Beschreibung:

MONTAGU, Edwin Samuel (1879-1924). Papers of Edwin Montagu, comprising correspondence, including his correspondence with his wife Venetia (née Stanley), and letters of Winston Churchill H.H. Asquith, Margot Asquith, Lord Beaverbrook, and others, 1896-1924, and copy correspondence, comprising draft and received 'Private and Personal' telegrams as Secretary of State for India, 1919-1922, together with other papers, including correspondence regarding the disposal of the majority of Montagu's archive, 1955; the whole contained in 18 folders . The papers comprise: Edwin Samuel MONTAGU. A series of approximately 161 autograph letters signed and 4 letters signed to his wife, Venetia, Whitehall, 24 Queen Anne's Gate, Paris, Cairo, various locations in India, and elsewhere, 21 December 1909 - 7 June 1924 and n.d.; 106 autograph letters signed, 16 typed letters signed and one unsigned letter, with a number of telegrams, to his mother, Lady Swaythling, 29 November 1904 - 8 October 1914, Co. Mayo, Cambridge, Whitehall, Seville and elsewhere; two autograph letters signed to his sister, Marion, 14 and 17 July 1896; typescript copies, most with signatures, of letters to Winston Churchill (2, October 1916), H.H. Asquith (31 July 1915, 'my views on the general situation', 16 pages, 4to ), to Austen Chamberlain (5 March 1917, to the Editor of the Times (7 July 1914, 'Council of India Bill. Mr Montagu's Explanation'), to Lord Chelmsford (2) and others mainly on Indian questions; together with a carbon copy typescript of his Indian Diary , 20 October 1917 - 11 May 1918, 543 pages, folio (published in 1930, ed. Venetia Montagu). A considerable proportion of Montagu's surviving letters to his wife date from the year of their engagement and marriage, 1915, when not only Montagu's own varying emotional state, but also the deep difficulties presented by Venetia's relationship with H.H. Asquith (Montagu's closest friend in politics) provided much food for discussion: Montagu, as with his future wife, was acutely aware of the Prime Minister's emotional reliance on her ('you are getting more an element than ever in his life') and deeply concerned with how to set about 'facing the P.M' with news of their engagement. Montagu's letters after their marriage have many revealing political insights, as well as depictions of an influential social circle. A fine series from the India Office in January and February 1922 includes a number of comments on his relations with Winston Churchill (then Secretary for the Colonies): 'Winston has a pleasant habit of getting bored with the details of his subject and then appointing a Sub-Committee of which he makes me Chairman, unless I am alert enough to escape it' (27 January 1922); 'relations between Winston and myself ... are very strained on the subject of Indians in East Africa ... He has behaved very badly, not only coming to the wrong decisions, but behaving most trickily' (31 January 1922); 'The press are working up a great state of agitation about India ... Meanwhile, what with Curzon and Turkey, Winston and Kenya, things cannot get better, they must get worse' (3 February 1922); 'I do not think that the Government is in good spirits on the eve of the meeting of Parliament' (7 February 1922). A typed copy of a letter to Churchill of 31 October 1916 reflects on an earlier period of collaboration, in the wartime Coalition Government: 'Ought not the winter to be occupied ... in devising new weapons, and more particularly new defences against old weapons? ... Cannot the idea of the Tank be so extended as to use a Tank-like machine to protect our infantry?'. The stresses of Montagu's tour of India in 1917-18 are revealed in a series of letters to his wife ('the work is just awful'; 'the bloody mail goes in a few minutes'; 'Chelmsford's library is full of bad detective stories collected by Hardinge - hooray!'), while five letters between February and May 1919 depict predominantly social aspects of life with the British