Trevor-Roper was a remote figure to his three stepchildren during the early years of his marriage. However, he developed an increasing intimacy with the two eldest, James (b. 1942) and Xenia (b. 1944), as they became bright, intense teenagers whose intellects he could stimulate, enrich, and guide. The following two letters were written when James was a 17-year-old pupil in his final term at Eton, estranged from his father and in low spirits. Encouraged by his stepfather, Howard-Johnston would study classics at Christ Church, beginning in the Michaelmas term 1960. Howard-Johnston would go on to become a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and University Lecturer in Byzantine studies 1971–2009. Trevor-Roper’s correspondence with him draws on their shared knowledge of Greek literature.
Boughton House, Kettering1
My dear James,
Your letter arrived this morning just before we set off for a week-end at Boughton. I am so sorry you are ill, and I do hope you will be better quickly. Meanwhile here is a brief booklet (please don’t lose it) on an 18th century Bluestocking for your list of those tiresome creatures. They began, I’m afraid, long before Molière. There were some famous Renaissance Bluestockings. At the Reformation there was another crop of them. The Duchess of Suffolk, the Queen of Navarre, etc. In England the most bluestocking generation, I think, was that of queen Elizabeth. Her contemporary, Lady Jane Grey, for instance, when they came to offer her the crown instead of Bloody Mary, was reading the Phaedo in Greek.2 Queen Elizabeth herself of course was tremendously learned, and on one famous occasion reduced a Polish Ambassador to speechlessness by a brilliant extempore tirade in Latin.3 And then, in the 17th century, there is Lady Conway,4 who knew everyone who was anyone in the intellectual world, and had famous incurable headaches, and ended a Quaker. But as a general rule I think that Bluestockings flourish in ages of Reform. They take to Reform in a big way, and then, being feminine and conscious of not having the rest of their sex with them, and of seeming eccentric, they overdo it. Look up Harriet Martineau in the Dictionary of National Biography.1 She was a particularly tiresome Unitarian Bluestocking, a little later than Mrs Macaulay.2 You might do a turn on her: I expect she was related to your classics tutor.3 And finally, of course, there are the Suffragettes.
You asked for Lucian. I haven’t sent him for I only have him in four volumes. If you think he might interest you, why not get Fowler’s translation—or the Loeb edition—out of the Library (it must be there) & see whether you like him first? I nearly sent you a book, Dill’s Roman Society at the End of the Roman Empire,4 but I didn’t feel sure that you would be interested in it. I thought of this because you suggested looking at some period of antiquity outside the famous centuries. If you are, I really will.
In fact I wrote you a long letter about a week ago, but Mummy came & read it and then made a fuss and said it would upset you and I mustn’t send it—although in fact I can’t think it could have had any such effect since it only concerned books and such things! But she evidently thinks I upset you, and she wouldn’t let me come and see you, which I wanted to do. I am terribly sorry if I do upset you. I hope I don’t. I only want you to find your own feet and gain confidence in yourself, as I am sure you will do if only you don’t bother about yourself too much and will learn to speculate a bit and take risks.
I didn’t want you to see the psychiatrist, but perhaps I am prejudiced. During the war, I was ill & was sent to a military hospital. They couldn’t discover what was wrong with me—it was something internal—so, as institutions always do, they passed me on to someone else. They said it must be imagination & therefore I was a psychiatrist’s case. I saw the psychiatrist, who pomped and pumped away and doubtless made some grave report about my ego or id. Then I got out of the hospital and went to a proper doctor who at once said that I had got appendicitis. So my appendix was cut out, and I lived happily ever after, with a very low view of psychiatrists. But I mustn’t prejudice you against them.
Do get better quickly and write again. I do really like hearing from you and am sorry I don’t hear very much.
Don’t take any views from Juvenal! I really think he was an odious man. All that flogging of dead horses… And as for the satire on women—No 6, I believe—I thought it was always expurgated from school texts!
All love from
Hugh