Pièce 267 - Letter from Sir George Trevelyan to R. C. Trevelyan

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Welcombe, Stratford on Avon. - Good to read about Julian's 'encounter with country things' [see 46/230]. The people around Stratford who 'profess to be weather-wise', and perhaps are so, say that after a long winter like this, Spring will come very quickly and be 'fruitful'; true that he has never admired the daffodils so much. Caroline was saying she 'always has the cadence of the Bruce-Logan cuckoo [a poem attributed to both John Logan and Michael Bruce] in her ears; [John?] Bright always recited it to them at 'his annual dinner - no other guest, and a fruit table, by special request - at 30 Ennismore Gardens'. They have finished reading "The Grasshoppers" [by Cecily Sidgwick] which is am 'admirable novel', and are about to begin Gosse's "Life" of Swinburne. Interested to hear Elizabeth's opinion of [Walter Scott's] "Guy Mannering" and 'Hatteraick's language' [in that novel]; expects it was 'good enough for Scott's readers', and it is 'as like Dutch' as the 'serious conversation in "Old Mortality"' which Sir George has been reading to Mary Caroline was to 'the language which Morton and Edith must have talked'.