Item 4 - Letter from Roger Fry to R. C. Trevelyan

1 item

29 Beaufort St., Chelsea, S.W. - Asks when Bob is going to return from 'the fields of Enna' [Sicily] and sing 'songs of Persephone to fit my picture'. Jokingly objects to Bob's 'monstrous insinuations about the girls school' [see 13/1] and says he has been 'practicing fencing every day' to avenge the insult and get exercise. Fences with Hubert Crackanthorpe who has moved in nearby; has decorated the house 'with infinite care' but the way Crackanthorpe has furnished it has 'destroy[ed] all my schemes of colour'. Has a pupil three mornings a week: [Charles] Lacoste is 'quite ignorant but with much talent for a queer type of imaginative design'; thinks he has illustrated Baudelaire very well. Has therefore done little painting himself, only 'drawing with the pupil'; thinks this is good for him and is getting keener than ever on it. Asks how Bob's poetry is going; hopes he 'won't write one in 22 thousand lines like the Indian'. Has been thinking about metre; tells Bob to 'keep [his] hair on', as he begins to see why he is 'so furious about [Robert] Bridges'; tells him not to stay away 'for fear of having to talk about this'.

Appears, abridged, in Fry, R., & Sutton, D. (1972), Letters of Roger Fry / edited with an introduction by Denys Sutton. London: Chatto and Windus, Vol 1 p 165

Annotated in pencil with the number '4'.