Item 351 - Letter from Charles Philips Trevelyan to R. C. Trevelyan

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Rounton Grange, Northallerton. - He and George have been to Kirkby Lonsdale, staying at Sedburgh on Saturday night and walking over to Kirkby on Sunday, getting there about half past ten. They 'soon found' [Theodore Llewelyn Davies'] grave 'in the lime avenue which leads from the Vicarage to the Church, and the end near the house and next his mother's'. They 'rather expected' all the family would be in church, but they were at home. Crompton came out to meet them and they went into the garden; he is 'most dreadfully crushed'. Thinks it will 'take all his friends can do to give him proper heart for life again'. The tragedy came when he was 'already badly overworked' - Theo's 'chief anxiety was about Crompton' the last time he breakfasted with Charles ten days ago - and he is 'thin and shrunken'. Hopes he will 'soon be able to have a really quiet time somewhere'. It is hard for them all, he thinks especially for Margaret, but believes Theodore 'was most of Crompton's life'.

He can himself dwell on Theodore's achievements 'to such an extent that I can almost forget what he might have done. He had bettered and even controlled the lives of so many people, set such a standard, that he almost palpably lives on in all sorts of men and all sorts of ways'. Thinks he 'might feel even more the loss of some charming smaller men, whose force was only in their immediate personal contact, and not in the wisdom and sanity of their whole life and action'. Good to know that Theodore was 'having a spell of exceptional cheerfulness and that he died without pain or consciousness'. But there is still a 'greater blank than [Charles] could have believed'.

Has written mainly as he thought Robert would like to know what happened from a firsthand source. Theodore was staying for a few days with his father at Kirkby; they were due to go to London on Tuesday for Lord Lingen's funeral. He went out for a walk that morning, but did not meet his father at the station; his father went on to London without him thinking he would follow. His father and Crompton began to worry when no message came and Theodore did not return to Kirkby. Early next morning they wired for 'the moors to be searched and to Harry to come from Scotland'; there are 'ugly pot-holes a hundred feet deep' on the moors which people have fallen into. The doctor met them at Crickholme station to say he had been found. Charles may have been the first person to know in London, as Theodore's servants 'in their distress' came to North Street with the news.

On going out on Tuesday morning, Theodore had 'dropped in to talk to a radical shopkeeper about Lord Rosebery's speech'; he also called on 'two old ladies, protegées of Margaret's' but they were too ill to see him so the last person to speak to him was 'their little maid'. He went over the fell to the Leck Beck and to Job's Dub, 'a deep pool where they had bathed since they were boys'. He must have slipped or dived badly and hit his head on a rock; they are sure that he was 'temporarily stunned and was drowned while unconscious'. He was found 'some way below the pool', having been washed along by the stream, and they say 'he looked very beautiful on Thursday when they saw him for the last time'.

It seems to have been a 'calm and happy death', after a life 'perhaps not of turmoil but certainly not all smooth and easy, such as we might all wish to die, and such as we shall none of us deserve as much as him'.