Hugh Macnaghten to Arthur Llewelyn Davies - 1890

Description

Letter from Hugh Macnaghten to Arthur Llewelyn Davies, 28 March 1890. Arthur had been a temporary teacher at Eton, and it was this initial connection that led to the long friendships between Hugh, Barrie and the Davies boys.

Hugh committed suicide by drowning in 1929.

Transcription

Eton College, Windsor.
[March 1890]

My dear Arthur,
- for I think it is time that you had your Christian name - I trust you will be as happy as both of you together can wish, and the happiness won't be longer postponed than you deserve - in which case it will come very soon. I wish you every kind of good with all my heart, and please believe it.
Yours affectly,
Hugh Macnaghten.
Love from Brinton.

Peter's comment in the "Morgue":

I take it to have been through his Cambridge friendship with Hugh Macnaghten that Arthur went for a short time to Eton as an assistant master, while he was reading for the Bar. I very much wish I could have found some of his letters from Eton, but there seems no hope of it.
Hugh Macnaghten remained devoted to Arthur and later to Sylvia as well, and was a good friend to the four of us who were his pupils: one of whom proved a sad disappointment to him. He wrote a poem in memory of Arthur which I will quote if I can lay my hands on a copy. He will recur later on various occasions.
Hubert Brinton, I suppose, had also become a friend while Arthur was an assistant master at Eton. Both George and I stayed at his house when we went up for the Scholarship Examination there. He came to dislike me later, doubtless with every justification.

[AB: Hugh Macnaghten was to play a huge part in the lives of George and Michael Llewelyn Davies, who were to be in Macnaghten's House at Eton (Peter being a scholar boarded separately). Macnaghten became vice-provost of Eton in 1920.

In 1924 Macnaghten published "Fifty Years of Eton", being a collection of essays devoted to various aspects of the school. One of the chapters was entitled "Representative Etonians": ten old Etonians, including Lord Salisbury and Lord Roberts. Of the remaining eight, one was Michael Davies.

Hugh Macnaghten drowned himself in August, 1929.