A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HE daily papers have told the world
pretty much all there is to know about the new Foreign Secretary. Further curiosity, if it exists, may secure some satis- faction from a study of the book by his brother Sir Timothy Eden on their father, The Tribulations of a Baronet. Anthony Eden makes no conspicuous appearance in its pages, but he does turn up now and then, going off to 'school, coming home from school, doing this and that. What, if heredity counts for anything, may Cause anxiety to the new Foreign Secretary's admirers is the tempera- ment of the seventh baronet as revealed in his historic conk troversy, and consequent litigation with Whistler over the painter's portrait of Lady Eden. (See the painter's The Baronet and the Butterfly.) A spirited demonstration— and too much spirit is not a quality eminently to be de- sired in a Foreign Secretary, whether his name happens to be Palmerston or Eden. But Mr. Eden has been Well tested by this time. The impetuosity attributed to him by sexagenarians staggered at his incredible juvenility exists in their imagination only. A quiet urbanity is actually his salient characteristic.
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