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Articles
Great Contemporaries: George Nathaniel Curzon
- By BRADLEY P. TOLPPANEN
- | January 16, 2023
- Category: Explore Great Contemporaries
Churchill’s judgement of Curzon, whose later years were linked to his own career, carries touches both of sadness and respect: “The morning had been golden, the noontide was bronze, and the evening lead. But all were solid, and each was polished till it shone after its fashion.”1
“The Coming Man”
Curzon was born in 1859 at stately Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. His moderately affluent family, of noble descent, had lived on the same spot since the 1100s. At Eton, where he started in 1872, he won almost every academic prize. Scholarly laurels continued at Balliol College, Oxford, where he arrived in 1878. As president of the Oxford Union and secretary of the Canning Club, Curzon was “the leading Tory undergraduate of his day.”2 He won a first in Moderns but fell short of a first in Greats. He considered that a humiliation, and allegedly vowed to spend the rest of his life proving the examiners wrong.
Throughout his life, George Curzon possessed the ability to attract admirers while repelling others. Few were ever neutral about him.3 His many positive traits—charm, wit, good looks and intelligence—were outdone for some by his long-windedness, aloofness and self-assurance. His perceived arrogance inspired an Oxford couplet that followed him for the rest of his life:
My name is George Nathaniel Curzon,
I am a most superior person.
My cheek is pink, my hair is sleek,
I dine at Blenheim once a week.
Nevertheless, Curzon very early in life had amassed an outstanding reputation. As Churchill later wrote, “he was at twenty-one notorious as ‘The Coming Man.’”4
Travel and advancement
After Oxford, Curzon served as an unpaid private secretary for Lord Randolph Churchill during the Conservative government of 1885-86. A Tory Democrat, Curzon admired Randolph, but after his sudden fall he quickly switched his allegiance to Lord Salisbury. Defeated in the 1885 election, he won a parliamentary seat at Southport at the general election the following year.
In Parliament, success did not come as easy as it had at Eton and Oxford. He was considered a poor performer in the House of Commons. Churchill wrote that many in the House considered him a “lightweight.” He “aroused both admiration and envy, but neither much love nor much hatred.”5
Curzon first made his mark as a leading authority on Asian affairs. Over seven years starting in 1887, he embarked on a series of great international trips. After a journey around the world in 1887, he visited Russia and Central Asia, Persia, China and East Asia, and made a dangerous trip through the Pamir Mountains to Afghanistan. Curzon wrote many articles and books on his travels. Notable was The Persian Question, a 1300-page, two-volume work published in 1892.
In 1891-92 Curzon served as Under-Secretary of State for India. Upon the return of Salisbury as prime minister in 1895, he was appointed a Privy Counsellor, and Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Salisbury also served as Foreign Secretary, but since he sat in the Lords, Curzon became the government’s foreign policy spokesman in the Commons. Curzon set his sights on being the next Viceroy of India, campaigning hard for the Prime Minister. In January 1899 he was proclaimed Viceroy. He also received an Irish peerage, which allowed him to return to the House of Commons if he wished.
Churchill and Curzon
As a young man, Winston Churchill felt a hostility to Curzon and his personality. From his army post in India in 1897, he wrote his mother, describing Curzon as “the spoiled darling of politics—blown with conceit—insolent from undeserved success—the typification of the superior Oxford prig.” But after Curzon became Viceroy, Churchill visited him for a week in Calcutta and was “charmed.” He felt he had previously misunderstood Curzon, who he now thought a “remarkable man.” He wrote that Curzon was “delightful” in conversation, with a “wonderful” manner. “[A]ll the aggressiveness wh[ich] irritated me at home is gone.”6
In India, Curzon was a reformer who sought to improve many aspects of British rule, including policing, railways, education and the conservation of monuments. Although, he had many successes and was considered to be a great Viceroy, his appointment ended in failure. He became embroiled in a dispute over the Indian Army with Lord Kitchener, Commander-in-Chief, India. It ended with his forced resignation, after the government of Prime Minister Arthur Balfour sided with Kitchener. His enmity with Balfour would play out to his misfortune two decades later.
Curzon left India on 18 November 1905 and returned to England, bitter and resentful. The humiliation was furthered when he received no customary honors as a returning Viceroy. He did not stand in the 1906 election, and entered a political wilderness. A decade would pass before he held responsibilities that matched his abilities.
