2110-4-6-7

[M. Robertson]

Redroofs. Innerleithen. Peeblesshire.

17. 11. 24.

My dear John,

I bought Lord Minto: A memoir more than a month ago. After the hubbub of the election I sat down to read the memoir and finished it in the early hours of next morning, not because I wanted to, but I simply had to go on.

I now know Lord Minto. If I were to leave here and walk round Caerlee Corner and meet him I would recognize him, which is physical portraiture but if he spoke to me, I'd reply as if I'd known him all my life. You have so made the dead live that he is alive to me at least for all time.

I rememer years ago you speaking to me of your "Montrose' and my replying "It doesn't convey the man to me" and your reply 'Then I'm failed' which was very pessimistic of you if highly complimentary to my judgement, but this Minto! I tell you I know him as if I had

known him in the flesh. Your book is not a memoir it is to me one of the truest biographies in this our own or any other language. This is not a superlative statement it is plain, unvarnished truth. One understands Johnston from Boswell yet after much study and many readings I at least don't know him. From Carlyle's essay on 'Mirabeau' that man one also knows, only to be shaken a bit by Mrs Webster's 'French Revolution'. Strachey's 'Cardinal Manning' made me know the man while his 'Gordon' only made me more puzzled. Six volumes by Monypenny & Buckle entranced me as a novel by _ entrances one, but even yet I don't know Dizzy as I know Minto. Morley's three volumes with all the religous part almost left out of Gladstone's life cannot of course enable any one to know Gladstone. And yet in the short volumes which you call 'a memoir' you have made me at least know a man by the name of Minto. A real genuine man the noblest work of God! I'm so glad to be able to write and tell you so. For to have a noble example of life living in daily contact with one as 'Minto' now lives on my bookshelves here is a God's gift. I do thank you. What about a 1/- edition so that poorer men who also worship good might have a chance.

Yours sincerely

M. Robertson