable than to enquire for it at the Heralds’ College. In both places you may find relics and survivals of totemism, but not its origin. Totemism may end in heraldry; it does not begin with it. If it did, the only purely totemic peoples on earth would be the civilised nations of Europe, since heraldry with them remains uncontaminated with what, on this hypothesis, is the later accretion of superstitious belief and custom. But to say this is to set history upside down, with its heels waggling in the air and its head bumping on the ground. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer [The letter and card from Salomon Reinach are as follows:] Dear Sir, In a note to his history of the Inquisition, somewhat developed in my translation (III p. 322), [Henry Charles] Lea has reproduced, from the proceedings against the Templars, some interesting facts which folklorists seem to have overlooked. They ought to be quoted in Hartland’s Perseus, or in other monographs and articles on Perseus, but as I can see, they are not. The essential facts are as follows: 1. A man violates a dead virgin and, after nine months, opens her grave and finds a miraculous head between her thighs—a head which can destroy any enemy who sees it. 2. The head is that of the murdered and violated virgin herself and possesses magical powers. 3. The head is kept preciously in a box, but an old nurse opens the box while on sea; a terrible tempest arises and all are drowned. 4. The scenes of these episodes are the coast of Syria (Sidon) and Cyprus. Don’t you think that the legend of Perseus is the foundation of all that? The legend got localized on the coast of Syria in the Alexandrian period; perhaps earlier, as the most ancient representation is on an indigenous vase found in Cyprus. Popular feeling emphasized the virginity of Medusa, a character which I also remark in the allusions to the myth made in the Xth century, by the Byzantine author of Philopatris (?). I have searched in vain for other examples of the fruits of vampyrism, comparable to the ghastly head mentioned by one version of the story. I forgot to add that, after the tempest which destroys the ship, caused by the old

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nurse’s curiosity, the fish disappear for ever from that part of the sea. That reminds one of the Italian dictum about Genoa: Mare senza pesce, uomini senza sede, donne senza vergogna. But I fancy that the scarcity of fish in some parts of the sea must have given rise to other aetiological legends. Quas si quis noverit, certe tu novisti.2 Very truly yours, Salomon Reinach 22nd October 1903 Dear Sir, Just after having written the letter which will reach you together with this card, I observed (what I ought to have known) that the story in question is given by Hartland III, 138: but he does not know that the source of it is the procedure against the Templars (vols. I and II of Michelet’s edition). He further errs when he mentions a soldier: the Latin miles, in the mediaeval Latin, meaning a knight. He gives no analogies about the point of ‘posthumous embraces’. Truly yours, Salomon Reinach TCC Add. MS b.36: 46 (TS) 1. Salomon Reinach (1858–1932), French historian of classical religion. 2. ‘A sea without fish, men without homes, women without shame’; ‘if anyone knew this, certainly you will know it’.

From E. Sidney Hartland to J. G. Frazer, 24 October 1903 Highgarth, Gloucester My dear Frazer, It was a pleasure to see your handwriting once more. I have been spending a year in scarlet slavery as Mayor of Gloucester; and I am eagerly looking forward to slipping the chain in a fortnight, and getting back to more congenial occupations. Nothing but the Education Act would have induced me to go through such an experience. I hope I have been successful in the effort to start the new organisation on right lines here. . . . Very many thanks for letting me see M. Reinach’s letter and card, which I return herewith. I feel much honoured that he should refer to The Legend


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of Perseus. My translation of miles was of course a blunder. I wish it were the only one in the book! But M. Reinach is wrong in supposing the source of the story to be in the proceedings against the Templars. Gervase of Tilbury, Map and Roger of Hoveden, all of whom give it, wrote a hundred years before the fall of the order. According to Milman, vii Latin Xianity, 249, the handiest authority I have, Antonio Siri, notary, of Vercelli, sent the communication during the proceedings, to which M. Reinach refers. He alleges that a renegade Templar in Sicily had confessed this ridiculous story. Probably it had its effect against the unhappy victims; but it was an old tale then. I don’t know of any other exactly similar, though Liebrecht in the notes to Gervase of Tilbury gives a tale from the Acta Apostolorum of Pseudo-Abdiar in which the violation after death was miraculously prevented; and you remember dear old Herodotus’ story of intercourse of a surviving husband with his dead wife. I have a collection of the converse stories of intercourse by a deceased husband with his surviving wife (Osiris etc.) of which I am hoping to make use in a study on the Resurrection Myth, when time is vouchsafed me to complete my materials and put them into order. I have not heard any further from Hill-Tout on totemism. I quite understood your jocularly-expressed doubts as not involving any imputation on Hill-Tout. I think you will be pleased with his report as a whole. Dr. Hastings, who I understand has been in communication with you, has written to me about his contemplated Dictionary of Religion.1 I have felt in some difficulty because obviously he knows nothing about the anthropological side of his subject; and his list is a mere ‘‘rudis indigestaque moles,’’ in which no lines of logical scheme are visible. If he goes on with it one of two things must happen. Either we shall have a big book which may contain a few good articles but which will be no credit as a whole to British scholarship, and which may prevent for years the issue of a really good Dictionary or Cyclopaedia on the subject; or British anthropologists must take it up by some sort of joint action and insist on its being carried out, so far as their side of it is concerned, in a scientific way. What is your view? And how far has your correspondence with him gone? Fortunately he admits that his only qualification is a readiness to learn. Yours sincerely, E. Sidney Hartland TCC Add. MS b.36: 48 (TS) 1. James Hastings (1852–1922), having served as editor of the Dictionary of the Bible in 5 vols. (1898– 1904), followed this by editing the 12 vols. of the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1908–21). ‘Rudis indigestaque moles’: ‘a rude and undigested heap’, usually referring to a book containing interesting material but poorly organized and presented.


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To E. Sidney Hartland, 4 November 1903 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Hartland, I congratulate you on your speedy release from your ‘‘scarlet slavery’’. You will be glad indeed to have more leisure for study. May your work make good progress. With regard to Dr. Hastings, I am inclined to take a more hopeful view than you seem to adopt. I met him when he was here some time ago, and he struck me as a man of sense and energy, who might bring out a good book, if only he secures the right contributors. It seems to me that it would be a mistake to hold back on the chance of a better book being made by the anthropologists. The chance of the anthropologists taking such a work in hand and getting a publisher to take it up is, in my opinion, exceedingly small. Such a dictionary is hardly practicable without the support of the theologians, and that will be secured by a clerical editor and clerical publishers. He has, I understand, a free hand in the matter and is prepared to use his freedom liberally, without regard to orthodoxy or heterodoxy. Hence I think he deserves anthropological support, and I hope you will consent to write for him, and to secure as many good contributors as you can. I wish indeed you could join him as co-editor or assistant editor. I have given him a list of contributors whom he should try to obtain, but have not promised anything of my own. I have collected such masses of material for my future books, that it will take me years to work them into shape, and meantime I do not wish to undertake anything else. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 49 (TS)

To Jane Ellen Harrison, 17 December 1903 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Miss Harrison, I do not remember any examples of tempting a man to sin in order that he may be sacrificed without injustice. There may be such cases, but I do not


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think that I have met with them. It is common before dispatching a human victim to exact of him a promise to discharge some duty or commission in the other world, such as to take a message to a dead king. But that is another matter. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer Newnham College Archives, Harrison 1/1/7

To J. H. Moulton, 10 April 1904 Trinity College, Cambridge As to Manchester, about which you speak so kindly, I was asked whether I should be willing to accept the chair of Comparative Religion if it were offered to me, and I said I might do so on certain conditions.1 But I am in two minds about it. I have begun to doubt whether, with my views on religion in general and Christianity in particular, it would be right for me to accept a teaching post in a Theological faculty instituted by Christians for Christians, in particular for men training for the Christian ministry. How does it strike you? Please tell me quite frankly as a friend. What would you do yourself in a similar position, e.g. if you were asked to lecture on religion to Buddhists and Mohammedans with an implied stipulation that you should say nothing that should hurt their feelings as Buddhists and Mohammedans, and nothing that should reveal that you were a Christian? Would you accept a teaching post on such terms? I have grave doubts whether I can do so. The case would be quite different if the chair were established independently of any Theological Faculty, and to teach the subject simply as a branch of knowledge, unconnected with any creed, like mathematics or astronomy. To make the supposed parallel complete, the chair of religion offered to you should be established and endowed by Buddhists and Mohammedans for the training of their respective clergy, and you should be asked to take their money and train them for their work as Buddhist and Mohammedan priests, while promising implicitly never to drop a hint that you regarded Buddhism and Mohammedanism as false. I begin, I think, to foresee your answer, and my own. But please write to me fully and frankly on the subject. I shall regard it as a real act of friendship if you do.

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Published in William F. Moulton, James Hope Moulton (London: Epworth Press, 1919), 164. 1. ‘The Manchester affair’ arose when J. H. Moulton, a specialist in Iranian religion and a convinced Christian, suggested that his friend Frazer, once again in need of money, take a position as lecturer in comparative religion at Didsbury College, a Baptist seminary near Manchester. Frazer, ever the victim of an over-active conscience, agonized over whether to take the position. He turned for help to at least two of his oldest and dearest friends—Henry Jackson and J. S. Black—both of whom urged him to accept. But, as soon became clear, Frazer had insuperable qualms, and in the end turned down the offer even though his exchequer was definitely in need of replenishment. The astonishing reason for his rejection seems to have been that he felt that he could not trust himself while at the seminary to keep to himself his animus against Christianity, and therefore that he might therefore do or say something that would cause embarrassment or scandal.

From J. S. Black to J.G. Frazer, 14 April 1904 9 Lauriston Road, Wimbledon My dear Frazer, I should hear with the liveliest satisfaction and delight that you had received and accepted the appointment to the Manchester Chair (or Lectureship) of Comparative Religion. Just as I should hear with disappointment and disgust that (say) the Rev. Dr. Robertson Nicol, or Dr. Clifford or R. J. Campbell had got the post.1 You, of all men, are the man whom I would trust to give the subject the ‘rein objectiv’ treatment which I understand is desired by the people who are starting the experiment. I should expect you to find pleasure in so treating the subject, and the world of science and scholarship would, I am sure, gain greatly in the long run; though it is quite conceivable that through no fault of yours, the ‘course’ might not be largely attended. Your declinature—especially on any such expressed or implied ground as that you are not a ‘believer’—would embarrass the promoters of what I deem to be a very worthy scheme, and might tend to frustrate the whole idea. Let it once be laid down that the holder of the chair must be a ‘believer’, where are they to turn? First in that category (of believers) will come, I should suppose, a member of the Orthodox Greek Church, or a Roman Catholic. A bad third would be your High Church Anglican. As for the like of Cheyne or Beilby or Hensley Henson, have we not the Editor of the British Weekly telling us that they are not Christians at all?2 One of your most interesting and fascinating tasks might be precisely the clearing up of this point: What is the Christian religion? What points, if any, has it with the religion taught by Jesus? What do we know, if anything, of the religion actually taught by Jesus? What were its postulates and


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presuppositions? What elements did he take over from the Pharisees? And so forth. No, my dear Frazer: you must not refuse the opening if your only reason for refusing to help the new experiment is because you have reason to suppose that many people would have preferred matters to go on in the old way and have it taught in all our Universities that the Christian Religion consists of a definitely articulated body of doctrines which are all true because they have all come down straight from heaven, and not to be compared with anything of terrestrial or mundane origin. Have you looked at the April Hibbert? If you have not, let me beg of you that you will sacrifice at least a few minutes in order to do so and to be able to tell me what you think of (at least) Lodge’s article.3 I am very well as a whole. I was out at San Remo for a few days at Easter and am a good deal occupied at present with arrangements for my migration to Edinburgh with the two boys in June. Circumstances have ‘led’ me to buy my mother’s old house in Oxford Terrace and try the experiment of seeing how the boys will ‘live and learn’ there. I hope the venture will be successful. I should willingly have remained in or near London; but the ‘freeze out’ has been pretty severe—thanks to the number and steadfastness of these ‘believers’ of yours! Yet I do not repent of my share in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, so far at any rate as it was ‘rein objectiv gehalten’ and went on the assumption that people ought to be willing to hear the facts.4 I should be very glad if you would come over and spend a day or two here. The weather is becoming very agreeable, and with the help of bicycles we might be able to explore a good deal of territory. I have not been working at anything lately, beyond trying to keep the pot boil(ing), and to get a house ready. Yours ever afftly, John S. Black TCC Add. MS b.35: 66 1. All three were popular Evangelical preachers and writers; the British Weekly, mentioned later in the letter, was the largest organ of this tendency. 2. Cheyne, Beilby, and Henson were representatives of ‘advanced’ Christian opinion: i.e. those willing to rethink religion in the light of biblical criticism and anthropology. 3. (Sir) Oliver Lodge, ‘Suggestions towards the Re-interpretation of Christian Doctrine’, Hibbert Journal, 2 (1904), 461–75. 4. Black was the co-editor, along with T. K. Cheyne, of the Encyclopaedia Biblica; ‘rein objectiv gehalten’: ‘presented purely objectively’ (in the German historiographical manner).

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To Henry Jackson, 18 April 1904 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, Forgive me for troubling you again about the Manchester affair. I do not wish you to write me a letter, but to give me your opinion personally when we meet. I had an interview with the Principal after I spoke to you, and have got further information from J. H. Moulton, who is now at Didsbury College, Manchester, and is on the Advisory Board. He is thus in the inside of it. His letter, which I enclose, will help to show you how the land lies. The appointments are to be for three years. The number of lectures wanted in Comparative Religion would be small (sixteen and thirty were mentioned by the Principal as possible limits) and the salary would vary from £150 to £300 according to the number of lectures. They might all be given in one term of ten weeks. There is no obligation of residence. Thus I should not need to leave Cambridge. Thus far the proposal attracts me. (Please remember that the post has not been offered to me yet. The Principal only asked whether I should be disposed to accept it, if it were offered. He is to write me fully at the beginning of the term.) But I feel a serious difficulty about accepting, and it is on this point I particularly wish your advice. The lectureship forms part of the Theological faculty founded (as Moulton says) by Christians for the training of Christian ministers. I am not a Christian, on the contrary I reject the Christian religion utterly as false. Yet if I accepted the post I should be expected (as the Principal insisted repeatedly) to say nothing that would offend the religious feelings of the students. That is, I should be implicitly bound to conceal my own firm belief of the falseness of Christianity, and, I suppose, not to put before the students facts which might tend to undermine their faith. Do you think that would be honest? Would you accept yourself if you were in my place? Before I saw the matter in this light, I wrote to the Principal that if appointed I would be scrupulously careful not to say anything that would hurt the feelings of any reasonable man. I do not remember the exact words, but that was the substance. Certainly I would not attack Christianity openly, even if I had given no pledge or implied promise to abstain from doing so. Such attacks are repugnant to my feeling and I regard them as bad policy besides. But the facts of comparative religion appear to me subversive of Christian theology; and in putting them before my students without any express reference to Christianity, I should still feel as if I were undermining their faith, contrary to my implied


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promise not to do so. This is how the matter strikes me at present. But perhaps I am wrong. I shall be very much obliged if you will turn it over in your mind and advise me when we meet. Don’t answer before or return the letter. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer I asked Moulton whether if he were offered by Buddhists a lectureship on religion for students training for the Buddhist priesthood, he would accept it, on condition of never revealing that he was a Christian and that he regarded Buddhism as false. His letter is partly an answer to that question. TCC Add. MS c.30: 47

To Baldwin Spencer, 19 April 1904 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Spencer, I was very sorry to hear from your last letter, received a few days ago, that you had been overworking and were obliged to rest. I don’t wonder at it. It is a marvel to me how you can get through all you do—the excessively laborious and trying work of exploration, and then the literary work of putting your results into a book, in addition to all your teaching and administrative work as a professor. How I wish that you could be set free for anthropology entirely! It would be the best thing for the advancement of the subject that I can think of. Meantime—which I fear means a long time, for where is the money to come from to found a professorship of anthropology at Melbourne or anywhere else? I hope you will try to take things easier and not strain your energies to such an extent as you have been doing of late. You have now got your book off your hands, and may look forward to getting some reward for your long labours in the praise and gratitude of anthropologists and (I hope) in the more tangible shape of cash. I am sure the book will succeed, and that its very high merits will be recognised. It is a wonderful feat to have collected that mass of materials in comparatively so short a time, and to have presented it in so lucid a form. I was disgusted to hear of Lang’s getting hold of the missionary (I forget his name) and using him to attack you. His stuff has not yet appeared in Folklore apparently, but I have not seen the last number. If he prints the rubbish, you should point out clearly how little the evidence is worth, drawn as it is

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from a tribe that has been long under missionary influence.1 Lang seems to me to be sinking lower and lower, and clutching at any straws that may break his fall. I have quite ceased to take any notice of him or to read what he writes. His last two books I have not even opened, much less read. I passed the last sheets of your book for the press a few days ago. They (the printers) seemed to have the list of illustrations complete. I hope you will find the book correctly printed. I think that between us we can have let very few actual misprints escape. And I think that the use of italics and capitals is pretty consistent. The small verbal changes I made here and there will probably be imperceptible to you, except that I changed ‘‘lifts up his hands in holy horror’’ (about which I gathered you had some doubt yourself ) into ‘‘protests against it.’’ In the preface I did not alter a word, but corrected the date of the publication of your first book. The date was 1899; you had put 1898. The Clarks have printed Howitt’s book at an astonishing pace—382 slips (¼ 764 pages) in less than a month. I am glad to hear that Howitt is coming to England to correct the proofs. It will be good for the book and good for him by giving him change and variety of scene after his great loss.2 I shall be very happy to make his personal acquaintance. In a letter received from him the other day he announces the very interesting discovery that he has found totems among the Kurnai at last. And what is more he has found what I would call negative Intichiuma for diminishing noxious totems, as distinguished from the commoner positive Intichiuma for increasing useful totems. When sharks became too plentiful, a man whose totem was the shark would ‘‘sing’’ the sharks, and they went away. If traces of Intichiuma are thus found in the most unlikely tribe of all to have preserved them, we are pretty safe in inferring that every tribe in Australia must have had them. This will help to stop the mouths of the asses who bray about the Central tribes being sports. The new edition of the G. B. goes very slowly indeed just now. I am adding some new sections or chapters, which give me a good deal of trouble. I am glad you approve of what I say as to the germs of religion in Australia. As to the suggested explanation of the initiation rites, I admit it rests on very little evidence, but there seemed to me enough evidence to justify me in putting forward the theory tentatively as an hypothesis. I expect you to criticise quite freely, adducing any contrary facts that may occur to you. My wife is in Paris with her daughter just now, or would join in all kind messages. My hearty regards and congratulations to you and Gillen on the completion of your splendid book. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer


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Pitt Rivers Museum 1. One of Frazer’s rare mistakes. ‘Dr Durkheim on ‘‘Social Origins’’ ’, Folk-Lore, 15 (1904), 100–2, is Lang’s sole contribution to that journal for the year. In this brief polemical piece he attempts to undermine Durkheim’s theory of totemism that he had expressed in a negative review of Lang’s Social Origins. It contains nothing whatever on missionaries. 2. The death of his wife.

From Henry Jackson to J.G. Frazer, 19 April 1904 Aldourie, Bournemouth My dear Frazer, Thanks for your letter and the sight of the enclosure. I shall be very glad to discuss them with you when I return to Cambridge. Meanwhile, I write a few lines so that you may have something from me in a definite shape. I see no reason why you should not accept the post. (1) It is for them to say whether they care to appoint a lecturer on Comparative Religion who is not a Christian, like themselves. (2) That you are not a Christian, is hardly a secret; and you have spoken openly to the Principal and to Moulton. (3) If in lecturing on Comparative Religion, any one were to begin discussing the validity of religious belief, he would, I think, be leaving his subject for another, which I should call theology. (4) In lecturing on Comparative Religion, you, I should imagine, would, in consequence of the direction of your previous studies, be concerned with primitive and savage religions, rather than with those which Europeans look upon with favour at the present day, and in consequence, you would be in no danger of diverging into theology. (5) Hitherto, you have with diffidence indicated your position in regard to Christianity; but you have not thought it necessary, in recording the little which can be known about primitive and savage religions, either to investigate the principles or religions now prevalent, or to inquire into their validity; and if you have not thought it necessary in books, a priori it would be unnecessary in lectures. I see no reason why they should not appoint a non-Christian professor to teach the facts about religions, especially savage and primitive religions, trusting to him not to desert his proper province; and I see no reason why the non-Christian should not accept this appointment, knowing that they trust him not so to divert. It is true that there are some people who cannot control themselves; people who, if they were lecturing on logic, or on Shakespeare, would import theological controversy by means of illustrations: but you are not thus intellectually incontinent.

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Thus, however, you may say that, in your opinion, the facts observed about primitive and savage religions point irresistibly to the falsity of Christianity. To this objection I should answer that there are others who do not think so. I myself, who regard myself as a Christian, hate nothing so much as the notion that Christianity has a monopoly of religion, and am prepared to recognize as religions the mythical speculations by which men in different stages of development complete what is wanting in their scheme of life, and to attach a value to such speculations however mythical their presentation. There is one other objection which I could conceive coming up in connection with such an appointment. It is conceivable that the lecturer should never diverge from his proper subject into theology, and yet that friction should arise between him and intolerant colleagues, not in consequence of his public teaching about religions, but solely in respect of his private position about religion. This objection hardly arises when the appointment is a temporary one. Your postscript gives me an opportunity of restating my point: ‘I asked Moulton if he were offered by Buddhists a lectureship on religion for students training for the Buddhist priesthood, he would accept it, on condition of never revealing that he was a Christian and that he regarded Buddhism as false’. The analogy fails in exactly the points which are important: (1) You say ‘lectureship on religion’ without distinguishing between the facts of religious observances and validity of religious principles; (2) you forget that Moulton represents a rival religion and is in some sort pledged to promote it; (3) they do not pledge you not to reveal your position: they trust you not to diverge from the teaching of your subject into controversy in regard to another. My strong opinion is that, whilst you were right in calling the attention of the principal and of Moulton to the point, there is no reason why you should not accept. Yours very sincerely, Henry Jackson I return Moulton’s letter. Please acknowledge. TCC


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To Henry Jackson, 2 May 1904 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Jackson, After full consideration I have definitely declined Manchester. My main reasons were: First, with the views I have as to religion, I could not reconcile myself to accepting a teaching post in what is practically a seminary for the training of Christian clergy. The feeling may be unreasonable, but I could not rid myself of it. Second, I could not bring myself to give up, even for a time, research and literary work for teaching. I am perfectly happy in research and believe that it suits me far better than anything else I could put my hand to. Of teaching I have practically no experience and, so far as I know myself, no aptitude or inclination for it. Why should I desert work that I love and that I believe I can do fairly for work that I have never done, that I believe I should dislike, and that disliking I should probably do badly? I know you think I should gain in clearness of view and perhaps in other ways by the change. It is possible there might be some gain of this sort, but the gain, I fear, would be more than counterbalanced by my fretting at uncongenial work and chafing at the delay of my literary work. At present I am in the very thick of preparing a new edition of my book (The Golden Bough), adding some new chapters, which have cost me a good deal of thought and labour, and which are now going fairly well. It would be heartbreaking to me to lay all this aside and write elementary lectures on animism, totemism, and the other anthropological commonplaces. I could only do it by putting an almost physical constraint on myself which could not be good for the lectures, and I am sure would have been very bad for me. I ought to have seen this clearly from the beginning and not to have troubled you and other friends with my indecision. But my wife’s wishes weighed heavily with me, and the salary was certainly an attraction. I have put my reasons for declining before my wife very fully, and she entirely acquiesces in my decision. I thank you heartily for your kindness in the matter, and am only sorry that I gave you so much trouble in vain. There is no need to answer this. I enclose a letter from Baldwin Spencer criticising my circumcision theory. You may perhaps be interested to read it. There is no hurry about returning it. Yours gratefully and sincerely as ever J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.30: 48

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To R. R. Marett, 4 July 1904 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Sir, I am much obliged to you for your kind and candid letter.1 The new number of Folk-lore has not yet reached me. When it comes I will read your article attentively and shall hope to profit by your criticisms. As you know, I am of opinion that we are just at the beginning of anthropology and that all our views will have to be revised and corrected or wholly set aside when more facts are known and we understand them better. My own theories I regard as more or less tentative and I hope I shall always be ready to modify or drop them according to the evidence. If you help me to do so, I shall be grateful to you, and the kind words of your letter will, I feel sure, soften away any little asperities which may have escaped you, as they are very apt to do to any one, in the heat of writing. I am very glad that you do me the justice—for I think it is justice—to believe that I welcome all honest and well-informed criticism. I sometimes fear that people may think me deaf to reason and wedded to my own opinions because I avoid controversy and seldom or never reply to criticism, unless it is to acknowledge a gross and palpable blunder which I have committed. But I really do try to profit by all sound criticism. As to unsound criticism I think it best to disregard it wholly. Sometimes when the misrepresentations are more than usually grotesque I am momentarily tempted to expose them and repudiate the absurdities fathered on me. But to do so would probably only give rise to fresh misunderstandings, which would have to be set right again, and so on ad infinitum. It is best to say nothing and to let these mistakes die a natural death. To notice them is apt only to prolong their unwholesome existence. I do not know on what points you differ from me, but I shall not be surprised if, as you say, our differences should turn out in part to be more about words than things. In investigating savage thought I am more and more impressed by the difficulty or rather the impossibility of expressing it in language which does not seriously misrepresent it by giving it, for example, a precision which is quite alien to it, and by calling up by implication a host of ideas of which the savage has never dreamed. The language of a civilised people has been slowly elaborated and refined to fit and express all the complexities of civilised thought. It cannot fit and express the crude vague rudimentary thought of the savage. In attempting to use it, as we must, for that purpose it is necessary to strip our words (such words for example as god and spirit) of a crowd of associated ideas which they have for us but not for


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the savage. Hence it is very difficult to pick English words which will least misrepresent the ideas, say, of the Australian aborigines. Two men will very easily prefer two different sets of words and then they will be apt to fall out and dispute, though they may in reality be merely trying to say the same thing in different ways. When I have read your paper I shall hope to discuss it with you either by correspondence or when we meet, as I hope we may do. It is a great advantage to know the men personally who are working at the same subject. It clears up our ideas and conduces to amenity in discussing our differences. Thanking you for your courtesy in writing to me on this matter, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 189 1. Marett has courteously advised Frazer of his forthcoming critique: ‘From Spell to Prayer’, FolkLore, 15 (1904), 132–65; repr. in The Threshold of Religion (London: Methuen, 1909), 33–84.

To Edmund Gosse, 9 September 1904 Trinity College, Cambridge PRIVATE My dear Gosse, I write to ask whether you think there would be any chance of my receiving a grant from the Royal Literary Fund this year. You were so very kind as to exert yourself on my behalf on a former occasion, when I received a grant of £250. I do not know the conditions of a grant, and whether or not a second grant is ever made to the same person. If not, of course there is nothing to be done. My reason for wishing to obtain a grant is that I have had heavy expenses the last two years, and my book (The Golden Bough) is out of print, which means a considerable pecuniary loss to me. I have been for some time engaged in the preparation of a new, much enlarged and I hope improved edition, but a year or more will probably elapse before it can be finished and published, and it will be still longer before it begins to yield a return. A grant just now would be very opportune, by helping me to tide over the interval. Without it, I may be compelled to draw on my small available capital (£1500 in Consols), which for my wife’s sake I am very unwilling to do, especially as


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to sell our Consols would involve a heavy loss, as I bought them when they were far above par.1 I am trying to make something by offering some of the new parts of my book to monthly magazines, but have not yet heard that they have been accepted. I am sorry to trouble you in the matter, but your former kindness emboldens me to appeal to you in my present difficulty. Believe me, with kind regards, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. ‘Consols’: Government bonds.

To Edmund Gosse, 11 September 1904 Imperial Hotel, Helensburgh N.B. My dear Gosse, My letter of two days ago contained a serious mistake which I wish to correct. In speaking of my available capital as £1500 in Consols I forgot that I have shares in my Father’s business which I could realise if necessary. These shares bring me in, I think, on an average between £200 and £300 a year. Somehow it did not occur to me that I could sell them or a part of them but my sister, with whom I am staying here for a short holiday, reminded me that I could. You will see that this is an important correction, and I wish to put you in possession of it at once. You will of course make no use of my former letter for the purpose of obtaining a grant without supplying this correction. But the fact remains that, apart from a grant, I may have either to borrow or to trench on my capital. Of the two I should much prefer the latter. Forgive me for troubling you with a second letter, but I feel my former, through a serious oversight, misrepresented the state of my affairs, and naturally I could not rest under that idea without putting myself right with you at once. Yours ever J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University


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From Lilly Frazer to Edmund Gosse, 5 October 1904 4 Parkside, Cambridge Dear Mr Gosse, Your letter dated Sept 17 from Aix-les Thermes reached Trinity, while Mr Frazer was on a much-needed holiday with his sister and I took charge of his correspondence and only sent him the substance of your letter, not the letter itself—which he will find on his return. My reasons were twofold: First the official paper requiring statements of all particulars of income, etc., would worry a man like my husband so, that he would always be troubling himself about any farthing omitted, etc. You may know how terribly he worries himself over trifles? So I did not need to send on this paper, for last time when the Literary Fund gave him a grant they just gave it without enquiring into things at all and Mr Frazer looked upon it as a reward for his long and unremunerative work and not merely as an assistance in distress. I imagine that this word (distress) would worry him—and I wonder, if by your kindness and friendship you could not avoid Mr Frazer these declarations of distress etc.? It really does not amount to distress in its most literal sense—but you may have heard that my husband’s eyes are in great danger. The subject is taboo even to him—for nervousness about this foreshadowed evil is the quickest means to hasten it—so silence, as far as possible, is kept on the subject. The trouble may remain stationery [sic] for years—but . . . This and many troubles have been ours lately and the delay in producing the G. Bough III is adding to our financial anxieties caused also by illness of my daughter and so on. I am doing my utmost to help the family budget. I write French school books and articles, I lecture etc. etc.—but a little temporary financial help would greatly relieve us and by relieving Mr Frazer of anxiety it would help his work. I doubt if he would sign the paper sent to him by the Secretary of the Literary Fund to state distress. Would you be so kind to explain the silence thro’ Mr Frazer’s absence and my interference? My second reason for not forwarding your letter to my husband was because you touched a real sore in saying that Cambridge has shown strange neglect in not providing for him. The university has done absolutely nothing for Mr Frazer—they never even acknowledge him—never choose him as a representative of learning, nor otherwise honour his work. This is a great grievance which we feel, tho’ we rarely, if ever, speak of it and which I believe [is] due to the fact that Dons are people who run in grooves and who have no imagination. They cannot realise that a man may be personally modest and retiring yet proud of his work and grateful for the recognition of patient


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labour unrewarded. This neglect of Mr Frazer was most marked when deputations were sent to Glasgow for the University Jubilee there, and Mr Frazer—of whom Glasgow is very proud—was not even invited to be among the Cambridge delegates who went for the ceremony. There are thousands of such instances—but we ignore them. I always tell my husband that such as he is, he is—and that suffices—but on his holiday, away from me, I did not wish him to brood over this subject. He is so wonderfully generous that he will probably write to you acknowledging enthusiastically the favour his College does him by giving him a Fellowship!! What were Fellowships made for—if not for workers like him? I will show him your letter and he will answer it no doubt immediately but I thought that the sympathy you expressed might excuse my confidential chatter. I will tell Mr Frazer the gist of what I said to you. Meanwhile I remain Yours gratefully Lilly Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University

To Edmund Gosse, 9 October 1904 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Gosse, On my return to Cambridge a few days ago I found your kind letter awaiting me. I thank you warmly for its friendly tone and for your promise to support my application to the Literary Fund. But you will have already learned from my wife, who wrote in my absence, that I am precluded from making an application. I did not know that a formal application was necessary, still less that it had to be accompanied by a formal declaration that the applicant is in distress. As my wife will have told you, it is impossible for me to make such a declaration for the simple reason that it would not be true. My embarrassment is, I hope, only temporary and I will try to tide it over by economy. At the worst I can clear myself by drawing on my capital. Since I wrote to you I have received Macmillan’s annual account and find that, contrary to my belief, ‘‘The Golden Bough’’ was not sold out by the 30th of June last, there being twenty copies still on hand. From the previous rate of sale and from what I heard some time ago both from Macmillan and from a Cambridge bookseller, who told me he had been unable to procure copies for


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his customers, I believed that the edition must have been exhausted a good many months ago. But I was wrong. As to what you say about the University making provision for me, it is out of the question on various grounds. The University is poor, and the old established subjects have naturally the first claim on it.1 Funds may indeed be found for new subjects when they are of a practical and profitable character such as engineering or agriculture; but few people care to give their money for such a very unpractical subject as comparative religion, which puts nothing in anybody’s pocket and only makes people uncomfortable by unsettling their beliefs. Apart from that I should be very unwilling to accept any post which would oblige me to give much time to teaching. I am anxious to devote myself, as I have done for many years, to research and writing, as the work for which I believe myself to be best fitted. For that as well as other reasons I have hitherto refused such offers of lecturing work as have been made me. Their number has not been large. Again thanking you gratefully for all your kindness both past and present, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. Frazer is distinguishing between the university and the colleges, which are not at all poor.

To Edmund Gosse, 17 November 1904 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Gosse, I have today received the munificent grant from the Royal Literary Fund, and while I thank the Society for this most timely and welcome help, I desire above all to thank you to whose most kind and generous efforts I know that I chiefly owe it. I shall always retain a most grateful recollection of your great and repeated kindness to me. It is, I fear, the only return I can ever make to you. I know the state of my affairs more exactly than when I wrote to you before, and I may say that it fully justifies you in asking for the grant and me in receiving it. But for it I should, so far as I can see, have certainly been

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obliged to draw on my small capital, for I was resolved not to borrow, which would have been no remedy, but rather the contrary. As it is, I hope to avoid that necessity. Several of my articles have been accepted by magazines, and I am going to lecture next term, using as my materials some of the unpublished parts of my new edition, so that the lecturing, while it will (I hope) bring in some money, will not appreciably retard the publication of my book, which will take place, I trust, next year. You will thus see that in accepting, as I do most gratefully, the help of the Royal Literary Fund, I am taking steps to help myself. Fortunately I can do that without interrupting what I regard as my best work. Once the new edition of my book is out, it will, I hope, prove a steady source of income for many years. I am writing in College, and my wife has not yet heard of the grant; otherwise she would join with me in the warmest expression of our united thanks to you. Believe me, my dear Gosse, Most gratefully and sincerely yours J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University

To R. R. Marett, 17 December 1904 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Mr Marett, Many thanks for your notice of the new Spencer and Gillen.1 On every point on which you express an opinion you are, so far as I can judge, just as far from the truth as it is possible to be! I mean, that if your opinions were just exactly inverted, they would be the nearest approximation to the truth that we can get to, or nearly so, at the present time. What I mean will, I hope, be clear from the article on the beginning of totemism I shall publish shortly in the Fortnightly Review.2 Perhaps it may help you to see the extreme simplicity (from the savage, not the civilised, point of view) of the Arunta totemism, and how easily the system can pass, and is passing, into totemism of the ordinary type. I am ashamed to think how slow I have been in seeing what, when it is pointed out, will I hope be obvious to most people. But the transitional stage has only come to light in Spencer and Gillen’s second expedition. Please criticise my views just as frankly as I have done yours.


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If I have not given my reasons for my denunciation (if that is the right word) of your views, it is because they will be contained implicitly in the paper to which I have referred. It is quite short. You will read it in a few minutes. I really have hopes of bringing you into a better frame of mind on the subject of totemism! But even the extremest differences of opinion as to our respective theories need not prevent us from being friends. With all the good wishes of the season, and many thanks for the review, I am, Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 190 1. The bibliography in the Marett Festschrift, L. H. D. Buxton (ed.), Custom Is King (London: Hutchinson Scientific, 1936), includes no review of Spencer and Gillen. 2. Frazer, ‘The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the Australian Aborigines’, Fortnightly Review, ns 78 (1905), 162–72, 452–66; repr. in Totemism and Exogamy (London: Macmillan, 1910), 1. 139–72.

To Arthur James Balfour,1 24 January 1905 Trinity College, Cambridge Sir, I desire to express my deep sense of gratitude for the very high mark of honour which at your instance His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to confer upon me. I accept it not only with gratitude and pride, but with a feeling of responsibility, if I may say so, to His Majesty and the nation. I shall regard the pension not merely as a reward for work done but as a trust to be used by me for the advancement of knowledge. His Majesty’s bounty enables me to look forward with conWdence to devoting the rest of my life, as I should wish, to study without being distracted from it by those cares and anxieties which are apt to harass the mind of the student, even when they do not force him to ‘‘desert the student’s bower for gold.’’ It will be my earnest endeavour in my future writings to prove that I am not unworthy of the conWdence which my country has reposed in me, and to maintain, as far as is in my power, the glorious traditions of English literature and science.

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It adds not a little to my happiness that this mark of the public approbation of my labours should be bestowed on me through a First Minister of the crown who, amidst all the cares of state and under the heavy burden of his high oYce, has retained a keen appreciation of literature and a profound interest in the deepest questions which can exercise the human mind. I beg therefore that you will accept personally the expression of my deep and abiding gratitude, and that you will convey it to His Most Gracious Majesty, together with the humble assurance of my devoted loyalty and of my earnest wishes that His wise and beneWcent reign may be prolonged for many years to the happiness and welfare of His people and the world. If, as we read in Scripture, a blessing rests on the peacemakers, there is surely no man living on whom that blessing should rest in larger measure than on His Majesty, since no one in our time has done more to hasten the coming of that time when ‘‘nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’’ For this He is acclaimed by his contemporaries, not only in this country but throughout the world, and for this He will be blessed by posterity. I have the honour to be, Sir, with the greatest respect, Your most grateful, most obedient servant, James George Frazer Royal Library 1. Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930), British politician, prime minister 1902–5. The occasion for this fulsome expression of gratitude is Frazer’s receipt of an annual Civil List pension (‘His Majesty’s bounty’) of £200 as a result of Gosse’s inXuence.

To J. M. Image, 9 February 1905 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Image, I enclose a ticket for my lectures with much pleasure, and shall feel honoured if you should come and hear your old pupil. But don’t come if it bores you. To listen to a lecture is even more tiresome than to deliver one, for at least the lecturer is obliged to keep awake, while his hearer is not, and the endeavour to assume the appearance of attention while you are nodding with sleep and are in mortal fear of snoring in the lecturer’s face is one of the most trying things I know. If you should succumb in the arms of Orpheus (to speak with Mrs Malaprop) at my lecture, you will know that the lecturer sympa-


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thises with you and would like to follow your example, only for the reasons stated above can’t. Yours ever J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.17: 106

To A. W. Howitt, 12 February 1905 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Dr Howitt, I am much grieved to learn from your letter received today the very serious condition of Mr Fison’s health. I trust he may rally and that your next letter may give more hopeful news. But all his friends cannot help being anxious. I received the petition from Spencer with the Australian signatures, and it has been signed by a number of Wesleyan clergymen in this country.1 As the statement in the petition seemed to me hardly full enough, I have drawn up another, on the same lines but entering somewhat more into details, and have circulated it among anthropologists. It is being strongly supported by the leading anthropologists in this country. It will be sent in as a separate petition along with the other. Jackson will besides write a strong private letter to Balfour, and he seems conWdent of success. I hope that resolutions in support of the petition will also be passed by the Council of the Anthropological Institute and by the Board of Anthropological Studies at Cambridge. I am sorry you have discovered some misprints in your book. But it will be easy to print a list of corrections and have it bound with all future copies. You can hardly expect to learn anything from reviews, at least reviews written in England, for there is no one here who knows your tribes at Wrst hand, and few even of those who read about them seem to understand what they read. Yet you and Spencer write plainly enough. But the human capacity for misunderstanding the plainest statements is unlimited. Did you see the gross misrepresentations of your views (by Lang) in the review in the Athenaeum?2 That paper seems to me to go from bad to worse. My paper on the beginnings of religion in Australia, which you read in the proofs of my book, will be published soon, I hope, in the Fortnightly, and it will be followed by another on the beginnings of totemism in Australia, embodying suggestions which I mentioned to you in our Wrst interview in

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London. They contain my latest and, perhaps, Wnal view of the origin of totemism. I think the paper will interest you, and I shall be glad of your criticisms. What are you working at now? I am lecturing this term on the position of kings in early society,3 and I am going on with the new edition of my book. With our united kind regards to you and Miss Howitt, I am, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer State Library of Victoria MS 9356 1. Wesleyan clergymen because Fison was a Methodist minister. 2. [Andrew Lang], ‘A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia’, Athenaeum, 10 Dec. 1904, pp. 808–9; 17 Dec. 1904, pp. 847–8. 3. J. G. Frazer, Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship (London: Macmillan, 1905).

To W. J. Lewis, 24 June 1905 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Lewis, Thank you for your kind congratulations which we both appreciate. It adds to our pleasure to think that you should have heard the news along with Mr and Mrs Browne and that they should share our happiness. We are under the deepest obligations to Mrs Browne for the kindness she showed to my wife, then a perfect stranger to her, in the time of her greatest need.1 The day when Mrs Browne engaged my wife to give her Wrst lessons (private lessons in Italian), my wife had been all over Liverpool applying at every school she knew of for French teaching, and had been refused at all. The Girls’ High School was her last try, and it succeeded, purely through Mrs Browne’s kindness, for there was no vacancy in the French staV. But a vacancy soon occurred and my wife was given a trial. Has Mrs Browne told you what happened at the Wrst lesson? Perhaps she does not know. The desk at which my wife was to stand was tall, and as she is short she was mounting on a stool to stand at it, when in her agitation she fell, knocking down the desk with the ink, the exercises of the girls, and the Xowers which by a kind thought had been placed on the desk for the Wrst lesson. She thought she had done for her chance of being given the work, and she was so disheartened that she did not try to get up but lay quite still among the ruins on the Xoor. This frightened


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the girls, who might otherwise have laughed, and they gathered her up and comforted her as well as they could. So the lesson began and was the Wrst of many many successful lessons that my wife has given. You may be sure that when we think of this we are more grateful to Mrs Browne than we can say. The country where you are must be looking lovely just now. I passed through Frant on a walking tour many years ago, and the situation of the village and church on the top of the hill, with its exquisite views, imprinted itself on my not very retentive memory. You know, do you not?, a good place to stay at, high up, near Grenoble. If so, would be so kind as to send the name of it and the hotel on a postcard to my wife? She starts for Dauphine´ with her daughter next week. With kindest regards from us both to you and to Mr and Mrs Browne. I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 23 1. The outlines of the anecdote that follows are undoubtedly correct, but Frazer’s always suspect memory has betrayed him regarding the details. In the 1890s there was no such place as Girls’ High School in Liverpool, and neither of the principals of the two secondary institutions that did exist—the Liverpool High School for Girls and the Liverpool College for Girls—was named Mrs Browne. For this information I wish to thank Ms Kay Parrott, Team Leader in the Liverpool Record OYce.

To Edward Clodd, 8 September 1905 Rowmore House, Garelochhead N.B. My dear Clodd, Many thanks for your letter with the remarks on my articles. I shall look forward to reading your Animism with much interest.1 I am very glad that you Wnd my reasoning as to Australian totemism convincing. With regard to your question whether the theory may be regarded as applicable to totemism all over the world, my opinion is that it is so applicable. Although I spoke of the Australians specially because this theory of conception is reported only of them, I think it probable that the same theory has given rise to totemism everywhere. I regret I did not make this clear in the article. Everywhere, at an early period of human development, men must have been (like the Australians at present) ignorant of the

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true cause of conception. Everywhere in their ignorance they must have invented an hypothesis to account for the phenomenon; and the Australian hypothesis is, from the savage point of view, so simple and natural that it or something like it may very well have been a universal article of belief among men at a certain stage of culture. Thus it seems probable that totemism or a system like it has at one time been universal throughout the world. I hesitated as to this before, but I am now inclined to aYrm its probability. The stories of miraculous births, which occur among all peoples, are merely isolated survivals of what was once the universal belief as to all human births. The gods, of whom such tales are told long after they have ceased to be told of men, are here, as in so many things, merely fossil savages preserved in the heavenly museum to show what men were once like. My lectures on the early history of the kingship are to be published in the autumn. A copy will be sent to you, which please accept from me. With very kind regards from us both, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer University of Melbourne 1. Edward Clodd, Animism: Seed of Religion (London: Constable, 1905).

To Hermann Diels, 2 December 1905 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Professor Diels, I thank you sincerely for your kind letter and for sending me your inspiring Rectorial Address, which I have read with pleasure.1 I need hardly tell you that I warmly sympathise with your wish to maintain the Universities as the homes of learning sought for its own sake, apart from any practical or pecuniary gain to be extracted from it. Where knowledge is not thus pursued for itself, I believe that the whole national life must degenerate. Germany in that respect sets an example to the world, for nowhere else, I believe, is knowledge loved and honoured so much for its own sake as in Germany. The contrast in that respect between your country and mine is painful to a patriotic Englishman. Most men who make learning a profession in England


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seem to do so rather for what it brings in the way of social position and money than for sheer love of the thing itself. There are no doubt disinterested students among us, but I fear they are far far fewer than in Germany. My wife and I often think with pleasure of our happy visit to Berlin, and of all the kindness and hospitality we met with there. She joins me in kindest regards to you. Her son is now in Copenhagen. Believe me, with high respect and esteem, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1. ‘Die Scepter der Universita¨t’, Rede des Rektorats am 15 (Berlin, 1905), 18. Thanks to Prof. W. M. Calder III for the reference.

To Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Mo¨llendorV, 2 December 1905 Trinity College, Cambridge 1

My dear Sir, Your very kind letter about my book has given me great pleasure.2 I am proud and happy to learn that the book was in any way useful to you. My debt to German learning and scholarship is so deep that it gives me special joy to think that I have been able to pay a small portion of it back. Apart from that general debt I and my wife have the most grateful recollections of our short (too short) visit to Berlin, when we were received on all sides with a kindness and cordiality which touched our hearts and made our ten days’ stay in Berlin one of the pleasantest and most interesting times of our life. Amongst the memories that we cherish are those of the two hours we spent in your classrooms and of the meeting with you. I quite agree with you that a spell or incantation (Zauberspruch) should be classed with magic, not with religion, because it compels the gods or spirits to do the will of the sorcerer. But a prayer (Gebet) is religious, because it only entreats or supplicates the gods to grant the wish of the suppliant. In my larger work I have insisted on this distinction between compulsion and entreaty or propitiation as the fundamental diVerence between magic and religion. But I hardly touched on it in the lectures, because I wished, as far as possible, not to repeat what I had already said in my other book.

