Preface to the First Edition

GEORGE CURZON WAS obsessively anxious about the judgement of posterity; according to Walter Lawrence, his Private Secretary in India, he was ‘always thinking of the verdicts’ which history would pronounce on his career. Although he believed those verdicts would be more favourable than the assessments of his contemporaries, Curzon was too accustomed to criticism to be complacent. Shortly before his death he tried therefore to pre-empt posterity by inviting his former secretary to write his biography. Lawrence declined with regret. As his association with Curzon had been the great event of his life, he was sure ‘the world’ would consider any book by him to be ‘distorted by blind devotion and admiration’. His old chief reluctantly accepted the excuse but grumbled that he would be ‘pulled to pieces’ after his death.1

Within weeks of his funeral, Curzon’s literary executors began the search for a biographer. One of their first decisions was to reject the claims of Lord Birkenhead, who considered himself a suitable candidate and threatened to write a book even if his application was rejected. It was a curious ambition for a man who had persistently attacked his intended subject after the fall of the Lloyd George Government and who had tried unscrupulously to bring about his resignation. Had Curzon drawn up his own list of potential biographers, Birkenhead would have been very near the bottom, just above Lord Beaverbrook.

After several writers, including John Buchan, had been approached, the executors chose Lord Ronaldshay, a former Governor of Bengal and, as Marquess of Zetland, a future Secretary of State for India. Written with remarkable speed, three stately volumes soon appeared, imposing and somewhat sombre monuments of industry, diplomacy and tact towards those of Curzon’s opponents who were still living. Had the official biography been written by another candidate, Harold Nicolson, who had worked under Curzon at the Foreign Office, it would have gained in flair but lost in diligence. Yet although he decided not to write the Life, ‘the problem of Lord Curzon’s personality’ remained ‘almost an obsession’ with Nicolson, and later he wrote not only Curzon: The Last Phase but also the incomparable portrait in Some People and the article in the Dictionary of National Biography. Lady Curzon’s refusal to let him use the private letters she had promised – on the grounds that she herself was going to write a book – helped turn The Last Phase into a study of diplomacy rather than a portrait. Flawed though the book is by its author’s intrusive views on foreign policy and his reliance on Ronaldshay’s research, it is acute, jaunty, readable and sympathetic. Why Grace Curzon thought it a caricature of her husband remains a mystery.

Curzon’s reputation thus survived the first two verdicts of history. In the early 1930s, however, Lord Beaverbrook launched an assault on it that lasted for nearly thirty years and ensured its virtual destruction. In a series of racy and tendentious books the newspaper tycoon directed a crescendo of abuse culminating in the allegation that his victim had been ‘inconsistent, unreliable, untruthful and treacherous’. His principal charges were that Curzon had ‘changed sides on almost every issue during his long career’ and that he had given Asquith ‘an absolute pledge’ that he would not serve under Lloyd George in 1916.2

Beaverbrook’s judgements were accepted with a strange lack of inquiry by some distinguished historians, who repeated his statements and in some cases developed them so that it soon became almost obligatory to describe Curzon as a ‘turncoat’ or ‘deserter’ always joining the winning side. Pre-eminent among them was A.J.P. Taylor, who portrayed him as ‘one of nature’s rats’, a weak and irresolute figure who in 1922 ‘deserted Lloyd George as successfully as he had deserted Asquith’.3 Another highly respected scholar, A.M. Gollin, took up the theme of Curzon’s ‘political somersaults’, claiming that before the First World War ‘he often advocated certain definite policies, only to change his mind at the last moment and reverse his course’.4

These and other allegations will be examined in their right place. But it may be stated here that no impartial survey of the evidence could conclude that Curzon had been any more of a ‘deserter’ than the other Unionist ministers in 1916 or that he was guilty of disloyalty to Lloyd George six years later. Such a survey would find it equally difficult to sustain Professor Gollin’s charge against a man who at the time was often accused of the opposite vice, of being too inflexible in his views. Far from being a performer of somersaults before 1914, Curzon’s one substantial change of mind occurred in 1911 when, at the age of 52, he advocated the passing of the Parliament Bill.

