The Conservatives under Lord Salisbury returned to power in June 1895, and Curzon was made Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Salisbury himself being in control of the Foreign Office, this meant that Curzon was its spokesman in the House of Commons. He wished to be made a Privy Councillor at the unusually early age of thirty-six, and Salisbury yielded to his demand. Everyone believed that he would eventually become Prime Minister, and no one believed it with more certainty than himself. It was his ambition and intention to achieve that position, and he seemed to have every qualification for it. Though frequently prostrated by ill-health, he loved toil and never allowed physical weakness to interfere with it. He had an overpowering sense of responsibility, duty, and the necessity of labor for unselfish ends, and he believed that the Almighty had chosen his class to do the appointed work.
It sometimes appeared to his friends that the Almighty had also picked on him to keep an eye on the petty cash payments of his establishments. He attended to the least detail of domestic expenditure, and Harold Nicolson tells us that at some international crisis Curzon would spend hours checking the household accounts or criticizing the cost of a coalshed. He had been brought up to believe in an absolute right and a positive wrong, but this conviction may have been inborn, the effect of tradition and lineage. His private life from his marriage onward was eminently happy. The pair loved one another, and Mary’s wholehearted admiration for him helped him to have a wholehearted admiration for himself. She never criticized his actions; in her eyes whatever he thought or did was right, and it seemed that the emotions he felt were instantly reflected in her. It was an ideal marriage for a private life, but not so perfect when one of the parties had to make decisions which gravely affected his future.
Apart from the premiership, Curzon had for years hankered after the Viceroyalty of India, and indeed had prepared himself for the post by his Asiatic travels and studies. It was the most imposing office in the British Empire, and the trappings of oriental splendor appealed to his fancy. He had never missed an opportunity of pressing his claims on Lord Salisbury, and when it became apparent that Curzon’s wife would be an admirable Vicereine, whose fortune would make it unnecessary for them to practice economy, the Prime Minister asked the Queen to sanction the appointment in 1898. On hearing the good news Curzon was in ecstasies. He had retained many of the qualities of youth, and whenever anything pleasant occurred to him in life he was liable to behave like a boy who has won his colors at some game or who has beaten his competitor in an exam. He went about with shining eyes and triumphant manner, could not help telling everyone about it while at the same time showing that it added to his distinction, a combination of internal joy and external patronage. Even his father unbent on hearing the news, expressing pride in the young man’s achievement, which caused Curzon to sob with pleasure.
It was necessary that a Viceroy of India should be a peer, and he chose an Irish title, becoming Baron Curzon of Kedleston. “Oh, the ladyships!” exclaimed his wife: “I feel like a ship in full sail on the high seas of dignity.”
It was characteristic of Curzon that during the busy weeks preceding his departure he should personally attend to the furnishing of his new home in Carlton House Terrace and the papering of the walls. He also engaged a nurse to look after his two baby daughters in their country home, subjecting her to half-an-hour’s close examination and detailing his observations at great length to his wife, saying in his letter that the applicant “is ladylike, yet not quite a lady”; that she had a “curious way of rolling her lips when she speaks and an utterance...almost mincing in its accuracy”; and that she showed “acres of gum and files of artificial teeth.” Having put her through her paces, he asked whether she wished to question him on any point. “She replied by the following rather extraordinary question: might she take out a bicycle with her? I said I would inquire, but thought that if the roads permitted it, there would be no objection to her taking her exercise in that way.”
Mary Curzon accepted a subordinate place even in domestic matters because of her uninhibited admiration for her husband and her complete belief in his superior wisdom. It is almost certain that his spine complaint contributed to his restlessness and so to his minute attention to petty details, whether in private or public life. Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, a friend of the Curzons, thought that Mary was a dazzling beauty but wondered how an American woman could so completely subordinate her own personality to that of her husband, could so utterly lose her national characteristics in the process. But Consuelo, as we have seen, had a will of her own and did not surrender it for love.