Churchill had observed Curzon’s dispute with Kitchener, with whom he had his own issues. He defended Curzon in the Commons, referring to “the contemptuous manner in which he has been driven from the country.”7
The Lords and the War
In January 1908, Curzon entered the House of Lords, which was his option as an Irish peer. In 1909-10 came the bitter battle over David Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget.” Initially Curzon adamantly opposed it in the House of Lords and in the 1910 election campaign. He steadfastly declared that the Conservatives should “fight in the last ditch.” Then, abruptly, he reversed course. convinced that Prime Minister Asquith was not bluffing about forcing a constitutional crisis over finances. The bill passed the Lords in July 1911, thanks largely to Lords Curzon and Lansdowne. Curzon became an Earl in the British peerage in the coronation honours. Ten years later was created the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston.
In May 1915 Curzon, still a Conservative, joined the Asquith government as Lord Privy Seal. He briefly served alongside Churchill, who, after Dardanelles stalemate, was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In December of that year Curzon wrote to Churchill, who had resigned to join the army in France: “I miss you very much—and so I am sure do many others.”
In February 1916 Curzon visited France, demanding to see Churchill, who showed him a section of the Western Front. In cabinet, Curzon advised against the evacuation of Gallipoli, which he believed would be a disaster. He backed a renewed effort to take the peninsula. Curzon always believed withdrawal was a blunder, and that a successful offensive could have been launched in 1916.
The alliance over Gallipoli was the peak of Curzon-Churchill relationship. It soon cooled after Curzon became President of the Air Board in May 1916, a post Churchill had himself wanted.
Curzon in, Churchill out
Curzon was part of the political maneuvering by which Lloyd George replaced Asquith as prime minister in December 1916. Along with other Tories, Curzon made his entry into the Lloyd George coalition conditional on Churchill’s exclusion. Lloyd George, who could not form a government without Conservative support, acceded to their demand. Curzon became Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords. He was also a member of the five-member War Cabinet.
Churchill saw Lloyd George and Curzon as entirely opposite and antagonistic in background and temperament: The PM, WSC said, used “Curzon for his purposes, rewarded him handsomely when it suited him to do so, flattered him frequently, but never admitted him to the inner chambers of his decisions.”8
After the Armistice in 1918, Curzon organized victory celebrations and memorials, erecting the Cenotaph and planning the ceremony for burial of the Unknown Soldier. He also planned the Remembrance Day service. By now Churchill had made a comeback, becoming Minister of Munitions in 1917, then Secretary of State for War and Air in 1919.
Foreign Secretary
In January 1919, Lloyd George appointed Curzon Foreign Secretary. Curzon became bitterly unhappy in this role, because the Prime Minister often ignored him and the Foreign Office. Especially in regard to the postwar European settlement and relations with the continent, Lloyd George dominated policy. Curzon has been “portrayed as being too anxious to cling to power, or too spineless to defend the proper place of the Foreign Office in the policy-making process.”9 Sidelined over Europe, he was left to deal with the rest of the world, save for the bits Churchill sought to dominate, or to claim jurisdiction over.
While personally cordial, Curzon and Churchill often disagreed in the cabinet. Curzon was annoyed by Churchill’s regular interventions in foreign policy, which he thought his sphere. Churchill, he believed, should restrict himself to his own departments. Churchill for his part was unrepentant, saying that on great matters that affected the world, all must be allowed to have their opinions.
They were temporarily unified over intervention in the Russian civil war. Both hated the Bolsheviks, but Curzon was less enamored with the White Russians than Churchill. Curzon lost an initial round to Churchill in June 1919. when the cabinet voted to withdraw British soldiers from the Caucasus so as to increase aid to the White Russians. But Churchill was outraged when Curzon accepted the Milner Report, calling for abolishing the British protectorate in Egypt. Curzon had to overcome the fierce opposition of both Churchill and Lloyd George to grant at least nominal independence to Egypt.
