that is, you.4Trevor-Roper was not enamoured of Borders society, but he sometimes submitted to Xandra’s pleasure in visiting her friends with great Scottish houses.
Chiefswood, Melrose
My dear James
I long to write to you, but I seldom do. Always, as I sit at my desk, I see in front of me that mound of paper. Those boring letters to answer. Those bills to pay. Those forms to fill in. Those theses to examine. Those books to review. And then, when I have begun to cope with the easiest and least important of these problems, come the interruptions. The telephone. The gardener. The need to fetch a cheese from Melrose. The Sheriff. Two impertinent small boys spotted tickling for trout in the stream, immediately in front of the house. A flock of sheep which have broken into the garden. The Duchess of Argyll.1 So what do I do? To escape from it all, I saunter out into the woods, idly to tie up wild honeysuckle, or trim a weeping beech, or commune with a tawny owl which has made its nest there and braves the daylight, or watch the roe-deer which trip elegantly past me, or tickle a woodlouse, or an earwig (I love earwigs: primeval creatures, living fossils, like antique servitors in a Greek chorus, or gardeners in Shakespeare’s plays—I am thinking of the garden scene in Richard II—or old Scotch retainers in Sir Walter Scott). And so the day passes, and I have done nothing. The mound rises. A smell of decomposition issues from the nethermost papers. And still I have not written to you.
What can I tell you? We have been here almost continuously, although I went to Oxford for a week at the beginning of August, to fix the graduate quota, and we have just taken a jaunt to the West. Little by little, I am discovering this strange northern peninsula. It all began with Mummy’s bête noire, the D. of A. Mummy, as you know, was prepared to suspend her animosity in exchange for a sight of Inveraray, and it happened that the Duchess, who, now that she is a Duchess, reckons on capturing the intellectual world from above, instead of painfully creeping into it from beneath, invited us for two nights for a domestic concert. So we went, via Galloway, and spending the first night at Lochinch, near Stranraer (another socially suitable address). I must confess that I was really rather taken with the Western Highlands. Perhaps I should examine them further. There is something wonderfully seductive (in fine weather) in those placid, mild, romantic lagoons and islands into which, as into a neglected dustbin, we practical Saxons have driven the impractical Celts. But to live there … I must admit that my heart shrinks at the thought, especially after the Inveraray concert, to which the natives came, in kilts and trews, with sandy hair and pink, freckled faces. Their talk was of bullocks.1 One lady in a blue dress came up to me: ‘Are you Hugh Trevor-Roper?’ she asked. Yes, I replied, my heart sinking as I awaited the unctuous litany of insufficiently sophisticated praise for the less valued of my works. Then she said, ‘I once bought half a horse from you’.
I wonder when you will come here. We will try—if he is at home—to lure Steven Runciman over for you. Moses Finley, who is at Edinburgh for the Festival (I discovered this thanks to a letter he had written to the Scotsman), is coming to lunch next Wednesday (28 Aug). Sidney Watson is coming to stay next week.1 And then, on Sunday, there is a slight social quandary. My pupil Alan Clark wrote tentatively to ask if they could stay on their way north to Banff. I had to tell him that, alas, he was permanently in the dog-house as far as Chiefswood (or 8 St Aldates) was concerned, and have got him rooms at the George and Abbotsford2 … But come before 17 Sept when I have to go south for four days. At least, I am booked to do so, but recent events may convulse my programme. I am to go south (a) to attend an Anglo-Czechoslovak historical congress; (b) to examine a D. Phil. candidate who needs to be examined then because he is off to Prague on 21 Sept;3 (c) to appear on television with a Russian. I strongly suspect that no Czechoslovak historians, & no Russians, will be in London, and that the D.Phil. candidate will not in fact be leaving for Prague so soon.
Have you read any newspapers since you left England? If not, you will find, on your return, that the world is in convulsion. I alone, with irrepressible confidence, see nothing but good ahead. I see all those dreadful old Stalinists in eastern Europe—Brezhnev, Ulbricht, Gomulka, Kadar—banded together in a panic attempt to put out the fire in their neighbour’s house, lest it spread to their own;4 and I see it, thanks to their clumsy intervention, actually spreading the faster. How delightful to have the flames suddenly crackling under them in Moscow and Berlin, Warsaw and Budapest! Here the great problem is what will happen to the Edinburgh Festival which has invested heavily in Russia: the USSR State Orchestra, Rostropovich, Oistrakh, Richter.1 I suspect that all will be forbidden to come, or summoned home, to escape the humiliation of silent, disapproving audiences and inconvenient questions.
Meanwhile, when there are no earwigs to distract me, I read. I have been reading the entire correspondence of Grotius. Then I shall move on to Casaubon, Paolo Sarpi, de Thou, Lingelsheim.2 Nobody reads original sources now: they only read at second hand: or they read manuscript statistics. There are too many works of up-to-date scholarship, and we all have to read them. But I am for the pure, original fountain.3
I nearly flew to Formosa today, but sense prevailed. They offered me a D.Litt. of the China Academy. That would have been something with which to overtrump Steven Runciman in the game of academic one-upmanship. But really the only degree I want is D.D.4 He has one—but it is only of Wabash. I don’t think that is quite good enough. All the same, I would have liked—but for the thought of that long air-journey—to be D.Litt. (Taipei).
I fear that I may be in for trouble. Nigel Lawson—who has turned the Spectator into a good paper—is an importunate widow.5 He persecutes me, and I resist, like a good old protestant martyr in the days of Bloody Mary. But in the end I yield—and always I find that I have yielded at the wrong moment: the moment is determined by time and human frailty, not the particular issue involved. So I have written a review of the last volume of Harold Nicolson’s diary. I fear that I shall have black looks in the Beefsteak;1 and what will happen if Charles, the waiter (against whose decision there is no appeal), places me next to Nigel or Ben Nicolson, I shudder to think.2
Could you find me, while in Oxford, some 17th century paper and some 17th century ink? I have had a bright idea, to enliven the dull round of scholarship. I want to insert an extra, hitherto unnoticed page into the Aubrey MSS. It will read thus:
’Twas a pretty trick to father those exquisite pieces on one W. Shakespeare of Stratford, a poor country clown who cd. neither reade nor write. Mr Bushell tells me that his Lord (the great Lord Chancellour Bacon) knew something of it, but wd. never speak out, tho’ often asked. Sometimes his Lordship wd. look slyly but say nothing. Sometimes he wd. say, Go aske my Lord of Pembroke, who (he wd. hint) had a hand in the business. Sometimes, when Mr. Bushell pressed him, he wd answer, Who, but my Lord of Oxford? meaning Edward de Vere, him that let flee the great Fart.1
I like to think of a devout American D.Phil. student discovering this and sending it in triumph to the Times Lit. Supplement; and the rage of Dr. Rowse.2
We went the other day to Hamlet, in Edinburgh. Tom Courtenay is Hamlet, and very good: we both thought he was better than Gielgud. The Times had a monstrous, snooty, spiteful review; but I hope that Tom Courtenay adopts my Olympian practice of not even reading reviews of his work.3
I am trying not to think of Shakespeare lest I go mad. The trouble is that almost everything I take up is something that sends people mad: Shakespeare, witches, and now … But I shall not say. that is, you.4
It is past midnight. I must go to bed. Come soon.
Love from
Hugh