Item 17 - Letter from Edwin Montagu to Venetia Stanley

India Office, London.—Accepts her invitation to Alderley. The Government have decided to break up Parliament early, and he is uncertain what to in the interval before the day on which he had expected his holidays to begin. Is satisfied with his Budget speech. Everything is going well [with the Parliament Bill], though Balfour is to move a vote of censure on Monday.

TRANSCRIPT:

India Office, Whitehall, S.W.
August 5th 1911.

Now that I’ve got an address to write to, I do so at once (did you get the letter I wrote just before you left to Alderley {1}) although I shall write again on Monday Tuesday or Wednesday {2} to tell you the news.

Of course I’ll come to Alderley as soon as ever you give me a chance and thank you so much for it {3}. But may I let you know a little later quite definitely.

The Govt have changed all their plans and we are going to have an autumn session and are breaking up on the 18th. I am awful unhappy because at present I dont know where to go or what to do till club {4} Sept. 15th when I kalculated my holidays would begin. But at the moment I am busy resisting Dudley’s suggestions that I should go to Canada with him for 2 months!

I am very happy about my budget speech. The papers dont much care for much of it and much of what they say is true. But it was meant for very ignorant people and was designedly simple and elementary. It has done much good and I’m convinced of my own merits despite public opinion. There!

Everything is going well.

Lord Morley has a list of 76 supporters and there will be four or five others.

Balfour is to move a vote of censure on Monday {5} with a view to rallying his supporters but his rebels small in number are good names so far as Tories go and are very violent.

The Prime Minister has lost his voice—we are all actually praying it will return by Monday. If not———

Yrs ever
Edwin S. Montagu

—————

Black-edged paper.

{1} B1/16.

{2} 7, 8, or 9 August.

{3} Cf. A1/16.

{4} Reading uncertain.

{5} The vote of censure was moved in objection to the Government’s creation of peers in or-der to secure the passage of the Parliament Bill through the House of Lords unchanged. See The Times, 3 Aug. 1911, etc.