Item 94 - Letter from R. C. Trevelyan to Caroline Trevelyan

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Seatoller, Borrowdale, Keswick. - Thanks his mother for her last letter. Is glad she met [Herbert James] Craig, who is an 'excellent person', who was in Scrutton's chambers when Robert was there. [Henry Francis] Previté is a 'great friend of his' and says he is 'really a first-rate candidate'. Robert would 'like to see him again very much'.

The weather has been 'excellent', with just one stormy day. Bessie seems to be getting on very well at Rottingdean with Mrs Salomonson, and is 'probably going to bathe'. Expects Dowden's [biography of Robert] Browning 'would be dull. Chesterton's is certainly lively' though it 'annoyed [Robert] very much': thought Chesterton 'said all the wrong things it was possible to say about Browning as a man of letters, and in fact entirely showed himself up as a critic'; he was 'more interesting about Browning as a man, but even there was exaggerated and paradoxical'. Admits this may not be fair, as he 'never can stand Chesterton'.

Has a 'few scanty notices of the Chantrey bequest committee' in his newspaper; the [Royal] Academy's defence 'has certainly been a fiasco, as it was bound to be'. Hopes 'the whole gang of them will get thoroughly discredited at last', as until that happens there is 'no hope of any adequate recognition of what is really good in modern art', or reform of the mismanagement of the National Gallery. Poynter 'has just succeeded in swindling Fry out of the Slade Professorship', as he thinks he has already told her; this is 'only one instance of the fatal power for evil that his gang possesses'.

Is getting on with his own work, 'rather slowly "eppur si muove"'; his father is also getting on with his, doubtless a little faster.

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