The youngest of all Indian Viceroys, accompanied by his wife, received the usual glamorous welcome when they arrived in India at the beginning of 1899. A demon for work, Curzon set about his duties with his usual thoroughness, and all that need be said about his official life in India is that he understood and sympathized with the natives, made himself disliked at home on account of his humanitarian policy, and enriched the country by his grandiose schemes for public works and ancient buildings. He was criticized in the House of Commons for being pompous, supercilious and patronizing, and he never quite saw eye-to-eye with the military authorities; but he was popular with Indians and efficient in administration, never sparing himself or anyone else in the furtherance of liberal designs and enlightened systems.
His sense of justice made him extremely unpopular with the army. Once, when some drunken British soldiers raped a woman in Rangoon and were acquitted by a court-martial, Curzon compelled the Home Government to punish their regiment. The Colonel was dismissed, a sergeant-major degraded, the unit banished to Aden, while leave was canceled and other privileges were annulled for a year. Another time two soldiers of the 9th Lancers, a regiment that had won the admiration of the public for many gallant actions in the Boer War, lost their tempers with an Indian cook, belaboring him so unmercifully that he died in the hospital. Their commander punished them but to prevent an outcry did not have them court-martialed. Curzon heard of it from one of the cook’s relations, and promptly stopped all leave for the officers of the regiment for a year, punishing the men by forcing them to undertake excessive duties and rigorous drills. The British officers and men of the army never forgave him for these humiliations, though his prestige with the Indians was vastly increased.
He worked for part of the hot season in Calcutta, but his wife went to Simla every year for the summer. At first sight she was amused by the place, “the houses slipping off the hills and clinging like barnacles to hill-tops,” and she tried hard not to be disappointed with Viceregal Lodge, at length deciding that she could put up with its disadvantages because “I can live on views for five years.” Her heart ached for her husband, still toiling in the capital for the first month of heat before joining her: “I miss you every second and wish I had never come away. I never will again; life is too short to spend any of it apart.” Though surrounded by a holiday atmosphere, she could not be happy without him: “Oh, I miss you, and miss you, and have to keep on the jump not to cry.” By the middle of April he was with her, and at the end of their first season in the hills they made an expedition to the Himalayas north and east of Simla. She thought the trees as fine as the pines in California. “At 8:30 we went shooting, first riding, and then clambering, climbing, sitting and sliding, and making every effort possible to slay two coveys of partridges. After walking five hours our bag consisted of five head of game.”
Curzon worked as hard at Simla as he did at Calcutta. His intense application distressed his wife, and as he loved making speeches and she loved listening to them, she was divided between admiration and affliction. It was troublesome for him to speak in public owing to the pain in his back. He was encased in a “fearful steel cage” whenever he had to stand up for any length of time, and after these ordeals he would lie on his bed writhing in agony. It may be that an air of self-assurance if not of arrogance helped to cover his physical infirmity. Sometimes he had to visit districts where the inhabitan
ts were suffering from plague or famine. Once he did so when she, to her disgust, was playing croquet at Simla, and she wrote: “As you listen to no human voice of warning, I must turn into a fatalist.”
In the autumn of 1900 they made an eight-week tour of some six thousand miles, visiting many parts of India by rail, river, road and sea. They stopped at Diu, the Portuguese settlement, and the scene in the audience room of the palace amused Mary Curzon: “George was so hot that his collar had gone, and he was fanning himself with an immense red satin fan edged with swansdown...all the rest were ranged round the room fanning.” They were stifled at Bombay and she complained: “Oh, the heat, the heat! I am getting more used to it, but dressing in it is simply awful, and with broad swift rivers running down all over you it is hard to appear dry and smiling at a daily dinner party.” At Mysore a herd of bison which the Viceroy stalked successfully turned out to consist only of cows. But shooting with him was largely a ritual. What chiefly interested him during the trip was the condition of ancient buildings, which were moldering and falling into ruin, and he determined to preserve them.
