Beschreibung:

Sir Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Series of 197 autograph letters and memoranda signed, as Foreign Secretary, to John, Viscount Morley, as Secretary of State for India, some memoranda with Morley’s autograph notes,
Foreign Office, Falloden, 10 Downing Street, Balmoral Castle, and Brockenhurst, 15 December 1905 to 29 June 1910, over 400 pages, chiefly 8vo
[with:] accompanying manuscript transcripts in a later hand, 4to
This is a substantial series of letters and memoranda, written during Grey’s time as Foreign Secretary, addressed to the veteran liberal statesman John (Viscount) Morley, Secretary of State for India (1838-1923). Grey’s tenure as Foreign Secretary from 1905 to 1916 stands as one of the longest continuous periods of service in this role in British history. This correspondence elucidates Grey’s role as principal architect of the 1907 Anglo-Russian entente, also encompassing a range of other affairs related to Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet, and India, plus the pressing issue of the Navy Estimates. Taken as a whole, it provides a detailed account of Grey’s role in major international affairs in the years preceding the First World War, whilst giving an insight into the professional relationship of “cordial intimacy and cooperation” (G.M. Trevelyan) enjoyed between Grey and Morley.
Grey was appointed Foreign Secretary at the age of forty-three. The current series of letter commences within days of his appointment in 1905, the early letters show Grey grappling with practical arrangements whilst at the same time confronting a deluge of official business. Amidst documentation of Grey’s numerous dealings in the Middle East and elsewhere, topics of the early letters include the Chinese opium trade, the possibility of a Turkish invasion of Egypt, the Persian loan negotiations and importance of Persia to the defence of India (mentioned in nine letters), the Baghdad railway, and the “very grave” situation in Afghanistan. He writes of his disgust at Leopold II's rule in the Congo: "I would give much to wrench the Congo State out of the clutches of the first villain in Europe & make him disgorge his horrid gains, but foreign politics must be a matter of business, not sentiment” (30 December 1906). Domestic affairs discussed include the outcome of the election and proposed reform to the House of Lords. Many leading figures of the day are mentioned in passing, including Churchill, Lloyd George, Asquith, Curzon, Ritchie, Haldane, Clemenceau, and Hardinge (“…Hardinge is gone to Frankfurt to protect the King from the German Emperor, if the latter is obstreperous…”, 14 August 1906). 
Grey was instrumental in the signing of the Anglo-Russian Convention that brought to an end the rivalry in Central Asia known as the “Great Game”, and Grey touches on these negotiations in seventeen letters from April 1906 to September 1907. In April 1906, Grey explains to Morley that he “want[s] to discuss freely possible arrangements with Russia”. The following month, with a new Russian Foreign Minister in place, he writes that “it is therefore not the moment for us to attempt anything so big as proposals for a comprehensive entente”, but to begin negotiations over the status of Tibet, which Grey deems “easier ground to tread upon (politically not geographically) than Afghanistan or Persia”. Grey was aware throughout the negotiations that the instability of Russia in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution could lead to the collapse of any deal: “everything will be hung up” should Russia “sli[p] into another phase of the Revolution as seems likely” (June 1906). Negotiations were complex: Grey returns repeatedly to the question of how the Amir of Afghanistan would react, for example, whilst the competing Anglo-Russian interests in Persia led to a characteristic division of a supposedly independent third country into spheres of influence (“…As to Persia we must be prepared with a plan of our own in case the Russians propose something we cannot accept. The best appears to me to be a diagonal division, letting Russia in to the Persian Gulf, but excluding the mouth of the gulf from her sphere…”, 8 August 1906). Finally Grey jubilantly announces on 30 August 1907 that the “Russian agreement is to be signed tomorrow”, on the basis that the “hated article has disappeared” in return for “the deletion of the end of Article II”. Turning to a more general commentary on his aspirations for relations with Russia, Grey expresses his “hope” that a “new & more cheerful chapter in our history [...] will begin”.
During Grey’s tenure of the Foreign Office, the threat of European war from Germany was also a pressing issue: indeed, the shared German threat was largely what had brought Britain and Russia to the negotiating table. Britain’s paramount concern was to ensure the continued supremacy of the Royal Navy, even when the revolutionary technology of Dreadnaught battleships meant that this would require unprecedented levels of spending. Whilst this issue was not part of Grey’s own brief, he was part of the furious debates within Cabinet and beyond as the impact of naval rivalry on the public finances became clear. The issue of the Naval Estimates looms large over the correspondence from 1909: in a memorandum, Grey declares that “The Board of Admiralty will resign on 4” Dreadnaughts, and the “minimum on which they will remain is 6”, deeming this the “difference between scare and panic”. On this topic, he advises the Cabinet meeting to “remember that the critical time must come in about 1912”, urging that “if we err at all we must err on the side of safety [...] against possible German strength in 1912”.
The correspondence is also fascinating for its insights into the professional relationship enjoyed between Grey and Morley. Grey gives voice to his high opinion of Morley most openly in a letter praising a speech in Parliament shortly after Morley's elevation to the Lords: "The human issues you have to deal with are as great as those with which the F.O. has to deal; and you are the supreme central figure in dealing with them; and they are of vital interest to this country" (20 December 1908). Elsewhere, Grey deems Morley a key ally in retaining order amidst the unruliness of European diplomatists, whom he satirises as people “upset out of a boat by a sudden squall [...] all bobbing about in the water”. Topics of the letters sometimes stray from the purely political, suggesting that Grey and Morley clearly enjoyed each other’s company. In one letter, Grey thanks Morley for the receipt of two inscribed books which “will always remind me of an evening which I enjoyed”, and the correspondence abounds with witty literary references to authors including Wordsworth, Sterne, and others - as when Grey writes wistfully that on opening the pages of Gibbon he is “swept away from trifles, as if I had put out upon the ocean & left all the worries of the land behind” (5 Sept 1907). On one occasion Grey even sent Morley a set of Gilette's new disposable razors. Occasionally, the letters also let slip a tone of exasperation, as when Grey questions the project of British imperialism altogether when he admits to thinking that “these islands would be happier without an Empire”.
PROVENANCESotheby's, London, 18 December 1986, lot 257