Item 230 - Letter from R. C. Trevelyan to Sir George Trevelyan

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The Shiffolds, Holmbury St. Mary, Dorking. - They are 'at last having delightful weather', and have heard the cuckoo most days this week. Julian is 'especially delighted by the cuckoo', and 'goes out early in the morning by himself to listen for it'. They discuss which poem is better - Logan's 'Hail, beauteous stranger...', 'if it is his and not [Michael] Bruce's, which seems uncertain', or Wordsworth's 'O blithe newcomer...'- and decide that 'on the whole' they prefer Wordsworth's, though like the other too; thinks it was a favourite of [John] Bright.

Took Julian out for a walk today, and 'he did a lot of climbing fir-trees, at which he is fairly good now. When he had got up as high as he could, he said he wished to write a poem, and dictated one to [Robert], not a very good one, but probably as good as most poems written twenty feet from the ground up a tree'.

Mrs Gibson leaves them next Wednesday; she has been with them three months, with her baby, and 'has been a very pleasant inmate'. Her husband will have to stay in America for now, but 'they seem to be treating him very hospitably'. Bessie and Julian are going to Aunt Annie's on the 14th, 'unless someone else at the Park comes out with the measles before then', which is unlikely. They are reading Guy Mannering aloud; Bessie 'has a prejudice against Scott, but has to admit that this is a good book'. She is however puzzled that 'Dirk Hatteraick is a Dutchman, and yet always talks German'; at first she believed 'Scott must have thought the Dutch talked German', but Robert told her 'Scott knew more about modern Europe than that'; still, it is odd. Sends love to his mother. They are 'so glad to hear that Booa is really better'.