The heat was more than his wife could endure, and in 1901 he encouraged her to go home for her own sake as well as her children’s. She left to spend the summer in England, and he missed her terribly. Three weeks of her absence seemed like centuries to him, though he was shooting tigers in Nepal. He wrote her enormous screeds, telling her everything about his work, his plans, his thoughts. Existence without her was, he declared, “like living in a great sepulchre.” Her letters alone could put life into him; his sole joy was receiving them; and he begged for full descriptions of every detail in her life. She for her part held him as the center of all her interest, and even the gossip she retailed was chosen on account of its interest for him. In his loneliness he often wept, and though she had her daughters she was wretched away from him. His sense of solitude was emphasized by his unpopularity with his own countrymen, for he showed too strong a disposition to sympathize with the Indians whenever they came into collision with the English; and his wife as an American wholly approved his attitude.
The periods she spent at home seemed to be doing her good, but she invariably suffered on returning to India. Her courage never failed her, however low her physical condition. Just before the dreadful strain of the great Delhi Durbar in January 1903, whereat the accession of the Emperor, Edward VII, was to be solemnized, she wrote: “Every bit of my vitality has gone, and I am iller than I have ever been and simply can’t get back to life. But I believe absolutely in my power of ‘coming up to time’ or ‘answering my ring’ as an actor does in the wings of a theatre.” She answered the call well, and her appearance in a dress made of peacock feathers, emblazoned with semiprecious stones, was the focal feature in the spectacle. People whispered of the bad luck associated with peacock feathers, and as her ill-health persisted, the superstition was strengthened by coincidence. But she knew that her days were numbered whatever the material of her dress: “Some day, though, the bell will go and I shall not appear, as India, I know, slowly but surely murders women.”
Starting again for home, she admitted: “It is with a sad and miserable heart that I go, leaving all that makes life worth living behind me.” She suffered anguish every time they separated: “There is no happiness so great to a woman as the admiration she can feel to the depths of her heart for her Belovedst.” As for him, “You are everything and the sole thing in the world,” he wrote, “and I go on existing in order to come back and try to make you happy.” Her absences in the later days of his Viceroyalty reduced him to misery: “I have not dared to go to your room, for fear that I should burst out crying.”
An extension of his term of office was offered him, and though in two minds about it his ambition prevailed over his love and he resumed the post at the end of 1904, once more facing what he called “a task which I shall never cease to regard as the greatest and noblest that anywhere devolves upon the British race.” But he had recently taken a holiday in England. His wife left for home in January 1904, and he followed her in April. He had accepted an offer to be Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and she had been enchanted with a first view of their official residence, Walmer Castle: “I simply loved it. I never dreamed it was so pretty and fascinating.” But the drains were out of order and needed repair, so when Curzon arrived she took a house nearby while the castle was being made habitable. After attending many ceremonies in connection with his Viceregal work, they settled down at “the darling old castle” where Lady Curzon, following a miscarriage, nearly died. He thought her illness was due to the unsanitary condition of the place, which he called an “ancestral doghole.” The doctors suggested that all the floors should be taken up and the paneling taken down. But he decided that the castle was offensive, removed all his personal belongings, had the entire building disinfected, ultimately refused to live in it, and before leaving for India resigned the Wardenship.
He returned alone to India toward the close of the year, and in January 1905 heard by telegram that the doctors considered the voyage out there would be good for his wife, news which gave him the happiest day he had experienced for years. “Every night and morning I thank God that you are coming out,” he wrote. On her arrival she had a tremendous reception, the streets of Calcutta being decorated and crowded, the inhabitants jubilant, and there were presentations galore.
