Life and letters of Thomas Hodgkin / by Louise Creighton.

  • Thomas Hodgkin
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life and letters of Thomas Hodgkin / by Louise Creighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The ‘ Unseen Nile/ written on his first day in Cairo in 1889, was one of the latest of his travel poems. After this date original poems came more rarely ; but to the end of his life he enjoyed making translations in verse. His trans¬ lations of Claudian were written in early life ; later on came paraphrases of Horace and St. Augustine. On the voyage to Australia he amused himself by translating his beloved Boethius into English verse. His irrepressible fun was always ready to bubble up in verse or epigram. At the family breakfast one morning he announced, with the air of one who had made a profound discovery, that A gentle marmot in her nest Two orange eggs had laid, There came by three, men from Dundee And made them marmotlade. His two romantic passions, for Queen Bess and for milky puddings, were commemorated in the following lines : He loved his puddings nice and plain, He worshipped Queen Elizabeth, And ’twixt these adorations twain Was faithful unto death. Verses of this kind were the delight of his younger guests when he joined with keen zest in their writing games. Dumb Crambo and any kind of private acting were a real excite¬ ment to him. His filial piety had kept him. from ever visiting a theatre, though there was much in his nature which would have made the drama a special delight to him. Only in late life did he go once to the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford-on-Avon. He was not quite happy or comfortable there, and said afterwards that he felt he had been right in keeping away from the theatre. One summer, whilst he was at Bamborough, Sir Henry Irving was staying in the village, and they used often to take walks together. Sir Henry said that he found it most refreshing to talk with some one who had never been to a theatre. Thomas Hodgkin’s friendships were many and various, with people of different nationalities, of different ages, and