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Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson

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The late Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003; later Baron Dacre of Glanton) was everything you want in an Oxford don: deeply learned; possessed of a wicked sense of humor; extremely clever (in the British sense of the term); sporting a period of service in the Secret Intelligence Service during the war (out of which grew his "The Last Days of Hitler"); but above all one of the finest letter writers one is likely ever to encounter (on a par with Justice Holmes and Isaiah Berlin). This book consists of letters written by Trevor-Roper to the art expert and proprietor of I Tatti Bernard Berenson between 1947 and 1960.

The letters are edited and introduced by Richard Davenport-Hines, and his substantial introduction to the volume is one of its finest features. However, the meat of the matter are the letters themselves, skillfully annotated and accompanied by some wonderful photographs, and presented in pleasant format in this volume. Also included as appendices are several letters that Trevor-Roper wrote to the American historian Wallace Notestein. A couple points bear emphasis. While there are no letters as such from Berenson, occasionally there are some excerpts included to set the stage for Trevor-Roper's letters to follow. I was very surprised to see that Berenson was far more knowledgeable in fields outside art history than I had imagined; in fact, he was quite conversant with the main themes of European and American intellectual history. Another point is that for those of us interested in (and puzzled by) the inner workings of the University of Oxford and its component colleges, these letters are a treasurehouse of information. Trevor-Roper delighted in academic fisticuffs and delighted even more in explaining these strange rituals to outsiders such as Berenson. However, not all the letters are fun and games; some show Trevor-Roper at work as an historian, including dispute with some major figures such as J. Hexter, Christopher Hill, Tawney, and above all Lawrence Stone. So, from every vantage point, just as enjoyable a collection of letters as one will ever happen upon.

This is a wonderfully witty collection of letters written by one of the most distinguished British historians of the twentieth century, High Trevor-Roper, to one of the most famous art historians of the twentieth century, Bernard Berenson, from the late 1940s to the end of the `50s, when the latter was ensconced in his famous villa outside Florence, i tatti, and the former was an Oxford don and then Regius Professor of Modern History. One gets only Trevor-Roper's letters, but enough background in the excellent introduction, very full (and readable) footnotes, and in quotations from Berenson's letters to understand what is happening without needing prior acquaintance with the two personalities or their worlds.

The letters are worth reading, above all, for Trevor-Roper's marvellous English prose style. He was a master of the letter-form, and always has something funny and insightful to say on a range of topics, in particular elections at Oxford, bus-trips in Persia, falling in love with a woman who is trying to divorce her husband, post-war Germany, and life in communist Russia. But he is at his best when he writes about contemporaries like A.H.Smith (Warden of New College, Oxford), A.J.P. Taylor, Evelyn Waugh, Maurice Bowra, and Isaiah Berlin, to name just a few in a large cast. The humour, and (let it be said) malice, which these sketches often contain make the book a real pleasure to read.

Those who appreciate smoothly elevated language, as put down here by a very lively English scholar in private correspondence to an elderly friend from the art world of Italy, will greatly enjoy this book.

Flashes of insights on random subjects, biting descriptions of the petty politics of universities, asides on some of the most famous people and controversies of the 1940s-50s, and well-turned phrases abound in this collection of letters.

(Richard Davenport-Hines deserves the praise Hugh Trevor-Roper gave another editor of a collection of letters: "... it is very well and learnedly edited.")