] also
drew the enemy's fire and was probably more directly responsible
for the name of the Souls than any one.
He was a conspicuous young man of ability, with a ready pen, a
ready tongue, an excellent sense of humour in private life and
intrepid social boldness. He had appearance more than looks, a
keen, lively face, with an expression of enamelled selfassurance.
Like every young man of exceptional promise, he was called a prig.
The word was so misapplied in those days that, had I been a clever
young man, I should have felt no confidence in myself till the
world had called me a prig. He was a remarkably intelligent person
in an exceptional generation. He had ambition and--what he claimed
for himself in a brilliant description--"middle-class method"; and
he added to a kindly feeling for other people a warm corner for
himself. Some of my friends thought his contemporaries in the
House of Commons, George Wyndham and Harry Cust, would go farther,
as the former promised more originality and the latter was a finer
scholar, but I always said--and have a record of it in my earliest
diaries--that George Curzon would easily outstrip his rivals. He
had two incalculable advantages over them: he was chronically
industrious and self-sufficing; and, though Oriental in his ideas
of colour and ceremony, with a poor sense of proportion, and a
childish love of fine people, he was never self-indulgent. He
neither ate, drank nor smoked too much and left nothing to chance.
Pages:
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193