Item 1 - Letter from Edwin Montagu to Venetia Stanley

59 Bridge Street, Cambridge.—Reflects on Archie Gordon’s funeral, and asks after Violet.

TRANSCRIPT:

59 Bridge Street, Cambridge
Dec. 21st 1909.

Dear Miss Stanley

Your kindness to me in the past makes me bold to break in on the grief which you like all the rest of us who are Violet’s and were Archie’s friends must feel.

I have never seen anything like the collected helpless sorrow of yesterday’s service and it has but served to emphasise my sense of the reality of our loss and the sad plight of those who survive.

I have just written the letter I shrank from, {1} the impossible stereotyped banalities of sympathy.

Will you be a friend to me who feels thus helpless and anxious and tell me at some time how she is, and whether the courage which she has shown is helping her to bear the intolerable.

Yrs ever {2}
Edwin S Montagu

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{1} Comma supplied.

{2} These words are indistinct.