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Authors: Roy Jenkins
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography
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partisan of Baldwin’s, but a sufficiently skilful one to couch his arguments in moderate terms, probably got nearest to the nub of Curzon’s failings in a memorandum which he wrote for Stamfordhamand through him for the King. After beginning by saying that the case for either candidate was ‘very strong’ and paying a tribute to Curzon’s long experience, he continued:
On the other hand, there can be no doubt that Lord Curzon, temperamentally, does not inspire complete confidence in his colleagues, either as to his judgment or as to his ultimate strength of purpose in a crisis. His methods, too, are inappropriate to harmony. The prospect of his receiving deputations as Prime Minister from the Miners’ Federation or the Triple Alliance, for example, is capable of causing alarm for the future relations between the Government and Labour -between moderate and less moderate opinion. 7
Furthermore, Curzon’s behaviour over the fall of the Coalition was fresh in men’s minds and had made him a lot of enemies and few friends. He took no stand, but resigned at the last moment from the Lloyd George Cabinet so as to be ingratiatingly available to continue as Foreign Secretary in the new Government. The truth of the matter was that there were very few who wanted him as Prime Minister, independently of the House of Lords issue. The Cabinet did not, the party machine did not, the constituencies did not, at least three quarters of the Conservative members of the House of Commons did not. An exception was Salisbury, the leader of the diehards, who, like Balfour, was specially consulted by the King. Another half-exception may have been Bonar Law. He refused on grounds of health to tender any formal advice. But he saw Baldwin on the Sunday morning and told him that he had no doubt that Curzon would be chosen, although his own turn would come in due course. Then, when pressed by his principal private secretary, Colonel Waterhouse,he reluctantly said that if he had to advise, ‘he would put Baldwin first’. Waterhouse, probably improperly, passed this information on to the Palace. Then on the Monday morning Law saw Salisbury and left him with the impression that Curzon could not be ‘passed over’. The likelihood is that he saw the decisive disadvantages of Curzon but could not quite reconcile himself to the thought of the very junior Baldwin, who had so recently‘bounced’ and damaged him over the debt settlement, being in 10 Downing Street.
Compared with the strong forces and arguments working the other way all this counted for little. Curzon was in fact impossible. He could only have been chosen had there been no other credible candidate, and Baldwin’s performance from the date of the Carlton Club meeting forward had destroyed this possibility. The well-known story of Curzon’s Tuesday summons from Montacute 13 to London, of his confident and much-photographed arrival, first at Paddington Station and then at Carlton House Terrace, followed by the crushing blow delivered to him that afternoon when Stamfordham called at his house and told him Baldwin was to be Prime Minister, was not therefore a sudden snatching from his hands of the steadily earned and well-deserved prize, but more the last rather over-dramatized act of a tragi-comedy which had been played out in varying forms since his appointment as Viceroy of India in 1898. 14
Baldwin had spent the weekend partly in London and partly at Chequers. On the Saturday evening, before seeing Law on the following morning, he dined with Davidson at the Argentine Club and informed him that he would ‘rather take a single ticket to Siberia than become Prime Minister’. 8 Davidson, who was used to him, did not take this seriously, and rightly so, for Baldwin’s next railway activity was to leave Chequers early on the Tuesday morning in order to catch the 8.55 from Wendover and be available to see first Stamfordham and then the King. Stamfordham asked him if he would be
On the other hand, there can be no doubt that Lord Curzon, temperamentally, does not inspire complete confidence in his colleagues, either as to his judgment or as to his ultimate strength of purpose in a crisis. His methods, too, are inappropriate to harmony. The prospect of his receiving deputations as Prime Minister from the Miners’ Federation or the Triple Alliance, for example, is capable of causing alarm for the future relations between the Government and Labour -between moderate and less moderate opinion. 7
Furthermore, Curzon’s behaviour over the fall of the Coalition was fresh in men’s minds and had made him a lot of enemies and few friends. He took no stand, but resigned at the last moment from the Lloyd George Cabinet so as to be ingratiatingly available to continue as Foreign Secretary in the new Government. The truth of the matter was that there were very few who wanted him as Prime Minister, independently of the House of Lords issue. The Cabinet did not, the party machine did not, the constituencies did not, at least three quarters of the Conservative members of the House of Commons did not. An exception was Salisbury, the leader of the diehards, who, like Balfour, was specially consulted by the King. Another half-exception may have been Bonar Law. He refused on grounds of health to tender any formal advice. But he saw Baldwin on the Sunday morning and told him that he had no doubt that Curzon would be chosen, although his own turn would come in due course. Then, when pressed by his principal private secretary, Colonel Waterhouse,he reluctantly said that if he had to advise, ‘he would put Baldwin first’. Waterhouse, probably improperly, passed this information on to the Palace. Then on the Monday morning Law saw Salisbury and left him with the impression that Curzon could not be ‘passed over’. The likelihood is that he saw the decisive disadvantages of Curzon but could not quite reconcile himself to the thought of the very junior Baldwin, who had so recently‘bounced’ and damaged him over the debt settlement, being in 10 Downing Street.
Compared with the strong forces and arguments working the other way all this counted for little. Curzon was in fact impossible. He could only have been chosen had there been no other credible candidate, and Baldwin’s performance from the date of the Carlton Club meeting forward had destroyed this possibility. The well-known story of Curzon’s Tuesday summons from Montacute 13 to London, of his confident and much-photographed arrival, first at Paddington Station and then at Carlton House Terrace, followed by the crushing blow delivered to him that afternoon when Stamfordham called at his house and told him Baldwin was to be Prime Minister, was not therefore a sudden snatching from his hands of the steadily earned and well-deserved prize, but more the last rather over-dramatized act of a tragi-comedy which had been played out in varying forms since his appointment as Viceroy of India in 1898. 14
Baldwin had spent the weekend partly in London and partly at Chequers. On the Saturday evening, before seeing Law on the following morning, he dined with Davidson at the Argentine Club and informed him that he would ‘rather take a single ticket to Siberia than become Prime Minister’. 8 Davidson, who was used to him, did not take this seriously, and rightly so, for Baldwin’s next railway activity was to leave Chequers early on the Tuesday morning in order to catch the 8.55 from Wendover and be available to see first Stamfordham and then the King. Stamfordham asked him if he would be
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