Item 45 - Letter from George Macaulay Trevelyan to R.C. Trevelyan

1 item

Wallington, Cambo, Northumberland. - Bob's book ["Polyphemus and Other Poems"] came out just after everyone had left Cambridge, but George will do 'all [he] can for it next term'. Likes it 'so very much', and has ordered six copies to give as presents. Thinks Roger [Fry's] illustrations 'very romantic and beautiful', and that they 'illustrated and explained & enlarged the idea of the poems a great deal'. Discusses the poems; thinks "The [Lady's] Bat" 'much the best thing' Bob has done, and 'in the way the most serious'. Lord Rosebery's speech 'a funny business': he 'said things that any Pro Boer would have been lynched for saying' after criticising pro-Boers 'more strongly than anyone'; George hopes what he says will 'get into common parlance'. Says that he himself 'went mad for two months last autumn... and saw men as idiots walking'; he wrote 'an exceedingly mad article... in which a lot of truth was buried in a hopeless amount of bunkum'; hopes Bob will not judge him on it if he sees it.