CURZON’S MASK

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 318, 31 March 1928, Page 12

CURZON’S MASK

ARROGANCE A MYTH HAUGHTY ARISTOCRAT’S LIFE The late Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, one-time Viceroy of India and Foreign Secretary during and after the World War, was a sensitive, modest, charming man, totally different from what he was popularly conceived to be, according to a biography of him by the Fail of Ronaldshay. In the popular mind the name of George Nathaniel Curzon has stood for all that the typical aristocrat of an older, less democratic age could represent. In late life he had been called “the most arrogant of all Englishmen.” Almost every newspaper account during his political career and all except his few intimate friends characterised him as over-bearingly insolent toward inferiors, in which class he placed nearly everybody; as snobbish, tactless and pompous. It was said that his arrogance brought about breaks with almost all his old friends. Late in life he was dubbed the “Purple Emperor.’' All that was but a mask, Lord Ronaldshay says. To his intimate companions he was “an emotional and sensitive being, warm hearted and impulsive, within whose frame there lurked eternally the spirit of incorrigible youth.” Portrayed as a Charming Host “How could the public,” the biography continues, “who saw him only from the far side of the footlights—who were used to seeing him depicted always as ‘a most superior person’ in countless caricatures, cartoons and paragraphs published broadcast In the popular Press—know that behind the scenes of the theatre he bubbled over with animal spirits, danced, joked, did all those things that highspirited youth in love with life and with a consuming passion for laughter insists on doing the wide world over? Or that he possessed a spirit of hospitality that made him the most charming of hosts and a sense of humour that rendered him inimitable as a raconteur?” One reason for Curzon’s outward attitude of arrogance, Lord Ronaldshay declares, was his extreme sensitiveness. “Paradoxical though it may seem,” he writes, “this emotional sensitiveness goes far to explain both his hauteur and aloofness toward the generality of mankind and an epicene and almost Bohemian sociability where his personal friends were concerned. In the presence of strangers he was instinctively on his guard. His attitude toward them was determined by the same instinct of self-preservation which causes the hedgehog to withdraw to the shelter of its spinous coat when confronted with the unknown.” “It is impossible to draw from the correspondence," says the Eai-1 of Ronaldshay at another point, “a picture of anything but a generous, warmhearted man, eminently companionable, essentially lovable, the very antithesis of the proud and disdainful figure, haughtily reserved, cut off by invisible but none the less real barriers from the generality of his fellowmen, which to the public George Curzon appeared to be.” An Invalid Driven to His Duty Curzon suffered far more severely from an ailment in his spine than the public realised, his biographer asserts, and this was often a cause of his irritation and impatience in public. Lord Ronaldshay quotes a statement by Curzon himself on the subject, found among his private papers. It says: “Who knows what an effort and often a pain to me is public appearance of any kind? lam supposed to seek the footlights. Little do they know what a business it is to get me on to the stage! How many of them, I wonder, have any idea of the long hours spent in bed, of the aching back, of the incessant nerve pain in the leg, of the fearful steel cage in which I have to be encased when I undergo any strain in which standing up Is involved? They think me strong and arrogant and self-sufficient. Little do they reck that it is an invalid addressing them, who has only been driven to the duty because it is a duty, who has to be mechanically supported in order to stand upright for an hour, and who probably goes back to his bed to writhe in agony as an expiation for his foolishness.” George Curzon married quite late in life, when he was 36. His biographer hints that he had hoped that his friendship toward the Tennant sisters, Laura and Margot, “would blossom into a warmer and more intimate relationship” for one of them, probably Laura. In the end he did find a companion and helpmate, with whom marriage was to be a “complete and beautiful thing,” in the person of Mary Victoria, daughter of Mr. and Mrs, Leifer, of Washington and Chicago. A chance meeting in a London ballroom in the summer of IS9O gradually led to the growth of a warm affection, hut for years Curzon’s work kept them apart, so that the announcement of their engagement in March, 1595, followed shortly by their wedding, was a complete surprise, especially as they had been very secretive about their attachment. “Not even his most intimate friends were aware of the romantic story of his engagement,” writes Lord Ronaldshay; “the secret had been preserved with extraordinary fidelity. “For two years they had been engaged without the knowledge of a soul except Miss Leiter’s parents, to whom the secret had been confided more than a year after the engagement had been entered into.”