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I look forward with great interest to receiving the work of your pupil, and I thank you heartily for it in advance. Believe me, with high respect and esteem, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Wilamowitz Nachlass, University of Go¨ttingen (no. 397). 1. For the context of this and succeeding letters to Wilamowitz, see Robert Ackerman and W. M. Calder III, ‘The Correspondence of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-MoellendorV with Sir James George Frazer’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, no. 204 (ns 24) (1978), 31–40. In view of Frazer’s abiding distrust of the German scholar as a result of his work on Pausanias, his exceedingly respectful tone and elsewhere in his correspondence with Wilamowitz illustrates how much Frazer wished to achieve a favourable reception in Germany. 2. Wilamowitz had written to Frazer on 26 Nov. 1905 (TCC, Add. MS b.37: 356) after having read the latter’s recently published Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship (London: Macmillan, 1905). In it he made clearer than ever before his insuperable objections to those like Frazer who claimed that comparative anthropology might shed any light on ancient Greece. For him the anthropologists, in their eagerness to show resemblances in belief and behaviour between the Greeks and the ‘savages’ of Oceania and Africa, lost sight of the essential qualities of the Greek experience that made it distinctive and valuable. Wilamowitz saw that Frazer, like Le´vi-Strauss later in the century, was far more interested in epistemology than history, more interested in the evolution of the human mind than in what made the Greeks special. Furthermore, because Frazer was interested in the mentality of pre-literate peoples, whose minds are ipso facto largely inaccessible to us, he made the further considerable assumption that like actions bespeak like motives, which simpliWed matters greatly because it permitted him to infer thought from behaviour.

To A. W. Howitt, 22 July 1906 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Dr Howitt, I was very glad to get your letter some time ago and to learn that you intend to point out clearly some of the misapprehensions into which Lang appears to have fallen with regard to the Australian evidence. I say ‘‘appears to have fallen’’ because I have long ceased to read his books and only gather his views from the notices of them which I come across in magazines and journals. But as he is most persistent and vociferous, it is well that his mistakes should be exposed, else by dint of mere noise and repetition he will Wnd people ready to believe that what he says so often and so conWdently must be true. Your communication has done good already, for he has written a note to the Athenaeum expressing his regret that in ‘‘The Secret of the


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Totem’’ he has misapprehended you and me.1 What the misapprehension precisely is, I do not know (beyond what he says brieXy in the note to the Athenaeum) because I have not read his book. By omitting to read it I believe I have lost nothing and have spared myself much annoyance by not meeting with many crass misapprehensions and misrepresentations. The way in which people at home bedevil your and Spencer and Gillen’s evidence by their extraordinary misapprehensions would be incredible if one did not read them with one’s own eyes. Clearer and more precise writers than you three men I cannot call to mind. Yet, if we may judge by the people who write about the subject, there is not a soul in Europe who understands the facts as you present them with the exception (as I am bold to think) of myself. It is extraordinary and Wlls me, I confess, with contempt for the intelligence of the average anthropologist. I will willingly undertake to distribute the copies of your paper in Folk-lore according to your directions. The big bundle reached me only a few days ago. As this is the holiday season and people are or will be very soon scattering in all directions, I do not think this would be a good time to send out the papers, which would probably in many cases be overlooked or thrust aside. I propose therefore to delay the distribution till about the middle of September. People will then get them on their return from their holidays when they will be ready to attend to them. I hope you will approve of this. Mr Rogers, one of the assistants in the University Library, will undertake the actual distribution under my direction. Many thanks for the Wve pounds, which should, I imagine, be ample to cover the expenses of distributing all your Wve papers (the one in Folk-lore and the four to the Anthrop. Journal). Mr Rogers will keep an exact account of everything and I will send it to you with any balance that may be over. He is a very intelligent and thoroughly trustworthy man. I have employed him to do cataloguing and indexing for me. It will not be possible to send copies to all members of all anthropological societies at home and abroad, e.g. the members of the Berlin Anthrop. Society number over Wve hundred, besides more than a hundred corresponding members. But I will go through the lists, so far as they are accessible, and pick out the chief men, so far as I can judge by their reputation or oYcial position, and will see that copies are sent to them. And of course copies will be sent to the leading anthropological journals at home and abroad, so far as they are known to me. I hope this will meet your wishes. I have never heard from you or Spencer what you think of my two papers in the Fortnightly for July and September 1905. I sent copies to Fison and asked him to pass them on to Spencer. It seems to me that the Arunta belief as to the reincarnation of the totemic ancestors furnishes the key to the whole of totemism, which on this hypothesis, was in its origin simply a theory to

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explain conception. It was a great day for anthropology when Spencer and Gillen discovered these beliefs among the Arunta. Yet since their discovery the facts have been staring us in the face for years before I came to see, or thought I saw, their bearing. I see that an acute Frenchman, A. van Gennep, in a book on Australian myths, has accepted the conceptual theory of totemism and thinks that Lang must be ‘‘hypnotised’’ not to see the force of my arguments.2 What says Spencer? Will he never write to me again? Do poke him up for me. I have just been passing for the press a new volume, ‘‘Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Studies in the History of Oriental Religion.’’ It will be published in October and a copy will reach you in due course. It is simply an instalment of the third edition of the G.B. I look forward with great interest to reading your four contributions to the Anthropol. Journal.3 With our united kind regards to yourself and Miss Howitt, I am, my dear Howitt, Yours always sincerely J. G. Frazer State Library of Victoria MS 9356 1. Andrew Lang, ‘Australian Religion: A Correction’, Athenaeum (14 July 1906), 43, acknowledging having misunderstood Howitt (but not Frazer). The Secret of the Totem (London: Longmans, 1905) is yet another collection of Lang’s raking reviews of Frazer, Howitt, and others writing on Australian religion. 2. Arnold van Gennep, Mythes et le´gendes d’Australie (Paris: Guilmoto, 1906). 3. Howitt, ‘Native Tribes of South-Eastern Australia’, JRAI, ns 10, 37 (1907), 268–78; ‘Australian Group Relationships’, idem, 279–89.

To Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Mo¨llendorV, 21 November 1906 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Sir, My friend Dr W. H. D. Rouse, who has undertaken the editorship of the Classical Review, has asked me to forward to you the enclosed letter with a few words of introduction. I comply with his request with great pleasure, as he is a scholar for whose character and attainments I entertain a high respect. His range of knowledge is remarkable, for while he is primarily a classical scholar he has such a thorough knowledge of Indian languages that he holds a University Lectureship in Sanscrit [sic], and has translated several volumes of the Jatakas from Pali. He has an intimate knowledge of Greece, especially of


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the Greek islands, and he is a master of the modern Greek language, of which he has in his travels amassed, I believe, a considerable amount of manuscript materials. Lastly, he is a teacher of great experience, for he was formerly assistant master at the great public schools of Cheltenham and Rugby, and he has been for some years Headmaster of the Perse School in Cambridge. He is keenly alive to the necessity of reformed methods of teaching languages, both ancient and modern. Under him the Perse School has made great progress and is, I understand, regarded as a model. I hope I have said enough to interest you in my friend Dr Rouse and to show that any trouble you may be so good as to take on his behalf would not be thrown away. I am sure that a paper by you on the teaching of classics would be read with the greatest interest and respect by all classical scholars in England. A short time ago I had the pleasure of sending for your acceptance a new volume of mine, ‘Adonis, Attis, Osiris’. I trust that it reached you safely. My wife and I often think of the delightful ten days we spent in Berlin a few years ago. The politeness and kindness we met with on all hands endeared the place and the people to us. Here too in Cambridge some of our best friends are Germans. Believe me, my dear Sir, With much respect, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Wilamowitz Nachlass, University of Go¨ttingen (no. 397)

To Edmund Gosse, 16 January 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear, dear Gosse, my life-long benefactor and honoured friend, how could you imagine that such a dreadful idea ever crossed my mind?1 It never did for an instant. If I were to go mad, in the maddest nightmare of my disordered brain I could not conceive of such a thing. I am as incapable of such a thought as you are of such an act. It Wlls me with grief and horror to think that for any time, for hours certainly and perhaps for days, your kind heart should have been wounded by such a cruel thought of a friend. Put it away from you once and for all.

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How my letter to Mr Lingard could have been so misunderstood, I Wnd it hard to imagine. I wrote to him rather than to you (as I Wrst thought of doing) simply and solely to avoid troubling you in a matter with which I thought you had no concern. I supposed, and I still suppose, that you have only to do with the editorial department and have nothing to do with the payment. If this supposition is wrong, at least it is natural, since the payments come to me from a diVerent person (Mr Lingard) in a diVerent oYce in a diVerent part of the city. Accordingly I thought that if a mistake had been made, it had been made at the pay oYce, not by you, and accordingly I wrote to the pay oYce to enquire. But I wrote under no impression whatever of being cheated (I hate even to write the word) by anybody. I had gathered from one of your early letters on the subject that articles were to be paid for at two diVerent rates, and that I was to be paid at the higher. It seemed to me, judging roughly by the length of my articles (I have never measured them exactly or counted the words), that I was not being paid at the higher rate mentioned by you, and I thought that through a mistake at the pay oYce I might be being paid at the lower instead of the higher rate. So I wrote to enquire mentioning to Mr Lingard that you had told me (what I thought he might not be aware of ) that I was to be paid at the higher rate. I expected him to answer me and to tell me, what I do not yet know, whether any mistake has been made, or whether it is I, and not the oYce, that is in error. I may be wrong in my recollection of your letter, wrong in my estimate of the length of my articles, and wrong as to the scale of payment and as to deductions that may possibly have to be made for reasons with which I am unacquainted. I simply wrote for information to what I regarded as the proper quarter (the quarter from which I received the money), and instead of a simple answer from Mr Lingard correcting my mistake (if I had made one) or correcting his mistake or that of one of his subordinates, there comes this morning your letter like a thunderbolt out of the blue. I was surprised at not hearing from Mr Lingard, and if I had not heard from him in a day or two, I intended to mention the matter to you in my next letter (when I was going to ask you to let me have Farnell’s ‘‘Cults of the Greek States’’ for review) and to ask you to look into the matter for me.2 But I did not wish to trouble you needlessly and so intended to let a few days pass in hopes of hearing from Mr Lingard. That is the whole of the matter. When I think of the pain you have suVered, I bitterly regret that I did not (as my Wrst impulse was) write to you direct to enquire. If I could have thought that my writing to Mr Lingard could possibly have been so frightfully misinterpreted, I never would have written to him. But it was impossible


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that such an idea as you put in words could ever have crossed my mind. Forgive me, my dear friend, for having, with nothing but a kind intention, caused you such dreadful pain. Nothing like this has ever happened to me in my life before, and surely it will never happen again. You know that I write these articles to please you, my friend and benefactor, and not for the wretched pounds (I call them wretched because they have made you and me so wretched) that I receive for them. I would write them for nothing but the pleasure of pleasing you, though I willingly and gratefully accept payment for them besides. But I would far rather never have received a penny for them than that you should have suVered for them thus. Of course I will write at once to Mr Lingard to correct the extraordinary misapprehension which my unfortunate letter seems to have created in his mind as well as in yours. I will take care never to write to him again. Now, my dear Gosse, we must meet and shake hands. Will you come to me or shall I come to you? My mind will not be at rest till I see you or hear from you at least that this dreadful cloud of mistake has quite passed away from your mind and that you forgive me for the pain I have unwittingly caused you. May I come to you and bring my dear Wife with me? She wishes so much to know you and to thank you for all you have done for us both. And when you know her, you will love and honour her, as her noble and beautiful nature deserves, and as my best friends do. Only let us know and we will come at once to you. I am grieved to hear that you have been ill. Do write or telegraph to me at once to say that all is well and that we are friends as ever. At all events I am and shall be to the end of my life. Your grateful and aVectionate friend J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. In 1906 Gosse became the editor of the ‘Books’ supplement of the Daily Mail, and he enlisted an outstanding corps of reviewers, of whom Frazer was one. With that as background, the immediate context for the letter must be inferred. Through a misunderstanding, Gosse seems to have received a message through Mr Lingard (of the payroll oYce of the Daily Mail ) that Frazer believed that he had been paid too little for one of his reviews. Gosse concluded that Frazer believed that he had been cheated by Gosse. In turn, Frazer was shocked to Wnd such mean motives ascribed to him, especially by his friend and Wnancial saviour Gosse, and this aVecting letter is the result. 2. Volumes III and IV of Lewis R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, 5 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1896–1911).


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To R. R. Marett, 16 January 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Marett, I have been thinking of writing to you for some time to thank you for your review of ‘‘Adonis,’’ but I have been prevented partly by an almost insuperable aversion to writing letters, partly by the tedious and unsatisfactory nature of written controversy, on which I feared to embark if I began writing to you.1 But I may and will say, without fear of controversy, that the kind way in which you spoke of the book and me gave me much pleasure. And I will add that on one important point which you raise I am more and more inclined to agree with you, viz. that early gods are probably not much specialised in function, but are gods, if not of all work, at least of a good many kinds of work, of which in some cases fertilisation would be one. I have followed Robertson Smith by calling attention to the more general character of Semitic deities as compared with the more specialised character of Greek gods (p. 43). That observation, as far as I remember, I got from the fragmentary notes of one of his unpublished lectures. But next to thanking you for your kind words I write to ask whether you will not (if you can spare the time) come over to Cambridge and discuss our diVerences, so far as we do diVer, by word of mouth. It is far more satisfactory than writing about it. Indeed I have a strong and growing dislike of written controversy, believing that it often does more harm than good. But I have a very pleasant recollection of our friendly discussions by word of mouth, and I should be glad to renew the experience and to have the pleasure at the same time of introducing you to my wife. So if you will come, I will get rooms in College as before (our little house is not adapted for receiving visitors) and you will dine with me in hall and make the acquaintance of some of my brother Fellows. As to dates, I do not like to make any engagements before February 12th for a reason which the enclosed card will explain.2 I am not indeed stage-manager, but I run errands and make myself (or try to make myself ) as useful as I can. Could you come for February the 12th (Tuesday) and combine pleasure with business by seeing the French plays in the evening and talking shop next morning? Or if that day does not suit, perhaps you could come later. My wife and I expect to go to Liverpool to visit friends about February 20th. We may be absent a week or so, hardly more. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer


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Perhaps to explain the card I should add that my wife is French. But do not fear. She speaks English much better than I, who have never got rid (and hope never to get rid) of my Scotch accent.3 I am glad to learn that we may soon hope to have the remaining volumes of Farnell’s book. TCC Add. MS b.36: 191 (TS) 1. Man, 6 (1906), no. 114, 187–9. 2. Apparently, the date on which one of Lilly Frazer’s plays was being put on at the Perse School, Cambridge. 3. This note of Caledonian pride re-emerged periodically, most notably in 1920, in Frazer’s address to the Ernest Renan Society, in which he is pleased to note that one of the reasons why he Wnds Renan such a kindred spirit is that both he and Renan (a Breton) are fellow Celts and therefore share a deep racial aYnity (‘Address to the Ernest Renan Society’, GS, 261).

To Edmund Gosse, 17 February 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Gosse, If you will send me Miss A. Werner’s ‘‘Natives of Central Africa’’ (Constable) and N. W. Thomas’s ‘‘Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia’’ (Cambridge University Press), I will knock you oV reviews of these two books.1 If possible let me have them by Tuesday night, as I will then take them with me on a ten days’ absence from Cambridge. They will serve to beguile the time in the train and any other odd moments. I hope that you are Xourishing, if not like a green bay tree (a comparison which is odorous), at all events like anything nice that you can think of. My knowledge of botany is so extremely limited that I prefer to keep to generalities. Sometime next week (about the middle) my wife and I expect to be in London, and we hope to see you or perish in the attempt. Yours ever J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. If he reviewed Werner’s book it was not published, but his notice of N. W. Thomas, Natives of Australia (London: Constable, 1906) appeared in the Books supplement of the Daily Mail on 16 Feb. 1907. See the ‘Additions to Besterman’s Bibliography’ in Frazer, 309–10, for all of the reviews in the Mail that Frazer wrote while Gosse was the editor of the Books supplement.

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To Edmund Gosse, 21 March 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Gosse, Many thanks for Hill-Tout’s book. I shall try to send you reviews of it and of Crooke’s book before long. Volumes III and IV of Farnell’s ‘‘Cults of the Greek States’’ (Clarendon Press) are now out. It is an important work and deserves a full review.1 Can you send me the volumes for review? If not, I must buy them, as it is a book I must have for my own work. But it costs 32/, and of course I should prefer to get a review copy free. We were not in London on those days when we intended and expected to be there. Why do you never, never never come to see us?2 Yours ever sincerely J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. Gosse ceased to edit the Books supplement early in April 1907, and as soon as that happened, Frazer ceased reviewing and did not resume the practice for about twenty years. He reviewed none of the books mentioned in this letter. 2. An often repeated and increasingly plaintive query on Frazer’s part. The answer lay partly in the fact that Gosse had a much busier social life than the Frazers and partly in that Lilly Frazer was not easy company, although he doubtless enjoyed her letters.

To Edmund Gosse, 9 April 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Gosse, I am glad to hear that you are giving up the editing. It is work for a harder, coarser nature than yours, and you are wise to give it up in time. I trust and expect that with the relief you will soon recover what I fear you have lost in health and spirits. I could curse the editing when I think it could bring, even for a few hours, a black cloud between you and me. But it came like a cloud and it went like a cloud, never to return while we live. For purely selWsh reasons I am heartily glad of your resignation. For many years I made it a rule never to review a book, and I broke the rule only for your sake. But I did not like the work and it hindered me in my own proper work, so I am glad to be done with it. Let us shake hands on our mutual and happy release.


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I have two books sent from you for review, (1) C. Hill-Tout’s Salish and Deńe´ and (2) Farnell’s Cults of the Greek States, vols. III, IV. Both I have already marked and will keep. But I will replace them with new copies sent to you (or to your successor) for review. For I could not consent to keep books sent me for review without reviewing them. If I had not received them from you, I would have bought them, so I lose nothing by the transaction. I congratulate you on being a free man again. My wife and I have serious thoughts of leaving Cambridge and coming to live in or near London. Indeed we are looking out for a house.1 If successful we shall hope really to see something of you. Ever, my dear Gosse, Yours aVectionately and gratefully J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. An intimation of the intensity of Lilly Frazer’s dislike of Cambridge; one may therefore easily imagine her pleasure very soon afterward when Frazer was oVered the chair in Liverpool, and the passion with which she doubtless argued for the move.

To Edward Clodd, 17 May 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Clodd, I have to tell you of a great disappointment which has befallen me. Circumstances have arisen which render it undesirable that I should leave Cambridge these next few days. When I tell what the circumstances are I hope that you will forgive me.1 You know of course that the scheme for excavating Herculaneum has been delayed if not wrecked by the opposition of Boni to Waldstein.2 Well, I am a friend of both and am trying to bring about a reconciliation or understanding between them. As you probably know, Boni is in England, lecturing in London. We have succeeded in getting them to agree to meet for a consultation in Cambridge. But it has been a diYcult and ticklish business, for on one side the feeling has been very bitter. They will be assisted by Professor Hughes,3 who has made a special study of the geological stratiWcation at Herculaneum and will be able to advise them as to the best ways of boring, tunnelling, etc. I am hopeful that something will really come of this conference. Everything seems in train, but until the meeting is satisfactorily over the aVair remains in a critical stage and complications

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might arise at any moment. So I think it better that I should, as it were, stand by the wheel surrounded by barrels of oil which I am ready to pour on the troubled waters at any moment. In order to smooth the way as far as possible for the meeting I have written a letter to the Times, which I hope they will insert.4 It explains the situation and is intended to save the dignity of both men, for both of whom I have a sincere respect. That is what keeps me here at present. I have been going backwards and forwards between Cambridge and London, and do not think I could have come today even if my Wife had not made the mistake about the other engagement. It is a keen disappointment to me not to come to you, my dear Clodd. I have been looking forward with great pleasure to the visit and to meeting again Sir Alfred Lyall, Prof. Flinders Petrie, and perhaps others of the friends whom I have met there before.5 As I have told you, every time I come to your pleasant home I enjoy the visit more than the time before, and I believe that this must be the experience of all your guests. So I hope that another year you will let me have the pleasure which I have missed this time. Please remember me very kindly to all our common friends and believe me, with sincere regrets, my dear Clodd, Yours aVectionately J. G. Frazer Smith College Library 1. From what follows it is clear that Clodd had invited Frazer once again to the annual spring house party of his intellectual friends at Aldeburgh. 2. The disagreement about the best way to excavate Herculaneum between the leading Italian classical archaeologist Giacomo Boni and (Sir) Charles Waldstein (Walston) was of long duration. Frazer and others succeeded in smoothing things over for a little while, but the personal animosity between the men never permitted successful collaboration. 3. Thomas McKenny Hughes (1832–1917), Woodwardian Professor of Geology in Cambridge. 4. Published as ‘Commendatore Boni at Cambridge’, The Times, 21 May 1907, p. 6; not in Besterman. 5. (Sir) Alfred Lyall (1835–1911), Anglo-Indian administrator, writer on comparative religion.

To F. C. Burkitt,1 21 June 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Burkitt, In Jeremiah II.34 it would seem that we ought to read EMA for the meaningless EMA of the Masoretic text.2 This is supported by the Septuagint (epi p as h dryi), and I gather from Giesbrecht’s curt note ‘‘P H ‘sub omni quercu’ ’’ that it is also supported by the Syriac and by Jerome. Would you be


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so very kind as to tell me whether this is so? In my copy of the Vulgate I do not Wnd ‘‘sub omni quercu’’ but ‘‘in omnibus, quae supra memoravi,’’ which is clearly a rendering of EMA. The correction, if it is a correction, is important as proving that the blood of human victims (children probably, compare Isaiah LVII.5) was smeared on the sacred oaks. Forgive me for troubling you. I am writing some Biblical notes for a ‘‘Festschrift’’ in honour of Tylor, and amongst other things I deal with sacred oaks and terebinths in Palestine.3 Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Has the original text of Jerome’s version been tampered with in later editions of the Vulgate? If so, I should wish to know where I can Wnd the original text in its purest form. I suppose that some day I must get a copy of the Peshitta to spell out for myself in doubtful passages. But I don’t even know the Syriac characters.4 UL Add. MS 7658/B319 1. Francis Crawford Burkitt (1864–1935), Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. 2. A complicated little knot, unravelled by my erudite friend Prof. Harvey Hames, of Ben-Gurion University. In fact the three Hebrew letters can be vocalized four diVerent ways, and not, as Frazer thought, two. Depending on what one believes the context requires, the available (and entirely disparate) meanings are ‘terebinth’ (not oak, Frazer and the Septuagint notwithstanding), ‘these’, ‘shillelagh’, and ‘oath’. Because Frazer was arguing for the existence of a primitive stratum of Hebrew religion, he prefers the arboreal sense because he sees sacriWces performed around or under the tree. The translators of the Revised Standard Version, less tendentiously, choose the second of these meanings, the neutral demonstrative adjective. Burkitt’s reply, which has not survived, may have enlightened Frazer about the philological and semantic possibilities. 3. Frazer, ‘Folk-Lore in the Old Testament’, in N. W. Thomas (ed.), Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Burnett Tylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), 101–74. The essay became the germ of a work in three volumes of the same name in 1918. For Frazer’s study of Hebrew, see Frazer, 183 V. 4. The Peshitta, in Syriac, is the oldest version of the Hebrew Bible. Burkitt was the great authority on Syriac in Cambridge.

To F. C. Burkitt, 27 June 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Burkitt, Many thanks for your letter about Jeremiah XXIII.18. It is very kind of you to write so fully. I think you are right, and I intend to cancel what I had


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written on the subject. But I will mention Renan’s and Cheyne’s views in a foot-note, without expressing any opinion on their value. My rather wild idea about ‘‘brother’’ and ‘‘sister’’ will not be mentioned. You should not speak of me as a ‘‘scholar’’ in Semitic matters. I am only an ignoramus, but an ignoramus who is always willing and anxious to learn from those who know better. Again thanking you cordially for your timely caution and help, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer UL Add. MS 7658/B320

To Revd John Roscoe, 19 July 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Roscoe,1 Many thanks for your letter. I am glad to get news of you and to hear that you are enjoying Sheringham. I saw it more than twenty years ago, when it was quite a small place, a mere village. If I can help you by reading your paper for the C[hurch].M[issionary]. S[ociety]. I will do so gladly. Any changes I could suggest would of course be insigniWcant but if you will send me a copy I would pencil what occurred to me in the margin. I wrote to Liverpool a week ago mentioning the conditions on which I should be willing to accept a post at Liverpool, but have not yet received an answer. I am making a fair copy of my article for the Tylor volume introducing minor improvements as I go along. More than half went to the printer yesterday. The rest I hope to send tomorrow or Sunday. It will be a long article, 100 pages or so, but I hope may prove interesting. I wish very much that I could give more of my time to Bible study, for I Wnd it very fascinating, and I quite agree with you that much light may yet be thrown on the early history of the Hebrews by comparative study of institutions. But I must really try to Wnish oV the third edition of the G. B. before I can give myself


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seriously to anything else. When that is done I shall feel free to take up other lines of enquiry. Proofs of the new ‘‘Adonis’’ have begun to come in; the proofs of ‘‘Totemism’’ are waiting to be attended to; the proofs of the ‘‘Questions’’ are not yet Wnished oV; and in a few days I expect to receive proofs of the Tylor article. So you see the printer and I are keeping each other busy. If during the past winter I sometimes was irritable and impatient, as I fear I was, I hope my dear Roscoe that you will forgive me and put it down to its true cause, pressure of work and the eVort to get through tasks which sometimes seem interminable. The revision of ‘‘Adonis’’ took much longer than I expected, and then there is the poor old G.B. always waiting in the background. You will understand how anxious I am to be done with it and to get to fresh work. Let me thank you most heartily for the two beautiful catalogues of my library which you have made for me. The labour has been immense, but it will be a great convenience to me, such a catalogue being so much easier to consult than the slips, and I will deposit one copy for safety in the bank, so that if the worst should happen to my library I should know what I had to replace. But I hope never to need the catalogue for that purpose. In your letter mentioning that you had left the catalogue with the porter, you spoke of ‘‘the books’’ you had left with the catalogue. There were no books. Did you mean the box containing the slip catalogue? I suppose so. Now I must return to my copying. With our united kind regards to you and Mrs Roscoe, I am, Yours aVectionately J. G. Frazer My Wife exhibited the phonograph in London last Tuesday to a former Japanese Minister of Education and to ten other Japs.2 She thinks the phonograph might be very useful in Japan for the teaching of European languages. TCC Add. MS b.37: 35 1. The third extant letter from Frazer to Roscoe, included here as a specimen to give the tone of the correspondence, of which only Frazer’s side remains. Roscoe’s catalogue is TCC Add. MS Frazer 20: 1. 2. Regarding the postscript, Lilly Frazer was a pioneer in the use of the phonograph for the teaching of foreign languages.

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To Edmund Gosse, 26 July 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Gosse, I write to let you know, before any oYcial intimation has been made on the subject, that the University of Liverpool has asked me whether I would be willing to accept an honorary post in connection with my special subjects and that I have answered that under certain conditions I would.1 The matter cannot be deWnitely settled till the University reassembles in October, and till then I will ask you to regard this communication as private, though I am making the same communication to the Master and several friends. I am given to understand that the acceptance of my conditions by the University of Liverpool is practically certain. In that case I intend to take up residence at Liverpool about the end of the year. But I hope not to break my connection with Cambridge altogether. I propose to reside a part of each year in Cambridge, and for that purpose I shall ask the Council for permission to retain my rooms in College at least for a time. Naturally I shall leave Cambridge and especially Trinity with many regrets, but I hope to Wnd compensating advantages in my new life at Liverpool. It is my wish and intention to pursue my research and literary work there as here, and the stipulations I have made will, if accepted by the University, enable me to do so freely. As the post, I understand, is to be purely honorary, I shall be under no obligation to lecture to an extent which would interfere with my research, which I regard as the main business of my life. I am told by one who knows Liverpool and the University well (Forsyth2) that the intellectual atmosphere of the place is exceedingly keen and the enthusiasm for the advancement of knowledge great. And some of the professors are old friends and acquaintances, so I expect to be in very congenial society. And my oYcial connection with the University will, I hope, give me means of advancing my special studies in various ways, apart from my writings. But of course until the University accepts my somewhat stringent conditions (intended to safeguard my freedom of study and of utterance), the matter must remain in suspense. I trust, my dear Gosse, that you have long ago recovered from the strain and worries of the editorship, and that you are now in your usual good health. With kindest regards I am as always, Yours most sincerely J. G. Frazer


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Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. The Wrst mention of the oVer from Liverpool. To Lilly’s delight, Frazer accepted and moved to Liverpool in 1908 to become the Wrst professor of social anthropology. To her despair, however, he found himself unable to work there, and they returned to Cambridge, at great expense, after having been away less than a year. For more on the Liverpool episode, see Frazer, 207 V. 2. Andrew Russell Forsyth (1858–1942), professor of mathematics in Liverpool.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 18 October 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Hartland, You would have had the enclosed 6 copies of the Questions sooner, but I have been absent from Cambridge (mostly in Paris) till yesterday. I shall be grateful if you will distribute them to your correspondents. You can always have more for the asking. In the new edition of ‘‘Adonis,’’ I have considered the question of sacred prostitution in Western Asia much more fully than before in answer to Farnell, and have given him and you what appear to me to be good reasons for changing your opinion.1 You are wrong to set aside so cavalierly the testimony of Eusebius as to the prostitution of married women. He was a contemporary of the practices, he lived in the country, he was bishop of the diocese, and he was taken to task by Constantine (who abolished the sacred prostitution) for remissness in dealing with the heathen practices of his people. He is therefore a witness of the highest authority, and is not to be put out of court in favour of the later historian Socrates, who lived at Constantinople and was born long after the custom was abolished. If you hold the balance between the two writers, Socrates Xies up and kicks the beam. You will receive the new ‘‘Adonis’’ very shortly. I passed the last sheets for the press in Paris, some little time ago. With our united compliments to Mrs Hartland, I am, Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS 1. ‘The new edition of Adonis’: the Wrst edition of Adonis Attis Osiris appeared in Sept. 1906. When a second printing was called for (published in Nov.), Frazer took the opportunity to respond to some criticisms from L. R. Farnell and to add a good deal of new text. He also used the moment

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to apprise the world that the volume should henceforth be understood as a component of a forthcoming 3rd edn. of The Golden Bough. A cancel half-title was accordingly pasted in, describing the book as Part IV of the complete work. The bibliographical information is drawn from Besterman, 30.

To R. R. Marett, 22 October 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Marett, Thank you for your kind words about my article.1 They gave me pleasure. But I confess that the long screed about the oaks and terebinths seemed to me dull. I quoted my authorities lest I should be accused of seeing oaks (as some people, I understand, see snakes) where no oaks exist. But the quotations are tedious. At least so I found them. In the matter of the kid and the milk I have again been anticipated by [Marcel] Mauss, as he pointed out to me in a friendly letter. See L’Anneé Sociologique, ix, 190. I have sent notes to Man and the Athenaeum on the subject.2 Most of the papers in the volume, including yours, I have as yet only glanced at, for I only returned to Cambridge last Thursday. Yours seems to turn largely on the use of terms, and though it is no doubt very important that we should use words correctly and consistently, the discussion of such matters does not particularly interest me.3 In psychology remember I am an ignoramus.4 In my youth indeed I was interested in philosophy and psychology, but I have not kept up the study, and my notions on these subjects may be quite antiquated.5 A new and enlarged edition of ‘‘Adonis’’ will be out shortly. It contains a good deal of new matter which may possibly interest you. I have considered and replied to some of Farnell’s objections, and I should be glad to know whether you think my replies satisfactory or not. With our united kind regards, I am, Yours ever J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 193 (TS) 1. From the reference to the oaks and the terebinths, this must refer to Frazer’s contribution to the Tylor Festschrift (p. 267 n. 3).


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2. Frazer, ‘Not to Seethe a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk’, Athenaeum (26 Oct. 1907), 524, and Man, 7 (1907), no. 96, 166. 3. Marett being a good friend, Frazer chose always to believe that their disagreements were essentially semantic, which in his mind meant that they were not substantive. In fact, from the start, their disagreement on primitive religion was fundamental. The disparity in their views was exposed in an exchange of letters about the origin and meaning of myth and ritual starting on 11 May 1911; see Frazer, 224–9. 4. In view of his undiminished willingness to ascribe motives to ‘savages’, Frazer never did realize just how serious his ignorance of psychology was. 5. For his youthful study of philosophy and psychology, see Frazer, 39–45.

To Edmund Gosse, 8 November 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Gosse, I promised to let you know when the Liverpool aVair was decided. Well, yesterday I received from the Vice-Chancellor of the university an oVer of the newly instituted chair of Social Anthropology, and today I have written accepting it. I am to be left free to lecture or not as I think best, and I shall feel the freer because no salary is attached to the chair. I shall thus be able as hitherto to go on with my researches (the thing I care most about) without any of the compulsory teaching and examining, which are such serious drawbacks to most professorships. I quite agree with our Vice-Master [William Aldis Wright] who once was asked to examine for the Theological Tripos and answered that nothing but extreme hunger would induce him to do so. I intend to take a furnished house in Liverpool and to go into residence there probably in the spring, letting my Cambridge house and retaining (if possible) my College rooms, so that if Liverpool should not suit us as a residence it would be quite easy for us to return to Cambridge. But from what I have seen and heard of Liverpool I believe that it will be a very agreeable place to live in. I hope you received lately a copy of my paper ‘‘Folk-Lore in the Old Testament.’’ Some day I intend to expand it into a book. You will shortly receive a new and enlarged edition of ‘‘Adonis.’’ Some of the new passages I think you will like, as the Wrst assembly of the returned exiles, in drenching rain, at Jerusalem, and the retreat of Sennacherib, with the blue squadrons of the Assyrian cavalry disappearing in clouds of dust in the distance. These same blue squadrons were touched into the picture at the last moment, in fact only last Sunday, weeks after the whole book had been passed for the press. Indeed I fancy that a sheet had to be cancelled to admit of the change. For the

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Assyrian cavalry in their gorgeous blue uniforms, ‘‘all of them Wne young men,’’ see Ezekiel XXIII 5–6, 12, a passage which I read in Hebrew at lunch the last Sunday that ever was, and now they stand or rather gallop in my book.1 I hope that you had a good autumn holiday. My Wife and I spent between two and three weeks in Paris and met many interesting people. With our united kind regards I am, my dear Gosse, always yours sincerely, J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. Thus the Authorised Version; the Revised Standard Version has ‘warriors clothed in purple, all of them desirable young men’.

To Edward Clodd, 5 December 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Clodd, Thank you for your kind congratulations, which give me much pleasure. The conditions of the chair are not onerous. Practically I am left free to lecture or not as I please, so that I shall continue as hitherto to devote myself mainly to research. But I intend to lecture from to time on my research work, and, most important of all, I intend to try to found a fund for conducting researches among living savages so as to record their customs and beliefs before they have vanished. This is really the work that is most urgently wanted in anthropology, perhaps in science generally, since almost everything else can wait, but this cannot. It must be done now or never. With its wealth, local patriotism, and many connections with foreign lands, Liverpool seems to me the best place in the country in which to start such a scheme. I intend to plead for it strongly in my inaugural lecture. You are right in speaking of the Liverpool University as alive, and I believe that part of its life is due to its contact with a great and energetic community engaged in other than academic pursuits. That tends I believe to broaden the views of University men and to strengthen their hold on the realities of life. Left to ourselves we are apt to lose ourselves in abstractions, to lag behind the forward movement of the world in some important directions. I hope therefore that my work may gain rather than lose by transplantation to Liverpool.


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All that I have seen of the place and the people has impressed me very favourably. The climate is brisk and stimulating. One ought to do much more work there than in the fenny atmosphere of Cambridge. There is an admirable train service to London, and I share your hope that you and I may continue to meet from time to time. We hardly expect to move till April, as I have work and other things that may keep me here till then. Believe me, my dear Clodd, always yours sincerely, J. G. Frazer I have written to Aldeburgh to thank you for your most interesting book. Smith College Library

To Lorimer Fison, 14 December 1907 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Fison, I am much indebted to you for both your letters of November 2nd and 11th. It is most kind of you to interest yourself so actively in the distribution of my Questions. New Guinea is one of the very best anthropological Welds remaining to be reaped, so I am particularly grateful to you for planting a good seed there. I will send you 8 or 10 more sets of Questions for distribution, and shall be happy to send you more if you want them. I am preparing a new edition of Totemism, so am anxious to get all the latest information on the subject. The new edition will contain (1) a reprint, verbatim, of the old book; (2) the essays on totemism which I published in the Fortnightly Review; (3) a number of supplementary chapters giving the new information as totemism arranged geographically, not comparatively as in the original Totemism. Just at present I am extracting the gist of Spencer and Gillen’s account of Central and North-Central Australian totemism, and am more than ever impressed by the magniWcence of their work. I consider them, I mean their two books, on the whole the most valuable record of any savage tribes that we possess. They had two great advantages over Howitt, who with the same opportunities might have given us as valuable a record: (1) the tribes Spencer and Gillen worked at were far less inXuenced by contact with Europeans; (2) all their evidence was gathered by themselves, and they were not obliged to rely on correspondents, whose evidence cannot always be tested.

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I am most anxious that Spencer and Gillen should make a long expedition to Western Australia and do for the Western what they have done for the Central tribes. I want to see this done before I die. It would be a Wtting crown to their great work. I hope you will use what inXuence you have with them to urge them to it. I am not without hope of raising a fund for that and similar expeditions. For the University of Liverpool has elected me to a professorship of Social Anthropology, and in my inaugural address I intend to plead strongly with Liverpool for the establishment of a permanent fund to be devoted entirely to anthropological research among savages. Considering the wealth of Liverpool, the interest the people take in their University, and the many connections they have with savage lands, I am not without hope of succeeding. I have already written to Spencer to ask him if he and Gillen would be willing to take to the Weld again, and what a year or 18 months’ work in Western Australia would cost. Then I wish to set Roscoe free for anthropological work in Central Africa. He can do work there that no one else is likely ever to do. He has just returned to Uganda after a year at home. I shall go to reside at Liverpool, at least for a time, to see how it suits us both. My wife knows it well. She lived there for years and has many warm friends there.1 So it will not be like going to a strange place. My main work will be, as hitherto, research. I am left free to lecture or not as I please. There is no salary. You say nothing of your health, but I was rejoiced not long ago to hear of its improvement. I met a Mr Tovey, a relation of yours, lately at Trinity Lodge. Please give my heartiest greetings to Howitt and Spencer when you see or write to them. I hope that Howitt’s polemic against Lang’s misapprehensions of the Australian facts will soon appear in the Anthrop. Journal. With kindest regards to yourself, I am, my dear Fison, Always yours most sincerely J. G. Frazer Australian National University MS 7080/41 1. She lived there presumably because her Wrst husband, Charles Baylee Grove, was a master mariner.


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To Baldwin Spencer, 5 February 1908 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Spencer, I Wnd a reference by Lang to a paper of yours on exogamy in the Report of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science for 1905.1 I have never seen the paper, and as these Reports are not easily accessible here in England I should be much obliged if you would send me a copy of it and of any other occasional papers you may publish from time to time. No one can well be more interested in your work or admire it more than I do. Today I have received the Wrst part of Strehlow’s book on the Arunta. It deals mainly with the legends of the Alcheringa. I wish you would tell me what you think of it and of Mr Strehlow as an anthropologist.2 We shall shortly move to Liverpool, where I have taken a lease of a house for four years. One of the Wrst things I intend to do when I settle there is to get funds for an expedition to Western Australia to be conducted by you and Gillen. I want to see that done and to read ‘‘The Native Tribes of Western Australia by Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen’’ before I die. I wrote to you about this before. Do let me know what you think of it, whether you and Gillen would go, and what it would cost, so that I may have a fairly exact notion of what sum to ask for. Also I wish if possible to relieve J. Roscoe of his mission work in Central Africa and set him free there entirely for anthropology. We should learn very much from him. I know no keener anthropologist than he. My inaugural address at Liverpool is not to be till May 14th. It is then that I mean to broach my plan for promoting research in the Weld, so there is plenty of time yet for me to hear from you about this plan of mine about West Australia, which I have much at heart. I am bringing out a new and much enlarged edition of Totemism. I am adding a geographical survey of all the principal facts about totemism known at present. I have devoted more than 100 pages (8vo) to the Central and Northern tribes described by you, and am more than ever Wlled with admiration of the solidity and splendour of your work. I do trust you are well and not killing yourself with over-work. Do let me hear from you about yourself and everything. With our united kindest regards, I am always, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer

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I look forward with great interest to reading Howitt’s paper, which is, I believe, to be published in the next number of the Anthropological Institute. I was much grieved to hear of the death of our good friend Lorimer Fison. I admired and loved him. I have sent in a petition on behalf of Mrs Fison and her daughters to the Prime Minister, but the matter is not yet decided. If successful I will telegraph to Mrs Fison. I will enclose a copy of the petition. What do you think of my new anthropological Questions? All kind messages to Howitt if you see him. Pitt Rivers Museum 1. W. Baldwin Spencer, ‘Totemism in Australia’, in Tenth Report of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science Held at Dunedin (Sydney: The Association, 1905), 376–423. 2. Carl Friedrich Strehlow (1871–1922), one of a number of German Lutheran missionaries who worked among the Aborigines at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. In 1897 Strehlow (and J. G. Reuter) translated the New Testament into Dieri, and then, starting in 1907, Strehlow composed no fewer than seven volumes on the myths and traditions of the Arunta; the book noted by Frazer was Mythen, Sagen und Ma¨rchen des Aranda-stammes in Zentral Australien (Frankfurt-am-Main: Stadtliches Volker Museum, 1907). Andrew Lang, who perceived a glimmering of monotheism in Aboriginal belief, often cited Strehlow approvingly in his long-running controversy with Spencer and Frazer, who did not. Not surprisingly, therefore, Spencer and Frazer largely dismissed Strehlow’s testimony.

To Baldwin Spencer, 14 March 1908 Rowmore House, Garelochhead, Dumbartonshire My dear Spencer, I was much grieved to hear a few days ago of the death of our friend Dr Howitt. It is a great loss to Australian anthropology. I had hoped that he might yet live to do good work and to correct many of the current misapprehensions and misrepresentations of Australian facts. His forthcoming paper in the Anthropological Journal will, I believe, be an important contribution in that direction. I have been asked to write an obituary notice of him for Folk-lore. I have said that I could not write it for the next number, but might write it for the next but one. Could you give me any facts as to his early life and work? I know nothing but what appears in his published books and papers. I will write to Miss Howitt also for particulars. I hope that you will write a notice of him for one of the scientiWc periodicals. The petition which we got up on behalf of Mrs Fison and her daughters for a pension on the Civil List has not been granted. I wrote to Howitt telling him of our failure and suggesting that a petition to the same eVect should be


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addressed to the Victorian Government. At the same time I sent him copies of our petition and of the Prime Minister’s reply (through his private secretary), thinking that these might be useful in applying to the Victorian Government. My letter and its enclosures would reach him too late. If you approve of the plan of appealing to the Victorian Government for help, will you undertake to bring the appeal before them? In that case I would suggest that you should obtain from Miss Howitt the copies of the petition which I sent to her and also the letter of the Prime Minister’s private secretary, to be used by you as you may think Wt in presenting the object of the petition. I would send you more copies of the petition, but here in Scotland I have none beside me. I have written to you already about my great desire that you and Gillen should make an anthropological expedition to Western Australia, and my hope that at Liverpool I may be able to raise funds for the expedition. I was speaking to Sir John Murray, of the Challenger, a few days ago, and he took up the scheme warmly and oVered to contribute £200 to it.1 I imagine (please correct me if I am wrong) that £2000 would suYce for the work, so that if I could get nine other men to promise equal contributions, the funds for the expedition would be provided. I am hopeful of succeeding at Liverpool, where Sir Rubert Boyce (of the Tropical School of Medicine), the Lord Mayor (Dr Caton), and Lord Mountmorres are all interested in my anthropological work and plans. If the funds are raised in Liverpool, and the plan is carried out, I think it would be right that your book on the subject should appear as a publication of the University of Liverpool, Department of Anthropology, and that the ethnological objects collected, together with copies of the photographs, phonographic records, etc., should go to Liverpool University. Would you agree to this? If I remember aright, you have many unpublished photographs. How would it do to publish all your photographs complete in an album with explanatory notes? I am anxious to establish at Liverpool an institute for the prosecution of anthropological work in the Weld, and should like to inaugurate it by an expedition by you and Gillen to Western Australia, for there is nothing that I have more at heart than that. My general scheme for the obtaining of records of savage races will be propounded in my inaugural lecture on May 14th, and it would be a very happy omen of its success if I could announce on that occasion that an expedition to W. Australia had already been arranged for and the funds subscribed. So I am very anxious to know whether, if the money is found, you and Gillen will go. If you have not already answered when this reaches you, will you please telegraph your answer, in order that I may be informed in good time? ‘‘Yes’’ or ‘‘No’’ would be a suYcient answer. If you and Gillen cannot go, I am afraid the scheme will break down altogether. For I could not

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accept money for an expedition unless I could answer for the competence of the men who are to go on it, and I know of no men but you and Gillen who are competent for this piece of work. In regard to Howitt, I should be glad to learn when he went to Australia, what the nature of his professional work was, how he came to study anthropology, what his early relations with Fison were, etc. I think of asking Macmillan to publish a collection of Howitt and Fison’s scattered papers, for it seems to me that these papers are not altogether superseded by Howitt’s book. If such a volume of papers were published, I should like to preWx to it a brief biographical notice of the two men. I shall be much obliged if you will answer this letter as soon as and as fully as you conveniently can. To my reprint of Totemism I am adding my papers in the Fortnightly and a new ‘‘Geographical Survey of Totemism,’’ which threatens to run into two volumes. I trust that you keep well. With the united kind regards of my wife and myself, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum 1. Sir John Murray (1841–1914), whose voyage of exploration on the Challenger took place 1873–6.

