LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
LORD CURZON'S FUNERAL AT KEDLESTON
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—It is encouraging in this our multifarious age to recover for a while the glamour of true legend. The diffuse intellect- ualism of to-day is apt in its course to falsify our values and thereby to induce in public men the habit of being perfunctory in intention, and in action opportunist. How striking, therefore, as evidence of the sane continuity of the English character, have been the universal tributes paid to the memory of Lord Curzon—a sense of national loss manifested in an almost unexpected outburst of national homage. For although we have to-day repudiated the extreme hero-worship indulged in by a former generation, yet we still ardently admire per- sonality ; we turn almost with relief from the surrounding trivial in order to venerate and to praise the firm and simple qualities of courage, thoroughness and devotion. Sane and just, at such moments, is the judgment of the English people ; instinctive for truth. His ambition they have rightly appraised as no material worldliness but as a high and noble energy : his resplendent honours were cited but its the fitting pledges of a life-long service ; his very mag- nineence they welcomed as a personal manifestation of that intense patriotism, to the objective expression of which he sacrificed every minute of his life : he had done the State some service, and when he died the country was no niggard of its gratitude. A tragic satisfaction, surely, to record this posthumous understanding of a man who imagined always that he was misunderstood.
Yet, in truth, there was some cause for misconception. The physical affliction which had assailed his childhood sundered him from the easier activities of his fellows, encased him in a galling torture of his own. The unflinching energy, the restless courage with which he fought his pain, the sleepless cerebral activity which fretted a nervous system already drained by suffering, produced no querulous invalid but a man grimly and persistently embattled against himself. The momentary hardness which would settle on his features was indicative not of the harshness of arrogance but of the rigidity of physical suffering sternly controlled : the sudden outbursts of petulance, so disconcerting for those who failed to understand, were, for those who loved him, but pathetic evidence of the fires which preyed upon a suffering frame. Courage, devotion, public service : the magnitude of England, the integrity of beauty, the glory of work ; such were the ideals by which he achieved his victory, by which he triumphed over pain and tragedy and disappointment. And those who gathered to the Abbey to celebrate that triumph were well aware that his struggle and his example had not been without avail.
It was pleasing and decorous that so great a public figure should have been honoured with distinguished ceremony in the Pantheon of our race ; that his high public qualities should thus have been recognized and celebrated by those who had worked with or for him, and by those to whom he had been opposed. Even more fitting and significant were the last hours at Kedleston—that village burial, simple, intimate, intensely English. Here was the soil from which had sprung that fierce love of England which inspired and fortified his wide career ; here was the great house which he had loved and yearned for, and from which he had so often and so long been sundered by the needs of service. No panoply was required for such a funeral ; the dignity of the house itself surrounded the simple trestles on which the coffin lay ; the village choir sang the hymns that he had heard in boyhood, and he was carried quietly from his home to the little church which enshrined the memories and the traditions of his race. The same March sky which the day before had lightened and then darkened the triforium of Westminster, swept its wind-dashed sunlight upon the little churchyard, and as the small bell tolled gently, he was borne with grave simplicity to his tomb.
It was given to Dr. Lang; a friend of forty years, to voice in the simple sentences of his beautiful address the emotions awakened Le so appropriate a ceremony. He touched but
lightly on the public career of the man whom we had come to honour, quoting from Burke that great Empires and little minds go ill together, referring to the passion for justice which had inspired his administration of India. He dwelt rather upon the less-known qualities of Lord Curzon's nature —upon his passionate emotion, his lavish geniality, his boyishness, his unfailing humour ; upon how he would leap forward eagerly to greet old friends, upon " the almost amazing simplicity of his religious faith." With rare delicacy also he referred to the one great sorrow which had marred his middle life, and to the great joy which in the end had come to him and brought beauty, serenity and happiness to the last eight years.
Such, for those who really knew him, will always remain the final impression—an impression of joy, of zest, of energy and of humour. We left the Abbey conscious that honour had been done to a man of great attainments ; we walked away from the little church at Kedleston realizing that a personality of infinite charm, who had loved and suffered with the eternal intensity of boyhood, had at last been laid to rest.—I Foreign Office.
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