was created C.S.I. in 1881, and in 1885 K.C.S.I. on retirement. He died suddenly in London on 10 April 1903. He married: (1) in 1872 Ellen (d. 1885), daughter of the Rt. Hon. Henry Baillie of Redcastle, N.B.; and (2) in 1890 Lady Florence Lucia, daughter of Admiral Sir Edward Alfred John Harris, and sister of the fourth earl of Malmesbury. She was raised to the rank of an earl's daughter in 1890. Sir Charles Grant edited the 'Central Provinces Gazetteer' (2nd edit. 1870).
[War Office Records; Royal Engineers Records; The Times, 13 April 1903 and 9 and 10 Jan. 1904; Royal Engineers Journals, February 1904.]
GRANT DUFF, Sir MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE (1829–1906), statesman and author, elder son of James Grant Duff [q. v.] by his wife Jane Catherine, daughter of Sir Whitelaw Ainslie [q. v.], was born at Eden, Aberdeenshire, on 21 Feb. 1829. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy, the Grange School, and at Balliol College, Oxford (1847-50). Among his contemporary friends at Oxford were Henry Smith, Henry Oxenham, Charles Pearson, Goldwin Smith, Charles Parker, and John Coleridge Patteson. He graduated B.A. in 1850 with a second class in the final classical school, and proceeded M.A, in 1853. On leaving Oxford he settled in London and read for the bar, and in 1854 passed with honours, second to James Fitzjames (afterwards Mr. Justice) Stephen, who later became one of his most intimate friends for life, in the LL.B. examination of London University. In the same year (17 Nov.) he was called to the bar by the Inner Temple, and while a pupil in the chambers of William Ventris (afterwards Lord) Field [q. v. Suppl; II] joined the Midland circuit, and obtained his first brief because he was the only person present who could speak German. He was one of the earHest contributors to the 'Saturday Review,' and lectured at the Working Men's College, of which Frederick Denison Maurice was first principal.
In December 1857 Grant Duff was returned as the liberal member for the Elgin Burghs, and held this seat without intermission until he was appointed governor of Madras in 1881. In 1860 and in each subsequent year he addressed to his constituents an elaborate speech, mainly on foreign policy, and he came to speak on this topic with recognised authority. His knowledge of the subject, largely derived from intimate conversation with foreigners of distinction in their own languages, was singularly wide and accurate, and his treatment of it entirely free from political acerbity. These speeches, which were from time to time re-published collectively, possess historical interest.
When Gladstone formed his first ministry in 1868, Grant Duff was appointed (8 Dec.) under-secretary of state for India, and he retained the office until the ministry finally resigned in 1874. In that year he paid a first visit to India. In 1880 he joined the second Gladstone ministry as under-secretary for the colonies, being sworn a member of the privy council on 8 May. It is probable that neither the domestic nor the colonial policy of the government during the next twelve months was supported by Grant Duff with unreserved enthusiasm, and on 26 June 1881 he accepted without hesitation the offer of the governorship of Madras, which brought to an end his twenty-four years' unbroken representation of his constituency in the House of Commons.
The presidency of Madras during the period of Grant Duff's government was free from critical events, but he devoted himself strenuously and successfully to his administrative duties, and the minutes in which from time to time he recorded and commented on the course of public affairs were models alike of assiduity and of style. Sir Louis Mallet [q. v.], under-secretary for India, commented upon the receipt of the last he wrote, 'I doubt whether any previous governor has left behind so able and complete a record.' Grant Duff left Madras in November 1886, and after making some stay in Syrria returned to England in the spring of 1887. In March he was invested at Windsor with the G.C.S.L He had been made C.I.E. in 1881.
On settling again in England Grant Duff made no effort to re-enter political life. The home rule controversy had embittered politics in his absence, and he had neither the requisite physical robustness nor any relish for violent conflict. A scholar, a calmly rational politician, and a man of almost dainty refinement both physically and morally, he devoted himself thenceforward to study, to authorship, and to the cultivation of the social amenities in which his experience was probably as wide and as remarkable as that of any one of his contemporaries. He was in the habit of meeting or corresponding with almost everyone of any eminence in social life in England, and with many similar persons abroad. He was a member of almost every small