To Baldwin Spencer, 19 April 1908 24 Abercromby Square, Liverpool1 My dear Spencer, I received your letter of March 10th last night. The death of our friends Fison and Howitt so soon after each other has been a great grief to me. But I am very glad to have known and esteemed them both personally as men as well as anthropologists. Their visits to Cambridge were memorable events to me. I was so proud of you four men and happy to think of you as a band of brothers. I knew of no other such band, and now two are gone. You and I, I hope, will try to stick more closely together for the loss, in spite of the distance between us. I have, as you know, the warmest admiration for your work and the fullest conWdence in its accuracy and Wdelity. I value it all the


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more by comparison with the work of others, and it makes me sick to think of the sophistry and misrepresentations of which your facts and Howitt’s have been the object. But I believe that these misrepresentations will pass away like clouds and be forgotten, while your facts and the sound and true inferences which you and Howitt and Fison drew from them will remain. I wish, my dear Spencer, I could see you again and shake hands with you. When is that to be? I have proposed to Macmillan that they should publish a collected edition of the scattered anthropological papers of Howitt and Fison. It seems to me that these papers contain some things of value which Howitt has not embodied in his book. One striking example of this I communicated to him shortly before his death and published in ‘‘Man.’’2 It is the explanation of the classes and subclasses as intended to prevent the marriage, Wrst, of brothers with sisters, and second of parents with children. Since Howitt’s visits to Cambridge I had imagined that the perception of this truth was a discovery of mine, and so he represented it in his book. But in fact he had enunciated the same truth in an early paper published many years ago. I am glad that I discovered the facts and did him justice both publicly and privately before his death (for I wrote to him at once and the letter reached him in life). Macmillan has agreed to publish such a volume of collected papers on condition that I am responsible for the selecting of the papers, and that I preWx a biographical notice of both men. The proWts, if any, would be divided between the publishers (who would take all risks) and the families of the authors. It might be a little diYcult to apportion the shares between the two families, since the greater part of the work would be Howitt’s. What do you think of this plan? Do you think that Howitt would have approved republishing papers, some parts of which he regarded as superseded by his book? And if you approve, please let me know what papers should be included. My idea would be to reprint all the papers mentioned by Howitt in the preface to his book (pp. viii–ix) together with his paper on the Dieri ( Journ. Anthrop. Inst. XX), his paper ‘‘On the Organisation of Australian Tribes,’’ in Transactions of the Royal Society of Victoria, 1889; and perhaps his ‘‘Remarks on the Class Systems Collected by Mr Palmer,’’ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. XIII. Also I would include Fison’s articles on Fijian customs in the Journ. Anthrop. Institute. But I do not think it would be desirable to include the recent controversial papers which Howitt published against Lang. I am sorry that you and Gillen cannot yet go to West Australia, but I am glad you both have the expedition in view; it is one of the pieces of work I have set my heart on seeing done before I die. I told you in my last letter that Sir John Murray of the Challenger has subscribed £200 to the expedition. My new book on totemism is to include, Wrst a reprint of the old book, second a reprint of my four papers in the Fortnightly, and third a


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Geographical Survey of Totemism, which will form the bulk of the book. I intend to describe all the principal facts of totemism so far as they are known at present in geographical or ethnographical order. I begin with Central and North Central Australia, drawing my materials of course exclusively from you and Gillen; then I take up South-East Australia, using chieXy Howitt’s facts. That is as far as I have got just now, and what I have already printed will make about 450 pages. So you see I am making the ‘‘Geographical Survey’’ pretty full. From what you tell me about Strehlow it seems to me that I cannot safely use his evidence; so I intend to make no use of it. I wish you would publish your reasons for distrusting his evidence, such as you have stated them to me, so that I could refer to them. The shakiness of Strehlow’s facts ought to be known here in Europe. As for the fellow R. H. Matthews, of course I shall not even mention him or any of his multitudinous writings. He wrote to me twice in a tone which shewed the character of the man. I did not answer his letters and shall hold no communication with him. I am sorry that our eVorts to procure a Civil List pension for Mrs Fison and her daughters were unsuccessful. I hope that something may be got out of the Victorian Government. But I have already written to you about that. It is too soon yet to say whether I shall like Liverpool or not. But we have a very comfortable house and I have an excellent study with my books well arranged in it. I intend to lecture very little, indeed only to read a little of what I have ready for publication. I have announced four lectures on totemism in Central Australia, which will be an abstract and digest of your facts such as I have made it for my book. The deaths of Howitt and Fison are a heavy loss to you. When you have done your work in West Australia, perhaps you will return and settle in England? I wish for our sakes we had you here, but so long as there is Weld work to be done in Australia, I suppose that it is better you should stay where you are. Is there much left to be gathered in Queensland? Do you ever think of going there? Why has Roth left it? With kindest regards from us both, I am always, my dear Spencer, yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer I hope you will write to me oftener than you have done of late years. I also have been very remiss as a correspondent. Pitt Rivers Museum 1. The Wrst extant letter addressed from Liverpool. 2. J. G. Frazer, ‘The Australian Marriage Laws’, Man, 8 (1908), no. 8, 21–2.


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To Hermann Diels, 5 May 1908 24 Abercromby Square, Liverpool My dear Friend and Colleague, Your very kind letter has given much pleasure to my Wife and me. You appreciate the main motive of my lecture, that of arousing the country and the Government to a sense of the duty which they can still discharge, though soon it will be too late. Whether the appeal will have any eVect, I do not know, but at least animam liberavi.1 There is at present a movement on foot to establish a national or imperial Bureau of Ethnology; perhaps something may come of it. As to the professorship I do not intend to lecture much. My real work is done in my study, which I never quit willingly to appear in public. I am not at home in a professor’s chair and doubt whether I shall long occupy it. It is a great change from the pensive beauty and historical memories of Cambridge to the bustle and tumult and squalor of the great commercial seaport. I seem to have left part of my heart on the willows by the Cam and cannot say how soon I may go to reclaim my lost property! I grieve to hear of the cause which prevents you from coming to England this Whitsuntide. I trust that your stay in Rugen will restore your Wife to health as it has done before. How charming these old beech woods must be, with the summer breeze from the sea blowing through them. I wish we could meet there and talk of our studies in the green arcades. I love the German woods. We have nothing like them in England. To a German in a foreign land the memory of the German woods must be particularly tender. Ich hatte einst ein scho¨nes Vaterland Der Eichenbaum wuchs dort so hoch.2

It is extremely kind of you to interest yourself so much in my book. I had hoped to publish parts I and II of the new edition this year, but that can hardly be now, as I have been led into writing a book on Totemism and Exogamy which requires all my attention.3 It cannot be published before the autumn, perhaps the late autumn, but as soon as I am rid of it I intend to give my undivided attention to The Golden Bough and hope to issue the Wrst two parts (which are both in type) in rapid succession, say the spring or early summer of next year, Parts III and V will take a good deal longer time. I doubt whether, even if all goes well, I can complete them by the end of next year. But I will try. Part IV (Adonis), as you know, is out. That is all I can say on the subject at present. I much appreciate the generosity of your friend who has oVered to bear part of the expense of bringing out the book in a German

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translation. As I have the greatest respect for German learning, I should be very glad indeed to see my book made more accessible to German scholars in a translation. But of course as you say the translation must be made from the new edition. It would never do to translate the old one with all its faults, some of which I hope to correct in the new edition.4 My Wife is very well. She has left me for a few days to go to Paris, where her daughter is to maintain her thesis for the doctorate next week. Her subject is the life and writings of R. L. Stevenson.5 My step-son is still at Stockholm, where he seems to be busy and content. If my Wife were beside me she would join me in the most cordial good wishes to you and Mrs. Diels. I am, yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer P.S. Dieterich’s death was indeed a heavy blow to the historical study of religion in Germany, all the more that it came so soon after Usener’s.6 It will be very diYcult to replace him. I fear that the Archiv may not maintain the high level to which he raised it. I regret to think that we were both in Paris at the same time last autumn, and even in hotels quite near one another, but did not meet. Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1. ‘Animam liberavi’: ‘I have freed my spirit’. 2. Heinrich Heine, ‘In der Fremde’, in Sa¨mtliche Werke, ed. E. Genton (Dusseldorf: HoVmann & Campe, 1983), ii, 71–3. 3. For the strange way in which Frazer was ‘led into’ writing Totemism and Exogamy, see Frazer, 206–7. 4. Germany being the universally acknowledged capital of the scholarly world, a German translation of The Golden Bough was long among Frazer’s desiderata. (Lilly Frazer supervised the translations of all his work into French.) This letter refers to Frazer’s Wrst attempt to bring out a translation, but the project languished because Diels, its moving spirit, was unable to Wnd a publisher. Then came the war, so the German version, Der Goldene Zweig, trans. Dr Helen von Bauer, did not appear until 1928, and then it was a rendering of Frazer’s one-volume epitome of 1922. 5. Lilly Frazer’s daughter, Lilly Mary Grove, did obtain her doctorate and went on to teach English in France; she died in 1919, probably a victim of the inXuenza pandemic. 6. Albrecht Dieterich (1866–1908) and Hermann Usener (1834–1905), distinguished German historians of ancient religion. Usener was for many years the editor of the Archiv fu¨r Religionswissenschaft.


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To Solomon Schechter, 6 May 1908 24 Abercromby Square, Liverpool Dear Dr Schechter, Very many thanks for your kindness in sending me the Second Series of your ‘‘Studies in Judaism.’’ Some of the papers in the volume I had read before, but I am glad to see them collected and made accessible to all in a permanent form. I hope that you will give us more essays of the same sort. We are settling down into our new home in Liverpool. The house is commodious, comfortable, and in a good situation, looking out on a pleasant square. The whole of my library has been transferred from Cambridge; there is ample room for it and to spare, and my books are all in good order. My inaugural lecture on ‘‘The Scope of Social Anthropology’’ is to be given next week. It will soon be published. You shall of course have a copy. My Wife has had much hard work in getting the house in order. But she is well. As you know, she has many good friends here, so that the place is not strange to her. I continue my Hebrew studies at odd times and expect before long to have Wnished reading the Old Testament in Hebrew. At present I have only to read the Psalms, Job, and part of Proverbs.1 The reading of the Old Testament in the original has been an immense pleasure and stimulus to me. What magnum opus have you on hand at present? When you write, please give me news of you all and of your work. I am hoping to raise funds in Liverpool for an anthropological expedition to West Australia, to be made by Spencer and Gillen, the two men who have done such splendid work of the same sort in Central Australia. Sir John Murray, of the Challenger, has given me £200 towards it. The total sum wanted is about £2000. Is there any chance of seeing you in England this summer? I don’t suppose the Congress of the History of Religions at Oxford in September has much attraction for you. I shall have to go, as Cambridge has made me its representative at the Congress; but personally I should prefer not to go. I trust that you are all very well, and that you get good news of Ruth in her South African home.2 My Wife joins me in kindest regards to you all. I am, yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer

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Jewish Theological Seminary 1. Frazer went through most of the text in Hebrew at least four times; his Hebrew Bible is in Trinity College (TCC Adv. c. 21. 20–3); for more on his Hebrew studies, see Frazer, 183–4. 2. Schechter’s daughter.

To Vice-Chancellor, University of Liverpool,1 8 July 1908 Trinity College, Cambridge Dear Mr Vice-Chancellor, When I accepted a Chair of Social Anthropology at Liverpool, I stipulated that I should not be bound to residence, but I said that it was my intention to give up my Cambridge home and come into residence at Liverpool. That intention I carried out in full. But experience has proved that my attachment to Cambridge—my home for more than thirty-three years— was deeper than I knew, and that my roots, like those of Polydorus, could not be pulled up without blood. In fact I Wnd it essential to my happiness, and therefore to the doing of my best work, that I should return to residence in Cambridge. I am accordingly taking steps to do so; but I trust that in leaving Liverpool I need not sever my connection with the University which has honoured me so highly and welcomed me so kindly. Of that honour and kindness I shall always retain a grateful recollection, and I hope that, retaining my Chair, I may be allowed in future to co-operate with my colleagues in Liverpool for the advancement and diVusion of knowledge. Thanking you for your personal as well as oYcial courtesy and kindness to me, I am, dear Mr Vice-Chancellor, Yours very respectfully and sincerely J. G. Frazer University of Liverpool Archives 1. (Sir) A. W. W. Dale (1855–1921), vice-chancellor of the university from 1903 to 1919.


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To A. B. Cook, 18 August 1908 24 Abercromby Square, Liverpool My dear Cook, Your interesting letter was very welcome. Your identiWcation of the leaves with those of vervain is very attractive.1 I have long inclined, as you know, to think that the least improbable etymology of Virbius was that which connected the name with verbena. The resemblance between the leaves on the bust and the leaf of verbena oYcinalis, which you enclose, seems very close. I hope you will send a note on the subject to the Classical Review, giving illustrations of the bust and the leaf. Step by step we seem to be unravelling the Nemi mystery. Go on and prosper. How goes the book?2 I have disposed of my house in Liverpool from September and have taken St Keyne’s in the Grange Road. So we shall soon be near neighbours, and I look forward with great pleasure to renewing our walks and talks. I am in hopes of bringing you up to Hebrew scratch again.3 I shall shortly Wnish reading the Old Testament in Hebrew, having at present only Job and about half the Psalms yet to read. I have also a big book on Totemism in the press, which I hope to publish about the end of the year. With kindest remembrances from us both to you and Mrs Cook. I am yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 60 1. This is one small part of Frazer’s laborious quest to identify the plant from which the golden bough was plucked. After much correspondence with botanists at Kew and elsewhere, he concluded that it was the mistletoe. 2. The Wrst volume of ‘the book’, Zeus, bringing together everything known about the father of the gods, would appear in 1914; further instalments were published in 1924 and 1940. 3. Cook and Frazer were members of the private tutorial run by the Regius Professor of Hebrew, Revd R. H. Kennett, in 1904, the other members of which were Jane Ellen Harrison and Francis Cornford. For more, see Frazer, 183–4.

To Hermann Diels, 29 August 1908 24 Abercromby Square, Liverpool My dear friend and colleague, Many thanks for your kindness in sending both the Festrede and the Geda¨chtnisrede.1 I had a great respect for Zeller’s admirable work and am

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glad to learn something of his life. From recent experience I can understand with what a heavy heart he quitted the woods and hills of Heidelberg for the streets of Berlin. I am leaving Liverpool to Wnd my heart where I left it on the banks of the Cam. We have taken a house in Cambridge and return there next month. Few things would give my Wife and me more pleasure than to welcome you to it. I hope that pleasure may come before long. We shall have plenty of room for friends. I have just come across a passage which may interest you, if you have not met with it. Speaking of the East African tribe of the Wachage the missionary Charles New says: ‘‘Prognostications, as has been seen, are made upon the appearance of the Xesh and muscular twitching of slaughtered animals’’ (Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, London, 1873, p. 458). I hope that your Wife beneWted greatly by her stay among the beech woods of Rugen. Shall you be at the Oxford Congress of Religion next month? If so, we shall meet. With kindest greetings from us both, I am, yours very sincerely, J. G. Frazer Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1. Hermann Diels, ‘Gedachtnisrede auf Eduard Zeller’, Abhandlungen der Akademie Berlin, no. II (1908): this is the authoritative necrology of Eduard Zeller, the great historian of ancient philosophy; see Hermann Diels and W. Waldeyer, ‘Die wissenschaftliche Arbeit der Ko¨niglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaft im Jahre 1908’, Internationale Wochenschrift, 2 (1908), 327–44. Thanks to Prof. William M. Calder III for this attribution.

From Lilly Frazer to W. J. Lewis, 1 September 1908 24 Abercromby Square, Liverpool Dear Professor Lewis, Your kind letter & the kind thought of us gave us much pleasure. We are, once more, plunged in the thick of removal-business, the work of destruction to begin on Sept 14th while we go to the so-called ‘‘Congress of Heretics’’— We hope to pull all thro’ by the 18th or 19th & take up residence at St Keyne’s then.1 J. G. is representing Cambridge at Oxford & on the 14th there is a Crush at the Ashmolean at 8.45 p.m. Will you be at this function & look out for us?


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We are to stay during the Congress with our old neighbours & friends the Somervilles 121 Banbury Road but they don’t return till the 15th & on the 14th (possibly already 13th) we are to be the guests of the Hospitality Committee— So far I don’t know exactly where but c/o Mr Farnell Exeter College would Wnd us—J. G. has a little discourse to make during the Congress.2 I meant to send you a p.c. long ago but the arrangements for both mansions takes up all my time—exacts endless correspondence & interviews—& also I have been ill, quite ill—for a fortnight & utterly disabled; better now—but still weak & still muddle headed & lazy. It will be a great pleasure for us to lunch with you at Oriel, & if the 15th suited it would be the best day for us as we would be between two houses— ergo—free & we would much enjoy it—but if you only arrive on the 15th then on the 16th?? & the Somervilles can be informed—in time—I was just wondering when your letter came if you could give me, procure me— information on a matter of University millinery—ought J. G. as a D.C.L. of Oxford wear his Oxford gown—or as Cambridge representative would that not do—? & if so ought he to wear the Cambridge M.A. hood and gown? Academicals I see are to be worn at functions—& I know the etiquette is always various & peculiar. Had Cambridge honoured J. G. with a Dr degree things would be easy—but . . . it is only in Liverpool that people are prophets in their own country—!3 I leave Liverpool with intense regret—tho’ I look forward to renewing relations with such kind friends as you are—I cannot help feeling J. G. is making a huge mistake, for work’s sake etc., but one cannot reason with imagination and it is my province just now to pack & unpack etc. & never mind the rest! Kindest messages to Mr. Andrews & thank you. Au revoir either on the 15th or 16th to lunch. Sincerely & gratefully, Lilly Frazer We have let this mansion here to a Dutch man who wants it by Sept. 21st, hence some hurry. TCC Frazer 1: 38 1. More formally, the Third International Congress for the History of Religions, in Oxford; dubbed ‘The Congress of Heretics’ by the popular press. St Keyne’s: the house in Cambridge, in Grange Road, to which they moved in 1908. 2. Published as ‘Two Notes on Hebrew Folk-Lore’, in P. S. Allen and J. de S. Johnson (eds.), Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), i. 255–9. 3. It was a source of never-ending pique to Lilly Frazer that her husband had received an honorary doctorate from Oxford, whereas his own university acknowledged him not at all.

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To Margaret A. Murray,1 1 January 1909 St Keyne’s, Cambridge Dear Miss Murray, Thank you for your interesting letter. But I fear I cannot help you. The only cult of the drowned which I remember is that of the Greek Hylas, about which somebody has written a dissertation, on which I cannot lay hands at the moment. Of course there are cases of human sacriWces to water spirits. I have referred to a few examples in my Lectures on the History of the Kingship, p. 192. And again there is the superstition, perhaps a relic of such sacriWces, that the spirit of a river requires a victim on a certain day of the year. I have collected some evidence in The Golden Bough2, III pp. 318 sq. At Duke Town (Calabar) a girl, dressed in her best, used to be drowned every year as a sacriWce to the river-spirit (H. Goldie, Calabar & Its Mission, ed. 1901, p. 43). But what you want is the worship of the drowned rather than sacriWces by drowning, and, with the possible exception of Hylas, I do not remember any. Still it is conceivable that the victims sacriWced by drowning to water spirits might in time be themselves worshipped, perhaps as embodiments of the waterspirit. I am sorry I cannot help. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer UCL MS Add. 155 (Murray Correspondence) 1. Margaret A. Murray (1863–1963), controversial folklorist and anthropologist. Drawing on the work of Frazer in an attempt to establish the continued underground existence of the ‘Old Religion’ into the Middle Ages and beyond, she is today regarded as one of the intellectual ‘foremothers’ of modern witchcraft (Wicca).

To R. R. Marett, 4 April 1909 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Marett, So far as I can gather, no funds have been obtained at Liverpool for the expedition. The two men most likely to obtain them (Sir Rubert Boyce, the


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pathologist, and Garstang, the Egyptologist) are both abroad, and till their return I fear nothing will be done.1 I hope you are more fortunate at Oxford. A. R. Brown tells me he would be glad to go on the West Australian expedition.2 Would you be willing to let him join it, if Oxford sends the expedition? I think he would be useful. He has had experience, he is very keen, and is particularly interested in marriage and the classiWcatory system, which are the things we especially wish to learn more about in Australia. Of course if Spencer is, as I hope, to lead the expedition, his consent to Brown’s joining it would have to be obtained. I much hope that you will get Gillen also to go. He and Spencer have worked together so successfully before, that I think it would be a great pity to send the one without the other. My plan for the expedition always contemplated sending them both. They are so accustomed to the work and to each other, that I fear the one without the other would not accomplish so much. I hope you and Mrs Marett are both very well. With our united kind regards to you both, I am, yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 196 (TS) 1. (Sir) Rubert Boyce (1863–1911), professor of pathology; John Garstang (1876–1956), Egyptologist, professor of archaeology. 2. Then Alfred RadcliVe Brown, later RadcliVe-Brown (1881–1955), along with Bronislaw Malinowski the leading theorist of structural-functionalism in anthropology.

To Edward Clodd, 23 May 1909 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Clodd, You will perhaps think me very changeable, but I must after all renounce the pleasure I had anticipated of coming to you. I am very sorry to do so, but circumstances practically prevent me from coming. I should greatly have enjoyed and beneWted by sea breezes and friendly talks with you. But it cannot be just now. Perhaps we may meet before long in London. As I said in my last letter, there are things I should like to talk over with you as a friend as well as an anthropologist—and how much better the Wrst is than the second, is it not? So I hope we may meet soon.


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I regret having committed myself to this big book on Totemism before the conclusion of the G. B., but it is now past praying for and I must go through with it. Except the Summary and Conclusion the book (Totemism) is all written, and all but a comparatively small portion is printed. It should appear in the autumn. After that, if life and the Fates permit, I hope to give myself without further interruption to Wnishing the G. B. With the kindest of messages from us both, I am, my dear Clodd, Always yours aVectionately J. G. Frazer You must be saddened by the death of your great friend [George] Meredith. I never had the privilege of meeting him. One of my Wife’s great friends, Mrs Plimmer, was intimate with him. Smith College Library

To C. W. Hobley1 4 September 1909 St Keyne’s, Cambridge Dear Mr Hobley, Thank you for your letter of August 9th. Please tell Ex-President [Theodore] Roosevelt that I am honoured by the interest he has taken in my paper ‘‘Folk-Lore in the Old Testament’’ and that I thank him for the message he has sent me. The passage in II Kings, chapter 3, to which he calls my attention, is very remarkable. It is only one conspicuous example of what we know to have been a ghastly custom of the Semitic peoples, that of sacriWcing their children, especially their Wrstborn, by Wre. When Carthage was besieged by Agathocles, the Carthaginians sacriWced Wve hundred children of the noblest families, placing them on the sloping hands of a brazen image, from which they rolled into a pit of Wre. Of these Wve hundred victims three hundred were volunteers, who chose to die for the fatherland. Semitic history, we are told by an ancient writer, is full of such sacriWces. It was against them that the Hebrew prophets thundered. There is strong reason to hold that the Hebrew practice of redeeming the Wrstborn for a sum of money (while the Wrstborn of beasts were sacriWced) was merely a mitigation of an older practice of burning or slaughtering them all. I have discussed the


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evidence for the custom at length in my book The Golden Bough, Second Edition, vol. II, pp. 38 sqq., where the case of the son of the King of Moab is mentioned among the rest. Strange as it may seem, the custom of killing the Wrstborn children seems to have been widespread among other races than the Semites. I have found more evidence of it since my book was published. What the motive for the custom may have been is not yet perfectly clear. In some cases it would seem to have been thought that the father would die if his Wrstborn son were allowed to live (for it seems to have been especially the males who were killed), as if the child had in a manner drawn away his father’s life to himself, so that the only way to save the father was to kill the son and get back the stolen life. But as I said the train of thought which led to this dreadful custom is still in great measure obscure. As Ex-President Roosevelt is interested in anthropology, I should like to commend to his attention the work being done by the Bureau of American Ethnology at Washington. The Bureau has done excellent work among the Indian tribes within the dominions of the United States; but that Weld is to some extent exhausted owing to the diminution of the Indian tribes and their long contact with the whites, which has eVaced many of their old ways and ideas. But there still remains in South America a great and to some extent virgin Weld for an American Bureau of Ethnology to labour in. We know very little about the South American Indians. Hardly one, if one, of these tribes has been properly studied. The tribes on the upper waters of the Amazon, the Orinoco, and the Rio Plata are almost unknown. It is much to be desired that the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington should extend its operations to South America. It seems to have ample funds and plenty of workers. Why not send some of them to where they could reap a far richer anthropological harvest than they can now do within the area of the United States? If ExPresident Roosevelt would use his great inXuence to further this object, he might render an immense service to the study of primitive man. The Bureau, I am glad to say, has already extended its operations to the Philippine Islands, where the races seem to be very interesting. I wrote you lately in answer to your former letter. Please let me know whether you wish me to return your MS account of the Wakamba (I beg your pardon A-kamba) at once. But I had better do so as soon as my section on that tribe has been passed for the press. I am ashamed to have kept it so long. When is your book on the A-kamba to come out? I look forward to it with interest. My book on Totemism has swollen to a great size. I am at present revising the proofs of the part dealing with Central Africa. Thanks to J. Roscoe’s

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enthusiastic and unwearying researches I am able to give a very full account of the totemic system of the Baganda. With kind regards I am, Yours very truly J. G. Frazer Ridgeway has never shewn me your notes nor (so far as I remember) mentioned them to me.2 He has so much to think of as President of the Anthropological Institute etc. etc. that the matter has perhaps escaped his memory. Royal Anthropological Institute MS 27/8 1. Charles William Hobley (1867–1947), British anthropologist in Africa; his book is Ethnology of A-Kamba and Other East African Tribes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910). President Roosevelt’s letter has not survived. 2. (Sir) William Ridgeway (1853–1926), Disney Professor of Archaeology in Cambridge.

To Edmund Gosse, 10 November 1909 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Gosse, I have now read through ‘‘Father and Son’’ with keen interest which never Xagged from beginning to end. It is indeed a fascinating book. The story is a sad one, but it is delicately as well as powerfully told, and the reader cannot help sympathising with both the actors in what was hardly less than a domestic tragedy. It can scarcely be doubted that you have accomplished your object of recording a phase of education and religion which has passed, or is rapidly passing, away. As such a record, apart from its literary merit, the book is entitled to a permanent place in the archives of religious psychology. With regard to the manner, it has one of the surest marks of a good style, namely that the reader is so absorbed in the interest of the matter that he seldom attends to the style. In this respect a good style resembles a good manner in society. It is a bad manner and a bad style which attract attention. The portrait of your father which you have drawn is deeply interesting.1 One would like to know more of him. Has any memoir of him been published? If not, would you not give us one? He must have been a very high-minded man. His double devotion to science and religion was wonderful. And you yourself, if I may say so, become doubly interesting to your


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friends for the extraordinary experience you had in your youth. What a strange, sad childhood! It seems wonderful that you should have emerged from it as you have done. The long solitude and gloom would have broken or embittered for life many spirits. Now to turn to another and more cheerful subject. This year our Commemoration Feast is to be on Monday 13th December, and it would give me very great pleasure if you would come to it as my guest and stay with us over the night. It is a great wish of mine to make you and my dear Wife acquainted with each other. You have only to know to like each other. Do come. She wishes to know you and to thank you for all that we both owe to you. Thanking you for the pleasure you have given me in the reading of your book, and with kindest regards, I am, My dear Gosse, Always yours sincerely J. G. Frazer My Wife had bought and read ‘‘Father and Son’’ long ago. Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. The naturalist Philip Gosse (1810–88). Father and Son (1907), now regarded as a classic Victorian autobiography, describes Gosse’s upbringing among a fundamentalist Protestant sect, and his father’s increasingly desperate attempts to reconcile Scripture and evolutionary biology.

From Lilly Frazer to W. J. Lewis, 13 June 1910 Hotel Kronenhof & Bellavista, Pontresina, Switzerland Dear Professor Lewis, It was kind of you to write & give us news of you & of Cambridge. All the other news we got from our acquaintances in the Marsh1 seemed a stereotyped phrase, reminding one of a packet of toVee coming out of a pennyin-the-slot-machine. It ran invariably: ‘‘the May term is like the comet shorn of its tail,’’ this witticism (??) became stale after many repetitions on insuYciently paid p. cards—! We continue to like Pontresina—J. G. Wnds a new walk every day & even I am able to go on foot to St Moritz or to the Morteratsch2—but we have been here now three weeks—in unclouded weather. Even on the hottest day it was hardly warm enough to sit out long—now it is very cool in the morning—but the days are lovely and lend themselves to excursions. The people

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here—all British—except one very nice German couple—are all friendly & club together and tho’ none of them (as far as I can make out as yet) is thrilling they are an exceptionally pleasant lot about 30–36 of us—now—& this hotel is most comfortable. Unfortunately our time draws at its close—we have now been 3 weeks here & 4 weeks altogether in the Engadin—& we are getting hard up & have to think of the return—alas—alack—! . . . Both J. G. & I needed really a longer holiday—he is still tired—tho’ he will not own it & we ought to be out of the Swamp all summer—I fear, it cannot be done & we must face the stewing lonely days, as last summer & buckle to to work again—both of us. We hear indirectly that Totemism is doing well—how far—we do not know—The Times Library Club has issued a notice that it is very much in demand & that subscribers must return it quickly!!? I don’t know if that is much good to us. It has been a very costly book to produce being so long (partly) in print, to which early print, so much had to be added etc.—At times it seems a little hard that Cambridge has never done anything for J. G. & it was a piece of folly to return to it from mere sentiment from Liverpool where J. G. had found recognition & would have had remuneration if he wished. He, now as well as I—regrets it bitterly—But for you & two or three friends we are left miserably lonely in the needless grandeur of St Keyne. But there is nothing for it but grin (or groan) & bear it & also J. G. is now so tired (tho’ unaware of it himself ) that he could hardly bear the noise & strain of a great city. Yet it makes my heart heavy to think that after 2 years 1⁄2 of constant work—he cannot—for need of means—take a longer rest. We have practically decided to leave here on June 20th or 22nd & to slowly go down—reaching England about July 1st. I have looked up Vals-Platz in Baedeker & it sounds charming & our excellent chamber-maid comes from Tlanz & told me how to get to Vals-Platz. If you go there within our limit of time perhaps you will let us know. We would probably reach there between the 22–23? instant—& we would both enjoy it very, very much if we could meet you there. We might stay till the 26th—According to weather we may spend a few days in Paris— J. G. dislikes the idea, fearing it will undo the good we got here—but in many ways it is good on business grounds—of various sorts—& to me the mental refreshment is worth as much as Alpine air. We have many & most interesting friends there & among them genuine admirers of J. G.’s work. People who really try to grasp its scope. Still, if it is very hot & thundery again, we will have to give up Paris & trot home via Basle, direct, so that from the 27th June onwards we shall be as uncertain as the weather! We have had a very good holiday—only we both were so tired, it does not seem enough—& last year I found Cambridge intolerably dreary in the vacation; but once home again there is no prospect of another break. It takes all my energy to make J. G. go for


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a holiday at all—As soon as he is at his desk again he will take up the G. Bough III & intends to bring out two volumes within twelve months! Altogether the new edition will take about three years—& while a work like that is on the anvil there never is a real holiday for us. When that third edition is concluded Pausanias will need re-editing! . . . It will probably be sold out in a year’s time. The G. Bough has been sold out for some years now & that means a considerable loss of income to us. But I must go out now & make the most of the air, view and Xowers & apologize to you for this long rigmarole on private matters—but we know you are a friend & a patient one. Gratefully, Lilly Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 31 1. The Marsh and the Swamp are two of Lilly’s many unlovely names for Cambridge. 2. An Alpine peak more than 12,000 feet high.

To Edmund Gosse, 17 June 1910 Hotel Kronenhof, Pontresina, Switzerland My dear Gosse, Your kind and friendly letter reached me here a few days ago and gave me pleasure. But I was much concerned to hear that your health had not been good for some time. I trust that your Italian holiday may have completely restored you. Since the completion of Totemism my Wife and I have been taking a long holiday abroad, chieXy for the sake of our health, which had been a good deal shaken of late by one thing and another. We have been at Pontresina for more than three weeks, and she has beneWted much by the Wne air and by exercise. My health is as usual robust. No amount of hard work seems to make the least impression on it. But I am sorry to tell you, and I know that you will be sorry to hear, that I have again pecuniary anxieties. The move to and from Liverpool proved far more costly than I could have anticipated, and compelled me to draw on my small invested capital to a large extent. On my return to Cambridge (which at the time I thought, rightly or wrongly, necessary to my work) I took the house which you have seen, being attracted by its good study and quiet situation, both very desirable for my work. But it is certainly larger than we need, and the

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upkeep and maintenance have cost very much more than we have foreseen. We would gladly rid ourselves of it if we could, but for a variety of reasons there seems to be no immediate prospect of that. My Wife, to whom I leave the management of the house, has spared me as far as she could the particulars of the heavy outlay we have been put to during the past two years, in order that I might Wnish Totemism with an easy mind. It was not until a few days ago that I learned from my Bankers the extent to which my account has been overdrawn. Their letter came the very same day that I received your friendly letter, as if to remind me of all that you had already done for me in the past, when I was in similar diYculties. I wrote to my publishers Messrs Macmillan, and they have most promptly and kindly relieved my immediate anxiety by advancing me £300, which will clear oV the overdraft at the Bank. They say that they expect that this debt will be wiped out in a year or two if I concentrate myself on the completion of the remaining volumes of ‘‘The Golden Bough.’’ That is my own hope and expectation; and it is my wish to devote myself entirely to that book till it is Wnished. It will be the principal work of my life; it will, I venture to believe, establish my reputation and secure me (with my other sources of income) from any further pecuniary anxieties for the rest of my life. But meantime I have to live and to maintain my family. In these circumstances it occurs to me that the Royal Literary Fund, which has already helped me twice, might be willing to help me again. Since I received that help I have devoted myself (as before) wholly to study and research, and the books I have published in the last Wve years (Kingship, Adonis, Psyche, and Totemism, not to mention the Bible Passages and contributions to the Tylor and Darwin volumes) could not have been written, at least within the time, had it not been for the help of the two grants and of my pension. If the Literary Fund should again come to my help, I hope that the new volumes of The Golden Bough will soon prove that their liberality has not been ill bestowed. I repeat that if I can only tide over the time till that book in its new and enlarged form is complete, my independence will, I believe, be assured. I hope (if I can work undisturbed and uninterrupted) to publish the Wrst part about the end of the year and the second part in spring. The remaining parts (the third and Wfth, the fourth consisting of the already published Adonis) may require in all two years more to complete. Knowing the value you attach to my writings and remembering how much you have already done to enable me to devote myself wholly to their production, I am encouraged to ask you once more (I hope it may be for the last time) to help me to carry on my work by procuring for me, if possible, a grant from the Literary Fund. Otherwise I see nothing for it in future but to draw still further on my small remaining invested capital which, at the rate I have drawn on it during the last two years, must soon dwindle to nothing. But I am prepared, if necessary, to do that in order to give myself, wholly


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without interruption, to writing the best books I can, trusting that in the end they will bring me an adequate return in money as well as in reputation. I have laid the case fully before you as a good and tried friend. If you should decide, as you may, that you cannot and need not do more for me than you have already done, I shall not take it ill and I shall always be to the end of my life. Your grateful and attached friend J. G. Frazer P.S. Perhaps I should add (what perhaps you know) that I have never received any salary or remuneration of any kind from the University of Liverpool for my services; and that I have never had or been oVered any post by the University of Cambridge. But Trinity College has prolonged my fellowship for life; the dividend at present is £210. I have never held a lectureship in the College. One thing more occurs to me and I will venture to mention it. Perhaps it is possible that my pension might be increased, and that the publication of Totemism and Exogamy might be regarded as an appropriate occasion for such an augmentation. If I remember aright, there was an attempt to obtain an increase of Johnson’s pension of £300 a year (mine is £200); and I believe that my works may compare with his in bulk, though not in merit. In justice to my Wife I wish to add that our present house in Cambridge (St Keyne’s) was taken at my instance; I persuaded her into it for the reasons I have given, and she gave way because she thought it was for the good of my work. But she did her best to dissuade me. Brotherton Library, Leeds University

From Lilly Frazer to Edmund Gosse,1 25 June 1910 Hotel Kronenhof, Pontresina Dear Mr Gosse, Your letter of the 22d reached my husband here just as we are packing up to return home to resume work—& I have asked leave to reply to it so that he might climb the Schafsberg & also so that I might possibly give you a clearer explanation of our problems. We both thank you sincerely for the real interest in our aVairs shown in your letter & this adds another link to the

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chain of gratitude we owe you. If my letter is longer than convenient, please put it aside till you are at leisure—it will contain nothing of urgency. You call my husband: a man of genius & his work: unique—for a man of genius, who works as he does, everyone will grant that he is singularly free from special needs & wants. Yet he has some needs & his books could not be produced without those being satisWed. The Wrst is absolute quiet—both in & out of the house; the slightest noise disturbs him & my experience has been that it is the most diYcult condition to procure. Long before our marriage J. G. had Fellow’s rooms in Neville’s Court & had to give them [up] & to take rather undergraduate’s rooms as his neighbours in Neville’s Court poked the Wre inconveniently. I give you this one example, but the need of total silence is growing on him with growing work & growing age. In a small house such as I personally dearly like, silence either domestic or other is an impossibility. We have tried twice & failed. The second of J. G.’s needs is space for his library—another very serious condition—so serious that while in Trinity (Great Court) writing the Wrst edition of the G. Bough—also before our marriage—he was asked not to put any more weight of books on the Xoors—I myself saw the ceiling below him looking like an inXated sail—in Liverpool & in St Keyne’s we had each time, special precautions taken about the solidity of the Xoors etc. The next need is that his working library should all be in one room; his methods of work necessitating to him instant reference to any book. He has worked that way all his life and is too old to change. Perhaps had he begun younger he might have adopted a system of ‘‘Wches’’ in the French style; as it is it is too late and he has his own method. It however necessitates size and loftiness of study. How is that to be obtained in a small house? There are other questions of importance, not least light, both natural and artiWcial, for tho’ his eyesight has kept up wonderfully thanks to two treatments in Pagenstecher’s klinik, it has given us anxiety not later than last August and certain arrangements for lighting a necessity. These are two points few people realise—i.e., that J. G. works from 7.30 a.m.–1.30, again from 4–8 p.m. and again from 9 p.m. to midnight or later! . . . & this, year in year out, without the least break, Sundays, weekdays, vacations etc. This holiday here is only the second real one we have had in 15 years. The Wrst was the last year of last century after his completing G. Bough II when we went to Rome. The second point is that, dealing as he does with mankind in all places & at all time[s], he needs his books—all of them—at any moment. He is not able for ex: to take up a certain period as an historian might and do with few books at a time. This leads to the fact that he cannot now (his library and needs having increased) go, as before, between College and home without serious loss of time & a certain amount of irritation at missing perhaps


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the very book he needs. In order that he might complete his Pausanias, G. Bough II, etc. in serenity I have spent the Wrst 12–13 years of our married life in College with him—usually being there from 8 am to midnight! He needs me, and I did it gladly for the sake of his work and for a certain economy—but I am no longer strong enough for such a strain and J. G. himself is now dependent on the comforts of home; also it is not such an economy as it looks. We had a house rented at £40. The College rooms (tho’ free) entailed an expenditure of about £50 a year (bed-makers, Wring, upkeep of furniture etc. etc.) not to speak of my absence from my own house all day! This makes £90. Our present house is rented at £95 and we keep two servants only, whose wages are no more than that of the bed-makers [illegible] & the necessary one servant in the small house. Just at present our rent at St Keyne is £105 as we thus repay the landlord for improvements (electric light etc.) he put in for us—that is only temporary. I dislike St Keyne for its showiness and I am sorry, tho’ not surprised, that it led you to an estimate of our expenditure which must be divided by 4! But even as it is, the house is too large and too expensive for us, yet to get rid of it now would be unwise. We could not get a house to hold J. G.’s library & to fulWl the necessary conditions for his work at less than £90 a year in Cambridge, & the expense of a move & of Wtting up everything again would swallow up many years’ reduction in rent. I have considered it all carefully— most carefully—and much as I would rejoice at leaving St Keyne I see no way to cut the Gordian Knot. It has to be patiently unravelled. How, I do not yet see distinctly, but I feel clearly that it must be thro’ J. G. & my own eVorts. We are both well now—the holiday was not long enough, yet such as it was, it has been splendid—& we mean to buckle to our tasks again with fresh zest & zeal. I do not know if you are aware that I am part bread-winner. I write & have written for Messrs Longmans, Macmillan, Blackies, A. & C. Black, and Dent & have now two booklets on the anvil for the Oxford Univ. Press—at their request— besides an article for Dr Hastings’ Dictionary of Religion. I also do much work with my Phonograph scheme. Most of all this is scholastic. It was sad that the Liverpool move was a failure. Residence there seemed to solve the problems which have troubled us so long. We were able to have a good house at very low rent, & life in general is cheap there. J. G.’s work met with the recognition which Cambridge out of poverty—perhaps also out of purblindness—has not vouchsafed him. He—J. G.—now regrets bitterly the return to Cambridge but an attack of Heimweh—uncontrollable at the time—assailed him. The homing instinct is very powerful in some strong natures. He felt he had to return to his old haunts, & he took the Wrst house that was in the least suitable & there was no other free. I myself was very ill at the time & unable to make the opposition he now wishes I had made! The double move entirely broke my health & I shall never be quite strong again.

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I have endeavoured to put the case before you in all such bearings as time and space allows, but there are many more. We cannot speak of penury, as you have seen, but there is a wide gulf between the actual pauper and the man of easy means. Few people could realise what an outlay in actual books etc.—subscriptions to societies and magazines etc.—such work as produced by J. G. means. . . . While Trinity rewards the most commonplace teacher automatically by a Pension, i.e. double dividend, the man of research who spends capital in his research is left unrewarded in that way. It seems hardly fair—and that is what I call purblindness. Yet J. G. could not have done what he has done if he had taken up teaching as well. It has taken all his time, strength & energy to publish as he has—& Totemism (we hear from many) would have satisWed many a scholar as the book of his life-time. It has been produced in less than 2 years 1⁄2 !! without one single day’s break. Is it therefore unnatural if after the completion of such a task a man wishes for some reward from his University or from his Country on whom he has thrown lustre by his industry & intelligence? & can such a reward not be merited without the claim of actual penury? At a time like this—when the strain is relaxed— but when the ghosts of the arduous task are hardly laid—the desire for some more tangible recompense—for more ease & more facilities strongly comes over one. Ever most gratefully, L. Frazer2 Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. In what has by this point become regular practice, in moments of Wnancial exigency Frazer writes to Gosse, outlining the problem in a calm, ‘manly’ fashion. At the same time Lilly writes to him to put emotional Xesh on the dispassionate bones supplied by her husband. 2. Once again Gosse came through, producing a third grant of £250 from the Royal Literary Fund. This was followed later the same year by an invitation to Frazer to deliver the prestigious and remunerative GiVord Lectures at the University of St Andrews. These two supplements to the Frazerian exchequer suYced to carry them through until the completion of the 3rd edn.

To F. M. Cornford, 20 February 1911 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Cornford, The passage in my Adonis (Second Edition, London 1907), to which I referred in telephoning to you a few minutes ago, occurs as a footnote to a long excursus on the use in ritual of children of living parents (a mwiuadeÐiB).


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Having spoken in the text of the octennial Delphic Festival of Crowning and the octennial Theban Festival of Laurel-bearing I add (p. 418) in a footnote: ‘‘I have examined both festivals more closely in the forthcoming third edition of The Golden Bough, and have shown ground for holding that the old octennial cycle in Greece, based on an attempt to harmonise solar and lunar time, gave rise to an octennial festival at which the mythical marriage of the sun and moon was celebrated by the dramatic marriage of human actors, who appear sometimes to have been the king and queen. In the Laurelbearing at Thebes a clear reference to the astronomical character of the festival is contained in the emblems of the sun, moon, stars, and days of the year which were carried in procession (Proclus, l.c.); and another reference to it may be detected in the legendary marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia. Dr. L. R. Farnell supposes that the festival of the Laurel-Bearing ‘belongs to the Maypole processions universal in the peasant-religion of Europe, of which the object is to quicken the vitalising powers of the year in the middle of spring or at the beginning of summer’ (The Cults of the Greek States, IV. 285). But this explanation appears to be inconsistent with the octennial period of the festival.’’ In the following note (p. 419) I add: ‘‘We may conjecture that the Olympic, like the Delphic and the Theban, festival was at Wrst octennial, though in historical times it was quadrennial. Certainly it seems based on an octennial cycle.’’ Then follow references to authorities. I will bring tomorrow to the lecture the proofs (printed in October, 1905) of the part of the G.B. in which the theory is developed at length. I am delighted that you have arrived at what I gather to be practically the same conclusion quite independently.1 Surely this perfectly undesigned coincidence is a presumption in our favour! I shall be greatly pleased if you will kindly read through my proofs and criticise them. Farnell’s view that an eight-year’s festival is to be explained by the vegetation-spirit is a delightfully naı¨ve example of the misapplication of a good thing in unskilful hands. As if vegetation sprouted only once in eight years! It is just such misapplications which bring discredit on anthropology. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Clare Cornford Chapman 1. For a further reference on Cornford’s part to the importance of the octennial cycle, see his letter to Gilbert Murray of 11 May 1914, in Robert Ackerman, ‘Some Letters of the Cambridge Ritualists’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 12 (Spring 1971), 133–4.

