Pièce 50 - Letter from R. C. Trevelyan to Caroline Trevelyan

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Grand Hotel Valescure, St Raphael [headed notepaper]:- Is settled here ‘in the luxury of a ten francs pension’, waiting for the rain to stop. The hotel is ‘full of friends of Mr Bowen, sent here by him’: [J.W.?] Sandilands, the ‘Grahams of Harrow, and Mrs Graham’s parents Colonel and Mrs Stewart’, and the [Charles Alfred?] Elliotts. At a villa nearby is Bowen’s friend [William Henry] Bullock Hall, on whom Robert and Sandilands called yesterday, and who has leant Robert ‘an essay of his on the meeting of Lepidus and Antony at the bridge of Les Arcs’ which he wants him to send on to his father; Hall ‘cannot talk of anything now for half an hour without dropping into the subject of the Romans in the Riviera’, but is an ‘amusing neighbour’, and what Robert saw of the household ‘promise[s] some entertainment’. Will write to the Rendells [Stuart Rendel’s family?] at Cannes to see if they would like him to visit.

Although there has been no fine weather, Robert‘can see this is just the country’ for him, with its ‘indefinite miles of not too mountainous forests, and a network of good paths and no tourists… an infinite variety of trees and shrubs, and.. the sea not too far off’, with almost all the guests at the hotel his friends. Expects he will ‘stay well into February, and not go anywhere else’. Expects she will go up to London before long. Has little news; will have more when the sun comes out, as the current weather ‘is really very like Sirocco weather in Italy, and makes the mind as well as the soil damp and clammy, though not in so unpleasant a way’. Has however done some work, and will get on well this week. Was ‘delighted to see that Earl Russell has at last triumphed over his wicked old mother in law’. Hawkins 'has behaved very well'. Supposes C[harles] and G[eorge] are still at Wallington.