Item 52 - Letter from Simon [Reginald Popham] Nicholson to R. C. Trevelyan

1 letter

Tallboys, Abinger Hammer, Surrey. - They are thinking a great deal about Trevy at the moment: the 'darkest hour comes before the dawn', and he will soon be 'made whole and restored to [his] hills'; it is worthwhile to experience darkness, if only to appreciate light. 'Much depends on the nurses': for his own last operation, he was 'waited on hand and foot by Irish nuns, all young & of the most ravishing beauty'; he 'look[s] forward eagerly' to his next. Trevy's 'too slender sheaf of poems' [this year's "From the Shiffolds"] are a 'delight'. Likes the translation of Menander 165 best, but the 'matitutinal procedure practised by Simylus' reminded him 'almost too vividly of [his] Molly'; regrets that unlike Simylus she has 'no female Afrite with cracked heels to devil for her'. Hopes that Trevly will 'bring forth more gems' in the nursing home. Adds a postscript saying they have just had a 'scrap' from Nicky [Mariano], 'sadly over-worked as usual': B.B. [Berenson] should get her a secretary.