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To F. M. Cornford, 15 March 1911 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Cornford, Many thanks for your letter and the proofs. The latter I did not need, so the delay caused no inconvenience. What I have just published is only the Wrst part of the G.B. There will be six parts in all. The proofs you saw are part of the Third Part, which I am at present correcting for the press. It cannot be published for several months. If you care to have the proofs back, they are at your service. Thank you for your correction of Totemism. I have made a note of it. I always assumed the ‘‘home’’ in Egypt was simply the Greek nomoB; but this is a mere tacit assumption of mine. Whether there is any similar Egyptian word I do not know. It is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis that the sacred animals of Egypt are localised totems, but I do not see how the hypothesis can be proved, unless the Egyptologists turn up some fresh evidence. On looking again at my note on the great Greek games (Pausanias, vol. II p. 549) I see that the evidence for the funeral origin is much stronger than I supposed. If such games were celebrated for real historical persons such as Miltiades, Brasidas, Leonidas, Pausanias, Timoleon and Mausolus, surely the tradition that the Olympic games were founded in honour of a real man Pelops gains greatly in probability.1 I have collected more evidence of funeral games in other parts of the world, and I intend to give it as an alternative or corrective to the sun-and-moon theory in Part III of the G. B. As I said in the debate (in which I fear I waxed hot, indeed I always do in debate, Scotchmen like Irishmen are peppery, we lack the Saxon phlegm), there is a good deal to be said on both sides, and who am I that I should decide between them? My readers will pay their money and take their choice, as the showman said to the small boy who failed to distinguish between Daniel and the lions in the peep show. My Wife and I hope very much that you and Mrs Cornford will give us the pleasure of dining with us quietly (morning dress) on Tuesday next at 7.30.2 If that day does not suit you, will you name another? I look forward very much to a talk with you about the things that interest us both. You almost carried me oV my feet the other day with your lecture. I fear that in my stumbling remarks I did not convey all the admiration that I felt. But of course I should like to see your views fully in black and white and meditate on them before pronouncing an opinion on your complete theory. The almost complete absence of positive evidence for the existence of initiatory rites at


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puberty in Greece is a serious stumbling block in your and Miss Harrison’s way. As for cannibalism practised at such rites I cannot recall any instance of it anywhere and it strikes me as contrary to what I should expect at such ceremonies. Believe me, yours very truly J. G. Frazer I began on the wrong side of the sheet by mistake, not out of malice prepense. I detest the modern fashion of beginning at what I call the end of the sheet instead of at the beginning. My printers did that for a time with proofs, and they vexed my soul thereby. Clare Cornford Chapman 1. A reference to the two diVering ways of understanding not only the Greek games but numerous other public ceremonies in antiquity. On the one side stood the so-called Ritualists (Cornford, Jane Ellen Harrison, Gilbert Murray, sometimes A. B. Cook, and in earlier times sometimes Frazer) and on the other side the euhemerists (William Ridgeway, L. R. Farnell, and increasingly Frazer himself ). The Ritualists, arguing sociologically, argued that the funeral games and the tragedies and comedies performed annually at the Dionysia reXected their origins in prehistoric agricultural ritual, so that regardless of their ostensible content in formal terms all the performances recapitulated the career of the god (e.g. Dionysus). The evidence adduced for such ritual origins was largely of the comparative ethnographic kind. For the euhemerists these performances arose out of respect for historical persons—local heroes—whose cult then spread more widely; for them the only relevant evidence was Greek, not comparative. For more, see Robert Ackerman, The Myth and Ritual School: J. G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists (New York: Routledge, 2002). 2. ‘Morning dress’: ‘At the close of the century the correct dress for the following occasions was S-B [single-breasted] lounge or Morning coat with S-B or D-B [double-breasted] vest to match. Felt bowler with lounge; silk hat with Morning coat. A coloured shirt was permitted but a white collar must be worn. Fancy silk tie. Boots, brown for a sac coat; black for Morning coat. Grey or tan gloves’ (C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd edn. (London: Faber & Faber, 1966), 324).

To Hermann Diels, 30 April 1911 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Friend and Colleague, Your kind telegram gave my Wife and me much pleasure. I need hardly tell you that I esteem very highly the honour which the Royal Prussian Academy has done me in electing me a Corresponding Member.1 The recognition of my work by so illustrious a body of savants is a great

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encouragement and stimulus to me to carry it on. I have received from Professor Vahlen the formal intimation of my election, and I have written begging him to express my most grateful thanks to the Academy for the honour it has conferred on me. I trust that you and Mrs Diels are both very well. We cherish a very happy memory of our meeting at Baden last year. My Wife and I spent a fortnight lately in Paris. Amongst others we met Loisy and S. Reinach. You will soon receive Part II of the Third Edition of ‘‘The Golden Bough.’’ Part III will follow in the course of the summer. With our united kindest regards and greetings to you and Mrs Diels from my Wife and myself, I am, yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1. For Diels’s letter sponsoring Frazer, see William M. Calder III, ‘The German Reception of J. G. Frazer: An Unpublished Document’, in Quaderni di Storia, 33 (1991), 135–43; repr. in his Men in Their Books: Studies in the Modern History of Classical Scholarship (Zurich and New York: Olms, 1998), 197–203.

To R. R. Marett, 11 May 1911 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Marett, My friend J. Roscoe has been asked by the Church Missionary Society to deliver a series of lectures on the tribes of Central Africa with which he is personally acquainted. The lectures are to be delivered in various places, the times and places being (I understand) left to his discretion. He proposes to give a course of eight lectures in Cambridge in the Michaelmas term, and he will be glad to repeat them afterwards in Oxford, if you could arrange for them. What do you think? The lectures will be sure to be full of good matter, and he lectures in a clear, simple, attractive style, which holds the attention of the audience. In case you care to write to him on the subject his address is The Rev. J. Roscoe MA 80 Chesterton Road Cambridge


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I owe you many apologies for having delayed so long to thank you for sending me a copy of your inaugural lecture.1 I put oV and put oV writing. Accept even now my tardy thanks. Allow me to correct what I believe to be a mistake on your part. So far as I know Robertson Smith’s views from intimate personal acquaintance as well as from a study of his writings, he never proclaimed that ‘‘ritual is historically prior to dogma,’’ as you say he did. On the contrary I believe that he would have rejected such a view (as I do) as a manifest absurdity. What he did say, with perfect justice (and I entirely agree with him), is that many dogmas or myths are historically posterior to the rituals which they profess or explain and are therefore worthless as explanations of them, being mere deductions from them. But to generalise and aYrm that myth or dogma is universally posterior to ritual is, I believe, an idea that never occurred to him. On the contrary he always assumed that dogma was prior to ritual, and the whole aim of his investigations was to discover the idea (dogma, myth or whatever you please to call it, in short the thought) on which the ritual is founded. That, for example, is his procedure in regard to sacriWce. He assumed, or rather tried to prove, that men sacriWced because they had the idea of communion with a deity and wished to put it in practice. He did not, as I understand you to do, suppose that men sacriWced Wrst and invented a theory or dogma for it afterwards. That is, I believe, in his opinion (as it is in mine) to invert the true relation of cause and eVect. But of course he held and proclaimed that the original idea on which a ritual is founded has often been forgotten, and that men have then often invented false and worthless explanations, which the student of the history of religion can and ought to set aside. If you read his remarks on the subject again carefully (in his Religion of the Semites), I think you will see that I have interpreted his views correctly. I entirely agree with his views, as I interpret them, and have always acted on them in my writings, laying more stress on ritual than on myth (dogma) in the study of the history of religion, not because I believe ritual to be always historically prior to dogma or myth (that I regard as absolutely false), but because ritual is much more conservative than dogma and far less apt to be falsiWed consciously or unconsciously, and therefore furnishes a far surer standing-ground for research. That and nothing else was, I Wrmly believe, my friend Robertson Smith’s view. You are not the Wrst who has fallen into this error. A German, R. M. Meyer, in Archiv fu¨r Religionswissenschaft, ascribed precisely the same views that you do not only to Robertson Smith but to me! to me, who repudiate them as an absurdity.2 Thus I am apt to think that the view of the universal priority of ritual to myth (which seems to be coming into fashion) is primarily based on a simple misunderstanding of Robertson Smith’s views,

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and has since been supported by what I regard as a misapplication of psychology. Because it is or may be true (I am not able to pronounce an opinion on the question) that in the lowest forms of animal life—protozoa, infusoria, or whatever they are—movement precedes thought or whatever corresponds to thought in these lowly beings, it has been inferred that religious ritual must universally have been performed Wrst and a theory or dogma of it invented afterwards. I do not think that we have any right to make this prodigious intellectual leap from protozoa to men. Religious ritual even of the lowest savages is a highly, enormously complex phenomenon of thought, sensation, and action, and to compare it to, and to treat it as on the same level with, the instinctive twitchings and motions of protozoa, infusoria, or molluscs or the like, is, in my opinion, quite illegitimate. Savage ritual, so far as I have studied it, seems to me to bear the imprint of reXexion and purpose stamped on it just as plainly as any actions of civilised men. Whether that is so or not, you should not claim the support of Robertson Smith for views which I feel sure he would have unhesitatingly rejected. I have some idea of publishing this correction in Man in order to prevent others from falling into the same mistake again. I trust that you are well and Xourishing. What literary work have you in hand just now? With kind regards to yourself and Mrs Marett, I am, yours sincerely J. G. Frazer I see that you regard McDougall as an authority on psychology. He is not so regarded by my friend James Ward, who is really an authority on the subject.3 TCC Add. MS c.56: 198 (TS) 1. Marett’s inaugural lecture as reader in anthropology was The Birth of Humility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910); repr. in The Threshold of Religion, 2nd edn. (London: Methuen, 1914), 169–202. For more on this important exchange, see Robert Ackerman, ‘Frazer on Myth and Ritual’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 36 (1975), 115–34. 2. Richard M. Meyer, ‘Mythologische Studien aus der neuesten Zeit’, Archiv fu¨r Religionswissenschaft, 12 (1910), 270–90. 3. William McDougall (1871–1938), fellow of Trinity and social psychologist; James Ward (1843– 1925), fellow of Trinity, philosopher and psychologist, and Frazer’s lifelong friend.


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From R. R. Marett to J. G. Frazer, 13 May 1911 Exeter College, Oxford My dear Frazer, I shall certainly try to get Roscoe to lecture here. Very many thanks for suggesting it. I am right in supposing (am I not?) that the lecturer is in this case remunerated by the Church Missionary Society, and would thus be gratuitous as far as we are concerned. I want to be quite clear on the point, because, if money had to be raised, I should have to set about it at once, as it is hard to unloose the public purse for Anthropology here. Now to discuss my alleged mistake in stating that Robertson Smith proclaimed that ‘‘ritual is historically prior to dogma.’’ I think you have altogether missed my meaning, owing doubtless to the obscure way, and (necessarily) cursory way, in which I have expressed it. As the general context was intended to make clear, I meant by dogma precisely what Robertson Smith meant by it. See, for instance, Relig. of the Semites, 18: ‘‘in all the antique religions mythology takes the place of dogma.’’ What he means by dogma is, I think, manifest from many passages, as, for instance, the following (p. 21): ‘‘In ancient religion the reason was not Wrst formulated as a doctrine and then expressed in practice, but conversely practice preceded doctrinal theory. Men form general rules of conduct before they begin to express general principles in words; political institutions are older than political theories, and in like manner religious institutions are older than religious theories.’’ Dogma in short means, for him, theory or reasoned belief. In the absence of any proof that at the back of ancient religion there were ‘‘great religious innovators’’— men who thought conceptually and didn’t merely get along with the help of perceptual processes such as imitation—he even goes so far as to speak of ‘‘unconscious forces’’ as having caused the ancient religions to have grown up, and terms the religious tradition itself ‘‘unconscious’’ (see p. 1)—a use of the term in which I could hardly follow him. Well, that is what he meant, and what I meant too—that and nothing more. I certainly wasn’t thinking about protozoa; and would go further than you apparently would, in doubting whether the protozoon is entirely destitute of the rudiments of ‘‘thought’’ in the wide sense that covers perception (as opposed to mere sensation, if there be such a thing) no less than conception. As to your statement ‘‘savage ritual, so far as I have studied it, seems to me to bear the imprint of reXexion and purpose stamped on it just as plainly as any actions of civilised men,’’ (if ‘‘reXexion’’ here means what it ordinarily means in psychology or indeed in plain English) I entirely disagree with it. If you print your view in that form, using the word reXexion thus unqualiWed, I believe that

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every psychologist in Europe, including Ward, will be down upon you. No one would be such a fool as to say that there was no reXexion at work in savage religion; these things that we distinguish as higher and lower, conceptual and perceptual, processes shade oV into each other, so that the diVerence is always one of degree rather than of kind. But to say that the stamp of reXexion is ‘‘just as’’ plain seems on the face of it to say that both types of religion—the savage and the civilised—are equally reXective, or each in its way as reXective as the other. If, however, you mean that plainly there is a very little reXexion at work in savage religion, and, equally plainly, there is a great deal of it at work on civilised religion, then no one will deny that; but they will claim the right, when drawing a broad contrast, to call the former ‘‘unreXective’’ as compared with the latter. And Robertson Smith went further; he called it ‘‘unconscious.’’ Dear me! I seem to myself almost over-vigorous in my style of counterargument, but, when one is up against a giant like you, one has to lay on hard, or he crushes one with a tap of his Wnger! All that some of us—McDougall, for instance, and Le´vy-Bruhl, etc., in France—have been trying to do is to emphasize the mobbish character of primitive religion and primitive life.1 Perhaps we have overemphasized it, but it doesn’t much matter; there’s always a tendency to oscillate before reaching equilibrium. You, on the other hand, have Howitt and Spencer behind you when you insist that in Australia a primitive legislator was capable of organising the marriage system, etc. Well, such a question must be decided on its merits. Nothing that any psychologist may say about the general ‘‘mobbishness’’ of savages can weigh against the evidence of facts in such a case, supposing the facts to be forthcoming. In your Totemism and Exogamy you made out a very good case for an Australian Lycurgus. Well, all the same, my saying that they ‘‘dance out their religion rather than reason it out’’ applies, I believe, broadly and on the whole. Thus I don’t believe we greatly disagree about the facts after all. I may end by saying that, whereas I have ‘‘gone for’’ everything you have said that I don’t believe—because I believe criticism to be the crying need of our science—further study has nearly always brought me nearer to your view; though, on the other hand, you have yourself sometimes modiWed those views as you went along, and in such a way as to meet my converging footsteps. Our very kind regards to Mrs Frazer. Did I hear aright that you were removing to London? Yours very sincerely, R. R. Marett TCC Add. MS c.56: 199 (TS) 1. Lucien Le´vy-Bruhl (1857–1939), French psychologist.


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To R. R. Marett, 17 May 1911 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Marett, The Church Missionary Society pays Roscoe’s expenses and gives him a small sum for each lecture, so that he would not expect to receive any remuneration for his lectures from Oxford. I am glad that you will try to get him over to lecture. I am sure that you and your anthropological friends and pupils will Wnd his lectures well worth hearing and attending to. Many thanks for your explanations. I am very glad to Wnd that I had misunderstood you, and that our ways of looking at these matters are not opposed to each other so sharply as I had feared they were, judging from your inaugural lecture. The passages of Robertson Smith to which you call my attention certainly support your interpretation of his view more fully than I had supposed. But I still incline to think that he was emphasizing a novel view (the importance of the study of ritual as compared with myth or dogma) and that in doing so he omitted to state (what he probably assumed) that every ritual is preceded in the minds of the men who institute it by a deWnite train of reasoning, even though that train of reasoning may not be deWnitely formulated in words and promulgated as a dogma. That at least is my view, and I believe that Robertson Smith would have assented to it. I do not say that savage ritual bears the impress of as much thought as some actions of civilised men; but I do think that it bears the impress of some thought and purpose quite as plainly as many actions of civilised men. That is not, I think, a matter which psychologists are more competent to decide than men who have made a special study of savage ritual. Certainly I do not think that my friend James Ward (with whom I have walked and talked on all subjects in earth and heaven on an average of once a week for many years) would claim superior competence as a psychologist in such matters. I quite agree with you in attributing great value to free criticism. It does much to clear the ground and stimulate further advance. I hope you will always indulge in it at my expense whenever you think my views are wrong, and I shall endeavour to proWt by it, as I try to do by all honest and wellinformed criticism. At the same time I am very glad to learn that on some points, where you diVered from me at Wrst, further study has brought you nearer to my views. That I venture to think is because my views on these subjects are generally based on a large induction from facts, which are not always fully known to those who diVer from me, but which as they become


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known will, I believe, bring enquirers round more and more to my views. So I look forward to some at least of my theories being more and more generally accepted as time goes on. But [illegible] in that I may deceive myself. Anyhow whenever I may be proved to be in the wrong I hope and believe that I shall always be ready to confess it. We had some thoughts of moving to London, but are settled for the present in Cambridge. With our united kind regards to Mrs Marett and yourself, I am, yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.56: 200 (TS)

To John Sutherland Black, 15 July 1911 Trinity College, Cambridge . . . I had quite forgotten the letter I wrote to you about The Religion of the Semites. But with the extracts which you give from it I still quite agree, and have nothing to modify or withdraw in them. I may add that it had long seemed to me that Smith, inXuenced probably by his deeply religious nature, under-estimated the inXuence of fear, and over-estimated the inXuence of the benevolent emotions (love, conWdence, and gratitude), in moulding early religion. Hence his view of sacriWce as mainly a form of communion with the deity instead of a mode of propitiating him and averting his anger. The latter is the ordinary view of sacriWce, and I believe it on the whole to be substantially correct. Not, of course, that I would deny sacriWce sometimes to involve a form of communion with the deity, but I believe it to be far oftener purely propitiatory, that is, intended to soothe and please a dreaded being by giving him something he likes. In short, I believe the old gift theory of sacriWce to hold good in the majority of cases. . . . I incline to agree with you in thinking that, withal its great qualities, Robertson Smith’s most mature and important work was probably to some extent provisional and written against time. Had life and strength been prolonged to him, he would probably have modiWed a good deal in the volume. For example, I hardly think that the hypothesis of a totem sacrament would have occupied the important place it does in his theory, if he had been aware of the extremely scanty evidence for the actual


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practice of a totem sacrament, at least in a religious, as distinguished from a magical, sense, among totemic peoples. Published in J. S. Black and G. Chrystal, The Life of William Robertson Smith (London: A. & C. Black, 1912), 518–19.

To Edmund Gosse, 3 February 1912 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Gosse, Forgive me for having given you a bad turn by my blunder about the dates. It was very stupid of me. But after all I fear I must not come to the Lamb dinner. What you tell me is a fresh and unsuspected revelation of your friendship and kindness to me. I hope you understand that I value your good opinion of my literary work, and the good opinion of a few others, far more highly than any pecuniary prize, however large, that could ever fall to me. I am bold enough to believe that your judgment will be conWrmed by those who come after us, for I think that my books will outlive me. Whether they do or not, I Wnd happiness enough in writing them and in making them as good as I can. What you say about Berlin rather surprises me; for they have treated me very well there. They have made me a member of the German Archaeological Institute and quite lately a Corresponding Member of the Prussian Academy—the latter, I am told, is an honour not very liberally bestowed. And a good many years ago, when I happened to attend a Winckelmann’s Fest with a German friend, they insisted on carrying me oV from the foot of the table (where I was about to sit down) to the top and making me sit at the President’s right hand in the place which the Emperor was to have occupied, if he had been there, as was expected. I might have felt uncomfortable, being in morning dress among men in evening dress with orders on their breast, but the kindness and heartiness of the President and of everyone about me put me quite at my ease. Then the Secretary of the Prussian Academy, Prof. Hermann Diels, is a warm and I may say aVectionate friend. He is a great friend of my books and exerted himself actively to Wnd a publisher for a German translation of The Golden Bough. So that I have no reason at all to complain of the Germans.1 On the contrary I am deeply grateful for, and indeed touched by, their courtesy and kindness to me. So I think there must be some mistake in the reports which have reached you about Berlin.

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Do come and see us, if you possibly can, when you are in Cambridge. Tell Frank Darwin that I shall take it very ill if he does not let you come to see us. You may add, if you like, that I also take it very ill that he has never been to see us all the years we have been in this house. So come and bring him too. Let us if possible know when to expect you; so that we may both be at home. Ever, my dear Gosse, Your very grateful friend J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. This was all to change drastically upon the outbreak of the war, when Frazer became Wercely patriotic, which is to say rabidly anti-German; see Frazer, 263–6.

To F. M. Cornford, 13 March 1912 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Cornford, Thank you very much for sending me your essay on the Origin of the Olympic Games.1 So far as I have studied it, I confess that I do not Wnd it convincing. I have grave doubts as to the Sun and Moon marriage, and you have not yet (so far as I see) removed them. As to Pelops I think it probable that he was a real man, though I would not swear to the exact shade of his ismata oVered to a hero, I think the whiskers. Wherever we Wnd enag chances are considerably in favour of the view that the hero was once a living man. Wherever no such sacriWces are known to have been oVered, the hero may have been mythical. For example, I incline to regard Triptolemus (pace ismata were ever Ridgeway) as purely mythical. So far as I know, no enag oVered to him, but signiWcantly enough the same sacriWces were oVered to him and the gods. With many thanks, I am, Yours ever J. G. Frazer Clare Cornford Chapman 1. Presumably a draft of the essay of that title that appears as ch. VII of Jane Ellen Harrison’s Themis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912).


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To Edmund Gosse, 2 July 1912 Hotel Saratz, Pontresina My dear Gosse, Your letter, forwarded to me in Switzerland, has given me the greatest pleasure. Few letters indeed that I have ever received have gratiWed me so much. You know that though my special studies are scientiWc or quasiscientiWc in character (the qualiWcation is necessary because our scientiWc Pharisees probably refuse the name of science to a study which conWnes itself to matters so low and trivial as the thoughts, the habits, the institutions of man), yet I have a great hankering after literature pure and simple; indeed, I believe that my heart is in it more than in the mere abstract pursuit of knowledge apart from the form in which the results of that pursuit are expressed. Hence the verdict which a literary critic of your taste and wide knowledge passes on my memoir of Cowper—an excursion into pure literature—pleases me more than I can say.1 I have been greatly encouraged further by warm letters of approval from other good judges and lovers of Cowper, including W. Warde Fowler, J. W. Mackail, G. G. Ramsay, and J. D. DuV.2 The last of these, who had planned an edition of Cowper’s letters years ago, thinks that they should serve as ‘‘a disinfectant’’ to an age which admires Shaw and Chesterton; and Warde Fowler, if I understand him aright, writes that I should invert the relations in which anthropology and literature have hitherto stood to each other in my studies, so that I should give most of my time to literature and steal only a few odd hours from it for anthropology! I am hardly likely to do that. Still the approbation of men for whose taste and judgment I entertain the sincerest respect may encourage me to steal more hours from anthropology in future to give to literature. As you like my biography of Cowper, it occurs to me that you might also like the biographical notices which I published a few years ago of two anthropological friends, L. Fison and A. W. Howitt. They were published in Folk-Lore in 1909 or 1910 and gave, I understand, pleasure to the relations and to others who never knew the men. I don’t remember whether I sent you an oVprint. Most of the copies allowed me were sent to the relations of the two men in Australia, and I believe that I have none left. Sometime perhaps I shall reprint them in a volume of miscellanies. In writing about these two men I had the great advantage of knowing them both personally; and both their lives contained much of picturesque interest. One [Fison] was a missionary among the Fijians at a time when ‘‘cold missionary on the sideboard’’ was a much commoner viand among them than it has been for a long time; the other was one of the early explorers in the deserts of Central Australia.

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My Wife and I are recruiting in Swiss air the energies that had been Xagging on the banks of the Cam. We both feel much refreshed by the change and hope to return with renewed vigour to work about the end of the month. You will shortly receive another instalment (the Wfth) of ‘‘The Golden Bough.’’ It is quite out of my hands and may appear any day. With renewed hearty thanks for your letter and united kind regards from us both, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Let me congratulate you on your new honour—a very mild one.3 Why not one more proportionate to your deserts? By the way, speaking of honours and (as I did above) of science falsely so called, you have sometimes promoted me to a Fellowship of the Royal Society by writing F.R.S. after my name. I have not the honour to belong to that distinguished body. The scientiWc men who compose it probably despise me as a mere literary gent, while the literary gents look down on me as a mere scientiWc man. So that I have hitherto fallen between two stools, the scientiWc and the literary, till you had compassion on me, picked me up, and seated me on the literary stool. Hence my elation and the gratitude I feel to you on this as on many other grounds. Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. His opinion must have been conveyed in either a private letter or a brief periodical notice because neither of Gosse’s collections of essays of the time (Critical Kit-Kats and Gossip in a Library) contains a review of the Cowper. 2. W. Warde Fowler (1847–1921), historian of Roman religion at Lincoln College, Oxford; John W. Mackail (1859–1945), classical scholar, literary critic, and educational administrator; George Gilbert Ramsay (1839–1921), Latinist and Frazer’s professor when the latter was a student at the University of Glasgow; James DuV DuV (1860–1940), fellow of Trinity College, eminent Latinist and translator from Russian. 3. Gosse’s honour was a knighthood. Frazer would be admitted to fellowship of the Royal Society in 1925, the Wrst person neither a natural nor a physical scientist to be so honoured.

To R. R. Marett, 14 August 1912 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Marett, From your recent letter to the Athenaeum I infer that the friends of Andrew Lang think of publishing a memorial volume in his honour, perhaps


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in the style of the Tylor volume. If that is so, I hope that I may be allowed to contribute a short paper to it to mark my respect for his memory. I could not write it just at present, my hands being full of other work, but I hope you will allow contributors a suYcient time so that the volume may be worthy of the subject. Lang’s death came to me as a complete surprise. I had not heard that he had been unwell. The Wrst intimation I had of the death was in the Athenaeum, and even that I did not see till some time after publication on my return from Switzerland. The obituary notice was not very generous or sympathetic. It hardly, I think, noticed his poetry, which always seems to me to possess the true poetical ring and a very musical cadence. I do not think it has been appreciated at its true value, and I am almost inclined to think that by it he will be chieXy remembered. I regret that he did not write more of it instead of the dreary controversial stuV about the Arunta etc. His light humorous prose was also exquisite in its way. He was essentially a man of letters rather than a man of science, though no doubt by his writings he did an immense deal to popularise and extend the study of primitive man. But it would have been better for his reputation and for the world if he had given us more of pure literature and less of what I would call adulterated science. At least that is how I regard his real vocation. Peace to his memory!1 I trust that you and Mrs Marett are well. My Wife and I had a delightful holiday of Wve weeks at Pontresina. The weather most of the time was very Wne. With very kind regards to you both from us both, I am, Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.36: 202 1. In view of Frazer’s detestation of Lang since 1900, this is a gracious tribute.

To W. H. D. Rouse, 31 May 1913 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Rouse, I fear I cannot undertake to write a review of the Loeb Library, my hands are too full of other work. I could not do it properly without having read all the volumes, and how can I do that when you bring them out so fast? Even if


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I could write it, you are mistaken I believe in thinking that it would have any eVect in America. I and my writings are not known there. At the Historical Congress I was introduced to an American who asked me to mention some of what he called my ‘‘publications’’ (pronounced with an American accent you know how beautifully the word sounds), because, as he kindly said, he might perhaps have heard of some of them. You will readily understand that I did not give him the information he asked for but simply turned the conversation to his own work, which he was quite ready to speak about and which consisted, so far as I could gather, in a new method for constructing good history out of bad sources, beginning with the Encyclopaedia Britannica as a foundation stone. He read a paper on the method, which he called Historiometry, but I did not hear it. They are a fearful and wonderful people. Whenever I meet an American I feel tempted to look at him from behind to see whether his tail is growing. Don’t distress yourself about American criticism. But if you possibly can, throw the whole crew of them overboard and sail the ship without them. Yours sympathizingly J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.37: 3

To Edmund Gosse, 14 June 1913 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Gosse, I much enjoyed lunching with you and meeting so many interesting and distinguished men. I wish that we met oftener. Perhaps you will come and stay with us for a couple of nights or so in the autumn or early winter before we go away for the long holiday which we think of taking when the G.B. is Wnished. When you asked me whether I knew ‘‘Tales of Old Japan,’’ I thought I did, but having a wretched memory and a mind that works slowly, I did not like to say ‘‘yes’’ for fear of telling a lie. But on returning home I found, as I half expected, the book on my shelves, and see by the inscription that I have owned it since 1890; and I believe I have read some of it, at least the rather ghastly account of Hara-kiri and the writer’s description of the instance of it which he witnessed. I wish I had known that Lord Redesdale was the author;


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I should have been glad to speak to him about Japan, on which he is an authority. I propose to send you ‘‘First Aid to the Servantless’’ and beg that you will be so good as to glance through the verses which my Wife and I concocted together under the title ‘‘L’Allegra.’’ The general division of labour was that my Wife found the ideas and I found the words for the verses; the rest of the book she wrote entirely alone. I may add that we are practising the doctrine preached in the book, for we keep no servant, but have women to come in for some hours a day. The economy in food is very great.1 With many thanks for the pleasure you gave me, and very kind regards, in which my Wife joins me, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer With reference to our proposed holiday I should perhaps explain that I am working hard to Wnish the enlarged third edition of the G. B. in ten volumes, which is being stereotyped so as to obviate the necessity of future editions. When that is Wnished, we intend to let our house and take a long holiday abroad, perhaps in Rome, but we have not decided on the place. I have also on the stocks (besides the new and enlarged Psyche,2 which will be out immediately) a selection of Addison’s essays in two volumes for the Eversley Series. For the Introduction I have got something quite new, which I hope will please you. Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. Mrs J. G. Frazer, First Aid for the Servantless (Cambridge: HeVer, 1913). The Frazers were most unusual in not keeping a servant, then regarded as a necessity in a middle-class household. Lilly Frazer’s amusing and prophetic book foresees the situation after the upheaval of war created alternatives to domestic service for young women, which meant that many middle-class families suddenly found themselves without live-in servants. 2. The second edition of Psyche’s Task, ‘revised and enlarged’, also includes Frazer’s inaugural lecture, The Scope of Social Anthropology (1908); this volume was reprinted in 1920 and reissued in 1927 with the title The Devil’s Advocate.

To F. M. Cornford, 1 February 1914 St Keyne’s, Cambridge My dear Cornford, Your very kind letter came as a great surprise to me last night. It was awaiting us on our return from the Trinity party. Neither my Wife nor I had

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received any hint of the project.1 The plan of raising a fund to make grants to travelling students of anthropology is so good that I cannot help approving of it, even though it is proposed that my name should be associated with it. I might have preferred that the fund should have been formed without any such personal reference and that I should have been able to assist it, so to say, from without. But if the Committee thinks, as I gather that they do, that my name associated with the fund is likely in any measure to promote anthropological research I cannot refuse the use of it. I am deeply sensible of the honour done me by the proposal. There is no honour that I should value more, because none could be better Wtted, so far as I see, to advance the study of anthropology. The promotion of research among the existing races of savages is, in my judgment, the most pressing want of science at the present time, for the simple reason that almost all other branches of science can wait, but it must be done now or never. The best result I can hope from my writings is to stimulate that research before it is too late, and the formation of such a fund as the Committee proposes, whether associated with my name or not, can hardly fail to further that object and therefore to enlist my warm sympathy. For the sake of science I wish it success. I thank you for your kind personal reference to me and my work. Our plans are not settled but I certainly hope and expect that we shall not wholly sever our connexion with Cambridge and Cambridge friends. Wherever we are I shall try to continue the work which I have carried on for so many years in Cambridge. Believe me, my dear Cornford, Yours very gratefully and sincerely J. G. Frazer Clare Cornford Chapman 1. Frazer’s departure from Cambridge and Trinity would ordinarily have been marked by the college commissioning a portrait. Instead Cornford came up with the inspired idea of a fund to support anthropological Weldwork. The history of the Frazer Fund is told in the exchange with Cornford that follows; for context, see Frazer, 258 V.

To F. M. Cornford, 8 February 1914 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Cornford, Since I wrote you a week ago I have had (in spite of the packing and removal of my library and all my household goods in the interval) more


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leisure to reXect on the proposal to found a Research Fund for Anthropology. The result of my reXections is that while I continue highly to approve of the institution of such a Fund and earnestly hope that it may be carried out, I see objections, which I regard as insuperable, to the proposal to institute such a fund in my honour. As a matter of personal feeling, it would be really painful to me to know that friends of mine were being asked to pay money to do me honour, whatever form that honour might take. It is most generous and kind of the promoters of the scheme to be willing and even anxious to give money for such a purpose. I am grateful to them and touched by their generosity. But most of my friends are poor men, many of them with families to support and with many pecuniary claims upon them. If such a fund were started in my honour, these men would be put in a painful dilemma. Either they might strain their narrow means to give a subscription, thereby perhaps doing injustice to those who have a far stronger claim on them, or they might refuse to give. In either case they might feel a natural and, I think, justiWable resentment at me, who had consented to put them in such a diYcult and disagreeable position. It would be painful to them and exceedingly painful to me. So that a scheme intended to give me pleasure would really cause me a constant grief and vexation, even if it did not (as it might do) cause a coolness between me and some of my friends. As for the general public, who have no personal relations with me, they show their appreciation of my work in a very practical form by buying my books, which cost a good deal of money, and it seems to me hardly fair to levy a further tax on them for my honour and gloriWcation. Such a tax, whether levied on friends or strangers, is in fact exceedingly repugnant to my feelings, and for that reason I must request the committee to omit my name and all reference to me or my work from the proposed fund. It is a great satisfaction to me, and one of the best rewards of my labours, to know that the friends who have signed the circular approve of my work. But I would ask them not to alloy that pure satisfaction by the attempt to express their approbation in any pecuniary form whatever. But it would be quite otherwise if the proposal were to found a fund for the promotion of anthropological research without any personal reference to me or to any one else. That I could approve of unreservedly and support wholeheartedly. The idea of founding such a fund seems to me so excellent that I earnestly hope the Committee will consent to sink all personal considerations and try to carry it out for the sake of science, pure and simple. As I said in my former letter, I regard research among the existing races of savages as the most urgent want of science at the present time, because it must be done now or never. I venture to think if a strong appeal were made for the formation of a Fund for Anthropological Research to the Universities, to the learned societies, and to enlightened members of the public (many of whom


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are both rich and liberal), it might meet with a generous response and be the starting-point of a great movement for the promotion of the study of man. In such a movement every one who cares for knowledge could join heartily, so long as the object is strictly impersonal and disinterested. But if once you mix up the personal element by connecting the movement with the name of a living man, you open the door to all kinds of petty jealousies and suspicions and thereby excite opposition, open or secret, to the scheme. My advice, if I may give it, is therefore to go forward with the scheme, but to keep it strictly impersonal and scientiWc. With such a scheme I would gladly cooperate by joining the committee, assisting in its deliberations, helping to draft the public appeal for subscriptions, and contributing to the fund among the Wrst list of subscribers. In this form the scheme outlined by the Committee would be a grand one, and, so far as I can see, liable to no objections, and I should be happy to do all in my power to promote it. Believe me, my dear Cornford, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer Clare Cornford Chapman

To F. M. Cornford, 14 February 1914 Batt’s Hotel, Dover St, London My dear Cornford, I thank you for your very kind letter, which I have carefully considered. I have never for a moment wavered in my approbation of the scheme suggested by the Committee for the Promotion of Anthropological Research; and if, as you think, the scheme would fall to the ground if I refused to lend my name to it, I do not, on further reXection, think that it would be right for me to allow any personal feelings of mine to stand in the way of a scheme which may do any, even a small, service to science. Accordingly I revert to the point of view expressed in my Wrst letter to you. I should prefer that the scheme were a purely impersonal one and that I should be able actively to support it; but if you and the Committee are of opinion that in that form the scheme is impracticable, or even that it has merely a much less chance of succeeding, than in the form suggested by the Committee, then I am quite willing that the Committee should proceed in the way that they think most


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likely to conduce to the object which we all have at heart, the advancement of knowledge, particularly our knowledge of the culture of the lower and vanishing races of mankind. Whatever comes of it, whether the scheme succeeds or fails, I shall always be grateful for the kind and generous feelings which prompted my Cambridge friends to undertake it. Believe me, my dear Cornford, Always gratefully and sincerely yours J. G. Frazer Clare Cornford Chapman

To Solomon Schechter, 3 July 1914 Brick Court My dear Dr Schechter, It was exceedingly kind of you and Mrs Schechter to telegraph your congratulations on the recent event [Frazer’s receipt of a knighthood]. My wife and I thank you both cordially for them. Coming from such old and valued friends they are particularly welcome. We were very sorry to hear lately that you had been unwell. When you or Mrs Schechter write next to us, please give us news of your health. We earnestly trust that by this time it is completely restored. We gave up our house in Cambridge early in February and moved to London. After looking about for some time we settled in the Temple, where we have chambers which in many ways promise to suit us well. We only began to reside in them a few days ago. Since our coming to London my Wife’s health has improved in some respects, which was our chief motive for leaving Cambridge. Please thank your son Frank from me for his kindness in sending me his Wrst published essay. I congratulate him on his thus entering on the career of a scholar. I ought to have written to him before now, but the essay came, I think, just when I was working under great pressure in order to Wnish my book before leaving Cambridge, and since then, in the strangeness and novelty of London life, and cut oV from my usual occupation (my library being in store) I almost ceased to correspond with friends. It is only within the last few days that we have moved into our new quarters, where I have all my books around me.


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We trust that Mrs Schechter and your children are all well. My Wife joins me in kindest regards and remembrances to you all. I am, yours always sincerely J. G. Frazer Jewish Theological Seminary

From Lilly Frazer to W. J. Lewis, 26 July 1914 Brick Court Dear Professor Lewis, Have I written to thank you for your kind letter or have I only done so in my heart? We have had so much of late that I have got a little bewildered & almost unmethodical—I intended to mark oV the letters (over one thousand) I have answered—but I did not mark oV all—no doubt being called away in the process. All I do know is that your letter was particularly nice & gave us both very great pleasure. I read it out to J. G. & (I confess to you) I passed the word condole you used in fun—‘‘Congratulate with me and (condole) with him’’ the reason being that a former fellow of Trinity—(I may as well mention him to you—feeling you will not refer to it in any way) Mr Wyse—has caused us deep & bitter harm by two horrid letters which point almost to mental derangement & against the title, against our dwelling here, against Everything! By an unfortunate chain of circumstances the Wrst Reproach!! reached here just as J. G., beaming in countenance & resplendent in (borrowed) millinery returned from the Investiture having appreciated the beauty of the Palace & the gorgeous spectacle of all the uniforms blazing on that sunny day of June. It did cloud our brilliant sky & it did hurt & therefore your kindly fun—‘‘condole’’ was surpressed [sic] by me, reading aloud! Mr Wyse knows perfectly, as you all do who know J. G., that if he accepted the title it was so that I had a chance of sharing publicly in his honour—; he also thought that had his Mother been alive she would have wished him to accept simply, as being more digniWed than a haughty refusal etc.—anyhow he was (after some Wrst jibbing) & is pleased—Mr Wyse, who is ill & was always a mass of cramped prejudices, only tried to wound me, but he little knows his friend. To wound J. G. thro’ me is to doubly wound him! That was our only Gnat in the ointment and your friendly congratulations came all the more welcome as they followed a second and still more violent letter from Mr W!


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J. G. will soon forget it all in work and he is very well and very Wt & in full swing of work again. Yet, as we may go and peep at you in your rooms next Wednesday 27th July a.m.—it may be as well for me to explain to you. I know you will not allude to what, after all, is but a passing Mosquito-sting; and your cordial friendship is a very great blessing to us. J. G. is always highly strung & far more sensitive—almost touchy, than one could guess from his manner—the result of over-work—I am doing my best to reduce that & have succeeded so far in his consenting to give up work after dinner & we have gone out much, seen many interesting things & people & in a word, been extremely gay. J. G. has gone everywhere with me jibbing—& tho’ it is a small gain, it is a gain, for he sleeps well, if he has had diversion at night—our outings have been mostly dinners, for my growing deafness spoils theatres & concerts for me & J. G. only goes out to please me. Do come and look us up here. We can give you a shakedown & a very warm welcome & we can introduce you to new Saints—and Plaster Saints! Two if you like also the author of ‘‘Plaster Saints’’ who lives in the Temple. Hoping to have a word with you on Wednesday when J. G. comes up with me for the day for unravelling his Income Tax papers with Mr Times!! I am very well & free from all chest pains & feel like a new Creature! I remain ever gratefully, L. Frazer P.S. I do hope people will not arouse Heimweh in J. G. by saying (as so many do) ‘‘How could you ever tear yourself away from Cambridge.’’ It is just a mere form of speech but J. G. takes all literally! TCC Frazer 1: 31

To A. B. Cook, 13 December 1914 Albemarle Club, London My dear Cook I have now got your magniWcent volume and am giving myself the pleasure, in intervals of work, of dipping into it.1 Wherever I dip I Wnd treasures of learning and wealth of suggestion which fascinate me and render it diYcult for me to lay down the book. I have seen enough to congratulate you with all my heart on a truly grand achievement. Such a monograph on a

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Greek god has never, I believe, been written before, and I can hardly think that it will ever be surpassed. The range, depth, and accuracy of the learning, whether we regard the literature or the art, strike me as wonderful. What an enormous advance scholarship has made since the days of Bentley and Porson, when the scholar knew, and was expected to know, little or nothing more than the bare texts of a comparatively few classical authors! How you have managed to do all this immense research in the intervals of your arduous teaching duties would be almost incomprehensible to me, if I had not seen for myself in those vacations long ago, when you Wrst opened this rich mine of learning, the wonderful speed as well as accuracy with which you work. But it is not only the extent and profundity of learning which I admire in your book. It is also the ease, simplicity, and clearness of the style, and the lucidity of the arrangement by which you have been able to marshal the whole of the vast materials in a simple and logical order so as to avoid all confusion. It is a work of art as well as of science. And when these intrinsic merits of the book are enhanced and set oV by the wealth, beauty, and aptness of the illustrations, and the splendour and faultless taste of the typography, the whole becomes a real joy to look at, to handle, and to use. With the principles which you lay down in the preface I Wnd myself entirely in agreement. I congratulate you on the sound sense you display in avoiding questions of ethnology altogether. Like you, I am of opinion that in the present state of our knowledge the attempt to discriminate the diVerent ethnological strata in Greek culture is perfectly futile, and can result in nothing but bottomless guesswork and endless wrangling. More than that, I am inclined to say the same of all attempts to analyse human culture into its ethnological elements. In most, if not all cases the facts are too complex and our knowledge of their history far too incomplete to allow us to undertake such an analysis with any hope of success. Hence though in theory such an analysis is no doubt very desirable, in practice it is impossible, and the best thing we can do is frankly to acknowledge the impossibility, or at least the extreme diYculty, of the task, and to devote our attention to other problems which oVer a more reasonable hope of a solution. That is roughly speaking my attitude to the present fashion in anthropology of attempting to dissect the various racial elements in a complex culture. The fashion was set, I believe, in Germany and has been advocated in this country by Rivers. However admirable the idea may be theoretically, I fear that little or nothing will come of it but interminable disputation and Wnal disappointment. So, like you, I strictly avoid it. Then again I am sure that you are right in avoiding on the whole the comparative method, and conWning yourself to the Greek evidence. The comparative method has its place and I should be the last to decry it, as


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some of those silly people do who are always trying to force all locks with the last new key, and who then throw away the key in a pet because it will not open them all. But what we all looked to you for, and what you have given us, is a monograph embodying the whole of the Greek evidence, literary and monumental, discussed and stated in and for itself, without reference, or with only very brief and occasional reference, to similar facts in other races. If you had interlarded the Greek materials with those drawn from all parts of the world, you would have spoiled your book. I congratulate you also on your good sense in steering clear of this danger also. Throughout your book so far as I have examined it, you seem to combine great ingenuity and originality of speculation with remarkable sobriety of judgment. The combination is a very rare one, and it makes the ideal investigator. As a further example of what I regard as your sound judgment I may say that I am particularly glad to see you appear to have avoided the excesses to which some over zealous friends of ours have carried the vegetation spirit, and which are apt to make the very name of the vegetation spirit stink in the nostrils of reasonable people. I confess I wince and shudder when I hear the name pronounced in a public lecture. That reminds me to say that I have fully recanted my old heresy as to Zeus being originally a god of the oak. In the preface to ‘‘Balder’’, I do penance for my error in a winding-sheet and candle. Your reference to my ancient error on the Wrst page of your book was no doubt printed before the publication of ‘‘Balder’’. I only call your attention to my recantation to let you know that like you I fully recognize Zeus and Jupiter as originally gods of the sky, a view which I ought never to have questioned. And in general I may say that wherever our views actually diVer on questions of Greek mythology and religion, I am quite prepared to learn that you are right and I am wrong. Indeed when I see what vast erudition is necessary for the adequate discussion of a single Wgure in ancient mythology, I am abashed at the light-heartedness with which, on a comparatively slender acquaintance with classical writers and classical art, I have hazarded conjectures on many points of Greek and Latin religion. However, this superWciality of treatment is, I fear, inseparable from the comparative method in its wider applications and constitutes probably its greatest weakness. I have never concealed from myself that fundamental weakness.2 But I still think that the comparative method serves a useful purpose in bringing from far and near facts which suggest new points of view to students who are immersed in the study of a particular area, and with whom the Wnal decision as to all questions concerning that particular area must rest. Now I fear I may have wearied you with this long rambling letter. But your book is so rich in suggestion that I have only touched on a few points which struck me in a hasty perusal of a few pages opened almost at random. I am

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looking forward to reading more and more of it, and learning much from it. In time I hope we may meet and discuss it together. I am delighted to see from the preface that the second volume is well advanced. May you have health and strength and leisure to complete the book at the same high level on which you have placed the Wrst volume. Even as it stands, the book is a glory not only to Cambridge but to English scholarship, and will keep your name fresh and green on the bead roll [of ] English scholars, so long as the world cares for ancient learning. With heartiest congratulations to you and Mrs Cook on your great achievement, I am, Yours aVectionately J. G. Frazer Pray forgive the horrible blots of which I have been guilty. The inkpot was very full, and I have sensibly lowered the level of the ink not only by what I have written but by what I have blotted. TCC Frazer 1: 61 1. A. B. Cook, Zeus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914). 2. On the other hand, he never acknowledged it in print.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 11 February 1915 Brick Court My dear Hartland, Thank you sending me a copy of your paper in Folk-Lore and for writing to me.1 I was glad to hear from you again. As to the question at issue between you and Roscoe, it is, I take it, rather one of degree than of principle. No sensible man (and Roscoe is eminently a sensible man) would maintain the absolute trustworthiness of savage tradition, and no sensible man would absolutely reject all savage traditions as destitute of every grain of truth. To hit the true mean between the two extremes is diYcult, perhaps impossible; the discussion of the general question clearly admits of no deWnite conclusion and is, in my judgment, at present unproWtable; each tradition must be examined on its own merits and accepted or rejected according to the evidence. No doubt if this were done for


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many traditions, it might be possible to arrive at certain general conclusions which might be useful guides in the future investigation of other traditions. You have made a beginning by examining some of the traditions of Central and South Africa, and it is to be hoped that others will follow your example in other parts of the anthropological Weld. My impression is that you are inclined to be too sceptical and to look at the native traditions too much from the standpoint of European rationalism.2 For example, you suspect the genealogies of the Baganda kings because the names of many of their mothers are simply the names of their sons with Na preWxed. May not this be a case of the very common custom of naming mothers after their children? And if so does it not rather confirm rather than cast doubt on the tradition? Then with regard to the Bushongo, you ask, ‘‘But they possessed the domestic fowl: did they never eat it?’’ If I remember aright, a number of African tribes to this day possess domestic fowls, but never eat them, just as we keep cats and never eat them, unless inadvertently in the form of sausages. So if tradition avers this of the Bushongo in the past, it may be perfectly in harmony with the facts. It must have been a very interesting experience to see the native haunts of the Australian savage. I gather that there is a sort of weird fascination, though little charm or beauty, in the scenery. My brother-in-law told me he had the pleasure of your company on the way out.3 As for me, I have passed the fat Index volume of the G.B. for the press, and am now preparing lectures for the Royal Institution which will form part of volume II of ‘‘The Belief in Immortality.’’ After that I have undertaken to give the Huxley lecture on ‘‘Legends of a Great Flood,’’ which will form part of a volume on Folk-Lore in the Old Testament. My Wife has brought out a charming story of French provincial life called ‘‘La maison aux Panonceaux.’’ With kind regards, I am, Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer Have you seen Cook’s gorgeous volume on Zeus and Rivers’ two big volumes on Melanesian Society?4 I have both books, but have read only a little of them as yet. Cambridge is doing well. TCC Add. MS b.36: 56 1. Hartland, ‘On the Evidential Value of the Historical Traditions of the Baganda and Bushongo’, Folk-Lore, 25 (1914), 428–56. 2. Precisely the criticism levied against Frazer by many of his later critics. 3. J. E. A. Steggall, professor of mathematics at the University of Dundee and husband of Frazer’s sister Isabella. 4. W. H. R. Rivers, The History of Melanesian Society, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914).

