6 Downside Road

ENP Moor was a ‘town’ (ie day) pupil at Clifton College. Rather than lodge at one of Clifton’s boarding houses, he stayed with his aunt, presumably Frances Hannah Moor who was a resident of Clifton for much of her life.¹

Moor was eighteen – ten years junior to Symonds – when the pair began to walk together and exchange romantic letters. Their relationship evidently sparked suspicion, and Symonds confided that “A little shadow overcast us yesterday. His aunt at Clifton doubts about me. But if I can see her and have fair speech allowed me I shall conquer her. I do not yet know the woman I [could] not overcome in such a cause.”²

1. Street directories list Frances H Moore as resident at Ravensthorpe, Downside Road from around 1868 – 1878. [↩]
2. John Addington Symonds, Robert L. Peters (Editor), Herbert M. Schueller, The Letters of John Addington Symonds, Vol. 2 : 1869-1884, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1968, p65 [↩]