Item 6 - Letter from Edwin Montagu to Venetia Stanley

TRANSCRIPT:

India Office
28.6.1910.

Dear Miss Stanley

I’m sorry you cant come Thursday. Anent my dishonesty perhaps you’re right but I do think you’re not altogether.
When I try to collect coolly a medley of attitudes I know

(1) that I’m still a little frightened of you.

(2) that I talk a great deal.

(3) often very nakedly.

(4) that an attractive sentiment really just made out to fill a gap in conversation becomes developed irresistibly to astonishing proportions.

However there it is. You are welcome to think I’m dishonest in pretending, really pretending, or honestly {1} to account for thinks {2} as your own unlimited shrewdness suggests to you. I’m too slack and too busy to write at the length necessary really to explain myself—for which be properly grateful.

Give me a chance to continue before the end of the century!
Yrs
Edwin S. Montagu

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{1} Reading uncertain.

{2} Reading uncertain. If this is the correct reading, it is presumably a mistake for ‘things’.