The guest papers, Add.Mss.57934-57941

Abstract

• MONTAGUE JOHN GUEST (1839-1909), Liberal M.P. for Youghal 1869-74, and for Wareham 1880-5, presented his papers to the British Museum in 1906; they were transferred to the Department of Manuscripts from the Department of Prints and Drawings in 1973. Guest was the third son of Sir Josiah John Guest, Bart., of Dowlais, the ironmaster, and Lady Charlotte Guest (later Schreiber), the Welsh scholar and celebrated collector of china, fans, and playing-cards. J.J. Guest was a dissenting industrialist who married into the aristocracy, obtained a baronetcy and a seat in Parliament, and became accepted by Whig Society. His eldest son, Ivor, succeeded in 1852 to the baronetcy, to Cranford Hall in Dorset and estates in Dorset and Wales; in the 1880s he possessed over 17,000 acres in Dorset alone; in 1868 he married the eldest daughter of the Duke of Marlborough; another brother, Merthyr, married the youngest daughter of the Marquess of Westminster, and Guest was to number among his brothers-in-law the future eighth Earl of Bessborough and A.H. Layard the archaeologist, diplomat, and Radical M.P. Guest therefore possessed wealth, status, and good connections; he had the means to pursue a number of interests, to become a keen yachtsman and fisherman, and a frequent visitor to country estates in the shooting season; he became a shooting companion of the Prince of Wales; he was also 'an enthusiastic and discreet collector of Georgian and other engravings and antiques'; furniture, porcelain, and the works of Rowlandson also aroused his interest, and he presented his collection of badges, tokens, and passes to the British Museum in 1907. His papers reflect his wide range of interests and social contacts, containing letters from authors, artists, and sculptors such as Thomas Hardy, G.F. Watts, Sir Oswald Brierley, Sir Frederick Leighton, and Sir Edgar Bohun, from men of the press, including Sir Francis C. Burnand, A. Borthwick, W. H. Russell, Linley Sambourne, and others, and from Winston Churchill, Lord Shaftesbury, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Thorold Rogers, Thomas Gibson-Bowles, Colonel Pitt-Rivers, and Sir Henry Cole. Guest also collected autographs, and his papers include letters of Landseer, Thomas Moore, Tennyson, Browning, Darwin, and Disraeli, along with three letters of William Barnes, the Dorset poet, whom Guest later sought to honour with a memorial statue.