Item 79 - Letter from Oliver Lodge to R. C. Trevelyan

Cud Hill House, Upton Saint Leonards, Glos. - Bob has given him great pleasure [by sending him his book "Windfalls"]: finds himself drawn first to the essays with personal names: Browning, Virginia Woolf, Meredith; these are all '[d]elightful', with '[s]uch sensitive discrimination in the literary criticism', combined with 'personal pictures - so vivid', such as 'Meredith's thumps with his stick in honour of the lovely Lucy Duff Gordon'; asks which of Meinhold's works Duff Gordon translated. Praises Bob's literary criticism: calls his defence of rhetoric 'timely needed & excelled'; might not have had Marlowe and the University poets 'without the Schools of Rhetoric of Oxford & Cambridge', and without Marlowe, there might have been no Shakespeare. Comments on 'how neatly' Bob 'refute[s] Edgar Poe's heresy!'. Likes what Bob says about Shelley's "Music when soft voices die": has sometimes read the last stanza as 'addressed by Shelley to himself'; cites 'Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind...' [from "To Jane: The Recollection"] as another instance of self-address. Diana [his wife] and the children are going to Sennen at Land's End on Monday; he himself is not, since he always finds South Cornwall 'too damp'; will go instead to the 'Brit[ish] Ass[ociation for the Advancement of Science]' in Broghton from 7-14 September. His eldest son [Oliver] is engaged to be married to Rosemary Phipps, a 'charming girl' living at Fairford on the upper Thames; she and Oliver have been to visit. Tom [his other son] is staying with Lodge's sister [Barbara Godlee?] near Manchester, but will join the rest of the family in Cornwall. He is 'very musical-studying'. Bob's grandson Philip is here, playing in the garden with Colin; he is a 'dear little boy'. Sends love to both Trevelyans; hope Bob's has a 'good holiday & enjoy[s] Italy'. Asks if 'the cause of Virginia Woolf's death [was] ever known'. Adds a postscript to say her heard a 'marvellous Beethoven piece' on the radio last night, the String Quartet in B flat, Op. 18 no. 6.