Yet despite his joy over their reunion it was not to be a happy year. Unconsciously he had prepared his own downfall. Soon after becoming Viceroy he perceived that a good soldier was required as Commander-in-Chief “to pull things together.” He pressed the Home Government to appoint Lord Kitchener; but the authorities were dilatory and for almost two years Curzon was compelled to undertake the duties, the recent occupant of that post being ill. He went on grumbling, and at last Kitchener received the appointment in time to take part in the Durbar. At first Curzon was delighted, reporting that Kitchener had “impressed me by his honesty, directness, frank common sense, and combination of energy with power.” But as time went on he was more impressed by Kitchener’s obstinate and dictatorial nature. The new Commander-in-Chief was violently against the system whereby the executive control of the army in India was vested in one authority, himself, while the administrative control was in the hands of the Indian Government. In other words Kitchener wished to be a military autocrat; and as he had by then been built up by journalists as a strong silent man of heroic proportions, he was able to blackmail the Cabinet at home by threatening to resign if he did not get his way, using the British dread of Russia for his purpose. From being very pleasant and co-operative he became hostile, and his attitude to Curzon lacked both grace and tact. “If you were here,” wrote the Viceroy to his wife, “you might be able to exercise some influence over this wayward and impossible man,” whom he described as standing aloof and alone, “a molten mass of devouring energy and burning ambition without anybody to control or guide it in the right direction.”
The Home Government, as is the way with politicians, played up to the press, which supported Kitchener, and a satirical note crept into Curzon’s communications with the Cabinet, which irritated the members. His great friend, St. John Brodrick, Secretary of State for India, advised him to go carefully, to treat subordinates with more consideration, to trust others with much of the work he liked doing himself, and generally speaking to revise his sense of proportion; as a consequence of which Brodrick lost his friendship and became in Curzon’s eyes the chief villain of the piece. But his real enemy Kitchener was a master of intrigue, in close touch with influential folk at home; and though at one moment he weakened at the sight of a Viceroy in tears, his heart soon hardened against a man who considered himself superior in ability and position.
In addition to his unpopularity with the politicians and the brass-hats, Curzon was ill throughout the summer of 1905, and when the moment of crisis arrived his wife had not the critical objectivity to perceive his danger. In August 1905 he resigned, believing that the C
abinet would recognize the value of his work and uphold him. But he should have remembered the Psalmist: “O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man, for there is no help in them.” A politician who trusts other politicians is clearly suffering from mental breakdown, and Curzon was practically a wreck, perceiving too late that he should have adopted a totally different strategy. His resignation was accepted; he waited long enough in India to receive the Prince and Princess of Wales; and returned home at the close of 1905 in a state of prostration, shattered and bemused. Incidentally, the system which Kitchener had favored broke down completely in the 1914-18 war, when the campaign in Mesopotamia was shockingly mishandled by the military bigwigs; so we may safely say that Curzon’s policy had been right.
Unfortunately the resigning Viceroy had lost a good deal of his popularity with the Indians by an address he gave to the seventh convocation of the Calcutta University, in the course of which he said that “the highest ideal of truth is to a large extent a western conception,” and that craftiness and diplomatic wile had always been held in high repute in the East. Such remarks were too true to be appreciated, and the friend of India became overnight the hostile critic of India. Misfortune had temporarily marked him for her own, for in July 1906 his wife died. Though his nature was complex his emotions were simple; and as his emotions were centered on her, who had cheered him in success and comforted him in affliction, his life became empty and meaningless. He remained at Hackwood, his house near Basingstoke, in lonely misery, answering some nine hundred letters of condolence, and twelve months after her death he confessed that he was existing in a state of “mute endurance.”
He managed to work off some of his feeling of ill-usage at the hands of Fate and the Cabinet by planning a memorial to his wife in the church at Kedleston, where he built a chapel to hold the white Italian sarcophagus containing her body. He ransacked Europe for the decorations he desired, Venice for silver lamps, Genoa for crimson velvet, Portugal for a crucifix, Spain for candlesticks and painted wooden panels, Mexico for a silver lectern, and Germany for a wrought-iron hanging electrolier. Models for the bronze candelabra were in the cathedral at Pavia, those for the sculptured panels adorning the walls were in a church at Rome, those for the iron grilles dividing the chapel from the nave were in the cathedrals of Spain, and the quartz for the floor came from the Urals. The Duchess of Rutland suggested that Curzon’s own effigy should be placed by the side of his wife’s, and this was done, though the crusader effect was perhaps not improved by the addition of two angels leaning over the figures, the crown of love in their hands.
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