In his campaign of denigration Beaverbrook acquired an unexpected and presumably unsuspecting ally in 1956. The year before, Grace Curzon had damaged her husband’s reputation by publishing her Reminiscences, the sort of book that makes people wonder why Britain never experienced a revolution: it describes inspections of the wrists of aspirant footmen to appraise their elegance when holding plates, and recounts how in her widowhood she canvassed for her Conservative son in East London accoutred with fur coat, French maid, Rolls-Royce and hampers from Fortnum and Mason. Then, a quarter of a century after Beaverbrook began his assault on her husband’s memory, she granted him – in return for £2,000 – exclusive rights over Curzon’s papers for five years and non-exclusive rights thereafter.5 That the documents were left after Grace’s death to the Kedleston trustees, who eventually recovered them thanks to Mr Kenneth Rose, did not affect Beaverbrook. Long before losing control he commissioned Leonard Mosley, a Canadian journalist, to carry out the biographical assassination which for obscure reasons he desired. The result, published in 1960, was Curzon: The End of an Epoch, a book that contains scarcely a page free of error, misquotation or bogus psychoanalysis.

From depths that not even Curzon could have anticipated, his reputation was partly salvaged by the publication of two excellent books in 1969. Kenneth Rose’s Superior Person is a justly celebrated portrait of Curzon and the society he grew up in, a work which elegantly and precisely captures the ambience of late Victorian privilege. Simultaneously, David Dilks produced Curzon in India, an original and authoritative study of the viceroyalty in two volumes.

Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, Curzon’s youngest daughter, was concurrently searching for a biographer to supersede Ronaldshay, who was by then out of date as well as out of print, and to produce a scholarly reassessment after the distortions of Mosley. Sir Philip Magnus, who had already written lives of Gladstone, Kitchener and Edward VII, started work in 1969 but abandoned the task three years later for reasons of ill health and lack of enthusiasm. Subsequently, Nigel Nicolson was tempted to write the book his father had turned down nearly half a century before, but preferred in the end to write an engaging and sympathetic life of Curzon’s first wife Mary.

When, almost a generation later, I suggested writing a biography, Lady Alexandra responded with inexplicable enthusiasm to an author whose earlier studies of politics had dealt with Spain and the Middle East, and whose previous excursion into biography had been the life of an indolent Sicilian prince who had achieved nothing before writing a great novel in old age. Despite these unpromising credentials, she gave me continuous help and frequent hospitality for five years, the benefit of a remarkable memory, and unrestricted access to the papers in her possession, notably the private correspondence between her parents. It is impossible to express adequately my gratitude for such assistance so selflessly given with never a suggestion that criticisms of her father might be modified or removed. No biographer could have had a less complicated task in this respect.

I have been fortunate besides to have received much useful information from several other relations of Lord Curzon, including his step-daughter Mrs Marcella Rice, his niece Mrs Noreen Wright, his great-niece Lady Aldington, his great-nephew Sir Roger Cary, his nephew Lord Scarsdale and his grandson Lord Ravensdale. I am most grateful to all of them.

Many other people over the years have been generous with their time and knowledge. I would particularly like to thank Mr Kenneth Rose both for his advice and for kindly giving me access to his archives, Charles Sebag-Montefiore for allowing me to study the unsorted papers of Sir Philip Magnus, Dr Margaret Maison for material on Pearl Craigie, Mr David Yates Mason for information about the Paraman family, Mr Patrick French for advice on the expedition to Tibet, and Mr Christopher Davson as well as Sir Anthony and Lady Glyn for answering enquiries about their grandmother, Elinor Glyn. I have also received information and assistance in other ways from Jane Lady Abdy, the late Lady Arthur, Dr Ben Benedikz, Professor Edmund Bosworth, Mr Roy Davids, Professor David Dilks, Mr Robin Harcourt-Williams, Mr Colin Harris, Mr Michael Meredith, Lord Rees-Mogg, Sir Steven Runciman, Dr Kathryn Tidrick, and a great number of archivists all over the country. Lord Crawford, Mr Nigel Nicolson, Lord Salisbury and Lord Shelburne combined generosity with ancestral papers with hospitality at their dining-tables. And at the India Office Library, where I have been happily studying for several years, Dr Richard Bingle and Mr David Blake have been unfailingly helpful. My heartfelt thanks to them all.

I am especially grateful to Mr John Grigg, to my father Ian Gilmour and to my brother Andrew, each of whom kindly read the entire manuscript and made a large number of invaluable suggestions. So did my editors, Gail Pirkis and Grant McIntyre, from whose patience, skills and encouragement the book has greatly benefited.

Lastly, I have to thank my wife Sarah for her continuous support and at the same time apologize to my children who have – understandably – derived less enjoyment than their father from the late Lord Curzon’s excellent but somewhat overwhelming company.

Edinburgh, June 1994