2. [Education of Sir Harry Luke] – [Lukach, Harry Charles / Sir Harry Luke] / [Sassoon, Philip / Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Baronet].
Manuscript Letter Signed / Autographed Letter Signed from one of Luke’s old classmates at Eton who writes to Luke’s first posting in Sierra Leone in September 1910 and reminisces about the time when everyone at Eton would apply to Philip Sassoon the “amazingly insulting nickname “Jew”: “My dear Harry, very many thanks for your good wishes and the ring, which I hope will serve a talisman puissant enough to avert the evil consequences which seem to have been the invariable commitments of marriage in the case of your other friends ! I don’t think i am really misanthropic, although I admit that things interest me more than people on the whole….curiously enough my wife was at the Orsi’s in Florence a few weeks after you had left, and the house seems still to have been full of the “Lukian” epic ! How long to you intend to stop in your African furnace – and what are the books about ? My fortunes are still in the melting-pot and unless the present job becomes very much more lucrative in the near future, I shall chuck it and try something else. I had a rather jolly letter from “Jew” Sassoon [that is Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon] from India. Sapper is out there too with the 17th Lancers. How extraordinarily far away Eton seems ! Has it ever struck you how amazingly insulting the nickname of “Jew” was, and how readily it was adopted and admitted by its users and its victim ? Nasty things, boys – I will try to write regularly in the future….FCL [?]”
[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. London / Kensington, 1910. Octavo. Two pages manusript letter signed (MLS) on folded A4 sheet. From the private collection / library of colonial governor, diplomat and historian, Sir Harry Luke.
