Item 20 - Letter from George Macaulay Trevelyan to R.C. Trevelyan

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Tells Bob to write if he does not get his boots: George would be sorry to see him 'like a French grenadier of 1796'; ads that he himself 'would have fought with greater pleasure in that army than in any other... just for the first four or five glorious years'. Had a 'great field day' here last weekend; wisely Sir George did not come to the meeting, which would have been 'rather an ordeal' as there were so many people, but 'held his own at a breakfast' in George's rooms on Sunday. Has discovered that almost everything by Swift amuses him; spends an hour on the Backs reading Swift or Pepys every day; would not advise Bob to try as the 'political allusions' are crucial, but it is a 'splendid insistence' of what Bob said about 'history as - what shall we say - the dressmaker [emphasised] of literature'. Is busy reading and thinking, as he is giving a paper to the 'Sunday Essay [Society]' this week and 'a greater society' [the Apostles?] the week after, the first papers of the sort he has written.