The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life 1st Edition
by W.C. Lubenow
Queer Places:
Harrow School, 5 High St, Harrow HA1 3HP, United Kingdom
University of Cambridge, 4 Mill Ln, Cambridge CB2 1RZ
The Shiffolds, Tanhurst Ln, Dorking RH5 6LZ, United Kingdom
Robert Calverley Trevelyan (June 28, 1872 – March 21, 1951) was born on June 28, 1872, in Weybridge, Surrey, into a prominent and intellectually distinguished British family. He was the second son of Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, a notable Liberal Member of Parliament and Cabinet minister, and Caroline Philips. His lineage included significant political and academic influence, and he grew up alongside brothers who would also achieve prominence, including Sir Charles Trevelyan, 3rd Baronet, and the renowned historian George Macaulay Trevelyan.
Educated first at Wixenford School—where he was affectionately nicknamed "the Dodo" and formed a close friendship with Frederick Lawrence—he continued his studies at Harrow School. In 1891, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, following a family tradition by joining the elite and secretive intellectual discussion society, the Cambridge Apostles. At Cambridge, he completed both the Classical and Law Triposes, earning his BA and LLB degrees in 1894. Although his father strongly desired him to pursue a conventional legal career as a barrister, Trevelyan's true passion lay in literature and poetry.
Despite his traditional upbringing, Trevelyan cultivated a bohemian lifestyle and was widely regarded as a rumpled, eccentric, and gentle poet. He married Elizabeth van der Hoeven, a Dutch musician, on June 7, 1900, and the couple settled at The Shiffolds in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey. They had one son, the artist Julian Trevelyan. Over his lifetime, Trevelyan established a vast and influential social network. He was closely associated with the Bloomsbury Group—who affectionately referred to him as "Bob Trevy"—and maintained deep friendships with prominent thinkers and artists such as George Santayana, Bernard Berenson, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, Isaac Rosenberg, and E.M. Forster. Notably, in 1912, Trevelyan, Forster, and Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson embarked on a formative journey to India.
Trevelyan’s personal convictions were marked by a strong, active pacifism. During the First World War, these principles led him to shelter John Rodker, a conscientious objector on the run. When the expansion of conscription made Trevelyan himself liable for military service in 1918, he chose to volunteer for the Friends' War Victims Relief Service, serving honorably in France from August 1918 until March 1919.
As a writer, Trevelyan was known as a traditionalist poet and translator who favored the lapidary style championed by Logan Pearsall Smith. His notable literary output included poetry collections and verse plays such as Mallow and Asphodel, Polyphemus, Thamyris or the Future of Poetry, Windfalls, and The Bride of Dionysus (1912), the latter of which was adapted into an opera by Sir Donald Tovey. Robert Calverley Trevelyan passed away on March 21, 1951, leaving behind a legacy as a quintessential scholarly eccentric, dedicated pacifist, and enduring fixture of early 20th-century British literary life.
Trevelyan's membership in the Cambridge Apostles placed him within an intellectual circle that historically included many prominent figures with same-sex desires and homosocial bonds, such as E.M. Forster and Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson. While Trevelyan himself married a woman and lived a conventional heterosexual family life, his inner social orbit—encompassing the Bloomsbury Group and his close travels with Forster and Dickinson—deeply intersected with the avant-garde, sexually progressive circles of early 20th-century England that challenged traditional Victorian mores.
References:
|
The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life 1st Edition by W.C. Lubenow |
Other references:
Support this project
This website is a passion project researched, developed, and funded entirely by me. If you find the content valuable and would like to help support the ongoing research and hosting costs, any contribution is deeply appreciated.
Thank you for keeping this independent resource alive!
My books on Amazon: Elisa Rolle's books