At loggerheads
Beyond policy issues, Curzon and Churchill differed in their approach to their role in Cabinet. Curzon has been portrayed by colleagues, including Churchill and Leo Amery, as just presenting information, but then pressing on to support impose his will. This was anathema to Churchill, who always fought like a lion for his corner. Churchill wrote: “[W]hen he had written his cogent dispatch, or brought a question before the Cabinet in full and careful form with all his force and knowledge, he was inclined to think that his function was fulfilled. He had done his best. Events must take their course.” Above all Churchill always wanted to get things done, while Curzon “thought too much about stating his case, and too little about getting things done.”10
In February 1921 Lloyd George moved Churchill to the Colonial Office. Before taking the appointment, Churchill had made it conditional that Iraq, Trans-jordan and Palestine were his responsibility. Lloyd George accepted the conditions. Curzon was much annoyed. He thought Churchill wished to grab everything, to become “a sort of Asiatic foreign secretary.”
As he took office, Churchill wrote his wife: “Curzon will give me lots of trouble and have to be half flattered and half overborne. We overlap horribly. I do not think he is much good…. We are on quite good terms personally. I shall take lots of trouble to bring him along.”11 But Curzon was discouraged by the seeming constant disagreement with Churchill and their other cabinet colleagues.
That Churchill found Curzon difficult is no surprise; he was “an exceedingly difficult man.” While proud and passionate, with talent and a tireless sense of duty “unsurpassed in British politics,” he was also pompous, “egocentric, often bad-tempered and occasionally ill-mannered.” It often seemed that he thought that those who disagreed with him were not just wrong, but “stupid at best and ill-intentioned at worst.”12 Much to the annoyance of his colleagues, Curzon was also unpunctual, and often kept them awaiting his arrival.
Turkey and the Chanak Crisis
Turkey was the issue that finally divided Curzon and Churchill and broke the Lloyd George government. In 1919 Curzon had advised a quick peace settlement with Turkey, in which the Turks would lose territory but retain the Anatolian heartland. He was stymied by Lloyd George, who was pro-Greek. Curzon correctly deplored landing Greek soldiers at Smyrna in May 1919, which started a Greco-Turkish War. After being ill for several months, Curzon returned to the Foreign Office in August 1922. He arrived as the Turks, having repulsed the Greeks, were advancing on the Allied-occupied neutral zone at Chanak on the Asian side of the Dardanelles.
Curzon argued against threatening military action to stop the Turkish advance, but the next day Lloyd George and Churchill issued a communiqué threatening war if Turkey seized the straits. Curzon didn’t see the communiqué until he read it in the newspapers. It was another humiliation. But loyally, Curzon made several trips to Paris to buck up the wavering French as war scares mounted. Ultimately he had his wish: in the Armistice of Mudanya, the Turks withdrew from the neutral zone pending a peace treaty. But the coalition collapsed, and Lloyd George resigned to fight the 1922 election citing Curzon’s disloyalty as a principle issue.
“Here was the real man”
Churchill disparaged Curzon’s work and ridiculed his desertion of the coalition—not without magnanimity: “Lord Curzon has now by a n[i]mble somersault, disassociated himself from all the principal persons with whom he was working and has appeared smiling brazenly in the opposite camp, but the public must not for this reason be permitted to obtain an erroneous impression of his services or character.”13
In a letter to The Times, Curzon replied, charging Churchill with “copious inaccuracy and no small malevolence.”14 The Conservatives won the election, with Andrew Bonar Law becoming Prime Minister and Curzon again Foreign Secretary. Churchill’s outrage over Curzon’s return was likely magnified after losing his own election in Dundee, the seat he’d held since 1908. It was nine months before they met again: but now friendship prevailed. At a London dinner, Curzon came around to him and, as Churchill recalled, “threw out his hand in a most magnificent, compulsive gesture which swept everything away. Here was the real man.”15
Curzon went to the Lausanne Conference to negotiate the peace treaty with the Turks. It has been called his “finest moment as foreign secretary.” He demonstrated his “superb qualities” as he shrewdly negotiated a settlement that restored Turkish sovereignty, achieved regional stability, and ensured freedom of the Dardanelles straits. Lausanne “was the most successful and the most lasting of the post-war treaties.”16
The Premiership lost
Curzon’s achievement at Lausanne was soon overshadowed by failure to win the ultimate prize: 10 Downing Street. In May 1923 Bonar Law was diagnosed with cancer, and hastily resigned. There were no party leadership elections. King George V asked Bonar Law’s advice on a successor, but the PM, now very ill, demurred. The decision was the Sovereign’s.