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From E. Sidney Hartland to J. G. Frazer, 15 February 1915 Highgarth, Gloucester My dear Frazer, Believe me, I am grateful for your criticisms. Perhaps I am inclined to be sceptical on the historical value of traditions; but I have been trying to arrive at some principles of criticism of historical traditions, and it was in the course of this eVort that I took up the Baganda and Bushongo traditions, to which it seemed to me Roscoe and Torday attached exaggerated value.1 I do not recollect (it may be the treachery of memory) any case in which mothers, and not fathers, are called by the names of their children. If the Baganda do so I do not think Roscoe calls attention to the practice. It is curious that in the earliest steps of the pedigree the name of these mothers are given, and that in the last 8 generations they are also given. Surely the conclusion is that the pedigree is a good witness to the custom (if it exists), but not to the identity of the ladies in question. In other words, it is more or less consciously fabricated for the honour and glory of the clans concerned. With regard to the eating of domestic fowls among the Bushongo, I cannot Wnd that people had any objection to such an article of diet. On the contrary, it is implied that they used it, because they were in danger of dying from famine when Wots, a predecessor of Minga Bengela, cursed the land so that their fowls (volatiles) died and their millet rotted. The Bakongo and the Basongo indeed forbade the eating of fowls to women, for what reason does not appear, but not, it would seem, to men: perhaps not to children also. In any case they were not the Bushongo to whom the tradition related. It was indeed an interesting experience to see the Australian savage in his native wilds, though himself tamed and almost grown domestic. The savage [something omitted] of the southern half of Australia is rendered monotonous by the absence of any forest trees except eucalyptus. The eye hungers for some change, for a sight of something like our European variety of woods. But no! it is all the same everywhere. Yet there is beauty even in the dense forest, where the eye is relieved to some extent with undergrowth and the tree-fern. And the canyons of the Blue Mountains are gorgeous, their bottoms Wlled with eucalyptus, their sides crowned with lofty cliVs and the blue Australian heaven over all. You must be glad to have the Index of the G. B. oV your hands. There is no literary drudgery so great as that of index-making. I have not seen any of the books you make my mouth water for. Lady Frazer’s must be very interesting, especially just now. I trust she will have a


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large sale for it. Before I left home I very reluctantly stopped my standing order for the Athenaeum. My father and I had taken it for 50 years, but it had got so poor that I determined to give it up. I have had nothing in its place, and know of nothing that can take its place. The criticisms, or notices, whether of scientiWc books in Man, Folk-Lore, &c. are very slow and behind-time. Continental ones are stopped. Besides, my purse is nearly empty. It is part of the penalty for living in such great, though terrible times. With kind regards, Yours sincerely, E. Sidney Hartland TCC Add. MS b.36: 56 (TS) 1. Emil Torday (1875–1931), anthropologist working in Central Africa.

To W. J. Lewis, 15 February 1915 Brick Court 1

My dear Lewis, Many thanks for your kind letter. How curious that Cowper should have come to light after hiding himself away so long! Perhaps the congenial society of Addison drew him out. Do not trouble about the delay in acknowledging the book. To tell you the honest truth, I had quite forgotten that I had sent you it, so your silence gave me no concern. You need not fear that I or my Wife will ever have any ill thoughts of you. We have known you too long and too well for that. Only the other day my Wife in a moment of gloom and depression (she has not been well lately but is getting better) said, ‘‘Every body is a humbug.’’ Then after a moment of reXection she added, ‘‘But Professor Lewis is not.’’ This testimonial to your character is all the more striking because in her general observations on humbugs she had made no exceptions whatever for the present company; in fact she pointedly included me and even herself, though she is strongly of opinion that I am a much greater humbug than she is, and I quite agree with her in that view. I am glad that you were decoyed into reading some of Cowper and found him interesting. He is a great favourite of mine both as a writer and as a man. In the latter capacity he is far more attractive than Addison, who strikes one personally as somewhat cold and aloof and (tell it not in Gath, that is in Cambridge) academic; after all he had been a don at Magdalen, Oxford, for a

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good many years and had no doubt acquired (here I am again going to put my foot very deep into it) the Oxford manner. Like you we feel very much for our German friends in England in this terrible crisis, and we wish and try to be more than usually kind to them. How much worse for them than for us, torn as they must be between their two countries, the one of their birth and the other of their choice. In choosing England as their home they have paid us and our country the highest possible compliment, and to add to their suVerings at such a time, as some people I fear do (from what we hear), is unworthy of English men and women. Only the baser sort, whatever their rank in life, can be guilty of such misconduct. There was a letter some time ago by a Cambridge beast (he signed his name but I did not know it and have forgotten it) proposing that all Germans should be expelled from their appointments in the Universities and elsewhere. The fellow deserved to be horsewhipped out of decent society for such a letter. It would be a great pleasure to my Wife and me if you would come and see us some time in our new quarters. We look out on Fountain Court and across to the Middle Temple hall. It is almost like having rooms in the Great Court of Trinity. I am delighted to hear that you keep so youthful in body and mind. That is the great secret of health and happiness. I do not practise or ring (as Cowper would say) dumb bells nor do I garden, but I walk nearly every day in the park, making the round of the Serpentine and the little circular lake at Kensington palace. One of my amusements is to feed the sparrows and especially the gulls, which spend the winter on these waters. My Wife puts broken bread in my pockets for the purpose, and I throw the pieces in the air and see the gulls swoop and catch them before they fall. When the days grow longer and the weather warmer we hope to come to Cambridge some day and to take tea with you and see our friends. But before that we hope to see you here. My Wife bids me ask you to let us know which day to expect you, whether the 11th or 12th of March or any other day. You will come, we hope, and lunch or take tea with us or both, as suits you best. With our united kindest regards I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 25 1. A letter remarkable for both warmth of feeling and the domestic detail that is normally conWned to Lilly’s letters.

Part IV After The Golden Bough, 1916–31

Although for rhetorical purposes it seemed Wtting for the preceding part of this book to end with the publication of the Wnal volume of the third edition, Frazer never fully put The Golden Bough behind him. Even at the very end of his life, in his ninth decade and in failing health, blind and facing Wnancial diYculties once again, he could not or would not stop, and in fact he published an embryonic fourth edition in 1936 under the title Aftermath: A Supplement to The Golden Bough, nearly all of which was quarried from his notebooks. Nonetheless, the twenty-three post-war years that remained to him were appreciably diVerent from those that came before. He remained active within scholarship, mainly in classics, but the completion of the third edition brought with it public acclaim as never before. This recognition notwithstanding, Frazer’s own life changed hardly at all in the day-to-day sense, made up as it was of endless reading, taking notes, writing, proofreading, and writing letters. Needless to say, when the Frazers moved to London, there was no possibility of moving his huge library with them, so one may fairly point to this as the moment when everything changed for him. Much of the persuasive power of his work had derived from the ‘objectivity’ and ‘scientiWc’ value conferred by the mountain of footnotes upon which it rested, and which he had created by positioning himself in his library, at the heart of a worldwide ethnographic web. After having lived his adult life to this point literally surrounded by all his books—according to Lilly, he insisted on having every book he needed or might need within reach, so that he rarely used the University Library—leaving his library behind meant that he could no longer put out his hand and locate the exact references needed to support his theories. The consequences were far-reaching, although they became apparent only over time. Once separated from the library and yet requiring some

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After The Golden Bough, 1916–31

piece of information, he had three choices: he could make a special trip to Cambridge to look at his books himself; he could write to Trinity and ask a college porter to go to the rooms where his library was stored and look, say, for the third book with a red binding on the second row from the top of the Wrst bookcase by the door and send it to him; or he could quarry references from his published works. He employed all three of these expedients, but as time passed and he and Lilly spent more and more of their time in hotels, the last of these came to outweigh the others, and many of his later (post-war) productions represent increased recycling of his earlier work. It should be said that the absence of his library primarily aVected his anthropological output; his classical work always required far fewer books, which he was able to keep by him. As a result, the decade of the 1920s was devoted mainly to producing the onevolume abridgements of The Golden Bough and Folk-Lore in the Old Testament and to his editions of The Library of Apollodorus and the Fasti of Ovid.1 In 1914 the Frazers moved into a small Xat on the top Xoor of 1 Brick Court in the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court. He had become a member of the Middle Temple more than thirty-Wve years earlier because, after taking his degree from Trinity, he had been called to the bar; his father had insisted that his son gain a professional qualiWcation before taking his chances on an academic career. Here they spent the war years; fortunately, we have several splendid letters from Lilly that describe their daily routine in detail. It goes without saying that Frazer carried on with his work, his focus now being the ‘primitive’ element to be discerned (and exposed) in the Hebrew Bible. Along with Hebrew, however, he found himself straying into areas—speciWcally, politics—that would never have attracted even a Xicker of his interest before the war. (Generally, he did not so much as glance at the front page of the newspaper.) As a fellow of Trinity, for example, he was perforce involved when in 1916 the furore surrounding the allegedly subversive activities of Bertrand Russell came to a head. Although before the war Frazer had expressed the greatest respect for Germany as the world leader in scholarship, with the outbreak of hostilities he became fervently patriotic. It is therefore not especially surprising that he voted with the majority to strip Russell of his fellowship.2 For her part Lilly was extremely active, going to numerous public meetings and translating patriotic books from French. 1 The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Frazer’s GiVord Lectures in 1924, is notable as a non-recycled work from this period. Here is Norman Kemp Smith’s reaction, in a letter to Baron von Hu¨gel of 26 Oct. 1924: ‘Sir J. G. Frazer commenced his GiVords on Tuesday last—the weariest of discourses, in a strangely old fashioned style of 18th century freethinking’ (in Lawrence F. Barmann (ed.), The Letters of Baron Friedrich von Hu¨gel and Professor Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Fordham University Press, 1981), 262). 2 For more, see Frazer, 263–4.


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There can be little doubt that Lilly, who loved the liveliness and bustle of London, would have remained indeWnitely in the Temple had it been possible. The problem, in the end insuperable, was that the Xat had no kitchen, which meant that they had to take all their meals outside, and further that it was up three Xights of stairs, which became increasingly diYcult after a series of bronchial infections made her a semi-invalid. But the long-awaited departure from Cambridge was not her sole gratiWcation in 1914, for in that same year Frazer was knighted, which meant of course that she could henceforth style herself Lady Frazer. This was only the Wrst mark of the recognition that Lilly Frazer had long craved for her modest and retiring husband and, once it came, relished for herself far more than he did for himself. It would be followed by membership in the Royal Society and induction into the exclusive Order of Merit, which is limited at any one time to twenty-four members distinguished for their contributions to arts and letters. While honours were being heaped upon Frazer in Britain, events that would determine his later reputation were taking place far away. When at the turn of the century in Krakow a young Polish student of physics and chemistry, Bronislaw Malinowski, decided to improve his English by reading a ‘masterpiece’ composed in that language, and selected the second edition of The Golden Bough as his text, the eVect was both immediate and far-reaching. In a reminiscence he tells us that the book was so powerful that it caused him to forsake natural science for anthropology.3 (But see his letter of 25 May 1925, in which a somewhat diVerent version of this story emerges.) In time this new calling took him to Australia and then to Melanesia, where he found himself when the outbreak of war prevented him from returning to Europe (the presence of German raiders in the PaciWc having caused the suspension of all passenger traYc for the duration). He therefore stayed in the Trobriand Islands considerably longer than he had intended, and as a result learned much more than he would have had he adhered to his original timetable. The Trobriand experience caused him to see that much of the most valuable ethnographic information could be gleaned only from a prolonged immersion in native life. This became the basis for the methodological innovation that has been his greatest contribution to anthropology—the necessity for extended periods of Weldwork. Only in this way could outsiders begin to learn not merely how the natives live and what they do but to begin to ‘feel their way into’ the native mental ‘world-picture’. Furthermore, this experience led 3

See Malinowski’s fulsome ‘Dedication to Sir James Frazer’ that precedes his essay ‘Myth in Primitive Psychology’, most easily consulted in Magic, Science and Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 93–5. The Wrst volume of the new biography, Michael W. Young, Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist 1884–1920 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), has just appeared.

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to his reXections, expressed both in writing and in his well-known inter-war seminar at the London School of Economics, on the inherently ambiguous status of the outside investigator during the course of Weldwork, now known as participant-observation, which has been the basic epistemological position of Anglophone anthropology ever since. Malinowski’s Weld observations, which began to be published before the war in several important articles, and later in books, were admired by Frazer and others, and Frazer was a frequent correspondent when Malinowski was in the PaciWc. After the war, Frazer wrote an appreciative preface to Malinowski’s important book, Argonauts of the Western PaciWc (1922).4 Although Frazer’s retiring nature, the fact that he had no students, and his distaste for professional politics made him a less-than-ideal patron, there can be no doubt that he served in that capacity for Malinowski, although it is impossible to imagine that Malinowski, despite his sometimes fulsome Xattery, ever thought of himself as the older man’s disciple. And, as is the way so often with patrons and prote´ge´s, Malinowski’s theoretical position, which came to be known as structural functionalism, undermined and then destroyed Frazer’s kind of library- and text-centred, belletristic, comparative evolutionary approach to the behaviour and beliefs of ‘savages’.5 The letters provide important testimony regarding Malinowski’s deeply ambivalent relationship with Frazer.6 As if to punctuate the ending of the war, the day after the signing of the Armistice Macmillan brought out the three volumes of Frazer’s Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, the product of nearly Wfteen years of immersion in Hebrew language and thought. Its germ was his contribution to the Tylor Festschrift volume of 1907, but in the intervening decade that essay had undergone the riotous growth typical of all of Frazer’s productions. The essay had consisted of a series of scattered folkloric notes on disparate biblical topics that had 4 Bronislaw Malinowski, ‘Baloma: Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands’, JRAI, 46 (1916), 353–430, was the Wrst of his essays to come to Frazer’s attention. As is so often the way with patrons and prote´ge´s, Malinowski repaid Frazer’s friendship with ambivalence. See his obituary, ‘Sir James George Frazer’, in A ScientiWc Theory of Culture and Other Essays (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), 145–76. The tone of Malinowski’s letters to Frazer in the 1920s is an unpleasant compound of servility and intimacy; the whole reads as deeply insincere and manipulative. 5 I exaggerate slightly in two respects: (1) Although from a methodological point of view the fuse was lit by the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas in his powerful critical analysis of the comparative method—‘The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology’, Science, 4 (1896), 901–8—a more important speciWc critique of Frazer (and others) on the leading idea of totemism was A. A. Goldenweiser, ‘Totemism, an Analytic Study’, Journal of American Folklore, 23 (1910), 178–298; (2) structural functionalism is at least as much due to A. R. RadcliVe-Brown as it is to Malinowski. 6 In 1985 the eminent anthropologist (Sir) Edmund Leach, one of Malinowski’s last students, described to me at length how Malinowski would often mock Frazer.


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caught Frazer’s eye as he read. Surprisingly, although the expansion from a single essay of seventy pages to three large volumes comprising seventeen hundred pages certainly constitutes a dramatic increase in scale, he saw no need to change its structure. Normally a miscellany is viable if only a handful of topics are discussed; otherwise, the reader tends to lose interest if the disparate topics are not integrated into some larger discourse. There being no such overarching theme or narrative, Frazer’s expansion of the loose structure over three bulky volumes had a disastrous cumulative eVect. Furthermore, because the subjects covered vary so greatly in length—for example, twothirds of the Wrst volume is taken up with a 257-page discussion of Noah’s Xood and a 137-page discussion of ultimogeniture (the legal system in which property passes to the youngest son)—the entire work is heavily skewed toward the Pentateuch, and toward Genesis within the Pentateuch, so that any suggestion of the comprehensiveness implied by the title is fatally undermined. However evident these shortcomings may appear now, the book was an immense success, with 6,500 copies sold within eight months of publication despite a very high price (thirty-seven shillings and sixpence).7 As much as anything, that success was due to its timing. To war-weary readers it must have seemed as if Frazer, in demonstrating on a vast scale the seemingly innumerable ways in which the Hebrews’ behaviour and beliefs resembled those embraced by explicitly backward nations, had undermined once and for all any claims of biblically based Christianity to abiding authority. With the success of Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, there were the inevitable calls for him to do the same for the New Testament (see the letter to Edward Clodd of 11 April 1919). As the letters show, Frazer demurred, citing the pressure of previous commitments. He had indeed made clear before the war to Macmillan that he had a long list of books in mind that he wanted to write, so it is inaccurate and unfair to accuse him of inventing an excuse. At the same time, a symbolic reading of this refusal is tempting, representing, as it would have been, the Wnal assault on the religion of his parents that he was in the end unwilling to make. Whatever the psychological truth may have been, and although he shied away from undermining the New Testament, he of course carried on working at full tilt. Inspired by the soothing eighteenth-century surroundings of the Middle Temple, in The Gorgon’s Head (1920) he collected his imitations of the Sir Roger de Coverley papers of Addison and the memoir to his edition of the Letters of William Cowper (1912), to which he added a miscellany consisting of items as diverse as the obituaries of his anthropological friends 7

Sales Wgures from the Macmillan corporate archives, Basingstoke.

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William Robertson Smith (1894), Lorimer Fison and A. W. Howitt (1909), the preface to his commentary on Pausanias (1898), and part of his Passages of the Bible (1895, 1909). He also continued his lifelong habit of shuttling between anthropology and classics, producing a two-volume edition of the grab-bag of myths written by Apollodorus, The Library (1921) in the Loeb Classical Library series. The early 1920s constitutes the high-water mark of Frazer’s reputation. It was customary, when an eminent scholar like Frazer retired or left the University of Cambridge, to present him with his portrait. Instead of doing this, Francis Cornford had had the inspired idea of creating an anthropological research fund in his honour. The campaign to raise money was under way when the war broke out, and this project, along with all other scholarly work, was suspended. After the war the idea was revived, and in 1922 his friends and colleagues inaugurated the annual Frazer lectureship, to rotate among the four universities with which he had a connection—Cambridge, Oxford, Glasgow, and Liverpool—that continues to the present.8 In the same year, 1922, he Wnally achieved ‘best-seller’ status when, by omitting all the footnotes and drastically trimming the innumerable examples he was accustomed to employ in support of his contentions, he produced a one-volume abridgement of the third edition of The Golden Bough, followed by a similar epitome of Folk-Lore in the Old Testament in the following year. Although Macmillan maintained the multi-volume editions of both titles in print, the two epitomes produced by far the biggest sales, and therefore the largest royalties, in Frazer’s writing career. As noted earlier, from the Wnancial perspective he was always and indubitably a man of letters, and he achieved Wnancial security only after the publication of the two abridged editions. Despite a publishing schedule that might have crushed a lesser man, after the war Frazer also found time to use his growing inXuence to assist the anthropological exploration of his good friend Canon John Roscoe, which eventuated in several important books on East Africa by Roscoe.9 Although by all accounts Lilly Frazer was the masterful one in their marriage, at the same time her shy and retiring husband found ways of 8 Oxford, with which Frazer had no institutional connection, Wgures in the list because, largely at the instigation of Marett, it awarded him an honorary doctorate of civil laws in 1899. The fact that Oxford honoured her husband before Cambridge did, never ceased to irritate Lilly Frazer. The Wrst eleven lectures were collected and published: Warren R. Dawson (ed.), The Frazer Lectures, 1922– 1932 (London: Macmillan, 1932). 9 His long-time association with Roscoe produced a number of volumes, all published by Cambridge University Press, that are still highly regarded: The Baganda (1911) (dedicated to Frazer), The Northern Bantu Tribes (1921), The Bakitara (1923), The Banyankole (1923), and The Bagesu (1924).


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arranging things to his liking. Their longest-running contention, lasting an entire decade, turned on his unquenchable desire to return to Cambridge pitted against her equally powerful dislike of the place. He was nothing without his work, and he was unable to work without his books, and they were in Trinity College, while he and Lilly were homeless if celebrated wanderers on the Continent, mainly in France. There the Frazers became part of a circle of people interested in religion but taking a critical view of it. Some were deep-dyed rationalists of the Renanian persuasion; others, though sceptical, were more charitably inclined to the ‘claims of the spirit’. In the end, as in their retreat from Liverpool, he prevailed. In 1924 they decided to return to Cambridge and, because of the size of his library, they decided to have a house specially built for them. The house was duly constructed and, the story goes, Lilly Frazer went to inspect it while the last touches were still being applied. Having used the lavatory, she was unable to exit because the doorknob came oV in her hand, and only after a great commotion was she released by a workman. She vowed then and there never to live in the house. It was sold, at a considerable loss, virtually to the Wrst person to put in a bid. They did return to live in Cambridge once again, but only at the very end of their lives. Once this second return to Cambridge was deWnitively dashed, in 1925 they took a Xat in the large apartment block known as Queen Anne’s Mansions, London, their life there punctuated by frequent trips to the Continent. Frazer did, however, marshal the energy for one more major project, which absorbed him throughout the mid-1920s. An edition in Wve volumes of Ovid’s leastread major poem, the Fasti (1929), marked a return to his classical roots. Ovid, who had been exiled for some unknown transgression to a settlement on the edge of the empire on the Black Sea for the latter years of his life and was forever homesick for Rome, whiled away the time by indulging his own antiquarian interests and composing a long poem about the origins and meanings of the Roman festivals and holidays (fasti). The explicitly folkloric element in the text made it an obvious and apt choice for Frazer, and the edition was well received by classical scholars, although its size gives it the appearance of cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. (A much abridged version, in two volumes, consisting of text and translation, along with selected extracts from the commentary, was published as part of the Loeb Library in 1931.) The Fasti, which appeared in October 1929, essentially marked the end of Frazer’s intellectual life, although with ever-increasing eVort he maintained an attenuated semblance of his old working regime virtually until his death. The Wrst blow came in that very month, October 1929, when the Wall Street crash marked the start of the Depression. With money suddenly scarce, the

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book-buying public and both public and academic libraries were forced to economize, and during the 1930s virtually everyone seems to have concluded that the latest volume from J. G. Frazer on the history of ancient or primitive religion was a purchase that could be deferred indeWnitely. Then, in May 1931, as he was giving a speech at a dinner of the Royal Literary Fund, blood vessels in both his eyes haemorrhaged, signalling irremediable damage. His sight had long been an object of concern, but this event marked the end of his ability to read and write on his own, which is to say his life as he had lived it to that moment. Henceforth he would gamely employ amanuenses to read to him and write for him, but it would never be the same.10 As if all this was not enough, during the 1920s Anglophone anthropology had turned away decisively from the grand-scale comparative evolutionary theorizing about the history of religion exempliWed by Frazer in favour of intensive Weldwork-based, and therefore necessarily small-scale, gathering of data as the methodological way forward. These misfortunes, taken together, left Frazer defenceless as he approached the age of 80, and Lilly, who had not had to think about money throughout the 1920s, was forced to economize drastically and seek Wnancial support anywhere she could. Of course Frazer was not the only author in trouble at the time: sales of all books dropped alarmingly. Macmillan, at the time a family Wrm based on personal relationships with its authors, did what it could to keep his titles in print, but Frazer’s last decade represents a depressing spiral of deteriorating health and straitened Wnances. During these Wnal years, according to the reminiscences of several of the amanuenses, the Frazers’ daily life became more than a little grotesque. The source of the grotesquerie was Frazer’s wish to have the amanuensis read to him from the current anthropological literature, whereas Lilly had other ideas. Her deafness, for a long time total, only heightened her suspicion because of course she never knew what people were saying and indeed whether they might be talking about her. In any case she decided that although he wished to be read the latest ethnographic information, he should 10 The moment of his blindness is described, rather facetiously, by Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters 1930–1939, ed. Nigel Nicolson (London: Collins, 1966), 74–5; among descriptions of life with the Frazers in the Wnal years by the amanuenses are P. William Filby, ‘Life under the Golden Bough’, Gazette of the Grolier Club, ns no. 13 (June 1970), and Sarah Campion, ‘Autumn of an Anthropologist’, New Statesman, 41 (13 Jan. 1951), 34–6. In a related incident, in 1932 Lilly hired Theodore Besterman, later the distinguished bibliographer and student of Voltaire, to prepare a bibliography of Sir James’s works as a tribute to be presented to him on his eightieth birthday, 1 Jan. 1934. When I spoke to him in the mid-1980s, Besterman told me that she decided more than once that he was stealing the postage stamps from the envelopes in the Wles and sacked him each time. When he failed to come in the next day, she would send him a puzzled note asking why he had not shown up for work.


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hear only extracts from his own published works, but because she was uncertain what was in fact being read, she would often enter the study without warning to check that her orders were being obeyed. If they were not, depending on how she was feeling at the moment, she would sometimes sack the secretary on the spot. Her anger would quickly blow over, however, and she would expect him or her to report for work the next day and would be puzzled when sometimes this did not happen. While this domestic tragic farce was taking place, the letters from the last years show her busy trying, with some success, to obtain money by applying to every possible source she knew of. Despite the diYcult conditions that prevailed at home, during the 1930s Frazer managed to produce a surprising number of books and essays, essentially by recycling older material. His physical condition worsened and he grew weaker, but he seems not to have been in pain; Lilly, on the other hand, continued to undergo frequent chest infections and shortness of breath. Their lives came to an end within hours of one another: Sir James died in the evening of 7 May 1941, probably from several of his organs giving out at the same time. Lilly had kept herself alive mainly by force of will, and once her raison d’eˆtre, her husband’s welfare, had ceased to exist, she seems to have relaxed and succumbed to the myriad of complaints that had long beset her. She died the next morning; at Trinity College the joke was that she couldn’t leave him alone for even a single day.

From Lilly Frazer to W. J. Lewis, 5 April 1916 Brick Court Dear Professor Lewis, How kind of you to remember about Prof. V. H. sermon. Thank you very much & thank you for your letter & the details you give me. What an escape you had in Burrell’s Walk!! I heard from Mrs Selwyn also that Mary had a very narrow escape in the same place that day. Here, sheltered . . . by the law! seriously: sheltered we did not know even that there was a storm. It was not till we put out the lights that I saw it was a bad night, for I drew back the blinds then—as J. G. arises at Wve a.m.—it saves him some trouble and prevents his making any breakages with banging about curtains, etc. We are so absorbed in work: ‘‘Folklore in the Old Testament’’ that we live quite a life of our own, hardly knowing what goes on excepting for a glance of mine, at the


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Times—J. G. never looks at it. It is no use following the war step by step for we can do nothing! Not even pray for Peace, for that also seems to be wrong? according to some authorities. All we can do is imitate you & economize, & we do so—religiously. Even J. G. says it would be impossible to simplify further! The only thing we might now reduce is his barber’s fee. He speaks (J. G.) of cutting oV his own hair (or what is left of it) but so far—tho’ barbers have also raised their prices—he has recourse to them every few months!! His chief operator was . . . an alien in early 1914 but has since discovered that he is a Serb! We keep no servant, a woman comes thrice a week to clean & wash. It is very peaceful. We cook our own breakfast—I make the study and kitchen Wres while J. G. partakes his grape-nuts in the dining room which has a Gas stove and he takes (the Hebrew Bible helping!) a long time over that meal. We go out to our midday dinner to a little club I belong to, Wve minutes walk from us— the ‘‘Writers’’ & get a most excellent meal for one shilling for me and 1/3! for J. G. who is my guest. We make our own supper or rather it almost makes itself out of cheese—& turn out lights by 9.30–10. Quiet a conventual life, varied by a few lectures etc. at the R. Institution where the other day explosives (such as Cordyte) [sic] were made in our presence & reminded us of the realities & atrocities of the present moment. Hoping all is well with you & with our united and aVectionate greetings and thanks many. Ever sincerely, Lilly Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 33

To William Rothenstein,1 27 June 1916 Brick Court Dear Sir, I shall be pleased to give you a sitting or sittings for the purpose mentioned in your letter. I can do so practically at any time convenient to you, but should prefer the afternoon, so as not to break in on my morning work. Please let me know what time would suit you, and I will try to arrange accordingly. I am, yours faithfully J. G. Frazer


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Houghton Library, Harvard University 1. (Sir) William Rothenstein (1872–1945), English painter, later principal of the Royal College of Art. Best known for the several series of portraits of contemporary literary and cultural Wgures that he published in the 1920s. Frazer’s inclusion in this group—others are Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells—testiWes to his cultural importance at the time. Frazer’s portrait appears in Twenty-four Portraits, First Series (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1920).

To William Rothenstein, n.d. [1916] Brick Court Dear Mr Rothenstein, If the exigencies of art absolutely require that I should be garbaged (as Mrs Leiter, the American Mrs Malaprop, once observed) in academic costume, let it be in the humble and unpretending M.A. gown of Cambridge. It is plain black; none of your blazing scarlet and ermine for me. I leave all that to real doctors. I am only a sham that is, an honorary one. My Wife joins me in very kind regards. Be sure to come and see us when you are next in town. Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer Houghton Library, Harvard University

To Edward Clodd, 11 July 1916 Brick Court My dear Clodd, It is most kind of you and Mrs Clodd to ask us to come to you. We should greatly enjoy a visit to you at Aldeburgh, and as for Zepps [Zeppelins], which you mention, neither of us is the least troubled by them.1 So far as that goes, I think that the risk is as great (or as small) here as there, but everywhere I regard it as negligible. But I fear we must deny ourselves the pleasure of coming to you at present. We are both busy. My Wife has thrown herself into the Fight for Right movement, and is working hard for it. The movement has

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two great schemes on foot, of which, if they come to maturity, you will hear in due time. My Wife is interesting herself in both and is unwilling to leave them at present, as both are urgent. For myself I am trying to make up for the leeway caused by my long long absence from my books last year. My book is progressing steadily, if not very rapidly, and I am reluctant to interrupt it. Proofs, too, are dribbling in, not Xowing in a torrent as they used to do before the war. Apart from these occupations there are other circumstances of a diVerent kind which make it diYcult for us to leave London at present. So here we stay and work, and can only think of the sea breezes of Aldeburgh, the sails on the river, and the good talks we might have had with you in these July days. We must hope that all the pleasures are only postponed. My Wife joins with me in kindest regards to Mrs Clodd and yourself, and in hearty thanks for your kind and hospitable invitation. Believe me, my dear Clodd, Ever yours aVectionately James G. Frazer Smith College Library 1. Aldeburgh, Great Yarmouth, and other locations in East Anglia were bombed in Feb. 1916 by Zeppelins.

To F. M. Cornford, 24 November 1916 Brick Court My dear Cornford, A copy of the circular had reached me before, but I am unable to sign it, as I take a serious view of Mr Russell’s oVence, and am of opinion that the Council of the College was right in depriving him of his lectureship.1 I will not go into my reasons now. Perhaps I may have an opportunity of seeing you soon when we could discuss the matter, but I am not likely to change my opinion. Quite apart from that it would be a great pleasure to my Wife and me if you could come and see us sometime when you are in town. We could then have a talk about the things in which we are both interested, though with your present military occupations2 they must seem far away. I trust that you keep well with it all.


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I will send you a copy of my Huxley lecture.3 It will ultimately form part of a book on the Folk-lore of the Old Testament which I am now writing. My Wife joins me in kindest regards to Mrs Cornford and yourself. I am, yours very sincerely, J. G. Frazer P.S. I return the article from the Manchester Guardian. Clare Cornford Chapman 1. For the scandal surrounding Bertrand Russell’s wartime activities, and Frazer’s part in it, see Frazer, 263–4. 2. With the outbreak of war Cornford became a marksmanship instructor in the army. 3. ‘Ancient Stories of a Great Flood’, JRAI 46 (1916), 231–83; reissued by the Institute as a pamphlet.

To Baldwin Spencer, 15 December 1916 Brick Court My dear Spencer, I was delighted to hear of your being in England, and I look forward eagerly to seeing you and having a talk with you. I would not miss it for much. My Wife has already written proposing various dates for you to come to us. You must not go without seeing us. I wish to talk to you about various things, particularly about another anthropological work which I wish you to write—a sort of general view of the social organization and totemism of the Australian natives, giving us your mature views on the subject, with criticism of the various theories that have been propounded (Durkheim’s, my own, etc.), and a consideration of the questions raised indirectly by Rivers in his Social History of Melanesia, with regard to the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the Australian race, the diVusion of culture in the Australian and neighbouring areas, the progress or degradation of culture among the Australians, etc. The book should be a statement of the general conclusions which you have reached on these topics as the result of many years of observation and reXection. It seems to me that science has almost a right to ask such a book from you. Think of it seriously. I have contrived to catch a cold which has conWned me to the house today and will probably conWne me tomorrow also, so that I could see you any time you cared to call. But of course my Wife also wishes much to see you and


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would be sorry to miss you. She is out just now and I am not sure of her movements tomorrow. Counting on seeing you some time without fail, and with kindest regards, I am, yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer [Lady Frazer adds:] We look forward to seeing you at the Albemarle Club, 37 Dover Street on Monday 18th at 7 pm. Morning dress. Thank you for your letter just received after J.G. had written this one. His cold is almost gone today. L. Frazer Pitt Rivers Museum

To H. Montagu Butler, 8 January 1917 Brick Court My dear Master, It is most kind you to oVer to give me your own inherited copy of Bishop Hurd’s Wne edition of Addison.1 It is with great pleasure that I accept the generous oVer. I shall value the book for its own sake and still more for the sake of the giver. When I see it or use it, I shall be reminded of you and of the unbroken friendship and kindness with which I have been honoured by you ever since you returned to Trinity to rule over us. I have not forgotten, and I shall never forget, the kind message you sent, not through me, but about me, to my dear Father and Mother very many years ago. You may be sure that they prized it, and that the opinion which you were good enough to express about me then has since been a motive with me to try to deserve it. And ever since our marriage you have extended to my Wife the same warm friendship and kindness, which she appreciates as much as I do. On all accounts, therefore, I shall prize the volumes of Addison and I thank you heartily for this fresh proof of your kindness in bestowing them on me. We grieve to hear that you have been so long laid up, but we trust that the present mild weather will relieve the catarrh, and that the approach of spring, to which we may look forward, may banish it entirely. I suppose that the aconite and the snowdrops will soon be in bloom in the Cambridge gardens.


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Here in London we have no calendar of Xowers to remind us of the lapse of the seasons. My Wife joins me in our kindest regards and good wishes to Mrs Butler and yourself. Believe me, my dear Master, Always aVectionately and gratefully yours James G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 20 1. Doubtless, the occasion for Butler’s gift of this copy of Addison to Frazer was the publication of the latter’s edition, in two volumes, of the Essays of Joseph Addison (London: Macmillan, 1915). The whereabouts of these volumes is now unknown. They are not in the Trinity College library.

To H. Montagu Butler, 13 January 1917 Brick Court My dear Master, The six beautiful volumes of Addison arrived safe last night. They had been most carefully packed and emerged from the box with their gilt edges shining and their polished leather backs glistening like new, but far better than new, mellowed by a life of more than a century (and what a century!) and enriched by associations which I shall always treasure. To think that these volumes belonged to and were read by one who knew the great and admirable Burke, one of the Wnest Wgures in the history of English letters! It seems to bridge the gulf of time between our age and his. Then I value the books most highly because they are associated with three generations of your family, and I appreciate all the more your generous kindness in giving me what is really an heirloom. You may be sure it will be prized and well cared for. I had seen and used Bishop Hurd’s edition of Addison, but only a copy in ordinary octavo, common paper, and indiVerent binding. Such a splendid copy as this I had never seen. In its Wne paper and print, handsome binding, and gilt edges it makes a really stately row of volumes with which very few volumes in my library (for the most part a student’s working library) can compare. The beautiful form of the books is a worthy setting to the beautiful prose of Addison, which on the whole I am disposed to regard as the most perfect in our language—the calm unruZed mirror of a mind serene in its innocence and in its happy unquestioning religious faith. You have given me the mirror


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in what I may call a golden casket, and I look forward to many a time opening the casket and seeing Addison’s wit and fancy and eloquence reXected in the mirror, which I shall never see without being reminded of the giver and of the friendship which is one of the prides of my quiet life. In giving me these beautiful volumes you have given me a source of lasting joy, and I thank you most heartily for it. My Wife, who loves books also, has seen and admired the volumes and she joins her thanks to mine. With our united kindest regards, I am always, my dear Master, Yours very gratefully and aVectionately James G. Frazer In speaking of Addison’s prose as on the whole the most perfect in English I refer to its general Xow and level. I do not of course mean that he ever rose to, or even approached, those heights of rapturous eloquence to which Milton soared as on angel’s wings in the Areopagitica. But in such Xights Milton outdistanced all other English writers in prose or verse. TCC Frazer 1: 21

To Bronislaw Malinowski, 5 July 1917 Brick Court Dear Dr Malinowski, I have been reading your article on ‘‘The Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands’’ and write you just a few lines to say how much I appreciate what seems to me to be the thoroughness of your method and the soundness of your conclusions.1 Social Anthropology is no doubt only in its beginning and as it progresses it will employ methods of inquiry ever more exact and thorough. From your paper I judge that you are one of those who will lead the way in this direction, particularly in the application of the inquiries to savage and barbarous peoples. In regard to your particular conclusions I need hardly say that I am much interested in all you say about the ignorance of the true cause of childbirth among your natives. Your general conclusion as to the probability that such ignorance has been universal among Mankind and represents an almost necessary phase in the progress of knowledge (a conclusion rather implied


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than expressed in so general form by you) will, I believe, in time be generally accepted by all sober students of the early history of mankind. Only the inability of most civilised men to place themselves at the standpoint of savages has occasioned the opposition to this view. I am pleased also to see that you prick the bubble of the ‘‘collective consciousness’’ which has been blown to such a height by some French writers and also (I fancy for I have not paid serious attention to these vagaries) by their followers in this country.2 The simple fact is that there is no such thing as a collective consciousness. It is an abstract idea which has no concrete reality corresponding to it and therefore all conclusions drawn from its assumed reality must be fallacious. In short it is a myth invented by learned but not wise men in their study. When Baldwin Spencer was here last winter I saw a good deal of him to my great pleasure and refreshment. He spoke most highly of the work you have done and are doing in the Trobriands so that I look forward with the keenest interest to the publication of your book. I am very glad to hear that the period of your stay in the Trobriands has been prolonged through (I understand) the enlightened generosity of my friend Mr Robert Mond.3 If you care to write to me occasionally to tell me how your work progresses I should be very glad to hear from you and to further your researches in any way that is in my power. I will not write more at present as I am preparing to leave London tomorrow for some weeks but I did not wish to defer any longer writing a few lines to say how much I appreciate the service you are rendering to Anthropology in the Weld. In case you have not a copy of my Anthropological Questions I will enclose one and beg you accept it with my best wishes. It may perhaps be occasionally useful to suggest further subjects of inquiry. With kind regards, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer National Archives, Canberra (TS) 1. Bronislaw Malinowski, ‘Baloma: The Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands’, JRAI 46 (1916), 353–430. 2. ‘Collective consciousness’ is a term associated with the French sociologist Emile Durkheim and those who followed him; Durkheim was esteemed by neither Frazer nor Malinowski. 3. (Sir) Robert Mond (1867–1938), British chemist, industrialist, archaeologist, and philanthropist.

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To R. R. Marett, 24 August 1917 Brick Court My dear Marett, You will be glad, I know, to hear that there is a good prospect after all of sending out Roscoe for at least a year’s work among the Central African tribes which he has brieXy described in the ‘‘Northern Bantu.’’ The money required (£1500) is provided by a generous donor, the Bishop has given his warm consent, Roscoe is burning to go, and all has been going like clockwork, when ‘‘Mr. Secretary Long’’ puts a spoke in our wheels by intimating his opinion that the expedition should be deferred until after the war.1 Considering the uncertainty of the duration of the war, the certainty that in the natural course of things Roscoe will not be able to undertake such arduous and exhausting work many years more, and that meantime the tribes are rapidly losing their old customs and beliefs under European inXuence, this decision of the Colonial Secretary, if persisted in, might mean postponing the expedition to the Greek Kalends and thus losing an opportunity of anthropological research in Central Africa which will never recur again. I have written to this eVect to Lord Bryce,2 urging him to use his inXuence with Mr. Long to induce him to reconsider his decision and to grant permission. If you can bring any inXuence to bear on him for the same purpose, I know that you will gladly do so. I sent the last of the MS of ‘‘Folk-Lore in the Old Testament’’ to the printers early in July, but have still the laborious business to go through of correcting the proofs. Just before starting for my holidays I received a voluminous MS from Colonel Gurdon containing an account of the systems of relationship among the hill tribes of Assam.3 I hope to publish it without undue delay, perhaps in book form. I trust that you are well and have escaped all the perils of the submarines on your passages to and from your native island. You must indite us a new Odyssey on the subject with yourself in the character of Ulysses, Mrs Marett in the character of Penelope, and Jersey in the character of Ithaca. Combining your maritime adventures with your antiquarian researches you would have a grand subject for an epic. These hints I present to you without any extra charge. It is for you to work them up in the true Homeric manner. With kind regards, in which my Wife joins me, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer


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Could you not make out a good case for Jersey being the real Ithaca of the Odyssey? As good a one as a French (I wish he had been a German) scholar had a few years ago for discovering the site of Troy on the top of the Gog Magog hills near Cambridge. What about the animus revertendi?4 Do you still keep it in your waistcoat pocket and brandish it in the face of the oYcials every time you cross the sea? TCC Add. MS b.36: 203 (TS) 1. Walter Hume Long (1854–1924), Colonial Secretary. 2. James, Viscount Bryce (1838–1922), politician, historian, and political sociologist. 3. (Sir) Philip R. T. Gurdon (1863–1942), colonial administrator. 4. ‘Animus revertendi’: a token needed to return home; probably something that Marett always carried that showed him to be a Jerseyman.

To Edward Clodd, 12 December 1917 Brick Court My dear Clodd, I put oV writing to thank you for your kind present of your book ‘‘The Question’’ until I had read it at leisure.1 I have now done so from beginning to end with great interest and entire agreement. The book is written with all your wonted vivacity and pungency, and the interest never Xags. Yet it is melancholy reading. It is sad to think that not only the ignorant should be deceived by the false pretensions of spiritualism, but that some of our eminent men of science should also be duped by it and hence, through the authority they enjoy in their own special departments of knowledge, should be the means of leading many astray, serving in fact as decoys to lure the simple into the traps set for them by mercenary knaves of both sexes. For my own part I am so convinced that the whole thing rests on error and imposture that I have never thought it worth while to examine it seriously, and it always surprised me that Henry Sidgwick, a man of Wne intellect and noble character, wasted so much precious time, which he could have spent so much better, on investigations that could lead to nothing except the exposure of vulgar cheats and the proof, as if that were needed, of the eternal credulity and gullibility of human nature. Your book is a telling exposure of the whole pretentious and disgusting sham, and I wish I could think it would go far to stem ‘‘the roaring cataract of nonsense’’ which dubs itself spiritualism. But I confess I am not very sanguine. Credulous folly is invincible and invulnerable

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to the shafts of reason and experience; many, perhaps most, men will persist in believing what they wish to believe, and there are even philosophers nowadays who justify them in so doing by telling them that they ought to believe what they wish to believe. However, there may after all be a good many who keep an open mind on the subject, and to such your book should prove useful by taking them behind the scenes and showing them the cranks and pulleys by which the oracle is worked. Your grave remonstrance with Oliver Lodge at the end of the book is eVective, but will he heed it and mend his ways?2 I fear he is too far gone on the downward (which he mistakes for the upward) path for that. Of course wise men will bless you and fools will curse you, and altogether the book is sure to attract attention and make a stir, which will be all to the good, so far as it helps to open the eyes of the public to the quackery of spiritualism. The New Year will soon be upon us. The political outlook is not very bright after the deplorable and infamous defection of Russia. We must hope that the powerful intervention of America in the spring will restore the balance in our favour and lead to the speedy overthrow of the brigands of Central Europe. We trust that Mrs Clodd is in better health and that you are as hale and hearty as ever. What is to be your next literary labour? I know that your mind is too active to rest and rust. I am pounding away at proofs of ‘‘Folklore in the Old Testament,’’ and my Wife is doing the same at a new volume of French plays for children which she has written, and which is being published by the Oxford University Press.3 She joins me in hearty good wishes to Mrs Clodd and yourself for health and happiness in the New Year. Always, my dear Clodd, Yours aVectionately J. G. Frazer Smith College Library 1. Edward Clodd, The Question (London: Grant Richards, 1917). As Frazer’s letter implies, the book is an onslaught on spiritualism. 2. Oliver Lodge (1851–1940), physicist and, later, spiritualist; as a scientist, his ‘defection’ to spiritualism seemed, to pure-blooded rationalists like Frazer and Clodd, especially scandalous. 3. Lady Frazer, La Victoire par les couleurs et autres sayne`tes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918).


