The General: The Classic WWI Tale of Leadership. Max Hastings
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in South Africa,’ he announced, almost before he was seated. ‘I didn’t ’old with them at all, and I said so all along. We didn’t ought to ’ave fought with the Boers in the first place. And burning farms, and those concentration camps. Sheer wickedness, that was. You shouldn’t have done it, you know, Bertie.’
Curzon, with an effort, maintained an appearance of mild good manners, and pointed out that all he had done was to obey orders.
‘Orders! Yes! It’s all a system. That’s what it is.’
Mr Cole seemed to think that in this case the word ‘system’ was deeply condemnatory – to Curzon, of course, the word was, if anything, of the opposite implication. He was roused far enough to suggest to his uncle that if he had undergone the discomforts of two years of guerrilla warfare he might not be so particular as to the methods employed to suppress it.
‘I wouldn’t have gone,’ said Mr Cole. ‘Not if they had tried to make me. Lord Roberts, now. ’E’s trying to introduce conscription. Ought to ’ave more sense. And now there’s all this talk about a big Navy. Big fiddlestick!’
There was clearly no ground at all which was common to Mr Cole and his nephew by marriage.
‘Look at the rise in the income tax!’ said Mr Cole. ‘Two shillings in the pound! Peace, retrenchment, and reform. That’s what we want. And a sane Government, and no protection.’
Curzon might have replied that Mr Cole had nothing to complain about in the matter of income tax, seeing that his income was clearly below the taxable limit, but his good manners would not permit him to say so while he was conscious of his own seven hundred a year from his private means. Instead, he rose to go, apologizing for the briefness of his visit and pleading further urgent matters demanding his attention. He declined the tea which Aunt Kate belatedly remembered to offer him; he said truthfully enough, that he never had tea, and the children goggled up in surprise at a man who could so lightly decline tea, and Aunt Kate said, ‘You’ll be going to have late dinner, I suppose.’
She accompanied him to the door.
‘Good-bye, then, Bertie,’ she said. ‘It was nice of you to come. We’ll be seeing you again soon, I suppose?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Curzon, and he knew it was a lie as he said it, that he would never be able to bring himself again to penetrate into Brixton. He thought the lie had succeeded, if he thought about it at all, but Aunt Kate dabbed furtively at her eyes before she went back into the parlour to talk over the visitor with her family. She knew perfectly well that she would never see ‘Lily’s boy’ again.
Meanwhile Curzon, out in the cabless suburban street, had to make his way on foot to the main road to some means of conveyance to take him back to his hotel. Before he took a cab he was constrained to go into a saloon bar and order himself a large whisky-and-soda, and while he drank it he had to mop his forehead and run his fingers round underneath his collar as recollections of his visit surged up within him. He thanked God fervently that he was an orphan, that he was an only child, and that his father was an only child, and that his mother had had only one sister. He thanked God that his father’s speculations in Mincing Lane had been early successful, so that preparatory school and Haileybury and Sandhurst had come naturally to his son.
In a moment of shuddering self-revelation he realized that in other circumstances it might have been just possible that he should have breathed naturally in the air of Brixton. Worse still he felt for a nauseating moment that in that environment he too might have been uncertain with his aitches and spoken about late dinner in a respectful tone of voice. It was bad enough to remember that as a child he had lived in Bayswater – although he could only just remember it, as they had early moved to Lancaster Gate. He had ridden in the Park then, and his father had already decided that he should go into the Army and, if possible, into the cavalry among the real swells.
He could remember his father using that very expression, and he could remember his father’s innocent pride in him at Sandhurst and when he had received his commission in the Duke of Suffolk’s Own. Curzon struggled for a moment – so black was his mood – with the realization that the Twenty-second Lancers was not really a crack regiment. He could condescend to infantrymen and native Indian army – poor devils – of course, but he knew perfectly well when he came to admit it to himself, as on this black occasion, that the Households and Horse Gunners and people like the Second Dragoons could condescend to him in their turn.
His father, of course, could not appreciate these distinctions and could have no realization that it was impossible for a son of a Mincing Lane merchant to obtain a nomination to one of these exclusive regiments.
Perhaps it was as well that the old man had died when he did, leaving his twenty-year-old son the whole of his fortune – when his partnership had been realized and everything safely invested it brought in seven hundred a year. Seven hundred a year was rather on the small side, regarded as the private means of a cavalry subaltern, but it sufficed, and as during the South African War he had been unable to spend even his pay, he was clear of debt for once, and could look forward to a good time.
The world was growing rosier again now, with his second whisky-and-soda inside him. He was able to light a cigar and plan his evening. By the time his cab had carried him up to town he was able to change into dress clothes without its crossing his mind even once that in other circumstances to change might not have been so much of a matter of course.
There were twelve years of peace between the two wars. It was those twelve years which saw Herbert Curzon undergo transformation from a young man into a middle-aged, from a subaltern into a senior major of cavalry. A complete record in detail of those twelve years would need twelve years in the telling to do it justice, so as to make it perfectly plain that nothing whatever happened during those twelve years; the professional life of an officer in a regiment of cavalry of the line is likely to be uneventful and Curzon was of the type which has no other life to record.
They were twelve years of mess and orderly room; twelve years of inspection of horses’ feet and of inquiry why Trooper Jones had been for three days absent without leave. Perhaps the clue to Curzon’s development during this time is given by his desire to conform to type, and that desire is perhaps rooted too deep for examination. Presumably preparatory school and Haileybury and Sandhurst had something to do with it. Frequently it is assumed that it is inherent in the English character to wish not to appear different from one’s fellows, but that is a bold assumption to make regarding a nation which has produced more original personalities than any other in modern times. It is safer to assume that the boldness and insensitiveness which is found sporadically among the English have developed despite all the influences which are brought to bear to nip them in the bud, and are therefore, should they survive to bear fruit, plants of sturdy growth.
Whether or not Herbert Curzon would have displayed originality, even eccentricity, if he had been brought up in another environment – in that of his cousins, Maudie and Gertie and Dick Cole, for instance – it is impossible to say. It sounds inconceivable to those of us who know him now, but it might be so. There can be no doubt whatever, on the other hand, that during the middle period of his life Curzon was distinguished by nothing more than his desire to be undistinguishable. The things which he did, he did because other people had done before him, and if a tactful person had been able to persuade him to defend himself for so doing he could only have said that to him that appeared an entirely adequate reason for doing them.
When as a senior captain in the regiment he quelled with crushing rudeness the self-assertiveness of some newly arrived subaltern in the mess, he did not do so from any feeling of personal animosity towards the wart in question (although the wart could not help feeling that this was the case), but because senior captains have always quelled self-assertive young subalterns.
He was a firm supporter of the rule that professional subjects should not be discussed in the mess. Whether the subject rashly brought up was ‘The Tactical