TRANSCRIPT:
59 Bridge Street, Cambridge
Oct. 4th 1911.
My dear Venetia
I am glad your† ill because it has meant getting two letters from you {1} and I like them inordinately. If you had been well I fear that the second would never have come.
If you are now a convert from the ridiculous hypothesis that its nice to be ill and fun I have heaps of sympathy for you and gladly proffer it. It would have been incredulous if not irrelevant to offer it while you thought you liked it.
But I agree jaundice which I understand springs from persistent illtemper (!!!) is a disease apart from others.
However it may be fun to be ordinarily ill, to be jaundiced must be and is beastly and I resent its coming to you.
As for me I’m here chasing constituents. I find interest in the insurance bill, boredom with the Parliament Act, enthusiasm for Home Rule and a bitter resentment of the high prices of everything.
And the fag of going to two meetings every night to say the same thing is almost worse than jaundice.
Winston made a good speech last night I think {2}. It only contained one sentence which I can criticise. I wonder if you can guess which.
Now I know you will find this difficult to read.
But I’m writing it crouching over the fire in an ecstacy of lazy reaction after a cold drive.
Why you may ask do I write at all in the circumstances.
Well because your last letter is on the mantelpiece; between a photograph of George Lyttelton and Fred Home (do you know of that Liberal Central Association peripatetic speaker?) I see a corner of your handwriting; it induces a wish that you would materialise and an irresistible impulse to write you a “sort of” letter. I am looking forward to Penrhos—particularly after the description you give of the party—it will be fun to be there with no Pauls or Jobes {3}, or even Bakers or Aranyi’s, {4} just you in a setting.
Yrs ever with a million condolences
Edwin S. Montagu
—————
Extent? Black-edged paper.
{1} A1/19 and A1/20.
{2} Churchill had addressed a joint assembly of the men’s and women’s Liberal Associations of Dundee (his constituency). See The Times, 5 Oct. 1911, p. 5.
{3} This is the apparent reading. Montagu may have meant Jonahs.
{4} Comma supplied. The preceding word runs to the edge of the page.
† Sic.
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