- Header
- Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant-Duff
- Also known as
-
Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant-Duff
-
primary name: Grant-Duff, Mountstuart Elphinstone
- Details
- individual; politician/statesman; author/poet; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1829-1906
- Biography
- Politician and author. Named after his father's (James Cuninghame Grant Duff) mentor Mountstuart Elphinstone (Indian administrator). Educated at Edinburgh Academy; Grange School, Sunderland; Balliol College, Oxford (1847-50) graduated with BA in literae humaniores, MA in 1853. Moved to London, 1854 passed LLB examination at London University; called to Bar by Inner Temple. Politician and author. Named after his father's (James Cuninghame Grant Duff) mentor Mountstuart Elphinstone (Indian administrator). Educated at Edinburgh Academy; Grange School, Sunderland; Balliol College, Oxford (1847-50) graduated with BA in literae humaniores, MA in 1853. Moved to London, 1854 passed LLB examination at London University; called to Bar by Inner Temple.
1857-1881, Liberal MP for Elgin burghs. 1866, elected Lord Rector of Aberdeen University (second term until 1872). Grant-Duff’s chief interest was foreign affairs. 1868, Gladstone made him Under-Secretary for India, meaning Grant-Duff had to handle most Indian business in the Commons. Travelled widely in Europe, Near East, India (1874). In Darmstadt during Franco-Prussian War 1870. 1880 Gladstone made him Under-Secretary for the colonies (with the colonial secretary, Lord Kimberley, in the Lords), with membership of the Privy Council. 1881, succeeded W.P. Adam as governor of Madras and given CIE. Visited all 22 districts of Madras and recorded his view of his governorship (Sept.-Nov. 1884; 20 Sept. 1886); took particular interest in forests, flora and fauna. 1886, left Madras; returned to Britain via Syria. 1887, invested with GCSI.
Member of Athenaeum, Cosmopolitan Club, Brooks’s, The Club; joined Literary Society (1872), Grillion's Club (1889); 1866 founded Breakfast Club. Through these clubs and other meeting places he maintained an extensive network of cosmopolitan contacts, to which his diaries testify. He became a diarist in 1851, and from 1873 wrote it with the intention of publication. He largely excluded politics from his extracts, which are mostly records of the intellectual gossip of the day, with many pleasant stories about eminent individuals. They constitute a voluminous record of the social life of the day.
President of Royal Geographical Society (1889–93) and Royal Historical Society (1892–99). Elected FRS in 1901. Crown Trustee of British Museum from 1903.
- Bibliography
- Notes on an Indian Journey, 1876.
Out of the Past (2 vols., 1903).
Gems from a Victorian Anthology, 1904.
D. Naoroji, Sir M. E. Grant Duff's Views about India (1887).
