Pièce 200 - Letter from Sir George Trevelyan to R. C. Trevelyan

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Welcombe, Stratford on Avon. - Bessy read them Robert's account of the Maharajah at breakfast, and Sir George received the letter from Benares [Varanasi]; he himself was there, but probably only between trains; Warren Hastings was there longer and liked it less. Has a vague recollection of a ghaut [ghat], a little like Robert's postcards. That was fifty years ago and much has changed; today is Gladstone's birthday, and it says much about the man that he is remembered 'half a generation after his death'. Sorry that [Goldsworthy Lowes] Dickinson was so ill; hopes he is 'permanently right again' now. In the future, Robert will be glad to have got to know a 'great native household' [that of the Maharajah of Chhatapur], rather than going to Burma; he himself prefers his 'thorough, and rather dearly-earned knowledge of Calcutta' than to have seen more, 'even more romantic objects'. Their journey south on Friday was 'arduous' but went well; Julian behaved perfectly and enjoyed it very much. Is reading the later volume of Gibbon, and more or less agrees with Robert that 'they are a stately bridge between the ancient and the modern world'; keeps thinking what a 'bright man of the world' Gibbon was.