Item 35 - Letter from Edwin Montagu to Venetia Stanley

TRANSCRIPT:

The Reform Club
12·45 AM.
April 23. 1912.

Dear Venetia

Yes of course I’ll come and see you at the earliest possible moment.

Summons me when you will and the sooner the better.

I have so often cried wolf and therefore can expect no sympathy but I made an arrant fool of myself in the House today {1}. My first speech was good. In my second I was ludicrously bad!, not only bad in form and matter but incoherent and worse than all indiscreet. Even Geoffrey the Angel! agrees.

I have no engagements this week, save dinner at 7 tomorrow and meeting at Cambridge on Friday {2}—so I await a telephone message—dying to see you.

Yrs ever
Edwin S. Montagu

I have just had to refuse to go to Vinters to meet you! Bother!

I shall be late {3} at office tomorrow because I’m very very tired.

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{1} Montagu had spoken twice in the debate on the second reading of the Government of India Bill. See The Times, 23 Apr. 1912, p. 8.

{2} 26 April.

{3} i.e. late in arriving.