Pièce 78 - Letter from Sir Charles Trevelyan to R. C. Trevelyan

Wallington, Cambo, Morpeth. - Glad to get Bob's Homeric hymn [to Demeter, in this year's "From the Shiffolds"], and would like to know 'more about its preservation and whether it has anything to do with the Homeric poems'; asks how many hymns there are. As usual, much admires the 'grand simplicity' of Bob's rendering. Bob will have heard that [Andrew] Baird has died, in three days of an illness which 'culminated in a brain haemorrhage of the sort that Franklin Roosevelt died of'. He was very rarely ill, so they were 'surprised at the tragedy'; he was a 'grand and trusty fellow' and is a 'lamentable loss to [Charles] and to all the countryside'. Has to find a new forester, a new head gardener, and a new parson for Cambo all at the same time.