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To Gilbert Murray, 6 February 1918 Brick Court My dear Murray I write to ask you to use your inXuence with your brother, the Lieutenant Governor of Papua,1 on behalf of a young anthropologist, who, under great diYculties caused by ill health and exceedingly narrow means, has done and is doing most valuable work in the Trobriands, to the east of New Guinea. His name is Bronislaw Malinowski, a Pole, and therefore technically an enemy subject, but without any sympathy with German aims and ambitions, and altogether, I believe, devoted to the prosecution of anthropological research. So far as I can judge, he is by far the ablest and most original of our younger anthropologists engaged in Wrst-hand observation or what is called Weld work. Sir Baldwin Spencer, when he was in England last year, expressed to me in conversation the very highest opinion of Malinowski’s work. He anticipates that M’s book on the Trobriand Islanders will be a work of Wrst-rate importance. A specimen of it you may Wnd in his article, ‘‘Baloma, the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands,’’ published in the Journal of the R. Anthropological Institute, vol. XLVI (1916) pp. 353–430. You will also be able to judge of the quality of the man and the thoroughness of his method by the letter which I enclose, and which will at the same time explain my reason for troubling you in the matter. You will see that he has been very generously treated by the authorities, both civil and military, in Australia, and has received leave to go to New Guinea for six months. This he considers far too short to allow him to complete his researches, and he desires to have his leave extended to [by?] six months. The decision rests with your brother. Will you be so kind as to intercede with him to grant the extension of leave? I believe that if the extension is granted it will, barring accidents, result in a very valuable addition to anthropological science, and that to refuse the extension would entail a corresponding loss. Of course you are quite free to convey this expression of my opinion to your brother, if you think it will have any weight with him. With kind regards, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer P.S. Considering the length of time it takes to communicate with New Guinea, as well as the uncertainty of the mails at present, I venture to suggest that no time should be lost in writing to your brother on the subject.

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Malinowski took the precaution of sending me two duplicate copies of his letter by diVerent mails. It might be well to do the same in writing to your brother, as the matter is important and urgent. Bodleian Library, Murray Papers 1. (Sir) John Hubert Plunkett Murray (1861–1940).

To W. H. D. Rouse, 27 September 1918 Brick Court My dear Rouse, From your letter to my Wife today I learn for the Wrst time that Godley is willing to do the Herodotus if I do not.1 I shall be very glad if you will give him the work instead of me. He will probably do it much better than I should, with a lighter touch and greater freshness of style. So secure him by all means, if you can. Had I known of this possibility sooner, I would have written to the same eVect before now. Forgive me, if you can, for the long delay I have caused. I thank you heartily for all your friendly patience with me. If I do anything for the Loeb Library, as for varied reasons I should like to do, I should prefer to take a less familiar and well-thumbed author than Herodotus, by preference one that had not been already translated into English, though that might be diYcult to Wnd. I Wnd it irksome to tread the beaten path, I prefer to strike out as an explorer into the untrodden wilds. Among the authors that have occurred to me as possible subjects are Apollodorus (the Bibliotheca), Porphyry (De abstinentia and De antro nympharum), and Dionysius Halicarnasensis (the Roman Antiquities). In Latin I am attracted both by the matter and the Wne Xowing style of Lactantius. Are any or all of these already earmarked for the Library? If not, I might undertake one of them, probably Greek rather than Latin. But in that case I hope you would be so kind as to leave me free to take my own time over it; I have been so long accustomed to choose my own work and to do it in my own way and at my own time that anything like compulsion is apt to have the eVect of preventing me from doing anything. By the way, what about Plutarch’s Moralia? They are very interesting and written in a better (because less pretentious) style than his Lives. But I fancy they have often been translated, and you may already have arranged for them.


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My Wife is writing to Mr. Cooke about the Tercentenary. I congratulate you on the splendid sum already raised for the School.2 May it be an omen of much more to follow! Yours ever sincerely J. G. Frazer Loeb Library 1. Herodotus, trans. A. D. Godley, 4 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1921–4). 2. Rouse was then headmaster of the Perse School in Cambridge.

To W. H. D. Rouse, 17 October 1918 St. Bernard’s, Caldie Road, West Kirby, Cheshire My dear Rouse, I fear that my last letter to you anent the Loeb Library was not explicit enough. I did not mean to oVer to do all or even any of the authors I mentioned. I only meant to suggest them for consideration in order to ascertain, (1) whether any or all were already bespoken, and (2) whether, if they were not bespoken, you approved of them and had any preference for one over the other. They were only alternatives, one or other of which I might possibly (though I did not promise) to undertake. From your letter I gather that they are all, except Plutarch’s Moralia, as yet un-bespoken, so that I am free to adopt any of them, with the one exception. That so far clears the ground. But until I am settled again among my books (which after a long interval of idleness I hope will be soon) and have resumed regular work, I can say nothing deWnite about the Loeb except what I have already said to you, that for various reasons I am inclined to undertake something for the series. In these circumstances please make no announcement either public or private in the matter; any such announcement I should regard as a form of compulsion which would have a deterrent eVect on me. As I said in my former letter, I have so long enjoyed absolute freedom in the choice of my work and the manner of carrying it on, that I am incapable of running in harness. If you try to put my neck in the collar I will shy and jib and kick over the traces. I am sorry to be such an obstinate animal, but such is the nature of the beast, and he is too old to mend. If you leave him quite alone to his own devices, he may do something; otherwise you will get nothing out of him. Of course, if I do undertake something, I shall have no objection to an announcement when the work is well forward, but not before.

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Among the other authors I have thought of as possible subjects are some of Cicero’s philosophical works (particularly the Tusculan Disputations and the De natura deorum); the Fasti of Ovid; and, in Greek, the minor orators [such] as Isaeus, Isocrates, Antiphon, Lysias &c. But all this we can discuss when we meet, which I hope will be soon. There is no need to answer this. I know how desperately busy you must be with all you have on hand. I trust that the Tercentenary will be a huge success. Of course we are coming for it. With kind regards, in which my Wife joins me, I am, Yours ever sincerely J. G. Frazer My Wife is, as usual, doing all she can for the school. TCC Add. MS b.37: 175 (TS)

To Edward Clodd, 14 December 1918 Brick Court My dear Clodd, What a glorious conclusion to the war we have witnessed! Germany has shown herself as mean and contemptible in defeat as she was cruel, brutal, and insolent when she fancied herself victorious. There is not the smallest sign that the Germans are the least conscious of the depth of national infamy into which, in the opinion of the whole civilized world, they have plunged by planning, originating and conducting the war. The historian Delbruck confesses that he and his people entirely miscalculated the odds against them, but that is all. He says nothing about the criminality of the war, nothing about the untold misery and suVering which his nation have brought on the world. On the contrary there is every reason to suppose, that if the calculations of the German military party had been right instead of egregiously wrong, and if the German legions had trampled on and devastated the whole of Europe, as they did Belgium, Serbia, and large parts of France and Russia, the men of science would have joined in the general shout of joy at the perpetuation of these horrors and regarded them as a triumphant demonstration of the superiority of German intellect, character, and culture to those of all the rest of the world. What shameless and unrepentant barbarians they are!


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What do you think of the elections? I am one of those who regard the holding of the election at a time when millions of men best entitled to vote are practically disenfranchised, as an infamous electioneering dodge to keep Lloyd George in the saddle for a term of years. But the dodge is so transparent that it has excited general disgust, and the result may not at all be what the politicians who have resorted to it expect. My wife greatly beneWted by a long summer holiday divided between Cambridge, Bath, and West Kirby in Cheshire. The Wne sea air of the last place especially did her good. We trust that Mrs Clodd and yourself are both very well. With our united kind regards to you both, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.35: 192 (TS)

To Edward Clodd, 21 December 1918 Brick Court My dear Clodd, I was very glad and much relieved to get your kind letter this morning. You show a truly Christian spirit (though I do not know whether you will regard that as a compliment) in returning a soft answer to my rather acrid letter. I had been, I confess, a little vexed at your taking seriously what I meant ironically, and I began to fear that your old rich sense of humour was deserting you. However, your letter has quite dispelled my apprehensions on that head. The story of the mouse and the rum is delicious—a gem which I shall treasure up and produce on occasion for the delectation of friends. As to my irony, now that you have called my attention to it, I think there is perhaps more of it in the book than I had suspected; witness for example the deity painting the face of Cain with all the colours of the rainbow to disguise him from the ghost of Abel, also the beginning of the ‘‘Sin of a Census,’’ and the last paragraph of ‘‘Jehovah and the Lions.’’1 I can imagine you chortling over the passages, which other readers, less endowed with a sense of humour, might peruse with perfect gravity. Thank you also for enlightening me as to the dark hint which you dropped in your book as to the high priest of spiritualism. It really seems as if he were

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no better than a hired decoy to lure simpletons to ruin—in fact a common swindler who should be excluded from decent society. It disgusts me to think the fellow dines at the high table of my College as a guest of the Master. He ought not to be admitted within the gates. I wonder what Cambridge is coming to. Did you see that the professor of English literature has prostituted his pen to write an eight or ten page advertisement of Pelmanism in the Quarterly?2 I wonder what he is paid for the prostitution. Of course the stuV is not in the disguised form of an article in the Quarterly, it is inserted, naked and unmasked, under the heading ‘‘Advertisement’’ at the end of the number. I would hardly have believed the thing if I had not seen it. Yet I suppose he will lecture to his classes of admiring young women as usual next term, and nobody will utter a word of protest. Many thanks for your kindness in renewing your hospitable invitation to us. It would be a real joy to us both to come to you again and enjoy a refreshing spiritual communion with you as of old. We must hope to do so in the coming year. With every hearty good wish from us both to Mrs Clodd and yourself for Christmas and the New Year. I am, my dear Clodd, Ever yours aVectionately J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.35: 194 (TS) 1. The book is the newly published Folk-Lore in the Old Testament (1918). It is astonishing to see that Frazer might have been unconscious of the pervasive irony of his style. 2. Pelmanism: a system for improving the memory, devised by the Pelman Institute. The professor of English at Oxford was (Sir) Arthur Quiller-Couch.

To W. B. Hardy,1 5 January 1919 Brick Court Dear Hardy, I learn from Keith that a Committee has been appointed to look after the Roscoe expedition, and that I have been put on it. So I write to ask when a meeting of the Committee is to be called. Roscoe is exceedingly keen to start, but he has his preparations to make, especially to purchase his stores and apparatus and to send them in advance to Mombasa, where he will Wnd them on arrival, so as to avoid delay. He makes his purchases at the Army and Navy Stores, and I understand that all purchases there have to be paid for in


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advance, so that he cannot simply order the things and send in the bills to be settled by the Royal Society. Thus his preparations are at present at a standstill for want of the necessary funds. Meantime the time is running on, and Mr Mackie is endeavouring to obtain a free passage for him in March. It seems therefore highly desirable to expedite matters as much as possible, especially as Roscoe must now be nearing the limit of age at which the fatigues and hardships of such an expedition become too great to be encountered by a man with a family to support. May I therefore earnestly beg you to do all in your power to forward the expedition by letting Roscoe have the funds necessary for making the purchases at once? And if that cannot be done without calling a meeting of the Committee, will you be so good as to convene it at the earliest convenient date? Forgive me for troubling you, but I am deeply interested in this expedition, which I have been trying for years to promote. With kind regards and all good wishes for the New Year on which we have entered, I am, yours sincerely J. G. Frazer Royal Society 1. (Sir) William Bate Hardy (1864–1934), biologist and chemist. Frazer writes to him in his capacity as secretary of the Royal Society, oYcial sponsor of the Roscoe expedition.

To Edward Clodd, 11 April 1919 Brick Court My dear Clodd, I should have answered your two letter-cards long ago. My absence in Paris for about six weeks and the sad circumstances attending it must be my partial excuse for my silence, to which I may add the many letters which my book [Folk-Lore in the Old Testament] has drawn upon me, and some of which called for an answer. The suggestion that I should write a book upon folk-lore in the New Testament has been made to me by a number of people and is in some ways attractive, but I have not yet decided on it. For one reason, during my present stay in Paris I made the acquaintance of a French scholar who has made what seemed to me a very important discovery concerning the early history of

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Christianity and I do not care to go into the folk-lore of the New Testament till he has published his discovery, which he hopes to do before long.1 Apart from that I have other work to occupy me; including the long interrupted ‘‘Belief in Immortality.’’ At present I am engaged on an edition and translation of the Greek mythographer Apollodorus for the Loeb Classical Library. The translation is nearly Wnished, and I hope soon to complete the recension of the text. My Wife is fairly well, though the death of her daughter, so sudden and so entirely unexpected, has been a heavy blow to her. We go down next week to Scotland to spend Easter with my sister and her husband at Dundee. I trust that you and Mrs Clodd are both very well, and I am sure that you are both busy. When you write next, let me know what you are at work on. With our united kind regards to you both, I am, my dear Clodd, Yours aVectionately J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b.35: 195 (TS) 1. Possibly Albert Houtin, whose rationalist A Short History of Christianity appeared in 1926.

To Edmund Gosse, 22 September 1919 Brick Court My dear Gosse, I have just read in this morning’s Times the address presented to you by your many friends on your seventieth birthday. I have read it with very mixed feelings—with hearty agreement and sympathy with every word of the Address, but with real grief that I have not been privileged to be among the signatories, as I should wish to have been and as I should most certainly have been if I had had the opportunity. But until this morning I never heard a word of the intended presentation to you. No notice or letter on the subject reached me, nothing was said of it in conversation in my hearing. Yet none of your friends had a better right, if I may say so, to join in such a presentation than I have, for few have known you longer, and none can be under deeper personal obligations than I am. I remember how in the Trinity days my dear friend [J. H.] Middleton brought you to my College rooms, and how from time to time we met in the hall or Combination Room or gardens of my


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beloved College. Nor shall I ever forget how again and again you came to my help in the most practical form, when help was needed to enable me to carry on my work free from harassing pecuniary cares, so that it is to you in great measure that I owe it that I have been able to do whatever I have done for many years for learning and literature. Do not imagine that because, to my very great regret, we hardly ever meet, I ever forget the deep obligations I am under to you, or ever cease to be grateful for them. My gratitude and friendship for you can only end with my life. Hence you will understand how deeply I regret the deplorable accident, or whatever it was, that has prevented me from joining in this public testimony to the aVection and esteem in which you are held by all your many friends. Please accept from me privately, my dear friend, my heartiest good wishes for very many happy returns of your birthday. May you long keep the health and strength which I am happy to think that you enjoy, and may you enrich English literature with many more contributions marked with all the grace and delicacy and versatility that are characteristic of your writings and yourself. Believe me, my dear Gosse, to be to the end of my life, Your very grateful and aVectionate friend J. G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University

To W. J. Lewis, 28 December 1919 Hotel Lute´tia, Paris My dear Lewis, Your friendly letter came this morning and was very welcome to us both. We are glad to hear that you are soon to be moving homeward, and we hope that you will have a safe and comfortable journey. My Wife is mending, but slowly. Today she was down stairs for a little in the afternoon for the Wrst time, but she is still weak and shaky. The doctor, who seems both skilful and cautious, holds out hope of her being able to travel in ten days or a fortnight. When she can do so with safety we have decided to return home, as she is not strong enough to undergo the fatigues and undertake the risks of a long journey. We think of spending a week or ten days beside the sea on our homeward journey, in the hope of the sea air restoring her strength, perhaps at Folkestone or St. Leonard’s. Fortunately we

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have been and are very comfortable in the hotel. The bedrooms, which communicate, are excellent, and the servants very attentive. Indeed we are much better oV than we should have been in a similar case at home, where we have no servant and no cooking on the premises. The nurse, who came one evening, was no use, and my Wife sent her away next morning. But we are highly satisWed with the doctor, whom we already regard as a friend. He is a Positivist and a friend of Frederic Harrison. Our friends are very kind in coming to see us, and they Wll our rooms with beautiful Xowers. The weather is dull and rainy, but not cold. We have seen very little of the sun since we came to Paris. We are grieved to hear of Mrs Ball’s death. We had not seen a notice of it, nor of W. F. Smith’s death. I am glad that Jackson seems to be getting on so well. I do not imagine that Hardy’s1 departure for Oxford will be much regretted in the College; the line he took in the war, if I mistake not, was neither wise nor patriotic. He struck me as a man lacking in judgment and common sense, however great his mathematical abilities may be. Bertram [sic] Russell I take to be a man of the same sort. Since we have been in Paris I have read through ‘‘The Origin of Species’’ for the Wrst time, though I had read the greater part of it before long ago. It is deeply interesting and gives plenty of food for thought. But from the address which Prof. A. Keith gave to the Anthropological Section of the British Association this year I gather that biologists know a good deal more about the mechanism which produces variation in animals than was known to Darwin; that the mechanism is largely centred in the glands, and that these can produce in an individual sudden and great variations resembling the diVerences between the races of mankind, so that, e.g. it would not be impossible for two pure white parents to have a black child.2 If they are right, it seems to follow that evolution may have been produced much more by the working of the internal mechanism of the animal, than, as Darwin supposed, by the slow accumulation of variations produced by natural selection; in other words, that the gradual adaptation to external nature on which Darwin laid most stress, has been a less potent factor in evolution than the internal activity of the animal’s own constitution, which would seem almost like a watch wound up to run a certain course quite independent of the weather and other external circumstances. If that is so, it seems to follow that external nature is impotent compared to the mechanician who originally constructed and wound up the whole of organic nature, vegetable as well as animal.3 Have you followed the discussion of Eckstein’s [sic] theories and do you understand them?4 I do not. His own exposition in the Times [on 28 November 1919] appeared to me cloudy and confused to the last degree, in


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the worst German style, and I distrust a man who cannot express himself clearly: confused speaking or writing implies confused thinking. But of course I have no pretension to understand the high abstractions of mathematics. The one fact that seems to emerge from the learned mist is that light is subject to gravitation. But this is surely not inconsistent with Newton’s conception of light as consisting of corpuscles, for all corpuscles would be naturally subject to gravitation. In fact, the new fact would seem to conWrm Newton’s old theory as against the modern undulatory theory of light. But I am talking about what I do not understand and probably only exposing my ignorance. Forgive me. We shall hope to see you soon after our return either in London or Cambridge and to Wnd you once more Wrm and steady on your feet and restored to health and strength. My Wife joins me in kindest regards and best wishes for the New Year. Ever yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 28 1. Godfrey H. Hardy (1877–1947), mathematician, fellow of Trinity College Cambridge; from 1919 Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford. Hardy was a leader among those in Trinity who opposed the war. 2. In view of the fact that the concept of the chromosome had been introduced as early as 1889, Frazer’s misunderstanding of the mechanism of heredity is striking. He seems to have understood modern developments in physics about as well as he did those in biology. 3. Mutatis mutandis, this ‘mechanician’ sounds very like the watchmaker God of the Deists. If this is the case, then it marks the Wrst known retreat, at the age of 65, from Frazer’s dogmatic atheism. 4. One of Frazer’s rare spelling mistakes; Einstein is intended.

To W. H. D. Rouse, 8 January 1920 Hotel Lute´tia, Paris My dear Rouse, I am glad to see that you are reading proofs of Apollodorus. Yes, space may be saved by abridging the titles of books cited in the notes, and you are at full liberty to abridge them at your discretion in the MS, e.g. Nauck, Trag. Gr. Frag.; C. Miller, Frag. Hist. Gr.; Pearson, Frag. Sophocles. Only the Wrst time a book is cited I should like the title given in full; in subsequent references the abridged title may be substituted. I prefer that you should not use op. cit. or loc. cit., because these are apt to be ambiguous and if used freely may cause

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the reader a great deal of trouble to discover what work is being referred to. Often I have hunted through hundreds of pages to discover what was the op. cit. referred to. My rule is never to use op. cit. or loc. cit. unless the reference is to a work or passage already cited by name on the same page. As for the confusion which so many half-baked ignoramuses (should I say ignorami?) make between op. cit. and loc. cit., it drives me to fury, and I once gave the Oxford University Press reader a piece of my mind which I hope he has not forgotten. As to the Greek feminine nouns ending in eia I fear my practice has not been uniform. In Latin and English the form is sometimes rendered by ia and sometimes by ea. My wish is in all cases to follow the traditional English spellings, e.g. Medea; but in the less known nouns there can hardly be said to be any traditional spelling, and I do not know of any rule for the preference of ea or ia in each particular case. Accordingly I have, I fear, rather arbitrarily sometimes adopted the one and sometimes the other, inclining to a preference for ia over ea. I gather that you would prefer, at least in some cases, to retain the Greek eia (e.g. Rheneia); but this is quite contrary to my practice. The transliteration of Greek names in English letters (as it occurs in the pages of Grote for example) is to me excessively repugnant as hideous in form and abominably pedantic. So please bear with my weakness on this point; but I shall always be willing to consider an ia for an ea or vice-versa. My Wife has been very seriously ill here in Paris with congestion of the lungs and weakness of the heart. She has nearly recovered and is able to go out for a little every day, but she is still weak and will need to take great care for some time to come. If she continues to regain strength, as she seems to be doing, we shall probably return home before long; but that will depend on the state of her health. Fortunately in this hotel we have every comfort in regard to rooms, food service, heating and light; indeed much more so than we have at the Temple, where we live much as in College rooms, with the serious disadvantage that there is no common kitchen to supply us with food; for the Middle Temple kitchen is not allowed to send food to rooms. We may have to adopt some new arrangement when we return to London. My Wife desires me to say that she much appreciated, as we both did, your very kind and friendly letter about Speech Day at the School. We were delighted to hear that it was so great a success, a real red-letter day in the history of the School. I congratulate you both on the speed and the quality of the Loeb volumes. I am reading the De Wnibus with Rackham’s translation, which is quite admirable. The translation of the Odyssey seems also good; I am glad that the translator does not aVect the archaic style of Butcher and Lang. I agree with another translator of Homer, my dear Cowper, that aVectation in every


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form, including style, is loathsome. Why, oh why, did you allow Theocritus to be translated in that abominable mincing aVected archaistic manner?1 Why, in many places the Greek is clearer than the English, and one has to look at it to know what the translator means. But if I am not mistaken, you actually relish this sad stuV. Well, de gustibus &c. With kindest regards from us both to your sister and yourself, I am, Yours ever J. G. Frazer I can hardly correct the proofs of Apollodorus Wnally except in my own library, but after our return I expect to do so rapidly. Our kindest regards also to Chouville and von Glehn. We are seriously concerned to think about Chouville’s diYculty about Wnding a house.2 Who is likely to be the new Public Orator? Though I cannot Wnally correct Apollodorus here in Paris, I should be glad to receive proofs here regularly as I can at least look through them in a preliminary way, thus saving time. TCC (TS) 1. The translator was J. M. Edmonds. 2. Chouville and Von Glehn were friends of long standing; the former translated Sir Roger de Coverley into French as Sir Roger de Coverley et autres essais litte´raires (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1922).

From Lilly Frazer to W. J. Lewis, 24 February 1920 Royal Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone My dear Professor Lewis, I was just going to write to you when your letter to J. G. came here (from London). Thank you for all your news & unvarying friendship. Before I tackle a great question (great to me) I just wish to say that I intend to write to Mr. Cornford and ask him to give me an appointment any time he is in London. That matter of the Testimonial to J. G. needs sifting & reconsidering & he, J. G., is not—& has not been, reasonable about it—& squashed it in the bud. I will say nothing to him about it at present & I strongly wish to see Mr Cornford by myself. Life is too short, too hard, too precious to beat about the bush now—but I may add that J. G. feels that he does not like his friends to be bled of guineas—yet several told him that if they like to give their contributions—they have a right to please themselves! The great point

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however is to make the Testimonial worth it—& to achieve this some rich men must be approached who may be willing both here & in America to contribute to form—what is being formed in France—i.e. a Frazer Society or a lectureship bearing his name—a suitable date may occur for it on April 22nd 1921 which would be our silver wedding if I live so long. I am anything but robust. I really had pneumonia and ‘‘arhythmie’’ of the heart continues— I have to be coddled & cared for like a baby or a princess—or both! The journey here, easy as it was, tried me sorely—especially the landing here in a full N.E. Gale—but my lungs are none the worse & on the whole I am mending . . . Now I come to the great point & claim your aVte patience. If you are busy or bored, put this letter aside for an opportune moment. I may tell you that my life was despaired of on 23rd Dec.—but resumed to its rhythm!?—haltingly on the 25th Dec. J. G. had a great shock & a great anxiety shared by loving, attentive & helpful French friends—as a matter of fact, I have an enormous power of resistance & up to that time (Dec. 23) I never was really ill. Never had J. G. to be up at night or to worry about me before, but at every diYcult juncture in life—whether it is a chilblain on my small toe or a tooth ache or inXuenza—his panacea comes pat: ‘‘Return to Cambridge’’—!!! It is a Wxed notion in his brain such as great thinkers frequently have, & which nothing can eradicate. Now, I may tell you in great conWdence that he dwells so much on this, that last summer I gave way against my better reasoning & he applied to Mr Innes1 for College Rooms & was refused by the Council—People or women like myself are so illogical that I bitterly resent that refusal—! & J. G. felt it desperately. He has always looked to Trinity as a haven of refuge—! But, dear friend, I also consider a move back to Cambridge—at least in my life time—except for a temporary stay or for a deWnite post—a piece of huge folly—! Where am I to roost if he has College rooms?? Am I at my age & in my delicate state of health to resume the navette (shuttle) I used to make for years before & perpetually come & go to his rooms!? He needs me—even if I could Wnd a small cottage to dwell in— which I know is unlikely, the climate of Cambridge is not so beneWcial that people of our years need seek it from choice. The position of a Don who has no post in either College or University, is not so enviable—it means perpetual slights & perpetually being overlooked. Never once has J. G. been invited by a V. Chancellor to any function where famous men are gathered—such as the Hon. Degree lunch—etc.—& invariably it has been commented on by the recipients of degrees! ‘‘What—you not there? Etc.’ However much one may dwell aloft, it is not easy in Cambridge to forget these things which stare one in the face. When Glasgow had a centenary or suchlike aVair—& being so proud of J. G.—it was Miss Constance Jones2 who represented Cambridge University—! And there was a great outcry at Glasgow and a great request for


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J. G. to come anyhow, but I would not let him go privately as he was ignored publicly. The same happened at the Aberdeen function & last November 1919 the French savants could not understand why J. G. did not represent Cambridge at the Strasbourg function!—which would have been appropriate as a Frazer Society exists there & as his theories are more & more valued on the Continent & U.S.A.—Of course all this is not ‘‘meant’’—the authorities run their eye over the oYcial list and J. G. not being in it—is left out. Only once, George Darwin insisted on J. G. representing Cambridge at the Oxford Congress of Religions—& he did it well & with great satisfaction to all parties. These are triXes, you will say, but many triXes are no triXe and why should he expose himself to fresh slights (the refusal of rooms was one) in a place where few read him—where he is known merely as a ‘‘collector of facts’’ & not as a Thinker whose ideas inXuence the thoughts of the world. He is blinded by his devotion to Cbge, to the College, to his friends, but it would be unwise—apart from practical matters, in my opinion—for him to return to Cbge unless & here is the point—the College gave him a lectureship or some work. That would alter the whole question & I suppose entitle him to rooms? It still would not dispose of my needs, but it would be a satisfaction to me & I would bear up. J. G. wanted to go to Cambridge now & see his friends & Wnd out how things were all round in the still faint hope of our return—but for more reasons than one I discouraged the plan—I am so brittle, I may take harm in another journey & installation? It means waste of time & money both lavishly spent alas! urgently in Paris—etc.—etc. & several days ago I suggested asking you to let us know if you pass thro’ London & for J. G. to Wrst seek your advice—? He gave in to that & no doubt will write to you independently & I thought it wise to tell you my view tho’ I know you will not quote me & tho’ I am ready to be converted if needs be—so that you may be ready! Matters got to a pitch, by the Temple giving us notice recently to quit unless we accepted higher conditions of rent. We made a temporary compromise with them by letter from Paris—also matters are awkward because stairs are forbidden to me and we have high ones to mount at the Temple—then there is the domestic quandary etc. etc. & something will have to be done!? My view is that some Institution in London should oVer J. G. house room for his library—we could then live in a modern tiny Xat and be often in Cambridge—or that Trinity should oVer J. G. a post for Ethnology or something like that in return for College rooms—? say a given set of lectures a year.—He would be both willing and able to do that & it could be but to the credit of the College & I know that Dr McTaggart & Mr Cornford would fully value such work—& plan.

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It is not personal pride that prompts all this—it is mere truth:—J. G.’s work inXuences the thought of the world & Trinity would regret it if it did not give him a chance.—It would not hinder J. G.’s work to give a few lectures say for two terms a year, they would form a book afterwards— I believe he would accept any post even as Waiter! at the High Table!! so as to return to Cambridge—his desire is so great! Of course if he had a post, if his library were housed in College rooms, our other needs & expenses would be so reduced—that we could make frequent absences from Cbge—& thus I might bear with the climate described by the late Sir G. Humphry as one in which one has neither the energy to live or to die in. Forgive this outburst. You can write anything to me in reply, but don’t quote me please to J. G. you know how gently and with how many grains of humour, one has to deal with a Wxed idea! Ever most gratefully and aVtly, Lilly Frazer We expect to be here in Folkestone till Sunday night 29th Feb. after that letters to the Temple will Wnd us in Town but we may not be able to settle in at once in our chambers. My sister and others oVered us hospitality? I must have domestic help before I can live at the Temple. The days of servantless (thank you for thinking of my work!)3 are over for me—For years I got up at four to light J. G.’s study Wre for he insists! on rising at Wve. Of course I went back to bed myself, but never slept after ‘‘a washing’’ the coal dust oV me—! Last year at last I had a gas stove installed as it was already then a little too much for me to continue but J. G. knows I have done everything to promote his work in every way. You can imagine how greatly all these questions have harrowed me while I lay helpless in bed for weeks & weeks in Paris!— Now something must be done, but nothing foolish or rash & your aVte & intelligent advice would be invaluable. TCC Frazer 1: 34 1. Hugh McLeod Innes (1862–1944), senior bursar of Trinity College. 2. The centenary was the University of Glasgow’s ninth jubilee, in 1901; i.e., she was complaining about something that happened fully nineteen years earlier. Further, in light of the fact that Cambridge’s oYcial delegates were Richard Jebb, J. J. Thomson, and Henry Jackson, only Lilly would have maintained that Frazer was as eminent as this trio. Constance Jones represented Girton College, alongside Emily Davies, the founder of Girton, who was given an honorary degree as part of the celebration. 3. She is referring to her book, First Aid for the Servantless (Cambridge: HeVer, 1913).


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From Lilly Frazer to W. J. Lewis, 19 March 1920 Cox’s Hotel Dear Professor Lewis, I am most grateful to you—you will have had my former MS!—things have been untoward here but are rather adjusting themselves—J. G. had asked the Master for an interview on this Sunday and he is to be at the Lodge at 4:15.—It did not take him long & if you can manage to see me alone for a few moments possibly on arrival before discussing anything with J. G. it would be a comfort to me—but we had to take a decision this very day and have settled to keep on the Temple chambers for another year at any rate in spite of raised rent. This was to be raised threefold!!? At least this was hinted at to us & there the matter became grave indeed but the Templars have been very decent & J. G. wrote to the Master & the rise, tho’ inconvenient, is not impossible for us to meet—but no time could be lost as the Templars have an oVer for our Xat at a rent Wve times what we had paid. After all our contracts are annulled on Lady Day—but no doubt at a considerable outlay! to the Society for improvements. Anyhow the actual rise is to be only £50—þ taxes—altogether £112 more a year! Considering my state of health & the diYculties of Wnding another home all in a hurry—things will have to stand over for 12 months, but J. G. wishes to ask the Master & it may be wise for him to do so . . . Well, I will tell you if possible & probably J. G. will take Dr Berguignan round for half an hour or so beforehand & I can tell you then. Gratefully, Lilly Frazer Writing is extremely diYcult to me in hotel rooms with hotel pens & in my nervous state. TCC Frazer 1: 35

To F. M. Cornford, 3 April 1920 Brick Court My dear Cornford, I thank you for your kind letter. Needless to say I am very grateful to you for your generous and unwearied exertions and to the subscribers, who have


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shown in this practical form their appreciation of my eVorts to advance the study of man’s early gropings after truth and goodness. The purpose to which it is proposed to put the Fund seems to me well adapted to stimulate the study of social anthropology in this country by bringing the subject annually before one of our principal universities, and it is particularly gratifying to me that the universities chosen should be those with which I am in diVerent ways connected. So far, therefore, as it is proper for me to express an opinion, I would say that the scheme has my cordial approval. Please convey to the subscribers my sense of the high honour they have done me and my gratitude to them for thus helping to promote the studies which I have much at heart. I suppose you are settled again in Cambridge and have resumed your College work. We are still living in London. Will you not come to see us some time when you are in town? It would be a great pleasure to have a talk with you again about the subjects in which we are both deeply interested. My Wife joins me in kindest regards to Mrs Cornford and yourself. Believe me, my dear Cornford, Very gratefully and sincerely yours J. G. Frazer Clare Cornford Chapman

From Lilly Frazer to W. J. Lewis, 7 June 1920 Brick Court Dear Professor Lewis, Your kindness is very touching. I felt remorseful all along for not writing to you after our Cbge visit—but we were in trouble from which I only recently emerged & are trying hard to clear up arrears now. Somehow J. G. caught a violent cold on the journey, he thinks, to Cambridge sitting that time with Dr. Berguignan in a thro’ draught in the carriage! . . . Anyhow it was a terrible cold & for the Wrst time in his 66 years he had breakfast in bed. I attended him, & of course, got the germ & it turned on my already tried chest & I was very bad & we were at the hotel, where the Manageress, seeing me so ill, thought she would not like a funeral, & therefore adopted a system of persecution: no coals, no meals sent up properly etc. which was successful for her purpose!—because tho’ we could secure no service at the Temple till after Easter, we moved in, goaded into


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despair, before we had any help, or before the place was properly aired! Result, I got worse & J. G. continued bad & the Dr had to be called in the night! & neither of us could even speak properly to him.—He sent me a nurse next evening when I slightly recovered, but as there was no one to cook for the (very ugly) woman, & as she declared she could not cook for herself! I begged her to depart—& the absence of so plain a face helped me improve—slowly indeed—yet surely. It has been a nightmare of homecoming! but we are now in comfort & tho’ I was so ill that all my hair (very long and abundant) came oV I am about again since Whitsuntide & fairly well tho’ not robust. J. G. got a relaxed throat and elongated uvula and could not sleep for coughing—but he has recovered & well some good time ago—However, I still battle with all the upset this condition of things caused in the household & in my enormous [page missing] & will you speak to Mr Cornford either in Hall or on telephone & settle it. We have to Wt in on Wednesday I hope? (or on Monday??) a meeting with Mr. Tunes for that beastly Income Tax return, and we have not yet his reply. We arrive at 1:30 or so Monday and depart Wednesday evening. Gratefully indeed, Lilly Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 36

To W. P. Ker,1 13 July 1920 Brick Court My dear Ker, I thank you for sending me your Inaugural Lecture. I have read it with interest, not untinged with awe of its learning and its metrical profundity. The subject of poetic metre is one that I regard with something of the same distant respect as the higher mathematics, with which I believe it has much in common. Accent, quantity, tone, stress, caesura, etc.—these things are too deep for me: I feel my head, so to speak, held under water when they are discoursed of. However, when I came to the surface, gasping, I was glad to hear you mention some of my favourite poems, such as ‘A Toccata of Galuppi[’s]’, ‘The Scholar Gypsy’, and ‘Thyrsis’.2 The music and tender imagery of these two last, in particular, I believe I love as well as even an Oxford man could do, and I am delighted to hear them mentioned in the

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same breath with Spenser, Milton, and Keats. Will you not give us a course of lectures, and hence a book, on the Oxford poets? It seems to me that Oxford ought to breed poets at least as naturally as fritillaries. I cannot conceive how Matthew Arnold could desert ‘that sweet city with her dreaming spires’ to inspect schools! I should have thought it would have broken his heart to do it! And that Mackail should exchange Balliol for the Education OYce, and you All Souls for Gower Street!3 Oh, how could you do it? How could you do it? Yours more in sorrow than in anger J. G. Frazer My Wife bids me add that she is sending you the French book of verse, and as it is to her a precious souvenir she looks to you to handle it delicately or shall I say gingerly. Another friend used it rather roughly.

TCC Add. MS c.58: 72 (TS) 1. William Paton Ker (1855–1923), professor of English at University College London, scholar of medieval literature. His lecture, ‘The Art of Poetry’, was published as a pamphlet in 1920, but is more easily consulted in The Art of Poetry: Seven Lectures (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925). 2. Well-known poems by Robert Browning (‘Toccata’) and Matthew Arnold (‘Gypsy’ and ‘Thyrsis’); generally, however, Frazer’s poetic taste inclined more toward the eighteenth than the nineteenth century. After Milton, Cowper was his favourite poet. 3. John W. Mackail (1859–1945), according to the DNB, ‘was without question the most brilliant undergraduate scholar of his time’. Instead of an academic career, however, he entered the Education Department of the Privy Council (later the Board of Education), and was a senior administrator there for thirty-Wve years. Ker, a fellow of All Souls, preferred the University of London (Gower Street) to Oxford; at London he taught as many as a dozen courses a year.

To F. M. Cornford, 19 March 1921 Brick Court My dear Cornford, I am much touched and moved by the beautiful Address (beautiful in every sense of the word) and the wonderful ‘‘List of Supporters,’’ which I received from you last night.1 You will not expect me to express all I feel about it, and I could not if I would. When I have thought it over, I will try to put down some words of gratitude and thanks which may convey, very imperfectly, a little of what I feel to those who have done me this great honour, and I will


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ask you to add to all your great kindness by circulating the expression of my gratitude among these many friends, some of them personally unknown to me, but all united by our common love of learning and truth. Meantime I beg you to accept personally the assurance that I am deeply sensible of the part you have taken in promoting the foundation of the lectureship and the penning of the Address. You have done this, I know and am glad to think, not so much out of friendship for me, as because you hope thereby to promote the studies in which we are both interested, and the advancement of which we both believe to be not unimportant for the general good. My Wife warmly shares all that I think and feel in the matter, and she much appreciates your kindness in sending her a separate copy of the Address. She is writing herself to thank you. Believe me, my dear Cornford, Always most gratefully and sincerely, Your friend J. G. Frazer Clare Cornford Chapman 1. The Address, composed by A. E. Housman, is TCC Add. MS Frazer 28: 42.

Reply to Lectureship Address, posted to all subscribers, 30 April 1921 Brick Court My friends and fellow students, I am deeply sensible of the honour you have done me by founding in my name a lectureship of Social Anthropology at four great Universities. Such an honour is usually reserved till the world can judge more fully and impartially of a man’s work than it is possible to do in his lifetime. I can only hope that if posterity should concern itself with my writings, it will not reverse the verdict which you have passed upon them. In any case you have erected a monument which will no doubt survive him whom you desire to commemorate, and will carry on his work when he himself has long been mingled with the common dust. It is my earnest wish that the lectureship should be used solely for the disinterested pursuit of truth, and not for the dissemination and propagation of any theories or opinions of mine. As you know, I have never sought to


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formulate a system or to found a school, being too conscious of the narrow limits of my knowledge and abilities to attempt anything so ambitious. I have been content to investigate a few problems in the history of man; but I am well aware, and I have endeavoured to keep my readers constantly aware, of the extreme uncertainty of all the solutions which I have ventured to oVer of these problems, always remembering that the study of man’s mental evolution, like the study of the physical universe in which he appears to exist as an insigniWcant particle, is still only in its inception, and that the views which we of the present day take of that evolution, as of that universe, are necessarily but temporary and provisional, destined with the progress of knowledge to be superseded by truer and more comprehensive views in the future. To that progress I trust that the lectureship which you have founded may in some measure contribute. At the worst it will be a monument of your generosity, if not of my fame: it will serve to show to those who come after us that in an age when the world was torn into hostile camps and exhausted by an internecine conXict, scholars could still meet on common ground, above the clash of arms, in the serene air and untroubled light where truth is sought by her votaries. Whatever else comes of it, the approbation of so many of my contemporaries will act as a spur to my industry; it will encourage me to labour yet a while for the advancement of knowledge, that so I may the better deserve the honour which you have conferred upon me. J. G. Frazer

To Baldwin Spencer, 18 September 1921 Brick Court My dear Spencer, I was delighted to get and read your Presidential Address to the last meeting of the Australasian Association.1 From it I am glad to see that you have not quite deserted the anthropological shop for the Muses’ Hill. I had somehow pictured you as seated on the top of that eminence, surrounded by artists and poets, twangling a golden lyre, and lifting up your voice in the divine chorus or circling in the dance about the altar. But it appears that you can still descend from these Olympian heights to common life and simple savages. Needless to say I was much interested, and I may add pleased, to see you repelling the attempts of Rivers to land his betel people, or his kava people, or whatever the baZed colonists may have been, on the shores of Australia. So


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far as I could judge, you repulsed these Johnies with great slaughter. I suppose the survivors will be dumped somewhere else. In your Address you speak of three distinct modes of making Wre as practised among the Australian aborigines. What are the modes? I should be greatly obliged if you would send me a few lines indicating them. I have some idea of taking up the early history of Wre as a subject of investigation. It has never, so far as I know, been seriously tackled, and it is worth investigating, considering the immense importance which the discovery of Wre has had in moulding human destiny. I have already written a pretty long chapter containing many legends of the Wrst discovery of Wre, but they do not go far to reveal the way in which men Wrst learned to produce Wre. Probably we shall never get beyond a more or less plausible conjecture. I incline to the view (not at all novel or original) that men Wrst learned to produce Wre accidentally in the process of boring one stick with another or of chipping Xints. But I wish to make a fairly complete collection of facts as to primitive modes of kindling Wre, noting the geographical diVusion of the various modes and the natural conditions (in regard to the diVerent sorts of woods and minerals, etc.) which may have favoured the discovery. Henry Balfour, who has studied the question for many years, tells me that the easiest way of making Wre is the Wre-drill made of two pieces of bamboo; he himself can make Wre in this way in forty seconds. The stick-and-groove method, he says, is diYcult and tedious. I have undertaken to give three annual courses of lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge. The Wrst course will be on the ‘‘Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead in Polynesia and Micronesia.’’ They will be a continuation of my GiVord lectures and will form a second volume to that work. When you write, as I hope you will do soon, tell me about yourself and what you are doing. Have you retired from the chair at Melbourne? My Wife is well, but she had two very serious illnesses the last two winters, both of them in Paris. She has just completed and passed for the press a French translation of ‘‘Adonis,’’ which will be published by the Museé Guimet in Paris. Roscoe is bringing out a popular account of his recent expedition to Central Africa. It will be followed by a full scientiWc account in several volumes.2 He has brought back very interesting materials. My Wife joins me in kindest regards to you. Will you not come over and see us? In any case, write soon. Yours always most sincerely J. G. Frazer

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Pitt Rivers Museum 1. W. Baldwin Spencer, [‘Presidential Address to the Australiasian Association for the Advancement of Science’], Report of the Fifteenth Meeting of the AAAS (Sydney: AAAS, 1921), pp. liii–lxxxix. 2. The closest thing to a full account is John Roscoe, The Soul of Central Africa: A General Account of the Mackie Ethnological Expedition (London: Cassell, 1922).

To ‘Tot’ [Isabella Frazer Steggall], 6 December 1921 Hotel Lute´tia, Paris My dearest Tot, You must often have wondered at my long silence, but since we left London to go to Cambridge more than a month ago we have been kept in such a whirl of work and engagements that I have found no time for correspondence. Our departure for Cambridge was somewhat hurried, for I had not expected to lecture till next term; but having Wnished my lectures earlier than I expected, I oVered to give them this term, and the College agreed. Still during our stay in Cambridge I had to give all my spare time to revising the lectures for delivery. I think they went oV fairly well. A good many undergraduates attended, and some senior men also. We saw a good deal of our friends, including Mr Capstick, Professor Lewis, Mr Chouville, and Mr de Glehn. The last of these, after a long bachelorhood, is now happily married to a clever and agreeable Scotch wife. Our stay in Cambridge was cut short by a week in consequence of the invitation to Paris. That invitation reached us in the form of a telegram from the Rector of Paris University. The telegram was sent to Liverpool, then returned to London, then forwarded by the intelligent head porter of the Middle Temple to us in Cambridge, carefully concealed in a catalogue of rhododendrons for sale, which Lilly nearly threw into the Wre. On such small things do great issues depend. So I had to omit my two last lectures, and change the date of another. Then we hurried oV, and after spending a night at Dover reached Paris on Wednesday the 16th November, three days before the ceremony, which took place on Saturday the 19th. In the interval I had to give all my spare time to preparing two French speeches, one at the ceremony in the Sorbonne and the other at a large banquet in the evening. The ceremony was very imposing. The huge amphitheatre, with two galleries, one above the other, and holding 3000 people, was packed and overXowing. We were told that about two thousand were turned away at the doors, because there was not even standing room for them. Many of our friends, who had tickets, were unable to enter.


