Outgoing Harvard President writes about Retirement

An interesting letter by the outgoing President of Harvard University Charles W Eliot as he ponders life in retirement. Eliot's forty year tenure of the Harvard Presidency is credited with transforming the university into one of the world's leading academic institutions. But in this letter he remarks 'I am not looking forward to repose after I cease to be President of Harvard University next May but only to be working under reduced pressure.... and I propose to follow familiar paths, and to decline to enter on new ones.' Eliot refers to a possible visit to England and speculates whether old age will allow this. There is an intriguing discussion of the efforts by London University to poach 'Professor Richards' who 'although only forty years old, is decidedly the best American chemist today, and besides, a very winsome person.' Eliot is presumably referring to Theodore William Richards who stayed at Harvard, only to win a Nobel Prize in 1914 for his work on atomic weights. The letter is addressed to 'E J Broadfield', a leading figure in Manchester intellectual life at the time. It is signed in full and dated December 27, 1908, with the usual fold lines. (C3)