Another voice
Let Curzons holde
Auberon Waugh
The year 1985 marks an anniversary which may not be judged important in all our lives, so idle have the times become, but which surely reveals one little, golden thread in the fabric of our nation which any of us can celebrate who have a mind to do so. It was in 1135, exactly 850 years ago, that there was the first record of the Curzon family — Sir Richard de Curcun — holding a knight's fee and residing in Kedleston, Derbyshire. One refers to Lewis C. Loyd's memorable treatise Origins of Some Anglo-Norman Families (Harleian Society Transactions vol. 103 page 37) for further detals, observing that in 1611, it was established that Kedleston had been held by the same line of the Curzon family since the reign of Henry I.
The Curzons managed to hold on through the disastrous civil war which followed the reign of Henry I, innumerable peasants' uprisings and revolts, the terrible Wars of the Roses between 1455 and 1485 in which two hundred noblemen and 100,000 gentry and common people perished, the Luddite riots and great Der- byshire insurrection of 1817, not to men- tion two world wars and six Labour gov- ernments, dedicated to removing every trace of hereditary privilege and exalting the common man in all his hideousness. Somehow the Curzons have survived it all, with their sensible motto: 'Let Curzon holde what Curzon helde.'
No doubt the anniversary will be cele- brated in some suitably gross form in the north of England with black puddings, tripes, Derby cakes and cheeses washed down by beer from Crown Derby teacups. Many will die of over-eating and others will be killed in the fights that always break out when simple north country folk are having a good time. There are not many families in England who can claim to have lived 850 years in the same place. It is a cause for congratulation not only to the Curzon family that they are still there, but also to all of us. Yes, yes. In a very real sense, we are all to be congratulated.
Until this moment. It is only now, in the sixth year of Mrs Thatcher's 'Conservative' government, that the family looks as if it is about to be thrown out. This is not because some dissolute rakehell has debauched his inheritance, or because the family, through generations of dimness, has lost all its money — the estate is valued at £20 million. Nor has the family sodomised itself out of existence, as has happened to one or two branches of our old nobility — its present head, Lord Scarsdale, has five children, God bless him, including four sturdy sons. They are not even selling up and moving abroad to avoid taxes and eat lotuses, like the abject Lord Brooke and others we could mention.
The reason the Curzons are being forced out of Kedleston is simply that the present government is unable to give a decision on what, it will take in settlement of Capital Transfer Tax outstanding on the death of the last Lord Scarsdale in 1977 — the sum of £2,500,000 owing has been bandied around — and on which it con- tinues to charge interest of £400 a day while it dithers and primps and strikes attitudes. Since the estate is composed almost entirely of land, works of art and a pretty well unsalable house, the only op- tion left is to sell the house and its furniture, since selling the land would remove the means of supporting the house, and selling the furniture would remove all the point of living in the house.
One could make out a case for arguing that the present Government, as a collection of get-rich-quick artists, upwardly mobile hairdressers and Sony Walkmen, is en- gaged in a deliberate and vindictive cam- paign against the old aristocracy as an expression of its envious hatred. Lord Scarsdale's neighbour, the Duke of Devon- shire, has had an export embargo put on £14 million-worth of the drawings he origi- nally offered the Government at a quarter of their value — by -Lord Gowrie, the curly-headed, dark-skinned former 'art' dealer. Since buyers quite reasonably re- fuse to pay for something which they may never receive, this delay is costing the Duke of Devonshire at least £20,000 a week, through loss of interest.
In writing about these matters, one can already hear the cries of embittered intel- lectuals and dispossessed younger sons like St Peregrine, that the unemployed are being asked to make much greater sacri- fices, that Lord Scarsdale and the Duke of Devonshire have no business to complain. The short answer is that neither of these noblemen are complaining — only I am — and the unemployed are not being asked to make any sacrifices at all. They are not only richer than the fully employed throughout two thirds of the earth's sur- face, they are also far richer than the unemployed have ever been in the history of England. They are unemployed because they are unemployed, not because they have been asked to make sacrifices. At the same time, the Dukes of Devonshire and the Viscounts Scarsdale are poorer than they have ever been. And they are being asked to make sacrifices. However sincere- ly one may believe in this unpleasantly fascist idea of 'one nation', one cannot suppose that it means one standard of living. One nation embraces a diverse• society which includes Dukes of Devon- shire, former chairmen of Bovis and smar- my investment trust promoters as well as the country's unfortunates: blacks, dis- abled, dispossessed younger sons, people with a Yorkshire accent, drunks, etc. Unless we are prepared to go the whole hog and say it is self-evident that every- body should be made equal in all material ways we really must renounce the right to make cheap, whingeing points about those who are even richer than we are.
Recently I pointed out that the persecu- tion of Lord Scarsdale is bound to be counterproductive since it will all end with the nation paying £12 million or so for a house it does not want or have any use for — purely for the pleasure of dispossessing its owner. But that is not the real point at issue. It has passed into Conservative philosophy that the nation has accepted these huge taxes as reasonable and just. Although they may be tampered with — even in such a way as to enable clever people to evade them — the principle is sacrosanct: that the government has an absolute right not only to tax the fruit of a tree but also to lop off its branches.
As a result, this Conservative govern- ment has allowed more of our heritage of social continuity to be destroyed, by de- fault, than any socialist government has ever achieved by its actions. However the British people may vote — and they could scarcely, within our voting system, have registered their preference more clearly — socialism and the horrors of egalitarianism march ever onwards.
The reason for all this, as I never tire of explaining, is that there are not enough rich people in Britain to put up a fight. Our accursed system of primogeniture has pro- duced not only an unhealthy accumulation of wealth in too few hands but also a rootless population of embittered, dispos- sessed younger sons — of whom St Pereg- rine is conspicuous only because penury forces him to write for a living — and a hatred of the rich. In France, where everything has to be shared out more or less equally between all members of a family, the rich are actually far better off. Even Mitterrand has not dared introduce such inheritance taxes as Mr Lawson cheerfully administers — at very little benefit to the Treasury and enormous damage to the social structure of the nation. Another advantage is that the great family houses which survived the French Revolution and which, in England, would now be turned into lifeless museums are actually inhabited up to the rafters by brothers, sisters, aunts, nephews, nieces and cousins — all with their rights, all immovable. There will be Rohans at Josse- lin long after the last Curzon has left Kedleston, the last Cavendish has left Chatsworth and the last Grosvenor been turned out of his hideous modern villa at Eaton Hall.
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