Pièce 187 - Letter from Sir George Trevelyan to R. C. Trevelyan

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Welcombe, Stratford on Avon. - Glad to hear that Robert has landed safely; 'awful to read' of the passengers on the cross-Channel boats kept at sea all night by bad weather; asks 'is even Assisi worth such a price?'. Would love to see Arezzo again and wants to know what the hotel was like; it used to be spoken of as the 'best hotel between Florence and Rome', before Brufani [at Perugia], and he thinks his parents and sister were 'the first names in the hotel book'. Notes what Robert says about [Samuel Butler's] "Fair Haven" and will see to it. Cannot 'manage Conrad as a novelist', nor Chesterton as an essayist. has been reading about the Phalaris controversy with great 'interest and amusement'; George gave him a copy of Attenbury's 1698 book a while ago, and he got Bentley's "Phalaris" as a prize at Harrow; they bear out everything that [Thomas] Macaulay says. Good to be 'in company with so strong and able a man as Bentley', whatever the topic; he is an even greater controversialist than Newman, Porson, Gibbon or Pascal.