In the early 1990s Xandra suffered a series of small strokes, and began to succumb to Alzheimer’s disease. The first sign for Trevor-Roper was when, during supper at Didcot, she suddenly asked him, ‘Do you know my husband Hugh?’ He was obliged to take charge of everyday chores as her mind slipped away. ‘I have been having a very difficult time,’ he told his friend Patrick Reilly in 1995. ‘I have to be permanently here in case of mishap, which is a great restraint of liberty. I also have to be cook, housekeeper, chauffeur, shopper, etc etc.’ Trevor-Roper’s failing eyesight made it impossible for him to continue driving, and increasingly difficult for him to write as well as to read. He cared for Xandra tenderly and ungrudgingly, though his attentions to her left him little time for intellectual activity. Her son James tried to exercise her failing memory by talking to her about the past. He asked her when Hugh had come into her life. She could not remember. He tried a different question: had Hugh been in her life while she had been at Cambridge? ‘Yes,’ she said, after much thought, ‘but that was another Hugh.’
His devotion to Xandra, and his distress at her deterioration, came as a surprise to his stepchildren. It seemed to James that his stepfather had changed beyond recognition. This became even plainer when James and Xenia organized a conference with three professionals to settle their mother’s future care. When it was clear that she must enter a nursing home, their stepfather, usually so cool and in command of himself, burst into tears. Both James and Xenia were amazed; this was a side of Trevor-Roper previously unfamiliar to them.
When he visited Xandra in the home, she received him politely, though it was evident that she had no idea who he was. She died in August 1997, at the age of 90.
The Old Rectory, Didcot
My dear Hugh
It was kind of you to write on Xandra’s death. As I think you know, she had been failing for a long time—2½ years. I looked after her at home till it became impossible; then we found an excellent nursing home, near enough for me to visit her regularly, where she was very well cared for, and quite happy—though not an enviable kind of happiness. I miss her terribly and find life rather empty without her, especially as I now suffer from serious glaucoma and can only read with great difficulty. But I have some very helpful ex-pupils and friends, who are a great help, so I have no right to complain of the ordinary incidents of human life.
I hope that you are well and that Mary is not only unharmed by the Amazonian armies of Negrophilia and Political Correctitude but is turning the tide.1 When are you coming to Oxford? I hope I shall see you before long.
Public affairs here are in a pretty sorry state. Oh for an hour of the Iron Lady—although admittedly she went mad at the end. We had a great orgy of mass-hysteria on the occasion of the funeral of ‘the People’s Princess’.2 Oleg Gordievsky, the ex-KGB man, compared it to the scenes in Moscow on the death of Stalin. I recalled rather those in America on the death of Rudolf Valentino.3 But I retain a touching, if also dwindling, faith in the ultimate common sense of the British People, and hope it will soon have passed—or turned into a ritual burning, on the anniversary of the Death, of effigies of the Fayed family, those chosen instruments of Fate. Our dear Prime Minister’s reading of the New Testament lesson at the Funeral Service (in all references to the Death, capital letters are obligatory) was a nauseating exhibition of unctuous cant.4 The Tory leader,5 not to be outdone, proposed that Heathrow Airport be renamed Diana Airport. I suspect that he has forgotten that by now.
I have been occasionally to the House of Lords, but it is very dull and anodyne. Perhaps it will brighten up when we come to serious matters like fox-hunting and hereditary peers (both now to be branded as politically incorrect).
I apologise for having been so bad a correspondent in the last two years; but you know the cause. I hope to improve now, in order to hear from you again.
yours ever,
Hugh
P.S. Just as I was finishing this letter, I had a telephone call from Isaiah’s secretary,1 to tell me that Isaiah died last night. He had double pneumonia very badly a few months ago and although he recovered from that, he never regained the necessary vital force to keep going: he had lost the will to live.
P.P.S. Do you remember Gibbon’s footnote on Antinous? This is surely a perfect early instance of the modern use of the adjective ‘correct’.2