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Before the ceremony I made [Rudyard] Kipling’s acquaintance in one of the anterooms, and we were introduced to the President of the Republic, who presided at the ceremony. Then, with the professors of the Sorbonne in their robes, we Wled into the amphitheatre in procession, the band playing Wrst the Marseillaise and then God Save the King. The President took his seat in the middle of the front row on the platform. On his right was the Minister of Public Instruction, and on his right I was seated. On the left of the President was the Rector of the University and on his left was Kipling. I was the Wrst to receive the degree, my claims to it being Wrst put forward by Professor Delacroix in an eloquent address, admirably delivered, which will be published in full. I acknowledged the great honour in a few sentences in French, which, I have been given to understand, were heard and understood all over the amphitheatre. Kipling afterwards remarked to me that I had ‘‘got home to the audience.’’ Their applause seemed to show it. Kipling spoke in English and his speech, much longer than mine, was afterwards translated into French by his spokesman, Professor [E´mile] Legouis. As the insignia of the degree we received parchment documents, beautiful medals, and a sort of shoulderpiece of white fur, ornamented with blue and red ribbons, the colours of Paris. The banquet in the evening was given jointly by the University and the Association France–Grande Bretagne. There were between 200 and 300 people at it, including many of our friends. It was given in the Sorbonne. In my little speech I referred to the old alliance between France and Scotland, and the old wars between England and Scotland. The references seemed to be appreciated by the audience. Lilly tells me that even the waiters, who remained stolid and impassive in their usual style during the other speeches, quite brightened up while I was speaking; and an English newspaper correspondent (Manchester Guardian, I think) told me afterwards that the French reporters near him were loud in my praise! The little speech, as well as the one at the ceremony, will be printed in the Bulletin of the Association France– Grande Bretagne. Since that great day I have had no rest. For I had immediately to begin writing my French lecture for the Sorbonne, which I gave two days ago. (I am now writing, after many interruptions, on the 7th December.) The preparation of the lecture took every minute of spare time that I could give to it. That is why I have been so long of writing to you since we came to Paris. However, it passed oV well, so far as we could judge. The large lecture-room, called the Amphitheáˆtre Richelieu, which holds 700 people, was crowded, the people standing in the passages, and hundreds, we were told, were turned away. Apparently I was heard and understood all over the hall. There have been, I hear, a number of favourable notices of the lecture in the French

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papers, and there was a particularly good one in the Times of yesterday, which must have been telegraphed from Paris. The lecture will be published in full in a weekly journal called La Renaissance.1 The interest which Paris has taken in the lecture is to me astonishing. In London such a lecture would attract few people and would pass almost unnoticed. Before the lecture the Rector of the University, who presided, handed me an envelope containing a banknote for a thousand francs. The lecture is one on a foundation presented to the University by a wealthy man, Monsieur Kahn, the same who founded travelling scholarships to enable men to go round the world. As to all the luncheons and dinners given to us it would be endless to tell. We have been almost killed by kindness. One dinner was given by the Autour du Monde Club, in their Wne club-house by the Seine, near the Bois de Boulogne. The club was founded by Monsieur Kahn. Another day the Kiplings and we were entertained by the Union Interallie´ in a magniWcent club-house, formerly the house of Rothschild. Among the guests were M. Barthou (the Minister for War), Maurice Barre`s (a great French writer), the Countess de Noailles (an eminent French poetess), Painleve´ (formerly Prime Minister), the English Ambassador (Lord Hardinge), and Lord Montague. Lilly was beside Painleve´, whose acquaintance we had made in London during the war. I was between Barre`s and Lord Montague. Two days afterwards we were entertained by the ‘‘Amis de France’’ in another very Wne house. There were among the guests the Ministers of Finance and of Agriculture, a Marshal of France, distinguished in the war (an elderly gentleman in mufti), Prince Roland Buonaparte, the American Ambassador (Mr Herrick), and the military Governor of Paris (in uniform). The Kiplings were not there. Lilly was the only lady present. She sat beside the Marshal. I was between the Minister of Finance and the Prince. I found the Minister a most interesting man. He had been Governor of Indo-China and head of the Commission for the Defence of Paris during the war. Altogether the luncheon was most agreeable. Every one was simple and frank, and there were no speeches. Among our most intimate friends are Monsieur and Madame Sembat.2 He is a Deputy and an enthusiastic admirer of my writings. We have lunched with them several times; on one occasion we met the Minister of Public Instruction, who on the spot, across the luncheon table, agreed to take a good number of copies of ‘‘Adonis’’ (Lilly’s French translation) for distribution to public institutions. For the book came out within the last few days. A copy of it will arrive in Dundee shortly. Lilly has also been very busy arranging about the French translations of two other of my books—Sir Roger de Coverley and the small Pausanias. The translation of the Wrst is Wnished, and that of the second nearly so. Anatole France has consented to write a preface to the


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translation of ‘‘Sir Roger.’’ We met him lately, not for the Wrst time, at the house of our friend Dr Couchoud at Versailles, and had a long and very interesting talk with him. He was to start today for Stockholm to receive the Nobel prize. Yesterday we called by appointment on Prince Roland Buonaparte to speak to him about a young Polish anthropologist in whom we are interested3. The prince’s house is palatial, and his library magniWcent; it extends completely round a square court. The collection is especially strong in works of geography and natural science. Today we had an interview with Poincare´ about some matters of public importance: he was most attentive and sympathetic, and we hope that some good will come of it. He was quite ready to fall in with some suggestions we made to him. The strained relations at present between France and England are lamentable. So far as I can see, they spring from a total misunderstanding of France on the part of some people in England, who equally misunderstand Germany. I will enclose a photograph of the ceremony at the Sorbonne. We expect to leave Paris on Tuesday next and to go on to Cambridge without staying in London. I do not yet know what our address [is] in Cambridge; but you may safely address letters to me at Trinity College, where I am fairly well known. We think of staying in Cambridge till after Christmas in order to see our friends (from whom we had to hurry oV) and also to rest after all the excitements and bustle (pleasant as these have been) of Paris. Lilly joins me in much love to you all. I hope you will understand and forgive my long silence; but in all my life I think I have never been so hurried and bustled as in the last month. Your loving brother Jamie P.S. You may gather how much I have been occupied when I tell you that in the three weeks we have been in Paris I have not yet found time to go to the bank to get money. Margaret, Viscountess Long 1. Frazer, ‘Sur l’e´tude des origines humaines’, La Renaissance politique, litte´raire, artistique, 9 (15 Dec. 1921), 6881–5; repr. GH, 337–55. 2. Marcel Sembat (1862–1922), French Socialist politician. 3. Bronislaw Malinowski.

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To Bronislaw Malinowski, 3 January 1922 Hotel Lute´tia, Paris My dear Malinowski, I have just been asked by the Editor of Nature to review the new edition of Westermarck’s ‘‘History of Human Marriage.’’ I have declined, but suggested that the book should be sent to you for review and I hope you will undertake it.1 Knowing that you agree with Westermarck on some fundamental questions I feel sure that you would give a sympathetic as well as instructive review. You see we are still in Paris. I gave M. Bourdelle the last sitting this morning, and we intend to leave for England, weather permitting, on Thursday.2 We much enjoyed seeing you in Paris and only regret that we saw so little of you. But we look forward to seeing you more at leisure in London. My Wife joins me in kindest regards and best wishes for the New Year to Madame Malinowska and yourself. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer My Wife bids me say that she will write to you from London. Beinecke Library, Yale University 1. Bronislaw Malinowski, ‘Sexual Life and Marriage among Primitive Peoples’, Nature, 109 (1922), 502–4. 2. E´mile Antoine Bourdelle (1861–1929), French sculptor, student of Rodin; the bust of Frazer is in the Trinity College library.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 26 February 1922 Brick Court My dear Hartland, Many thanks for sending me the two papers. I have read both with interest. I am glad that you think that the newly discovered inscriptions conWrm my old theory of Purim and the CruciWxion.1 You put the case very clearly and temperately. I am glad, too, that you think Miss Weston has


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found the true key to the mystery of the Holy Grail.2 I began to read her book, but confess I was deterred from going on by Wnding that Jack-in-thebox, the Priest of Nemi, turning up again in a new disguise. I begin to grow suspicious of that quick-change artist, especially when he is unmasked by a lady. However, as you approve of her general conclusion, there must be something in it. What is the authority for the priest-king of Elele in Nigeria? I have not got him on my list, and as he seems a good specimen of his class I should be glad to add him to it. Did you note the splendid example of a temporary king discovered by Roscoe in Bunyoro? He very closely resembles the temporary king of the Sacaea, particularly in his privilege of consorting with the late king’s widows during his reign of a few days. Africa is turning up trumps. Roscoe was here the other day. He had been to Dublin lately, where he saw Macalister, and found that they had independently come to the conclusion that the original home of Egyptian and European civilisation is the region of the great African lakes. Some one will soon be discovering the Garden of Eden and Adam’s tomb in the neighbourhood. But seriously it is very interesting. Roscoe’s big book on the Banyoro is nearly ready to go to the printer.3 He is an indefatigable worker and is very anxious to go out on another expedition to Central Africa next year. We trust that you are all well. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer We had a delightful time in Paris. Everyone was extraordinarily kind and cordial to us. To Wnish up with, I was ‘‘busted’’ by a sculptor (Bourdelle, pupil of Rodin), who proposes to present me in bronze to the Luxembourg. To judge by the clay model it will be a Wne work of art, and my Wife considers it to be a good likeness. I had no idea that I had such a statuesque head and noble brow! So at least he has made me out. The Kpelle of Liberia are a people who seem to be in a transitional state from maternal to paternal descent. The clan is inherited from the mother but children inherit property from the father. The mother’s brother is still prominent and can pledge his sister’s children to a creditor without their father’s consent. See D. Westermann: Die Kpelle, ein Negerstamm in Liberia (Go¨ttingen, 1921) pp. 55 [sqq].4 This case of transition may interest you. Have you read Westermarck’s new edition of his History of Human Marriage? And what do you think of his criticisms of you and me? Are you going to review him?

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TCC Add. MS b.36: 58 (TS) 1. Frazer proposed Purim as the Jewish member of the set of springtime festivals in the ancient eastern Mediterranean, in which a temporary ‘king’ is killed to promote fertility, and Jesus as the ritual victim, enacting the part of Haman. See Frazer, 168–9. 2. Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920). Although Weston acknowledges a general debt to Frazer, she was more directly inXuenced by Jane Ellen Harrison and her ‘eniautos-daimon’ hypothesis. Frazer’s outright rejection of Harrison’s work, and that of F. M. Cornford, A. B. Cook, and Gilbert Murray (the ‘Cambridge Ritualists’), may be found in the introduction to his Loeb edition of Apollodorus, The Library (1921), i. p. xxvii; see Frazer, 234–5. 3. John Roscoe, The Bakitara of Banyoro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923). 4. Frazer’s review is ‘A Liberian Tribe’, Times Literary Supplement (25 May 1922), 332; repr. in GS, 297–302.

To E. Sidney Hartland, 3 March 1922 Brick Court My dear Hartland, Many thanks for your letter. The account of the temporary annual king of Bunyoro, who reigned for a few days, cohabited with the late king’s widows, and was then put to death, was published by me in Man (November or December 1920, I think) from the preliminary reports which Roscoe sent home to me during his absence in the Weld.1 The novel feature about this temporary king is that he was supposed to represent the last king who had died; he lived in the temple-tomb of the deceased monarch, spoke in his name, and was put to death at the back of the tomb. I Wnd that I have got P. A. Talbot’s priest-king on my list after all, with a reference to Folk-Lore XXVI (1915), pp. 79–81. But I had not got the reference to the Journal of the African Society. Thanks for sending it. I shall have great pleasure in coming to Oxford to hear your lecture, particularly if the Oxford people intimate a wish that I should do so.2 I have not heard from them yet. Your subject is very interesting, and I have no doubt that your treatment of it will be instructive. Smith and Dale’s book is a very Wne one, amongst the very best monographs that we possess descriptive of a single group of peoples.3 This of course needs no answer. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer I have just Wnished reading proofs of Malinowski’s new book on the Kula of the Trobriand Islanders, and am now reading proofs of Hobley’s new book


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‘‘Bantu Beliefs and Magic.’’4 Both are interesting and valuable, but the former is rather stiV reading, being copiously sprinkled with native Melanesian words. It deals with a peculiar system of exchange, combined with trade of a more ordinary character. I write at my Club. Hence my doubtful reference to Man.

TCC Add. MS b.36: 60 (TS) 1. Frazer, ‘The Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa’, Man, 20 (1920), no. 48, 91–5. 2. Here Frazer scales the very Everest of false modesty—he professes to be unsure whether he will be invited to attend the inaugural lecture of a series given in his honour, although of course both he and Hartland know that he will be the guest of honour. 3. Edwin Smith and A. M. Dale, The Ila-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia (London: Macmillan, 1920). 4. Frazer wrote a preface to Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western PaciWc (London: Routledge, 1922) and an introduction to C. W. Hobley’s Bantu Beliefs and Magic (London: H. F. and G. Witherby, 1922); both are repr. in GS, 357–61, 391–8.

To Bronislaw Malinowski, 8 March 1922 Brick Court Dear Dr Malinowski, I have Wnished reading the proofs of your book and heartily congratulate [you] on having produced so very able and remarkable a book. It cannot fail to be recognized by anthropologists as a very valuable contribution to science. The institution of the Kula is very curious and, so far as I know, as yet unique of its kind in the anthropological record, and you have brought out its peculiar features very lucidly and forcibly. The amount of minute observation and painstaking recording that must have gone to the making of the book is astonishing, especially when one remembers that the Kula is only one of many institutions which presumably you have studied with the same patient care and accuracy. All anthropologists will look forward with the greatest interest to the publication of your complete work on the Trobriand Islanders. I have written my preface and posted it to Mr Stallybrass. It is not long, perhaps it may make four pages. In it I have called special attention to the immense inXuence which, as you show so fully, magic exercises on the economic life of the people, as well as on their life generally; and I have pointed out how completely your evidence refutes the current notion that magic is essentially antisocial, designed only to further the selWsh aims of the

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individual, regardless of the common weal. I hope that you will approve of the way in which I have put this point. In regard to the use of native terms you are of course right in printing them all in brackets: this helps the reader greatly. But I think that you might perhaps with advantage have used them somewhat more sparingly, substituting in many cases the English equivalent, where this would not involve ambiguity.1 The frequent occurrence of barbarous and (to a European) unintelligible words is a stumbling-block to any but a very serious reader, and in these days, when it is so diYcult to get books printed and published at all, an author should even in the interest of science (which would suVer by the suppression of books) remove as many stumbling-blocks as possible from the path of his readers. Roscoe tells me that in the big book which he is preparing on his recent expedition to Central Africa, he is acting on this principle and ruthlessly suppressing native words, wherever it can be done without sacriWce of accuracy. Where it is necessary for the sake of clearness, the native word can be added in brackets and italics. I congratulate you on your possession of an easy and Xowing English style. In the proofs I have here and there marked a word which might perhaps be altered with advantage, e.g. ‘‘destinations,’’ where, I think, you mean ‘‘destinies’’; and ‘‘lagging,’’ where it should rather be ‘‘Xagging.’’ But these may be printers’ errors, of which I have noted a number, most of them obvious and probably already corrected by you. On the whole the printing of the book is remarkably correct. I noted only one positive slip, as it seemed to me: in one passage (p. 28) you speak of ‘‘parallels,’’ where I think you mean ‘‘meridians.’’ Meridians, of course, are not parallel to each other. I have sent (or rather, am about to send) my proofs with their corrections and suggestions (all marked in red pencil) to Mr Stallybrass and will leave him to deal with them at his discretion. I met the Editor of Nature some little time ago at the Athenaeum and he told me that you had consented to review the new edition of Westermarck’s ‘‘History of Human Marriage’’ for him. The book is a wonderful monument of wide and patient research. On fundamental questions he seems to stand by his old views, with which, if I mistake not, you are in general agreement. I shall be greatly interested to read your review. It seems to me that on the question of former (I do not say primitive) group marriage he does not allow suYcient weight to the evidence of the classiWcatory system of relationship and the survival of customs approaching to promiscuity in Australia. But I have only read his discussion of these topics in the Wrst volume; I see that he has a special chapter, which I have not yet read, on Group Marriage in the third volume. At present, reading the book at odd times, I am only approaching the end of the second volume.


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We are glad to hear that you are likely to be in London in April, and we look forward to seeing you then. We congratulate you and Mrs Malinowska heartily on the birth of a second daughter, and are happy to know that Mother and baby are doing so well. My Wife joins me in kindest regards to Mrs Malinowska and yourself. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer London School of Economics 1. Another example of Frazerian ambivalence: on the one hand, he is often at pains in both the letters and in print to state unequivocally that the ‘savage mind’ is qualitatively diVerent from ours, and it is folly or worse to assume otherwise. On the other hand, Frazer’s request that native terms be replaced where possible by English equivalents assumes that such equivalents exist. Malinowski includes them precisely because they embody a qualitatively diVerent way of perceiving the world.

To Dr T. E. Page,1 28 April 1922 Brick Court Dear Dr Page, I have some thoughts of undertaking another Loeb volume, if you are willing and suitable author could be found who is not yet bespoken. Among the possible authors who have occurred to me are: Cicero. Tusculan Disputations. " Academics. Ovid. Fasti. Isaeus. Aristotle. De Anima. Poetics. " Minor Greek Mythographers (Antoninus Liberalis, Conon etc.) But if you have any others to spare who might suit me, I should be glad to consider them. Could you come to the Temple some morning for a talk on the subject? If I remember aright, you generally come in on Tuesdays. Would Tuesday week (May 9th) suit you? Next Tuesday (May 2nd) would probably not suit me. With kind regards I am yours sincerely J. G. Frazer

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Loeb Library 1. Thomas E. Page (1850–1936), at the time editor in chief of the Loeb Classical Library.

To A. E. Housman, 24 October 1922 Bridge Hotel, Bedford My dear Housman, I am grateful to you for your kindness in giving me a copy of your ‘‘Last Poems.’’ I have read them all with pleasure and admiration, tinged with melancholy; for the dominant note which they seem to me to strike is ‘‘sunt lacrimae rerum.’’ In their general tone as well as in their easy musical Xow, in their haunting phrases, and in the eVect which they produce by the use of the shortest and simplest words, they remind me of Heine, and I cannot say fairer than that, as I regard Heine as one of the most consummate geniuses who ever used human language to express human thought and emotion. His mastery of language seems to me to approach the magical and supernatural. So I hope that you will not take it ill that I compare you to—I was about to say to a German poet; but I never forget that Heine was not a German, but a member of a far Wner race, who handled the German language and drew music from the instrument in a way that no native of the coarser German race has ever, to my knowledge, approached.1 Compare for example Goethe’s cumbrous, heavy, slouching prose with the light, airy, vivacious movement of Heine’s prose. The instrument on which the two play is the same, but how diVerent is the execution! The one is a master musician, the other a bungling apprentice. It is only when he gets into verse that Goethe spreads his wings and begins to Xy. In it, I admit, he attains to great heights. The Wrst part of Faust I rank among the few greatest works of literature. But I am wandering or havering, as we say in Scotland. Many thanks once more for the poems. I like them all and think they will live. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer The only fault I Wnd with your book is the title. I hope that the poems will prove not to be the last, but the penultimate at least or something still further remote from Wnality. P.S. We return to Cambridge on the 26th.


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Library of Congress 1. For the evolution of Frazer’s views on the Jews, see Robert Ackerman, ‘J. G. Frazer and the Jews’, Religion, 22 (1992), 135–50.

To W. J. Lewis, 7 February 1923 Hotel Lute´tia, Paris My dear Lewis, I write to give you our news and to get you to give us news of yourself and of Cambridge in return. We continue to be very comfortable here and to see many kind and hospitable friends. We meet with nothing but good will and friendship for ourselves and England. Don’t believe the papers when they speak of French ill will to England. There is no such thing. I suspect that these reports emanate from the Bosh [sic], who is having his head punched just now, and richly does he deserve it. So far as my observation goes, there is nothing that the French so much desire as the closest friendship, indeed alliance with England, which they rightly regard as the best guarantee of the peace of Europe. My Wife has kept on the whole very well ever since we have been in Paris. She is now working hard at the French translation of the abridged G.B., which is to be published by the University of Strasbourg. She expects to send a batch of MS to the printer very shortly. I employ some of my leisure time in preparing a translation of the Fasti of Ovid for the Loeb Library. There is a MS of the Fasti at the Bibliothe`que Nationale, which I hope to consult. Now for a piece of news in which we know that you will be interested. Not Wnding a suitable house in Cambridge, we have decided to build a small one for ourselves. The site is bought and the plans settled with Rattee and Kett.1 The site is oV the Hills Road, next door to our friend Chouville’s house, Rathmore. The soil is sand and gravel, and all the chief rooms will have a south aspect. Kett promises that the house will be ready for occupation in September, when we shall hope to settle in and resume our regular life and work. One tires of living in hotels, however comfortable they are, and we look forward to being again among old friends. I had a kind letter from Haddon the other day. He Wnds the work of the term rather burdensome, and intends to reduce the amount of his lecturing. The death of Rivers is a loss to the anthropological school.

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Now write soon and give us your news. My Wife joins me in aVectionate greetings. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer There is to be a Renan celebration at the Sorbonne on February 28th, at which I have been asked to speak. I would much rather not, but I cannot decently refuse. Madame Renan (daughter of Ernest Renan) has asked me personally. TCC Frazer 1: 29 1. Well-known builders in Cambridge.

To Bronislaw Malinowski, 21 May 1923 Hotel Lute´tia, Paris My dear Dr Malinowski I have read with great interest and pleasure your most kind and generous appreciation of my book in ‘‘Nature.’’1 Valuing very highly as I do your science and your work, I attach very great weight to your opinion, and that your opinion of my work, regarded from the strictly scientiWc point of view, is so favourable is to me most gratifying and encouraging. I say ‘‘encouraging’’ because, though I have tried to follow a strictly inductive method (having no belief in theories evolved a priori), I cannot help often fearing that I have allowed my imagination to outrun the evidence. Your testimony is therefore very reassuring and comforting by indicating that even in cases where I have travelled beyond the limits of the facts known to me, I have yet sometimes been following the right lines, and that I have in fact anticipated conclusions which have been proved, or rendered probable, by subsequent researches such as your own. For this experimental conWrmation of theories which I sometimes feared were too bold, I am deeply grateful to you. I shall go back to my purely anthropological work (as I hope to do in a few months) with greater conWdence, and I expect to carry it on with better results, for the great stimulus and encouragement you have given me. Accept my heartfelt thanks for your most kind and generous words. I must try to deserve them better by the work I hope still to do in our fascinating science. Now about yourself we—my Wife and I—wish very much to get news of you. How are you in point of health? How does your work, and especially


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your book, progress? and what are your plans for the immediate future? We beg that you will write us fully on all these points, for we are both deeply interested in them. We trust that your health is improved, and that your great book is well on the road to completion. You know how eagerly I look forward to its publication and how much I hope and expect to learn from it. Then about your future, what chance or possibility is there of attaching you permanently (as I should wish to do) to an English University?2 Would your health admit of such an appointment? And supposing your health would admit it, would you be willing to accept of it? I am writing entirely on my own initiative, without consultation with any one; but if your answer is favourable, I would propose, with your consent, when I return to Cambridge, to sound the Trinity people, and especially the Master, with a view to appointing you to an anthropological lectureship which might in time (I hope) carry with it a Fellowship. If it could be so arranged that you should lecture in Cambridge part of the year, and carry on Weld work during the rest of the year (as Westermarck used to divide his time between London and Morocco), it would be all the better for the science and perhaps for your health, if you could arrange to put in your Weld work in some warm country during the winter. Tell me whether you think a scheme of this sort is feasible from your point of view, and whether, if feasible, it would be acceptable to you. Until I hear from you that you approve, I will of course take no steps in the matter and will not broach the subject to any one. But I will say that it would be a great joy to me if we could succeed in attaching you in some capacity to Cambridge. It would be an immense stimulation and help to me to have you resident in Cambridge for some part of each year, and I hope that you would Wnd it not unproWtable for the theoretical part of your work. I received some time ago an oYcial notice of a chair or readership of Social (or Cultural?) Anthropology to be founded shortly at University College, London, but I paid no attention to it, as from the terms in which it was drawn up I assumed that the appointment was to be made purely for the purpose of Wnding facts conWrmatory (or seemingly conWrmatory) of Elliot Smith’s wild and improbably a priori theories; in fact I took it to be a post created for Perry, who devils for Elliot Smith.3 Can you tell me whether the appointment has been made, and whether my surmise concerning it is correct? Mauss, whom we see occasionally, told us that you had been appointed to a post at the University of London. Is it possible that they have elected you to this new professorship or readership? If so, I congratulate the University of London and withdraw the injurious surmises to which I have just given utterance, and which are, of course, strictly between ourselves.

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I hope you will write soon and give us your news. We shall be here at this hotel till May 28th, after which you had better address to Trinity College, Cambridge, marking the letter ‘‘to be forwarded.’’ My Wife joins me in kindest regards to Madame Malinowska and yourself. Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS b. 36:184 (TS) 1. Malinowski’s glowing review of the one-volume abridgement of The Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1922) is ‘Science and Superstition of Primitive Mankind’, Nature, 111 (1923), 658–62. 2. One of several eVorts on Frazer’s part to assist Malinowski in obtaining an academic post in Britain. 3. (Sir) Grafton Elliot Smith (1871–1937), English anatomist, physical anthropologist, and tireless advocate for the idea of cultural diVusion from a single source (for him, Egypt), as opposed to multiple independent invention. William J. Perry (1887–1949), Smith’s disciple.

From Bronislaw Malinowski to J. G. Frazer, 25 May 1925 Oberbozen presso di Bolzano (Alto Adige) Dear Sir James, Many thanks for your kind letter of May 21st. I cannot tell you how glad I am to know that the review which I wrote for ‘‘Nature’’ has pleased and interested you. I felt that some parts might have appeared impertinent and I have tried to let facts speak and to put my praise into the mouth of the savage, so to speak. I have read your kind words with the greatest pleasure and attendrissement. You know, how my Wrst love for anthropology is associated with The Golden Bough, read to me aloud by my mother.1 How incredible and miraculous would it have appeared to us then, had some one told us that the illustrious author of The Golden Bough will at one time write to me so kindly and generously and that with reference to the great and beloved work itself ! I am more especially happy to know that you are starting soon on a new work. I would consider it a very great privilege to know the subject and scope of your new research. I am certain that whichever aspect of anthropology you take up you will show us new truths and reveal new beauties. Now in answer to your inquiries about myself: my breakdown last May– October made me undertake a medical overhaul, with the result that chronical tuberculosis of a diVuse and relatively benign kind was diagnosed.


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I submitted to a tuberculine cure, which I am supplementing by sunbaths. I am feeling a good deal better, but I shall not be allowed to interrupt my cure for another twelve months and to return to England until Autumn 1924. I have been appointed to a Readership in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics, while my counterpart W. J. Perry was made Reader in Cultural Anthropology at University College. Both are University jobs, both get the same salary (£600 per annum), both have been created at the same sitting of the Senate. Perry and I thus start on a sort of race, he with a year’s start ahead of me (for I have had to apply for a year’s leave from the outset) and with a great store of fame and advertisement. To tell the candid truth, as I feel I may do to you, a great deal of my pleasure in my appointment has been taken away, by being thus lumped together with Perry, or rather smuggled in his shadow! Your hypothesis about the University College job having been earmarked from the outset for Perry is therefore perfectly correct. On the other hand, there was as far as I can judge a strong movement to get someone else at the same time (and I was fortunate enough to be this second) as a sort of antidote against Elliot Smithianism. Personally, I am trying to treat Elliot Smith, Perry & Co. like a basketful of rotten eggs: with the greatest care and consideration, not to say respect. For in this like in all other types of warfare (you know that I am a PaciWst!), defeat is easy and the fruits of victory bitter. I shall not therefore attack Elliot Smith Wrst. But I am feeling very sore about the whole boom and especially about the militant spirit which they display. I am afraid cooperation will be very diYcult between Univ. College and the School of Economics, especially since ‘‘they’’ are full of hostility against my friend, teacher and boss Seligman.2 I have written at a certain length about these things, so as to make my situation clear to you, before I come to discuss your most tempting and kind suggestion ab. a lectureship at Trinity. The fact that from Autumn 1924 I shall have to spend all term-time in London makes, as far as I can see, things even easier than if I had to live on the continent permanently. Half of the people who teach at the School of Economics are at the same time lecturing in Oxford or Cambridge (Cannan, Foxwell, Higgins, Beveridge, etc.) occasionally if not permanently.3 And to start with, I would be extremely glad to lecture at Cambridge (without salary even—of course besides and next to my London job—perhaps with my expenses paid). My reasons for being extremely keen on securing a foothold at least in Cambridge are, besides ambition and vanity, twofold: Wrst of all Cambridge aVords a much more fruitful Weld for teaching than London. In spite of Seligman’s most competent, energetic and persistent eVorts, the return of his work was not very promising, and I look with some misgiving

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at the student material in London, especially since there is the Elliot Smith– Perry boom to reckon with, which will draw students away. The second reason [why] I am extremely keen on your suggestion is that I would be so happy to work under your guidance and have the privilege to cooperate with you. On the other hand I might be also of some use to you as an assistant lecturer, whose work would be made to Wt into your courses and supplement them in such a manner, as you would like to direct and I would be able to carry out. I reckon that in Cambridge an attempt will be made also to establish a culture-contact monopoly and to try and gag all these heretics, who do not believe the Kultur is One, that She was born in Egypt and that E. S. is her Prophet and Perry his barber. Thus my services at Trinity might not be superXuous and thinking for the moment neither of me, nor of yourself nor of anyone but Anthropology, I think that the plan which you so kindly suggested should be at least attempted. On my part, I shall do all I can to make it possible, i.e., I shall expect no remuneration, if the College Wnances do not allow of it, nor titles, nor honour. The only reservations I have to make are connected with my health and with the permission which I would have to obtain from my Director and from Seligman—but I hope, as to my health, for a fairly satisfactory state of aVairs and I have no doubt that my School would put no diYculties into my way, especially if I could prove that I am doing the whole thing for disinterested reasons. With all this, I would like to ask you to be so very kind and sound the ground very carefully and especially to present the whole thing, i.e., my possible work in Camb., as a very small and unimportant aVair. I have the feeling that if any sort of appointment of mine were discussed before the Board of Anthrop. Studies (or whatever is the name of this institution) a very decisive opposition would arise. The fact is that after my return from New Guinea, someone (I think it was Seligman) suggested that I should be invited to deliver a course of lectures at Camb. for a purely nominal fee. On a visit to Camb. I spoke about this possibility with two or three of the leading Anthropologists and had the impression that, much as they praised my work, they disliked the idea of an ‘outsider’ and esp. a ‘foreigner’ intruding and Wnally the whole thing fell through. Forgive my retailing this gossip, which to you must appear petty, but I think and see that one has to reckon with such facts and forces. I think moreover that in a year’s time, after perhaps my next book has been published, it will be easier for you to suggest my name, than it was for my friends in 1920. But I would be more than grateful to you if you sounded the powers that be at Trinity, at such time and in such a manner as you think Wt. I shall of course mention this whole aVair to no one, until I hear from you more deWnitely and then only I would ask Seligman.


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He has been very ill, gravely ill in fact, but is getting much better now. I have been extremely sorry to hear from Lady Frazer that she and you have gone through such bad times in health. I am certain nothing could be better than a holiday in Savoy. I will end this long letter now and please forgive its diVuseness and the amount I have spoken about myself! My wife joins me in kindest regards to Lady Frazer and yourself. Yours very sincerely B. Malinowski P.S. I have forgotten to ask you one great favour: I shall probably have to go to Rome quite soon—my friend is the Polish Minister there and I have several things to look up in a good Library. I think that in one of her previous letters Lady Frazer mentioned that you might be kind enough to give me an introduction to someone in Rome. I would naturally not trespass on anyone’s time and kindness socially. But I might need someone’s recommendation to gain admission to a library and I would like to meet some of the Anthropological and Sociological people. I forgot to tell you that the Editor of ‘‘Nature’’ has invited me to write half a dozen articles in a Series on Anthropology and Politics and it is mainly for this that I need to look up some things. B. M. I am going to answer Lady Frazer’s most kind and welcome letter within the next few days. B. M. TCC Add. MS b.36: 185 (TS) 1. In the fulsome dedication to Frazer that precedes his essay ‘Myth in Primitive Psychology’ (1925), Malinowski says that he read The Golden Bough while a university student in Cracow because he wished to try and ‘read an English masterpiece in the original’. Here, for the Wrst time, it appears that, rather than reading it, he heard it read aloud to him by his mother. 2. Charles G. Seligman (1873–1940), anthropologist and professor of ethnology at the University of London, 1913–34. Malinowski soon felt surer of himself and took Smith on directly in a public symposium on Culture: The DiVusionist Controversy (London: Kegan Paul, 1928), with additional contributions by H. J. Spinden and A. A. Goldenweiser. 3. Edwin Cannan (1861–1935), economist; Herbert S. Foxwell (1849–1936), economist; Alexander P. Higgins (1865–1935), professor of international law; (Sir) William Beveridge (1879–1963), political economist.

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From Lilly Frazer to W. J. Lewis, 29 October 1923 First Avenue Hotel, London Dear Professor Lewis, Your letter to J. G. came to awake us & to awake all my remorse at my long silence. Quite involuntary of course—I hope the Renan, for the get up etc. etc. of which I took special pains, has shown you that your friendship has not been forgotten. If I tell you that J. G. has been ill—very ill from end February to August (mid August) and that I had pneumonia in end of Feb and March, that I have myself translated, had printed and corrected proofs of the entire Twig1—published in England Nov 4th 1922, some 750 close French pages plus three other French books—(Renan being one) & that I am actually in correspondence with 15 publishers all over the world spreading J. G.’s thoughts & trying to make farthings to repay ‘‘LanWne’’2 where we hope to see you next week? or the following week. You will forgive—All private correspondence had to be given up except in reply to positive queries. As to J. G. he resents his illness being mentioned—so please do not refer to it. He got laryngitis at Madingley Hall a year ago, while lecturing [and] correcting Roscoe’s proofs late at night in icy rooms. We left for Strasbourg on Nov. 5th (I think)—had rough snowy weather there. He kept going on as usual till Feb. when bronchitis came on top of laryngitis. Many Doctors called, friends of his anthrop.—whether they carried Spanish inXuenza to him—?? anyhow he got it. Then I followed after some weeks & was in great danger with pneumonia—practically given up in March. In June the Dr. sent us to Savoie where we shivered! & got unwell again. We went on the Sale`ve 2000 ft but got no better—tho’ I recovered in July—but J. G. lost all appetite there and ceased to eat almost—; in August I got frightened and took ourselves back to Paris for consultation as J. G. was worn to a shred!—but he recovered in Paris at once and was fairly well till a few days ago; the wind at Calais, where we were 5 days storm bound, the Captain of the packet advising us to wait— renewed the throat trouble for him & some bronchitis for me!! Here we are going to consult a great throat specialist—who luckily, owes largely his successful career to me & hence is a great friend! All this—without comment please, will suYce to show that all thro’ winter anything like Hall dinners, or 9 p.m. lectures (they were the Wrst cause of the laryngitis originally) are out of the question—J. G. does not go out now at all unless weather [is] dry & Wne. He is much aged & weakened but he must not be alarmed about himself, nor questioned & he rejects any enquiry about his health—with a sneer. We have worked very, very hard. I have except during 8 days of acute illness, never


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stopped working 10 hours daily since we last saw you!—All the rest when we meet—& we look forward to seeing you. As to Renan being Celtic or not—is a moot question of course! But we have the very best French and many sided authority &, what is more precious the aVection and intimate friendship of Renan’s daughter Noe´mi—from whom a letter reached us together with yours to-day, & a letter about Renan from Maurice Croiset the Administrateur of the Colle`ge de France. The latter had to read out J. G.’s speech of Feb. 28th at the Sorbonne, fortunately ready last (in the vol.) as J. G. was laid up & I was battling that day between life & death then. We are now an old couple & are, I hope, coming to anchor in the Hills Road. The Twig (English) (abridged G. Bough) brought in to J. G. £1600!—in 4 months as it was my initiative & partly my work I am not a little proud & pleased but this, like the rest is for your eyes & ears alone—we met at Calais (storm bound too) a (Colonel & Mrs Turner, R. Engineers) friends of the Cunninghams you kindly introduced us to at your pleasant lunch party. Ever aVtly and gratefully, Lilly Frazer We have the Telephone at LanWne, Hills Rd., I suppose it works. TCC Frazer 1: 31 1. The Frazers’ name for the one-volume abridgement of The Golden Bough. 2. The name of the house being built for them in Cambridge.

To J. J. Thomson, 31 October 1923 First Avenue Hotel, London My dear Master, I write to let you know that I propose at once to resign the use of the College room which the Council granted me for Wve years as a bookroom and study. The reasons for taking this step I will explain to you when I see you, and I trust that you will approve of them. Here I will only say that circumstances, which I could not have foreseen, enable me to dispense with the use of the room, and that consequently I should not think it right to retain it when the College could apply it to other purposes. The room will be at the disposal of the College at the end of next week. My library will be transferred


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to a house which has been prepared for me in Cambridge, where I hope and expect to do my work in future. I am most deeply grateful to yourself and to the Council for so generously granting me the use of the room at a time, [when] without such help, it seemed doubtful whether I should be able to carry on my work. This renewed mark of conWdence bestowed on me, after so many others, by the Council has deeply touched me and strengthened, if that were possible, my unalterable attachment and gratitude to the College. Believe me, my dear Master, with the greatest respect, Yours most gratefully and sincerely James G. Frazer UL Add. MS 7654/F35

To J. J. Thomson, 7 April 1924 LanWne1 My dear Master, If the College has not otherwise disposed of the lecture-room which it granted to me as a library and study, I should be very grateful if it would renew the grant of the room to me for the same purpose. I resigned the use of the room in November last, because I then expected to be able to house my library at home. But for a variety of reasons, which I am ready to lay before the Council if they desire it, I am obliged to vacate my house very shortly and have no prospect of Wnding another one suitable for my purpose.2 In these circumstances I foresee great diYculty in housing my library and carrying on my work, unless the College should again grant me the use of the lecture-room for the purpose. The College has been so kind and indulgent to me for very many years, that I venture to hope that it will not refuse this my request. By granting the request it would add to the many deep obligations under which I lie to the College, and for which I never can be suYciently grateful.3 Believe me, my dear Master, Yours most respectfully and sincerely James G. Frazer


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UL Add. MS 7654/F36 1. The Wrst of the few extant letters written from LanWne. 2. Lilly Frazer inspected the house while the builders were putting the Wnal touches to it. After using the lavatory, she was unable to exit because the doorknob came oV in her hand. After a mighty commotion she was freed by a workman, and she vowed that she would never live in the house. They never moved in. It was sold to virtually the Wrst bidder, at a steep loss. 3. The request was granted, and Frazer moved his books back to Trinity.

To Edward Clodd, 22 June 1924 Central Hotel, Calais My dear Clodd, I was very glad to get your interesting letter at Paris where I have been spending a few weeks with my Wife. We are breaking the journey at Calais, on our way home, but cross to the white cliVs of old England tomorrow. We were much concerned to hear of your illness from our friend Whale when we were in London some time ago but were relieved to hear that you were making a good recovery. I wish you could report more rapid progress. As for ourselves we are well, but have passed an unhappy winter at Cambridge. The house which I had built there, and where we had hoped to pass the rest of our joint lives, has proved a great disappointment, partly in regard to structure (though it is well and solidly built), partly and still more in situation, which is remote from College, libraries, and most of our friends. For this failure I am almost entirely to blame, as it was I who pressed the plan of building on my Wife, chose (approximately) the site and the builder and laid down the general plan. As we agree that we never could be really happy in the house, we are endeavouring to sell it; but even if I Wnd a purchaser I expect to lose very heavily by the transaction. The College has again granted me the use of a Wne lecture-room to serve as a library and study, and since we left Cambridge a few weeks ago the whole of my books have been transferred to the room and replaced in order on the shelves. Henceforth I shall do my work there regularly. We may either occupy the house to sleep in till it is sold or we may take up our abode, for a time at least, in the Blue Boar Hotel almost opposite Trinity, where we can get clean and comfortable quarters at a moderate price. You will readily understand that this has been a great disappointment to us both. My Wife worked very hard, even beyond her strength, at installing us in the house, and then after a few months has had to undo all she had done. Under the new arrangement I hope to relieve her as far as possible from the diYculties and labour of housekeeping, which under the

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present conditions of service becomes more and more burdensome to ladies. This account will help perhaps to explain and excuse my long silence. It was as much as we could both do to carry on at all, and my correspondence with friends was neglected. However, I managed to write and deliver a course of lectures at Trinity in the Lent term. They are now printed and will be published in the autumn, forming the third volume of ‘‘The Belief in Immortality.’’ A copy will be sent to you on publication. The particular people dealt with are the Micronesians. I thank you for sending me a copy of Sir Frederick Pollock’s interesting letter on ‘‘The Enigma of Jesus.’’1 I entirely agree with his general remarks (and with those of Sir Alfred Lyall) on the historical reality of Jesus. Without the existence of a great teacher and reformer the origin of Christianity, as of Buddhism, is to me quite inexplicable. When some asses apparently mistook my conjecture as to the history of the CruciWxion as an attempt to resolve the personality of Jesus into a myth (instead of, as I thought lies on the face of it, a plain assumption of his historical reality) I endeavoured to dissipate this absurd misunderstanding in a note to the next edition (‘‘The Scapegoat,’’ Appendix), but whether this has had the desired eVect or not, I do not know. In my preface to ‘‘The Enigma of Jesus’’ I plainly indicated my dissent from the author’s main thesis but naturally under the circumstances I could not decently controvert it.2 I only wrote the preface out of personal regard for my friend Dr. Couchoud, not at all because I share his view. I showed him your letter in Paris. He at once admitted that in ‘‘The Enigma of Jesus’’ his treatment of St Paul’s evidence is superWcial; but he tells me that he has dealt with this point much more fully in a new and much enlarged edition of the book which will be published very shortly under the title ‘‘Le myste`re de Je´sus.’’ This will form one of a collection of short books on the history of Christianity which he is editing; it promises to be a very interesting and valuable series. The Wrst volume, a short history of Christianity by Albert Houtin, appeared a few days ago.3 It is brief, but striking and trenchant. The author is one of our best friends, a man of the most estimable character, solid learning and sound judgment. I fancy that you would Wnd yourself in general agreement with his treatment of the subject. The book should be translated into English. Would Mrs Whale undertake the task? Couchoud has secured the cooperation of a number of able and eminent scholars in the series, which he has undertaken to edit. He tells me that the book of Alfaric (of Strasbourg) on Simon the Magician is now at last Wnished; he has seen the complete manuscript; it ought to be published before long, but not in Couchoud’s series, for which it would be much too learned and elaborate.4 I have written to you before about this book of Alfaric. I believe that it will be one of the most important and original works on the early history of


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Christianity that have appeared for a long time, and I think that this opinion is shared by all who know Alfaric personally. He, like my friend Houtin, was formerly a priest; indeed, he was professor of theology at a Catholic college. So he knows Catholicism from the inside. You must look out for his book when it appears. I have been reading of late, and am now approaching the end of, Milman’s History of Latin Christianity.5 It is a book of the most fascinating interest, at least in the mediaeval period. What a history of delusion, folly, and crime! It is a sort of delirium tremens of humanity. I should like to make an anthology of it to be called ‘‘Flowers of the Papacy.’’ One chapter would be headed, ‘‘From Pirate to Pope.’’ For John XXII started life as a pirate, and when he rose (or fell) to the papacy he continued to exhibit the ferocity of a pirate to the end of his days. Another pope (Urban VI) recited his breviary outside the window of the torture-chamber, where the executioner was tormenting the cardinals, the pope raising his voice so as to be heard by and to encourage the torturer at his work. And so and so on. We have had a wretched summer hitherto, but the weather seems to be improving at last. Sea and sky must be beautiful at Aldeburgh in these Wne days. Do you keep up your boating? I often remember our pleasant trips down the river, particularly that one when we rowed back against the wind with Sir Alfred Lyall sitting at the stern, when a certain eminent novelist, who shall be nameless, made a rather poor show at the oar. Have you had [Thomas] Hardy with you lately? Or what news have you of him? My Wife laboured hard last year at her French translation of the G. B. The book was published during our recent stay in Paris. My task at present is the preparation of GiVord lectures for Edinburgh. The subject is ‘‘The Worship of Nature.’’ My Wife joins me in kindest regards to Mrs Clodd and yourself. Always your aVectionate friend James G. Frazer My permanent address henceforth is Trinity College, Cambridge. Please address everything to me there. The title of Couchoud’s series is Christianisme, cahiers publie´s sous la direction de P. L. Couchoud. The publisher is F. Rieder et Cie., 7 Place Saint-Sulpice, Paris. The title of Albert Houtin’s book is ‘‘Courte Histoire de Christianisme.’’

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Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. Paul Louis Couchoud, The Enigma of Jesus, trans. Winifred Whale (London: Watts, 1924). Couchoud was a French physician who became a good friend of the Frazers in the mid-1920s. A psychiatrist as well as a rationalist, he claimed that Jesus and the earliest Christians, as we know them through the Gospels, could best be understood as highly neurotic and at times even delusional. 2. Frazer’s preface, written entirely out of friendship for Couchoud, is to be found on pp. vii–xv; not in Besterman. 3. Albert Houtin, A Short History of Christianity, trans. Lady Frazer (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1926). 4. Prosper Alfaric (1886–1955), professor of the history of religions at the University of Strasbourg; former Catholic priest who was a member, along with Alfred Loisy and others in the Frazers’ French circle, of the rationalist, positivist group among those in the Cercle Ernest Renan. 5. H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, 6 vols. (London: John Murray, 1854–5).

To Edmund Gosse, 11 January 1925 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Gosse, Will you allow me as a very old friend to congratulate you on the too long deferred honour of your knighthood, which you have so richly deserved by your many eminent contributions, not only to English, but to European literature? You will hardly need to be told what a great personal pleasure it was to me to be associated in the honours list with a friend whom I have long regarded with aVection and to whom I am under such deep obligations. For I shall never forget how, at a time when my means were straitened and it became diYcult for me to carry on my work, you repeatedly came to the rescue, and with our good friend George Darwin obtained for me the Civil List Pension through which I was able to tide over the diYculty and to carry on with my work without interruption. Thus whatever I have been able to accomplish for many years past I have done in large measure through your assistance. You will be glad, I know, to hear that these times of stress are now over, and that, chieXy through the sale of my writings, my Wife and I are able to live in comfort without the harassing care of pecuniary embarrassments. Trinity has granted me the use of a large and beautiful room, in which the whole of my library is comfortably installed, and in which I do my work regularly. I am writing there at this moment. It would be a great pleasure if you could come and see me in it. Can I not induce you to do so?


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My Wife joins me in sincere congratulations on your new and welldeserved honour, and in the wish that you may live many years in the enjoyment of it and of the aVection of your large circle of friends. Believe me, my dear Gosse, Always your grateful and aVectionate friend James G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University

To Bronislaw Malinowski, 14 February 1926 Queen Anne’s Mansions1 My dear Malinowski, I return your two lectures on myths, which I have read with interest.2 When and where were they delivered? And where are they to be published? I confess that I have been in the habit of regarding myths as explanations, and am not sure that I follow your reasons for rejecting this view. Do not trouble to write to me about this; we can speak of it when we meet. Do you not occasionally use the adjective ‘‘sociological’’ when you mean ‘‘social’’? E.g., ‘‘sociological status.’’ This is a small point to look to. I am interested to note that in the Trobriands there is a myth of a time when men were immortal through casting their skins like lizards, etc. Of course the myth is widespread in Melanesia. Codrington recorded it long ago. What are the titles of the chairs held by [C. G.] Seligman and [Edvard] Westermarck at the [London] School of Economics? I should like to refer to them in my introductory remarks on Thursday next, and wish to avoid mistakes in doing so. With many thanks for letting me see your interesting papers, I am, Yours very sincerely J. G. Frazer My Wife sent your Liverpool lecture to Moret in Paris. He is to give the next Oxford lecture.3 So I have not had an opportunity of reading it. But my Wife read out to me the introductory part, and I much appreciate your very kind and graceful references to me and my writings.4

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Beinecke Library, Yale University 1. The Wrst letter from Queen Anne’s Mansions, a large apartment block in London to which the Frazers moved. 2. The reference is too vague to permit certainty, but in view of the fact that neither lecture is ‘Myth in Primitive Psychology’, referred to below, they are most likely to be ‘Magic, Science and Religion’, published in Joseph Needham (ed.), Science, Religion and Reality (London: Sheldon Press, 1925) and reprinted several times subsequently. 3. Paul Moret, ‘La Mise a` mort du Dieu en Egypte’, in Warren R. Dawson (ed.), The Frazer Lectures 1922–1932 (London: Macmillan, 1932), 120–71. 4. Malinowski, ‘Myth in Primitive Psychology’, delivered at the University of Liverpool in Nov. 1925 and dedicated to Frazer.