Curzon was convinced he would be prime minister. He did not see any other Conservative with a real claim. King George, however, sought guidance from senior Tory grandees. Among them was Lord Balfour, who had refused to back Curzon against Kitchener in 1905. Perhaps not surprisingly, Balfour recommended Stanley Baldwin, a much less accomplished figure but one who sat in the House of Commons. Balfour carefully confined his argument against Curzon strictly to the fact that he sat in the Lords.
Summoned to the Palace, Curzon had no doubt that he was to assume office. On the train journey to London he planned the formation of his government. He was stunned when he was told the new prime minister would be Baldwin. Like Balfour, the King was not particularly fond of Curzon. But he explained choosing Baldwin for “one reason alone: that he sat in the House of Commons.”17
“The evening lead…”
Despite bitter disappointment, Curzon did not retire from politics. He stayed on as Foreign Secretary until the Conservatives’ electoral defeat in November 1923. Baldwin and the Conservatives returned to power a year later, and he expected to get the Foreign Office again. Again he was disappointed: the job went to Austen Chamberlain. Again he thought of retiring, but instead accepted appointment as Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords.
In March 1925 Curzon suffered a severe bladder hemorrhage. Surgery was unsuccessful and he died on 20 March. Five days later a gloomy Churchill walked in his funeral cortege. He wrote Clementine that the funeral was “dull and dreary,” but Curzon had “faced his end with fortitude and philosophy. I am v[er]y sorry he is gone. I did not think the tributes were v[er]y generous. I w[oul]d not have been grateful for such stuff. But he did not inspire affection, nor represent g[rea]t. causes.”18
George Curzon had held many great political offices and achieved much. For a mere mortal, his career would have been considered an illustrious triumph. Curzon’s ambitions, however, outweighed what he accomplished. That he fell short of occupying 10 Downing Street was the damning verdict. As Churchill wrote, although Curzon bore his setbacks with “goodwill and dignity,” they “invested the long and strenuous career with ultimate disappointment.”19
Endnotes
1 Winston S. Churchill (hereinafter WSC), “George Curzon,” in Nash’s Pall Mall, January 1929, republished in WSC, Great Contemporaries (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1937), 188.
2 David Gilmour, “Curzon, George Nathaniel,” in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 793.
3 Gilmour, 793.
4 WSC, 275.
5 WSC, 275.
6 Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill. Volume 1: Youth, 1874-1900 (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 304, 421-22.
7 Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974) I: 502. Curzon’s treatment, Churchill continued, “had practically created the Commander-in-Chief [of the Army Lord Kitchener] the military dictator.…”
8 WSC, 280.
9 G.H. Bennett, “Lloyd George, Curzon and the Control of British Foreign Policy 1919-22.” Australian Journal of Politics and History (45:4, 1999). 470.
10 WSC, 281.
11 Martin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol. 9, Disruption and Chaos, July 1919-March 1921 (Hillsdale, Mich: Hillsdale College Press, 2008), 1355.
12 Bennett, 474; R.J.Q. Adams, Balfour: The Last Grandee (London: John Murray, 2007), 192, 363.
13 Martin Gilbert, ed., The Churchill Documents, vol. 10, Conciliation and Reconstruction, April 1921-November 1922 (Hillsdale, 2008), 2106.
14 WSC, 282-83.
15 WSC, 283.
16 Leonard Mosley, The Glorious Fault: The Life of Lord Curzon (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), 288; Gilmour, 800.
17 Kenneth Rose, King George V (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 273.
18 Martin Gilbert. Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5, The Prophet of Truth, 1922-1939. (Hillsdale, 2009), 107)
19 WSC, 288.
Further reading
David Gilmour, Curzon: Imperial Statesman (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1994).
Harold Nicolson, Curzon: The Last Phase, 1919-1925, A Study in Post-War Diplomacy (New York: Howard Fertig, 1974).
Kenneth Rose, Superior Person: A Portrait of Curzon and his Circle in Late Victorian England (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969).
The author
Bradley P. Tolppanen is Professor of Library Services, History Librarian and head of Circulation Services at Eastern Illinois University. He is the author of a definitive study, Churchill in North America, 1929.
I see Curzon as a survivor. And he accomplished some great things. Interesting reading. Thanks for
this.