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however, untypically for Indians of his class, an active sportsman, playing tennis, riding proficiently, and coxing a boat at races on the Cam. There is no record of his being the man-about-town he liked to pretend he was, though he is said once to have danced with a waitress just to find out what she would talk to him about. While still at Cambridge Jawaharlal joined the Inner Temple to prepare for admission to the bar, more in fulfillment of Motilal’s aspirations for him than out of any great passion for the law. This entailed a move to London and studies at the London School of Economics, where it is assumed he imbibed something of the socialism that came to define his view of the world. Again, there is less evidence of an intellectual engagement with Fabianism than of his spending much of his time on more leisurely pursuits, in particular attending a number of classical music concerts. “My general attitude to life at the time,” he later wrote, “was a vague kind of Cyrenaicism. … It is easy and gratifying to give a long Greek name to the desire for a soft life and pleasant experiences.” Jawaharlal ran up a few debts along the way, once pawning his gold watch and chain, and had to seek supplementary funds from Motilal. (He could be quite manipulative in his demands, at one stage threatening to return home without finishing his studies if funds were not wired to him.) His lack of enthusiasm for his father’s profession was manifest in his barely passing the bar examinations, but pass them he did, qualifying to practice law in 1912.
    About to return home for good at twenty-two, Jawaharlal Nehru had completed an unremarkable first phase of his life, the only period which would not be marked by any accomplishment worthy of the name. And yet it is striking how the correspondence between father and son reveals Motilal’s faith in his son’s destiny. Motilal, a man of monumental self-assurance and incandescent temper, known for erupting in rage and thrashing his servants, comes across as gentle, loving, almost sentimental in his tenderness for his son — and throughout the correspondence he makes no secret of his ambitions for, and expectations of, Jawaharlal. An early postcard bearing the pictures of Congress leaders bears, just below the portrait of Romesh Chunder Dutt, Congress president in 1899 and an extraordinary figure of the age (one of the first Indians to qualify for the British-run civil service, Dutt had been a successful administrator, lawyer, historian, litterateur, and translator), the notation by Motilal: “Future Jawaharlal Nehru.” If the father set the ultimate bar very high, he also urged his son to seek smaller successes, from becoming Senior Wrangler at school to taking the Indian Civil Service (ICS) examinations (which Jawaharlal in fact never did). Motilal’s letters were full of advice on everything from the importance of riding and shooting to the need to avoid soccer injuries. They also dispensed opinion and insight on Indian political developments, challenging Jawaharlal to contestation and argument. Across thousands of miles, father and son maintained a dialogue fuller and more direct than that which they might have been able to sustain had they lived under the same roof in India.
    Motilal also generously funded his spendthrift son, rewarding him handsomely for every educational attainment, however modest. Every time he bridled at his son’s profligacy, Jawaharlal managed to win him round. (On one such occasion Motilal wrote: “You know as well as anyone else does that, whatever my shortcomings may be, and I know there are many, I cannot be guilty of either love of money or want of love for you.”) It was one of Motilal’s lavish gifts — a graduation present of a hundred pounds — that nearly ended Jawaharlal Nehru’s career. Urged by Motilal to spend the money visiting France and learning the language, Jawaharlal