To Edward Clodd, 22 July 1926 Terminus Hotel, Calais My dear Clodd, I am heartily ashamed of myself when I think how very long it is since I wrote to you, though in the meantime we have received several kind and interesting letters from you. When you next write, which I hope will be soon, please give us news of yourselves; we wish to know how you both are, though from the cheerful tone of your letters we are glad to infer that you kept well through the long and trying winter. My Wife stood it fairly well, though she felt the conWnement to our rooms in Queen Anne’s Mansions and the too long application to her desk. So we left England at the end of May and have been abroad ever since, but expect to return very soon. Most of our time has been spent in Paris, where we saw much of our friends, and we had nearly a fortnight at Vevey on the Lake of Geneva. The weather there was at Wrst very Wne and we had beautiful sails on the lake; but we found the climate relaxing and depressing, and my Wife suVered acute rheumatic pains. I cannot think that the lake would be a good place of residence, in spite of the example of Gibbon and of the modern idle English who have converted the lovely upper end of the lake into a series of huge fashionable hotels and villas, with a roaring stream of motors and trams racing about among them. Motors have become one of the curses of this modern world. Apart from their danger to life, whether you are in or out of them, they have gone far to banish peace and quiet from the country and to make the streets of cities impassable. Paris is choked with them; to remedy the strangulation they are now making a huge broad avenue right through the city up to the Arc de Triomphe, battering down all the houses that stand in the way. As for the danger to life, that has been brought home to me of late by sad experience. One of my oldest friends,


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[J. P.] Postgate, the eminent Latin scholar, was knocked down and killed in front of his house by a motor a few days ago. Last year another of my oldest friends, James Ward, the philosopher, was knocked down by a lawyer in his car and never recovered though he lingered for some weeks. Another eminent Cambridge man, though not a personal friend of mine, the late Professor Liveing, bid fair to be a centenarian, but was cut oV in the Xower of his age by a lady bicyclist. Nor are the young spared by these infernal machines. Some years ago a young friend of ours, George Selwyn, son of Bishop Selwyn, was almost cut in two by a motor omnibus and died the same evening. It is one of the many advantages of Aldeburgh that not being on the highroad to anywhere it is comparatively immune from this modern pest. The same applies to Calais, where we are spending a few days. The quiet of the streets is refreshing after the deafening roar of the traYc in Paris. We are grieved at the Wnancial straits to which our French friends are reduced. Can you, with your long experience as a banker, throw any light on the situation? To the ordinary man it seems that the Americans (Uncle Shylock, as we now interpret the letters U. S.) are in great measure responsible for the distress of France. The Daily Mail reported lately an excellent letter or petition by an American named Peabody, who pointed out plainly how little America had done in the war, and how the Allies by their victory had saved the world, including America, from German domination; the money lent by the United States to Europe was a very small price to pay for such a salvation. Since I published my last volume I have been at work on a commentary on the Fasti of Ovid, which will accompany my edition and translation of that book. It is fairly advanced, but there is still a good deal to be done on it. Till it is Wnished, our headquarters will be Queen Anne’s Mansions, where I have most of the books necessary for my purpose. After that I must go on with ‘‘The Worship of Nature,’’ which will probably require two volumes to Wnish it. For that I shall probably have to return to Cambridge, where the great bulk of my library is stored in College. I wish we could meet and talk as of old about the things in which we are interested. Perhaps we may come to an hotel in Aldeburgh for a few days. We know by long experience how kind and hospitable you are, but the state of my Wife’s health makes it diYcult for her to pay visits: the eVort to listen for a long time together fatigues her. However, we have now had a long holiday and must soon put our necks back in the harness again. We suppose that in the Wne weather you have been enjoying many sails on the river. My Wife joins me in the kindest regards to Mrs Clodd and yourself. Ever your aVectionate friend J. G. Frazer

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P.S. When you write to Mrs Whale, my Wife begs that you will make her excuses to Mrs Whale for not writing to her, as on account of heavy necessary correspondence my Wife has been obliged to limit her letters to friends. Brotherton Library, Leeds University

To Edward Clodd, 8 March 1927 Queen Anne’s Mansions My dear Clodd, Your absence last week made a blank in our anthropological circle at Cambridge.1 We all regretted it and still more the cause. But your kind and interesting letter was read out, so we felt that you were with us in spirit, though not in body. The gathering was a large one, and included some men such as Peake and Torday whom I had never met before and whose acquaintance I was glad to make. Torday’s writings of course I have known for many years. The whole aVair passed oV without a hitch, thanks chieXy to the careful arrangements made in advance by my Wife, who was ably seconded by Fallaize. There was some good speaking, particularly by Edwin Smith, author of that Wne book ‘‘The Ila-speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia.’’ The speeches were taken down by a reporter, and will be printed and copies sent to all who were present and to all who were prevented from being with us. So I need not say more about them, as you will be able to read them. What struck us most about the gathering was the extreme cordiality with which the invitations were accepted and the warmth with which our guests thanked us for bringing them together and giving them an opportunity of meeting, for many had not met before. We felt as if the meeting went some way to create a fresh bond of union between men already united by our common interest in the science of man. Africa was strongly represented by Hobley, Driberg, Torday, and Smith; India by Hodson, F. W. Thomas, Theodore Morrison, and Sir Frederic Whyte; the PaciWc by Pitt-Rivers and Armstrong. Malinowski was unfortunately prevented at the last moment by illness from being present. He was to have spoken for the Weld workers. However, I believe he is all right again. Marett’s lecture on ‘‘The DiVusion of Culture’’ was entirely controversial and personal, which I regret. When next you write I hope that you will be able to report good progress in your health. The present mild spring weather should be favourable to your


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recovery and I trust that you will soon be able to be out and enjoying it. In a few weeks we go to Paris, where my Wife has some business to transact in connexion with the French translations of my books which she has arranged for. Also we shall be present at the Congress of the History of Religion held in honour of Loisy, who has resigned his chair at the Colle`ge de France.2 We shall miss much our good friend Albert Houtin. After Paris we may go on to Vichy to allow my Wife to get medical advice and, if it is thought advisable, to take a cure. I am bringing out a new edition of ‘‘Sir Rogerley de Coverley’’ [sic] with a new title (as the old one seems to have been misunderstood) and some new pieces. Of course a copy will go to you. It should appear about Easter. Ovid still occupies me, but is far from publication, though text and translation and a substantial part of the commentary are in type. My Wife’s translation of Aulard’s book on Christianity under the French Revolution is out and is being favourably reviewed. I read proofs of it and thought it an interesting book and the translation good, though perhaps I ought not to say so. I fear this is a dull letter, but I think my Wife intends to write you a more lively one about the aVair at Cambridge, which gave her much pleasure, chieXy because it seemed to give so much pleasure to our many friends. But she has much correspondence on hand at present and has preparations to make for our departure, so it may be a little while before she Wnds time to write you a chatty letter. Meantime accept this imperfect substitute. We write in all friendly greetings to Mrs Clodd and yourself. Ever, my dear Clodd, Your aVectionate old friend James G. Frazer Brotherton Library, Leeds University 1. The occasion was the Wrst time that the Frazer Lecture was delivered in Cambridge. 2. Alfred Loisy (1857–1940), French Hebraist and modernizing biblical critic.

To Edward Lyttelton,1 19 June 1927 Queen Anne’s Mansions . . . I deeply sympathize with and respect it [the religious view of life], though I do not share it. My childhood was passed in a religious atmosphere, for my dear and honoured parents were devout Christians . . . Our religious

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diVerences [which we never discussed], far from being a barrier, have rather been a link between us . . . for I have a tenderness for the old faith and for those who hold it, and I never forget how little we know and can ever hope to know about the ultimate problems. Hardly anything oVends me as much as the conWdent dogmatism of some rationalists. My work has lain chieXy among the crude elementary religions of the lower races; I have not seriously studied the great historical religions of the civilized peoples and have therefore little or no claim to speak about them. Such as my conclusions, tentative and provisional, are on the early history of religion and society. . . 2 Printed in the 2002 catalogue of Roy Davids, book seller. 1. Edward Lyttelton (1855–1942), headmaster of Eton and writer on religious subjects. This may well be one of the small number of extant responses by Frazer to letters he received from readers otherwise unknown to him. Thanks to Paul G. Naiditch, who brought this extract to my attention. 2. A good example of Frazer’s lifelong ambivalence about Christianity. His work is strewn with antireligious remarks of which Gibbon would have been proud; at the same time one also encounters sentimental moments when he harks back fondly to his youth and the faith of his parents.

To R. R. Marett, 27 June 1927 Queen Anne’s Mansions My dear Marett, Many thanks for sending me Mrs Stocks’ work on the folk-lore of the Lepchas. It is a valuable contribution to the subject and does her and you credit. I have noted some things in it for future reference. We also enjoyed the glimpse of you in your delightful den. If you have a totem, it must be the sun, for you seem to carry sunshine with you and to diVuse it all around you. We always feel the brighter for having seen you. You have no idea how glum I can be at other times. My Wife says I look like a tiger when I am at work, and she admires Bourdelle for having busted me on the pounce. Yours ever like a lamb J. G. Frazer I have just reconciled my three theories of totemism into a higher unity, as Edward Caird would have said in his Hegelian jargon, which used to make me sick at Glasgow. Look out for a footnote on the subject in my next book.1


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Sir Robert Marett 1. Edward Caird (1835–1908) was the idealist professor of philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1866 to 1903. Caird’s Hegelian jargon may have nauseated Frazer as a student, but he evidently found attractive Comte’s equally rigid and abstract three-step ladder of mental evolution. For more on the education Frazer received at the University of Glasgow, see the discussion in Frazer, 12–15.

To Baldwin Spencer, 5 October 1927 Queen Anne’s Mansions My dear Spencer, I return your proof. Few things in life would give me so much pleasure as such a dedication.1 So our names will go down linked together yours, I am sure, to a distant posterity and it will carry mine with it; for your reputation rests, and will long rest, on the fundamental facts of human history which you have discovered and which, but for you, might have remained unknown. You have opened up, in my opinion, a deeper mine into the past of human institutions than any one else has ever done; the rest seem by comparison to be scratching the surface. I have worked at the products you have brought up from the mine, as hundreds of people are doing and will do for generations to come. I look forward with intense interest to the publication of your book, containing the mature results of your long investigations. I cannot be too thankful that you have been granted the strength of body and vigour of mind to carry them to completion, and I trust that you will be spared yet for many years to do more work for anthropology. In a fortnight or so you will receive a volume containing some of the general results of my studies in the form of extracts from my published writings.2 There is nothing new in it (except a brief note on totemism on p. 363), but perhaps you will read over again some of the old passages for the sake of your friend. If you do you will see in the section dealing with Man in Society how much my thought has been occupied with the problems raised by your discoveries. When do you leave for Australia? We must meet before you go. There seems still so much to think about and to say. I wish your book could have come out before your departure so that we might speak of it together. My dear Spencer, I thank you from my heart for the honour you have done me. I am always your attached friend and thankful learner James G. Frazer


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Pitt Rivers Museum 1. Spencer dedicated The Arunta (London: Macmillan, 1927) to Frazer. 2. Frazer, Man, God and Immortality (London: Macmillan, 1927).

To A. E. Housman, 21 October 1927 Queen Anne’s Mansions My dear Housman, There is one word in the Fasti which I feel sure is wrong, though there appear to be no variations in the MSS and none of the commentators seem to have stumbled at it. In Fasti, V. 74 the commentators explain tangor by inducor ut credam, which is the sense seemingly implied by the context, but, so far as I can see, it is absolutely impossible that tangor can bear that sense. Various emendations have occurred to me. The Wrst was fertur (impersonal), ‘it is rumoured’. But is ferri used impersonally in this sense? It is not recognized in this sense by Smith’s Latin dictionary, the only one I have beside me. Then I thought of rumor, which, I take it, is possible without est. Also I have conjectured auguror aetati et or suspicor aetati et. But none of these is satisfactory. Rumor is perhaps the least bad. Can you help me to a correction of the text? If you can and will I should be grateful, and should of course be proud to acknowledge the help in my book. I have just seen the amusing spectacle of Mommsen tripped up by his sonin-law Wilamowitz on the question of the date of the Floralia, which Wil (that, I believe, is the correct contraction of Udalrich [sic] von WilamowitzMo¨llendorV) appears to have dated on the 1st of April instead of on the 1st of May. If you wish to see the father-in-law falling in a heap on the son-in-law look at Mommsen’s Ro¨mische Forschungen, vol. II, p. 13 note 30. It might perhaps be going too far to say that Wilamowitz knows as little of Latin as Mommsen knew of Greek, but at least it seems safe to say that Wil. is not a safe guide in correcting Greek texts or indeed in anything else. He has always seemed to me a sophist with an infallible instinct for getting hold of a stick by the wrong end. I do not forget how with the stick (wrong end up as usual) he belaboured my poor old friend Pausanias and no doubt many a better man. But this is a digression.1 Yours ever J. G. Frazer


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TCC Add. MS c.111: 17 1. Frazer neither forgot nor forgave Wilamowitz’s animosity toward Pausanias; here his own toward the German scholar surfaces once again, fully thirty years later. For a full discussion of this letter, Housman’s reply, and Frazer’s response, see Robert Ackerman, ‘Sir James G. Frazer and A. E. Housman: A Relationship in Letters’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 15 (Autumn 1974), 339–64.

From A. E. Housman to J. G. Frazer, 22 October 1927 Trinity College, Cambridge My dear Frazer, Cicero has several examples of the brachylogy found in de diuin. I 35 nec adducar (ut credam) totam Etruriam delirare; and I do not think it incredible that a poet should extend the usage to tangor, ‘I am inXuenced (to believe that)’. Somewhat analogous is Tac. ann. IV 57 permoueor (ut quaeram) num ad ipsum referri uerius sit. Such at any rate seems to be the sort of sense required, and I do not think that rumor would suit. Aetati et ending the Wrst half of the pentameter would have two metrical vices, for et is not one of the monosyllables which Ovid puts in that place, and he does not allow elision (as distinct from aphaeresis) at that point either. Wilamowitz may be all that you say in your sphere; but where I come across him, in verbal scholarship and textual criticism, he is a very great man, the greatest now living and comparable with the greatest of the dead. He has not written much on Latin, but what I have seen of it is good. (No, not all.) I am really bound to stand up for him, because last year one of my old pupils went to see him, and Wilamowitz spoke these words and said: ‘Although we Germans know that Housman is a rabid Germanophobe, we are unanimous in regarding him as the greatest authority both on Greek and Latin among the English-speaking peoples’. Unfortunately he is almost as wrong about my Greek at any rate as he is about my Germanophobia; but it is an amiable error. Yours sincerely, A. E. Housman TCC Frazer 1: 41


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To A. E. Housman, 24 October 1927 Queen Anne’s Mansions My dear Housman, I thank you heartily for your letter, which is very helpful. Your defence of ‘tangor’ seems to me sound and justiWed by the apt parallels which you cite. I had thought it quite impossible Latin. I now believe that Ovid wrote it, and with your permission (which I will take for granted unless I hear from you to the contrary) I will quote your explanation verbatim in my commentary and will suppress my conjectures, which I now see would have been corruption rather than corrections of the text. I am very glad to hear that you rate Wilamowitz’s Greek scholarship so highly. It is always much pleasanter to me to think well of a man than to think ill of him. As you know, I am not an exact verbal scholar either in Greek or Latin, and it would be the height of presumption (of which I hope I am incapable) in me to criticize the verbal scholarship of such giants as Mommsen and Wilamowitz. I ought not to have chuckled at what seems to have been a momentary slip of memory on the part of these great men. It is only on questions of history (not of language) that I occasionally venture to diVer from them both. From Mommsen I of course learn much, but with Wilamowitz, so far as I remember, I have never found myself in agreement about anything. Hence I am apt to regard him as a brilliant, but misleading, rhetorician rather than a historian. Wilamowitz’s opinion of your Greek and Latin scholarship is, I imagine, the one held by all English-speaking scholars all over the world, and it is very gratifying to us to learn that the same opinion is unanimously held in Germany. Once more many thanks for the instruction and pleasure I have derived from your letter. Yours ever sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Add. MS c.111: 16


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To Karl Pearson,1 23 July 1929 Albemarle Club, London Dear Professor Karl Pearson, Certainly you are at liberty to print my letter to Francis Galton in the life of him which you are preparing. I shall be happy to be thus allowed to bear my testimony to one whom in his life I so highly honoured and esteemed. You may add if you please (indeed I should be glad if you would add, to avoid possible misunderstanding) that, the ‘‘critical time of my life’’ referred to in my letter was in 1885, when my Trinity Fellowship would, in the ordinary course, have expired and the question of its renewal came before the College Council. In the same year, shortly before, at Mr Galton’s suggestion, I had read my Wrst anthropological paper (‘‘On Some Burial Customs as Illustrative of the Primitive Theory of the Soul’’) before the Anthropological Institute, with Mr Galton as President in the chair, and when the question of the renewal of my Fellowship was raised shortly afterwards, I believe that Francis Galton and my ever lamented friend Robertson Smith used their powerful inXuence to ensure the renewal and were successful. It was indeed a turning point in my life, and I shall never cease to be grateful to the two friends who stood by me at that critical time. I am glad that a Life of Francis Galton is being written and that the writing of it has been entrusted to such good hands. He well deserves such a memorial, which should be full of interest. He was indeed an admirable and lovable man from every point of view. Yours very sincerely James G. Frazer UCL, Pearson Collection 1. Karl Pearson (1857–1936), mathematician, statistician, and eugenicist. The biography is The Life, Letters, and Labours of Francis Galton, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914, 1924, 1930).

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To Bronislaw Malinowski, 1 August 1929 Albemarle Club, London My dear Malinowski, I have had today the pleasure of receiving from America your two handsome volumes, ‘‘The Sexual Life of Savages,’’ and I hasten to thank you for your generous and valuable gift. A perusal of the table of contents and a brief inspection of the book itself (all that I have yet been able to do) satisfy me that you have produced a work of very high scientiWc value which will throw much light, not only on the Trobrianders, but on the life of savages in general, and that it is written in a style of limpid and correct English which many, or rather most, Englishmen might envy without being able to imitate. I congratulate you heartily on your achievement, which will of course enhance your already high reputation as an anthropologist. The death of Baldwin Spencer is a great blow to our science, for he might still have done good work in the new Weld which he had set out to explore. Marett writes us that he had a letter written by Spencer in good spirits from Tierra del Fuego. The death must have been sudden. I have not learned the cause.1 ‘‘Nature’’ has asked me to write an obituary notice, but I have declined and suggested that you might be willing to write it. I hope that you will. I contributed to the ‘‘Times’’ a brief appreciation of his work,2 in which I mentioned that when he was in Paris last year I strongly advised him to continue his work in Australia and dissuaded him from going to Tierra del Fuego, largely on the ground of the risk to his health from the severity of the climate. Le´vy-Bruhl, who met him at my invitation in Paris, writes to me that he also advised Spencer in the same sense. I will enclose a letter of Pettazzoni on the chance that you may be able and willing to advise him on the matters on which he writes.3 I fear I cannot help him with the Hibbert Trustees. Beyond once refusing an invitation (enclosed like a butcher’s bill in a blue envelope) to dine with them I have had no relations whatever with them and do not know even who they are. Of course I could recommend him to my publishers the Macmillans, but fear that this might have an eVect the contrary of the one desired, for having lost money on some excellent anthropological works which I recommended to them, the Macmillans are more likely to reject than accept any books for which I stand sponsor. Perhaps you may be more fortunate with your publishers. From what I have seen of Pettazzoni personally and in his writings I am ready to believe that his forthcoming book on Confession deserves to be translated into English.


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We trust that Madame Malinowska’s health has improved, and that you yourself are well. We shall hope to see you soon after your arrival in England. When will that be? My Wife joins in kindest regards to Madame Malinowska and yourself. Yours ever sincerely J. G. Frazer As you are in Pettazzoni’s country, perhaps you might write to him direct, noting the various dates and addresses he mentions. [In Lady Frazer’s hand]: Please do what you can for Pettazzoni for my sake & for the Cause—& please tell me if you could do with us and Ceccaldi for the latter to give a talk at your school on Thursday 31st October only possible date. If yes—I would arrange things to the general satisfaction.] Beinecke Library, Yale University 1. The strange circumstances surrounding Spencer’s death, so far as they are known, are set forth in the memoir by R. R. Marett introducing the collection of letters edited by him and T. K. Penniman, Spencer’s ScientiWc Correspondence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), pp. 44–61. 2. Frazer, ‘Sir Baldwin Spencer’, Times, 27 July 1929, p. 14; repr. GS, 252–3. 3. RaVaele Pettazzoni (1883–1959), Italian anthropologist; his book on confession is La confessione dei peccati (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1922).

To J. J. Thomson, 7 February 1930 Hotel Terminus My dear Master, I venture to consult you about a matter which closely concerns my work and therefore to a certain extent the College, for I always regard my work as a duty which I owe to the College. For the last few years I have been mainly engaged in classical work, which I have been able to carry on with a limited number of books and which did not necessitate a continuous residence in Cambridge. But now, after a holiday of a few weeks, I propose to settle down to writing or completing a series of anthropological works for which residence in Cambridge, with constant access to my ethnological library, is almost imperative. But at present I have no home in Cambridge, and in these circumstances, it would very greatly facilitate the work which I have planned and hope to execute if the College would allow me to exchange my present single room in College for a set of

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Fellow’s rooms in which I could carry on my work with more space and privacy than I enjoy at present in my single room.1 I may be allowed to remind you that for some years I was allowed to occupy a set of rooms in Whewell’s Court with very great advantage to my work. Should the college grant me now the privilege for which I venture to ask, it would be my wish and intention to occupy the rooms regularly for the purpose of study for the greater part of every year, but I should prefer not deWnitely to pledge myself to do so, as circumstances might arise which might render frequent temporary absences desirable or necessary. But in that case I feel sure that I could trust to the indulgence of the College. I may add that during past years I have collected a considerable body of materials for the works which I have planned and of which several volumes have already been published. Another volume will be published in the course of this month and another, I hope, in March or April. I mention this as evidence that I am not misusing the leisure which the College has so long granted me for the purpose of study. Believe me, my dear Master, Always most respectfully and gratefully yours James George Frazer UL Add. MS 7654/F46 1. The college granted his request for a set of rooms, on condition that he spend at least 100 days a year in residence. This arrangement became moot once he lost his sight in 1931.

To A. E. Housman, 17 August 1930 Goldsmith Building, Temple My dear Housman, You will remember that you were so kind as to send me some queries on the specimen pages of my Ovid which had not been Wnally revised by me. In my Wnal revision of the text and translation I endeavoured to answer all your queries and thought that I had succeeded, but on looking into the matter again I Wnd that to my regret there is a mistake in one of my answers, though the mistake seems to have been committed by the printer after the sheet had been passed by me correctly for the press. The note bk III line 706 (vol. I p. 162) as published runs thus:


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706. caput AUDXM2m1 ¼ decus X1m2 It ought to run: 706. caput AUDX2Mm1 ¼ decus X1m2 I have not my photographs of the manuscripts beside me for comparison (they are now in Trinity Library), but in my collation of X I Wnd the variant of X in III.706 thus recorded: pontiWcale decus (caput by second hand in margin). In my collation of M I have no note on III. 706, from which I infer that it has the ordinary reading caput, not decus. In the last proof (the Wfth) which I saw of the text and translation the note ran thus: 706. caput AUDX2m1: decus X1m2 which I corrected thus: M 706. caput AUDX2m1: decus X1m2 It appears that the printer, while he inserted M, transposed the 2 from X2 to M, thus changing the correct MX2 into the incorrect XM2. Forgive me for saying so much about a small mistake, which your own acumen may already have detected and corrected. I will instruct the printers to make the correction in the plates (if they have been kept). If you should have honoured me by reading my book, or any part of it, and if, as is likely enough, you have detected other mistakes of omission or commission, I should be grateful if you would be so kind as to communicate them to me so that I might correct them on the chance (not perhaps a great one) of a future new edition. Or if you prefer to publish your corrections in a review or otherwise, I would equally receive them gratefully and attend to them carefully, nor would I in the least object to any severity of language you might employ in laying on the rod, believing as I do that your severity is always just and deserved.1 If you have seen H. J. Rose’s review of my Ovid in the last number of the Journal of Roman Studies you may have noticed that he accepts your defence of tangor in Fasti, V.74.2 Wyse, whom I consulted before you, agreed with me in thinking it impossible Latin, and when I communicated to him your defence of it, he was not (so far as I remember) convinced. I still have scruples on the point. When are we to have the Fifth Book of Manilius?3 I hope I may live to see and read it.

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We trust that you are well. We shall come to Cambridge in September and look forward to the pleasure of seeing you. It seems long since we met. My Wife joins me in all friendly greetings. Yours very sincerely James G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 42 1. Housman was (in)famous for the harshness of his reviews. 2. H. J. Rose, Journal of Roman Studies, 19 (1929), 235–9. Other reviews, all favourable, are Salomon Reinach, Revue Archeólogique, 31 (1930), 225; A. Ernout, Revue Philologique (1930), 429–32; J. Toutain, Journal des Savants (1931), 105–20. Both Reinach and Toutain were old friends, the latter having translated two of Frazer’s books into French. 3. Housman did complete the Wfth and last volume of his edition of the Roman writer on astronomy Manilius: M. Manilii, Astronomicon, v (London: Richards Press, 1930).

To W. F. Jackson Knight,1 23 November 1930 Goldsmith Building, Temple Dear Sir, I thank you for sending me your interesting essay on the Trojan Horse.2 Your theory is novel and ingenious, but the evidence on the subject seems too slight and scanty to prove it. In connexion with the magic circle of walls you might have referred to the Roman ritual at founding a city, which appears undoubtedly to have been intended to draw a magic circle round the city. The ritual is said to have been Etruscan, which so far goes to suggest an Oriental origin. I have a note on this on Ovid, Fasti, IV. 819 (vol. III, pp. 379 sqq.). With thanks and all good wishes, I am, Yours faithfully James G. Frazer The public talismans or Palladia, on which the safety of many ancient cities was supposed to depend, may have been thought to render them impregnable by tracing a sort of magic circle round the walls. I have a note on this subject on Pausanias, VIII. 47.5 (vol. IV, pp. 433 sq.).


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Harry Ransom Humanities Center, University of Texas, Austin 1. W. F. Jackson Knight (1895–1964), English classical scholar. 2. W. F. Jackson Knight, ‘The Wooden Horse’, Classical Philology, 25 (1930), 358–66. Frazer Wgures as well in many notes to Knight’s Vergil and Anthropology, ed. J. D. Christie (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967).

To Eric da Costa Andrade,1 16 March 1931 Albemarle Club Dear Professor Andrade, The book you so kindly promised me reached me on Saturday being forwarded from Cambridge, and since then I have been reading it with interest, pleasure, and proWt. I admire the wonderful lucidity with which you make plain the mechanism of nature (an excellent phrase) even to the least mechanical and least mathematical of readers. I gained some very elementary notions of ‘‘natural philosophy’’ (I am glad that you like the old phrase, which we still keep in Scotland) very many years ago under Sir William Thomson (as he then was) at Glasgow, where I took my degree in 1874. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) was a very bad teacher, at least to the elementary class which I attended, but I contrived to carry oV a conception of the uniformity and absolute mathematical regularity of nature which I have retained ever since as a basic principle of my thought, and which I am by no means disposed to surrender to the new-fashioned ‘‘indeterminism’’ of some eminent modern physicists. At the same time I entirely share your view that what we call the laws of nature are merely those working hypotheses which have been found to Wt best the observed facts, and that we must always be prepared to modify or discard the old hypotheses when they are found to be inconsistent with the facts. Thus, as I think you say in your book, science is not a rigid system but a growth; it is an inWnite progression towards a goal which forever recedes. In my time at Glasgow natural philosophy was a compulsory subject for the M.A. degree, and I regret that it has since ceased to be so. In my opinion no man is properly educated who has not at least a general conception of what you well call the mechanism of nature. It (I mean physics) is the most fundamental of sciences. Forgive this rambling letter. I wish to thank you heartily for the book and for its dedication, which adds much to its value for me. I have not yet Wnished reading the book (for I read slowly) and I promise myself still more pleasure and instruction when I come to your account of the Quantum Theory and

418


the Atom. I should be glad if we could meet and have a talk. It would give my Wife and me much pleasure if you could come and dine with us at the Albemarle Club (37 Dover Street) next Friday evening, say at 7 o’clock, before your lecture at the Royal Institution. If that evening does not suit you, any other evening that you might prefer would suit us and allow us more time for our talk. With very many thanks and kindest regards, in which my Wife joins me, I am, Yours sincerely J. G. Frazer TCC Frazer 1: 44 1. Eric N. da C. Andrade (1887–1971), English physicist. His book is The Structure of the Atom, rev. edn. (London: Bell & Sons, 1927).

To W. F. Jackson Knight, 7 April 1931 Albemarle Club, London Dear Sir, I thank you for your kind letter of April 4th. I have of course no objection, but the contrary, to your proposed references to the relevant passages in my Commentaries on Ovid and Pausanias, but I must ask you to omit the whole of the last sentence (‘‘The same authority. . . the magic of the defensive circle’’). I have no recollection of the custom of ‘‘drawing a palladium itself round a city,’’ and cannot at the moment (away from my books) remember the case to which I appear to have referred in my former letter. Besides a custom vaguely referred to, without any deWnite particulars of time, place, and authority, has no evidential value and is better omitted. With all good wishes, I am, Yours faithfully James G. Frazer P.S. My safest address is always Trinity College Cambridge. Harry Ransom Humanities Center, University of Texas, Austin


419

To J. J. Thomson, 2 May 1931 Albemarle Club, London My dear Master, I beg that you will do me the honour of accepting a copy of my new book ‘‘Garnered Sheaves,’’ which should reach you in the course of a few days. My reason for oVering it to you is that it contains an essay on the Scope and Method of Mental Anthropology which formed a general introduction to the two courses of lectures which I delivered some years ago in Trinity by invitation of the Council. The lectures were published in volumes II and III of my book ‘‘The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead,’’ but without the Introduction, which, however, was published in ‘‘Science Progress,’’ from which it is reprinted in ‘‘Garnered Sheaves.’’ The essay is complementary to the introductory lecture on Social Anthropology which I delivered at Liverpool in 1908 and to which my friend William Wyse referred in his bequest to the College as deWning the scope of the science which he desired to promote. Taken together the two lectures sum up my general ideas on the scope and method of Social or Mental (as distinguished from Physical) Anthropology; hence in view of Wyse’s bequest it occurs to me that you may possibly have an interest in glancing at the essay in ‘‘Garnered Sheaves.’’ I take this opportunity of saying that Wyse’s bequest in favour of Social Anthropology took me completely by surprise. Though he was one of my most intimate friends, and I remained in regular correspondence with him down to a few weeks before his death, he never (so far as I remember) gave me a hint that he took any special interest in anthropology or had any idea of doing anything to promote its study. On the contrary he told me many years ago that he intended to leave his property ultimately to the College for the promotion of the study of Greek history, the subject in which he was specially interested, and he never subsequently gave me a hint that he had changed his intention. Hence my great surprise at learning that change of intention for the Wrst time on reading [of ] his bequest in the ‘‘Times.’’ At the same time I was deeply gratiWed at this last and utterly unexpected mark of approbation from a friend for whose learning and character I had the very highest respect. I propose to come to Cambridge in summer to re-arrange my library and to prepare for writing a book on the Fear of the Dead for which I have collected much material and to which I refer in the preface to ‘‘Garnered Sheaves.’’ I never forget my accountability to the College for the use I make of the leisure which I owe primarily to its long-continued bounty and for which my gratitude will only end with my life.


420

When we were in Cambridge lately we were grieved to hear that Lady Thomson was suVering from the eVects of an accident. We earnestly trust that these were not serious and that she is making good progress to recovery. Believe me, my dear Master, With the greatest respect, Yours most gratefully and sincerely James G. Frazer UL Add. MS 7654/F48

I N D E X O F R E C I PI E N TS The following are recipients of letters from Frazer; page numbers in italics indicate letters to him. Letters from Lilly Frazer are listed separately, below. Andrade, E. da C. 417

Image, J. M. 23, 24, 25, 250

Baird, Spencer 34 Balfour, Arthur James 249 Black, John Sutherland 64, 234, 312 Budge, E. A. W. 216 Burkitt, F. C. 266, 267 Butler, H. Montagu 41, 84, 90, 145, 147, 148, 346, 347

Jackson, Henry 26, 30, 32, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 46, 49, 236, 239, 241 Jenkinson, F. J. H. 59

Clodd, Edward 95, 192, 253, 265, 274, 291, 343, 351, 356, 357, 359, 397, 402, 404 Conway, R. S. 220, 223 Cook, Arthur Bernard 214, 217, 287, 325 Cornford, F. M. 302, 304, 314, 319, 320, 322, 344, 369, 372 Dale, A. W. W. 286 Diels, Hermann 224, 254, 283, 287, 305 Fewkes, J. Walter 92 Fison, Lorimer 195, 275 Frazer, Christina (‘Tiny’) 60 Frazer Lectureship subscribers 373 Galton, Francis 28, 36, 44, 51, 100, 150, 217 Gardner, Percy 34 Gosse, Edmund 91, 153, 154, 243, 244, 246, 247, 259, 263, 264, 270, 273, 294, 297, 313, 315, 318, 360, 400 Haddon, A. C. 55, 56, 80, 81, 152, 205, 206, 208, 212 Hardy, W. B. 358 Harrison, Jane Ellen 232 Hartland, E. Sidney 93, 177, 178, 179, 183, 184, 186, 189, 197, 198, 201, 203, 204, 228, 230, 232, 271, 328, 330, 380, 382 Hobley, C. W. 292 Housman, A. E. 386, 408, 409, 410, 414 Howitt, A. W. 146, 150, 251, 256 Hu¨gel, Anatole von 87, 89, 90, 94, 120

Ker, W. P. 371 Knight, W. F. Jackson 416, 418 Lewis, W. J. 252, 331, 361, 387 Lyttelton, Edward 405 Macmillan, George A. 27, 28, 33, 45, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 94, 97, 114, 117, 122, 134, 155, 158, 160, 161, 174, 214 Malinowski, Bronislaw 348, 380, 383, 388, 390, 401, 412 Marett, R. R. 242, 248, 262, 272, 290, 306, 309, 311, 316, 350, 406 Moulton, J. M. 233 Murray, Gilbert 82, 84, 353 Murray, Margaret A. 290 No¨ldeke, Theodor 190, 193 Page, T. E. 385 Pearson, Karl 411 Roscoe, John 268 Rothenstein, William 342, 343 Rouse, W. H. D. 317, 354, 355, 363 Schechter, Solomon 95, 161, 218, 227, 285, 323 Shipley, A. E. 88 Smith, William Robertson 50, 57, 60, 61 Spencer, W. Baldwin 99, 111, 116, 118, 120, 135, 138, 139, 141, 157, 163, 209, 226, 227, 237, 277, 278, 280, 345, 374, 407 Steggall, Isabella Frazer (‘Tot’) 85, 376 Thomson, J. J. 395, 396, 413, 419 Tylor, E. B. 96, 122, 128, 129, 131, 132 Usener, Wilhelm 176

422

Index of Recipients

White, J. F. 102 Wilamowitz-Mo¨llendorV, Ulrich von 255, 258 Wright, William Aldis 113

Lilly Frazer to Edmund Gosse 245, 299 W. J. Lewis 288, 295, 324, 341, 365, 369, 370, 394

GENERAL INDEX (GB ¼ The Golden Bough) Addison, Joseph 346–8 Andreas, F. C. 191

Einstein, Albert 362 Encyclopaedia Britannica 20, 71, 103

Baird, Spencer F. 34–5 Baynes, T. S. 105 Beardmore, Edward 55, 56 Besterman, Theodore 339 n. Bevan, A. A. 110, 190 Black, A. & C. 61, 89 Black, J. S. 64–5, 191 ‘Manchester aVair’ 234 Blu¨mner, Heinrich 118 Boni, Giacomo 175, 176, 180, 217, 265 Brown, Alfred RadcliVe 291 Burkitt, F. C. 110, 267–8 Butler, H. Montagu 41–2, 84–5, 145, 347–8 renewal of fellowship 90

Fewkes, J. W. 92, 201 Fison, Lorimer 98, 100, 117, 136, 151, 157, 278 Fowler, W. Warde 84 Frazer, Christina (‘Tiny’) 60–1 Frazer, James George (chronological) education at Glasgow 17, 417 early reading 23–4 testimonial from Jackson 26 scholarly ‘debut’ 28–9 information on hopscotch 30–1, 32 proposes edition of Heine 33 importance of Dutch ethnographic material 36 ideas about ‘savage mind’ 37–9, 46–50 ideas about origins of exogamy 39–40 describes himself as lacking practical knowledge 41–2 origins of Questions 43 Wrst mention of GB 45 ethnographic queries to Haddon 55–7 oVers GB to Macmillan 62–3 critique of Smith’s Lectures on Religion of the Semites 64 oVers to resign fellowship 84 Wrst mention of Lilly Grove 89 renewal of fellowship 90 introduces Lilly Grove to Macmillan 94 Wrst mention of Baldwin Spencer 98 oVers Spencer’s book to Macmillan 98 memories of Robertson Smith 102–10 sees Spencer’s book through press 111–15 urges Spencer to keep observation separate from theory 120–1 resists Tylor’s attempt to abridge Spencer’s book 123 economic explanation of totemism 124–7 controversy with Tylor about use of Dutch materials 130–2 totemism as religious and essentially distinct from exogamy 136 origins and function of totemism 138–9, 141–4

Caird, Edward 406 Cambridge ‘Ritualists’ 21, 305 n.1, 382 n.2 Clodd, Edward 274 probable universality of totemism 253 excavations at Herculaneum 265–6 Colvin, Sidney 27, 28 Conway, R. S. 170 Cook, A. B. 225 critique of GB2 168–9 Cornford, F. M. funerary origin of Greek games 304 essay on origin of Olympic games 314 proposal for Frazer anthropological research fund (later lectureship) 319–23 Lilly Frazer on his role in establishing Frazer lectureship 365 Cumont, Franz 194 Acts of St Dasius 182, 185, 187, 189 Dale, A. W. W. 283 Diels, Hermann 283, 305, 313 German translation of GB2 224 admiration for German scholarship 254 Donaldson, James 27 n Do¨rpfeld, Wilhelm 155 Duckworth, W. L. H. 152 Durkheim, Emile 349

424

General Index

Frazer, James George (Continued ) personal Wnancial situation 153–5, 171–2, 243–6, 247, 297 visit to Berlin 219 the ‘Manchester aVair’ 233–7, 239–41 Civil List pension 249–50 Hebrew textual scholarship 267 informs Gosse of move to Liverpool 270 his hopes for Liverpool 276 controversy with Marett about origins of myth 307–12 Lang’s death 317 spiritualism 351 ironic element in his style 357 idea for ‘Folk-Lore in the New Testament’ 359 recalls Wrst meeting Gosse 360 Wrst reads The Origin of Species 362 Cornford’s proposal for Frazer fund for anthropological research (later Frazer lectureship) 319–23, 369, 372, 404 favourite poems 371 honoured at Sorbonne 376 possibility of Malinowski at Cambridge 389 query to Housman about Fasti 408 see also Steggall Principal publications (chronological): Totemism 36–71 Questions on the Manners, Customs . . . of Uncivilized or Semi-civilized Peoples 43–5, 55 GB1 21, 45, 62–3 Pausanias’s Description of Greece 71–2, 90–1, 97–8, 117–18 GB2 134, 137, 150, 159 Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship 169 GB3 173, 174–5 ‘Folk-Lore in the Old Testament’ 173, 272 Scope of Social Anthropology 172 n Totemism and Exogamy 277, 292, 293 Letters of William Cowper 315, 332 Folk-Lore in the Old Testament 168, 174, 336–7 GB (abridged ed.) 334, 338 Folk-Lore in the Old Testament (abridged ed.) 334, 338 The Library 338 Fasti 339, 387, 408 Aftermath 333 Galton, Francis 44, 100, 135, 148, 149–50, 411 JGF’s scholarly ‘debut’ 28–9 importance of Dutch ethnographic materials 36

poets’ predilections for seasons and times 51–4 Gardner, Percy 34 Gason, Samuel 42, 84, 137, 195 Gillen, F. J. see Spencer, W. Baldwin Glasgow, University of 17, 18, 19 n Gosse, Edmund 91–2, 153–5, 172, 264, 294, 300, 360, 400 Royal Literary Fund grant for JGF 243–6 misunderstanding about payment for review 259–60 chair at Liverpool 270 Gow, James 27 Grove, Elisabeth see Frazer, Lilly Haddon, A. C. 55, 56–7, 100, 152, 207 chastised by JGF 75, 208; forgiven 212 Torres Strait expedition 100 Harrison, Jane Ellen 156 Hartland, E. Sidney 93, 182, 187, 189 doubts about Acts of St Dasius 177 Lang’s critique of GB2 198 letter from Solomon Reinach 228 Hastings’ Dictionary of Religion 231 Heine, Heinrich 22, 33, 104, 167, 283, 386 Housman, A. E. Last Poems 386 JGF’s query about Fasti 408–10 Howitt, A. W. 136, 144, 150, 184, 201, 211, 238, 250 JGF disparages Lang 256 Howitt, Mary 140, 144–6, 150, 196, 204 Hu¨gel, Anatole von 87, 89, 90, 94, 120–1 Image, J. M. 19, 23–5 invitation to hear JGF lecture 250 intichiuma 79, 123 Jackson, Henry 21, 43, 82, 86, 110, 135, 144 hopscotch 30–2 menstruation in ‘savage’ society 37–9 ‘savage’ epistemology 46–50 James, William 77, 175 n Jenkinson, F. J. H. 59 Kennett, Robert 167 Knight, W. F. Jackson 416, 418 Lang, Andrew 74, 75, 77, 134, 144, 146, 151 critique of JGF 195 Lewis, W. J.

General Index Lilly F on Congress of History of Religions 288 Lilly F’s regrets about move to Cambridge 296 Lilly F’s description of knighthood investiture 324 Lilly F’s description of domestic life during war 342–4 Macmillan, George A. 64–6, 68, 94, 98–9, 114–15, 117, 123, 155, 160–1 size of translation of Pausanias 27–8 edition of Heine 33 Wrst mention of GB 45 JGF’s summary of GB 62 suggestion that JGF write guide to ancient Athens 158 Malinowski, Bronislaw 335 JGF enlists G. Murray’s brother to help 353 JGF’s preface to Argonauts of Western PaciWc 382–3 JGF pleased that Malinowski agrees with him 388 possibility of post at Cambridge 389 position at LSE 391 McLennan, Donald 104 Marett, R. R. 75 n.1, 169, 173 disagrees with JGF about Spencer and Gillen 248–9 disagrees with JGF about Robertson Smith’s views on mythology 307–12 Mau, August 158, 166 Middleton, J. H. 59, 60, 63, 86, 160, 360 Morgan, Lewis Henry 35, 144 Moulton, J. H. 236 ‘Manchester aVair’ 233 diVerences with Marett essentially semantic 242 Mu¨ller, F. Max 47, 76 Murray, Gilbert 82–3, 84, 156 n.1 JGF enlists brother’s help for Malinowski 353 Murray, Mary 156 n.1 Neil, R. A. 110 No¨ldeke, Theodor information on Iranian deities 191–4 Pagenstecher, Hermann 167, 196 Parker, K. Langloh 151 Perry, W. J. 389, 391 Postgate, J. P. 26

425

Renan, Ernest 395 Ridgeway, William 135, 139, 152, 157, 294 Roosevelt, Theodore 292 Roscoe, John 79, 96, 381 Mackie expedition 330; expedition delayed 350, 359 Roth, Henry Ling 141, 177, 179, 186, 195 Rothenstein, William 166 n, 342–3 Rouse, W.H. D. 51, 258 editor of Loeb Classical Library 354–5 Royal Literary Fund 154, 155, 243, 246, 247, 297 Russell, Bertrand 344, 362 Schechter, Solomon 95, 161, 167 JGF describes his visit to Berlin 219 Shipley, A. E. 89 Smith, G. Elliot 389, 391 Smith, William Robertson 20, 21, 40, 50, 57, 61, 82, 86, 89, 133 sacriWce in Nile 60 JGF’s memories of 102–10 views on mythology 307–12 Spencer, Herbert 29 Spencer, W. Baldwin 78, 99, 111–12, 114–15, 118–19, 138, 139, 141, 157, 163 JGF introduces to Macmillan 98 told by JGF to keep observation separate from theorizing 120–1 JGF’s theory of totemism 124–6 visit to England and theory of totemism 135 relation of totemism to exogamy 210 JGF disagrees with Marett about Spencer and Gillen 248–9 death of Howitt 278 Fison, Howitt, Spencer, and Frazer as ‘a band of brothers’ 280 Steggall, Isabella Frazer (‘Tot’) 85–7 JGF honoured in France 376 Theal, G. McCall 197, 198, 201, 203, 204 Thomson, J. J. 86 Tylor, E. B. 74, 78–9, 96, 123, 129, 145, 150, 156, 157 n.2, 216 introduces Roscoe 97 accuses JGF of unacknowledged debt to Wilken 122, 128–9, 131–2 Festschrift 173, 336 Usener, Hermann 176

426 White, J. F. JGF’s memories of Robertson Smith 102–10 Wilamowitz-Mo¨llendorV, Ulrich von 24 n.2, 73 JGF introduces Rouse 258 JGF disparages 408–10

General Index Wilken, G. A. 74, 122, 128, 129–32 Wright, William 102 Wright, William Aldis 114–15, 192 Wyse, William 324

Selected Letters of Sir J. G. Frazer

Selected letters

Selected Letters