Item 314 - Letter from Sir George Trevelyan to R. C. Trevelyan

Welcombe, Stratford on Avon. - Envies Robert having heard the Fairy Queen [see 46/254]; Purcell is the 'only name which really fascinates' him in music, apart from that of Mrs R. C. Trevelyan, the effect of allusion to him in Browning's Waring', and of reading about him in the 'list of composers at the beginning of the Anthem-book in Trinity Chapel' as he sat in his surplice like the four or five hundred other young men around him in 'the most impressive Church ceremony (Uncle Tom used to say) except perhaps the Beguinage at Ghent'. Thanks Robert for sending [Lucian's] Peregrinus which goes well with the Alexander Pseudomantis and the On Salaried Posts in Great Houses [whose title he gives in Greek]; considers to be 'the most human pictures of ancient society', and recommends Robert to read the other two if he has not done so. Is going to read gradually through Bergck, except for the Pindar and the fragments taken from ancient grammarians; will use Robert's letter from 1900 with the 'first sketch of a charming little poem on the "roses"'. Good to hear of Robert and Julian's bonfires; cannot remember if he saw their bonfire for the 'second jubilee of 1897' [Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee], which was the best he himself ever saw: the estate was fully staffed, and the estate workers built it forty foot high of brushwood soaked with paraffin.