Item 312 - Letter from R. C. Trevelyan to Sir George Trevelyan

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c/o Thos. Cook & Son, Athens, Greece. - Has now been at Athens for a week; will stay another week, then go on, probably to Nauplia [Nafplio]. Tomorrow morning will catch the 6.30 train at the Peloponnesus station (gives the Greek for railway station) and go with two friends to Megara to begin a walking tour taking in Pagae, Aigosthena (where they will sleep), and Eleusis, from where they will take a train back to Athens. His friends are Heurtley, librarian and sub-director of the 'British School of Archaelogy [British School at Athens], where Robert takes his meal every day, and Cox, a 'Balliol man who is a student for a year or so'; they will be 'very good companions'. Went up Pentelikon with them last week. Also went by train to Eleusis with 'Greenwood an 'Emmanuel Classical don (an apostle) and his friend the Bursar of Emmanuel'; they walked back the thirteen or so miles to Athens along the 'ιερος όδος' [rightly ιερά όδος: Sacred Way], the 'dustiest road' Robert had 'ever seen'. The scenery however is 'very lovely', and they 'bathed in the bay of Salamis just where the road leaves the sea', turning through the pass of Daphni; this is 'a 12th century monastery, with fine mosaics somewhat like those at Monreale'. Eleusis itself is a 'wonderful site', though there is little left of the House of the Mysteries.

Has been twice on the Acropolis and will go again, and once up as far as the theatre [of Dionysus, or the Odeon of Herodes Atticus?]: 'one gets tired in this hot dusty town if one tries to do too much in the day'. Thinks he likes the countryside best really; the Peloponnesus from the sea, both the shapes of the hills and the colours, is 'very beautiful'. The view from Pentelikon is a fine one: you 'see the whole of Attica... and feel that Theseus, or whoever it was united (συνωκισεν) Attica, must have been a great man, and his job a very difficult one'. Notes the lack of trees near Acharnae, whose people used to be 'great charcoal-burners, even on that side of Parnes [Mount Parnitha].

Hopes his father got his postcard: the head is an old bronze. If the card was crumpled, it was because Robert took it in his pocket up Pentelikon. Likes some of the 'pre-Persian statues almost as much as the Periclean. A great deal was found buried in the Acropolis, as foundations for the later temples... Several of them have still their old paint on them'.

Must now go and call on some Greek friends, the Kalapathakes, to whom he has an introduction; they 'live just opposite the beautiful arch of Hadrian' near Hadrian's Temple of Zeus; may go to the theatre after tea but it shuts at sunset.

Bessie wrote to him more than a week ago from Welcombe, the time post usually takes to travel from Greece to England. Is sorry to hear his father has not been well; hopes his parents are now both in good health. Expects Julian will be home by now, and that he and Bessie will soon go to the Netherlands. Robert hopes to be back in early May.

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