Pièce 42 - Letter from R. C. Trevelyan to Caroline Trevelyan

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Hotel Timeo, Taormina [on headed notepaper]:- There is 'beautiful weather again', though the nights are rather cold. Everything is 'rather backward this year, and the almond trees are only just beginning to blossom'; there are many in the Cacciola garden, which 'will be a very Eden in a day or two'. Is still living a 'studious and simple life, not cottoning' to any other hotel guests, but occasionally taking meals with the Cacciolas. They have many books, and a 'really fine collection of illustrated books of all kinds, Nashes, Bidas, Dorés etc'.

Is going to Syracusa for a day on Thursday or Friday, to 'go over the place with Dr [Thomas] Hodgkin, and to listen to long-drawn comparisons between the Syracusan and Crimean campaigns'. Will 'remember and compare the Greenleighton Epypolae [Greenleighton was a moor with a prominent hill in Northumberland near Wallington, Epipolae a fortified plateau near Syracuse]' when he visits its 'prototype', though he fears the animals 'that browse about its foot will be a sorry lot and nothing to compare to MacCracken's prize sheep'. But 'the genuine Theocritean shepherd still survives here, still plays on a συριγξ (or reed) and still calls out σιτθ to his goats'. Surprisingly, he was as unable to buy a text of 'the great Sicilian poet [Theocritus]' in the capital of the island, Palermo, 'nor even a Thucydides'; he did manage to 'rout out an Odyssey' to re-read the story of the Cyclops, which is set 'in a cave a few miles south of this place'.

Her 'P. M. Budget [a newspaper his mother has sent to him?] is 'very welcome'; also sees Truth, which someone at the hotel takes. Has had a cold, but got rid of it; otherwise has been in 'first-rate health'. Hopes his family are 'all enjoying life, and not suffering too much for being London-pent'.