It is hard to measure the grief that the death
of Lord Greene has caused to everyone who had had personal contact with him, for he was one of those men, all too rare, who inspired something like affection even in almost casual acquain- tances. There were the elements of a Greek tragedy in his brilliant career. After sweeping the board of every classical distinction at Oxford he came down to start at the Bar on nothing, rising by sheer industry and ability till he was reputed to be earning £50,000 a year. Then a Lord Justice, then Master of the Rolls, then a Law Lord, then a stroke, from which he largely recovered, then another stroke which left him largely helpless, then a fall in his room and a broken thigh from which, after weeks of pain, he died. Meanwhile Lady Greene had fallen in the same way and sustained the same injury. If ever such a fate was unmerited it was here. Wilfrid Greene was a man of deep and wide culture. He retained his interest in the classics to the end, sending his friends Latin elegiacs on a postcard, or mentioning that he was re-reading the Odyssey, in the original, or it might be, in another field Chateaubriand's Metnoires d'Outretombe. Never to see that kindly, keen, humorous, almost mischievous glance again is to have lost something of rare value from life.
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