THE idea that Lord Curzon was hard and arrogant is so prevalent that, out of justice to his memory, I would like my experience to the contrary to be known.

The first occasion on which I saw Lord Curzon was during his first experience of office. He was then, in 1891, Under-Secretary of State for India. And I had just returned from the Pamirs, the Roof of the World,' whence I had been expelled by the Russians. It was a serious matter, for I was on official duty at the time, and the place in which I was arrested was in Afghan territory. A strong note had been despatched by Lord Salisbury to the Russian Government and an apology demanded. Mr. George Curzon, as he then was, had asked me to come and see VOL. XCVII-No. 579 621

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him at the India Office to tell him exactly what had happened and to give him information about that kind of No Man's Land' which lay between the Russian and Indian Empires, and which I had been exploring for the previous three or four years. I was greatly impressed by the interview. Instead of asking me a series of perfunctory questions and regarding me with that blasé expression which I had been accustomed to in the Simla offices, he entered into the whole matter with the keenness of a boy. His mind was as fresh as his colour. He was well dressed, eager and buoyant, and, what astonished me most, he frankly told me his own views of policy; and, instead of being merely interrogated, I was given the advantage of free and equal conversation with a man who was thoroughly up in the subject and enjoyed talking about it. I should say, indeed, that probably he did far more of the talking than I did myself. I had been very keen on my work, and I had undergone great hardships, and often risked my life, in carrying it out. It was natural, therefore, that I should be drawn to a man who took such interest in it.

And Mr. Curzon, on his side, was attracted to me for one special reason. Through all his life he had a particular admiration for explorers. He has publicly recorded that the award of the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society gave him more pleasure than his appointment as a Minister. I was four years younger than he, but already, when I first saw him, I had gained this gold medal for one journey and the United Service Institution of India medal for another-secret-journey. And I had just returned from a third.

So we were mutually attracted to one another. From that time to the very end of his life I was honoured with his friendship. And, except my own father, no man ever did anything like so much for me as Lord Curzon. Staunchness in friendship was a marked trait in his character.

On this occasion I had seen Lord Curzon in his element. On the next occasion of our meeting he was to see me in mine, and at a spot not so very far away from where I had been arrested by the Russians. He was then-in 1899-out of office, and, in the very teeth of opposition from the Government of India, had managed to find his way to the northern frontier of India, and he wrote to me in Chitral asking if he might come and see me there. It was a year before the Chitral campaign, and I was then in political charge of Chitral, with an escort of fifty Sikhs to guard me. I gladly welcomed him, and for a fortnight we rode round Chitral together. And often since I have marvelled at the pluck he then showed. His complexion was then ruddy; he was stoutly built, he spoke vigorously, and he had done much travelling. I had not an inkling that he was suffering all the time from

that trouble in the back which beset him all his days. I therefore arranged the day's marches as I would for an ordinary hard frontier officer bent on getting over the ground quickly. It is true, he used to be somewhat restive at the end of a particularly long march. But he got through them all right, and wrote innumerable letters and made voluminous notes besides.

At Chitral itself I gave a dinner for the chief—the Mabhtar, as he is called—and some of his nobles, and Curzon delighted in the opportunity of seeing these people in their own surroundings. And every evening, even after a long march, we used to sit up till twelve or one at night discussing frontier problems, and a good deal besides. For the moment, I must confess, my enthusiasm for him cooled under these discussions. He would directly oppose me on every point, and I used to get tired of the ceaseless argument. But when we reached Gilgit, and I found him behaving in exactly the same way to other frontier officers, and when at the end of it all he handed me the draft of an article for The Times and asked me to criticise and correct it, and I found all my own views most admirably expressed, I saw that all this opposition and argument did not mean real disagreement. It was partly habit and partly a device for drawing out the opinions of others. And this knowledge of my Curzon served me well on many a subsequent occasion.

All officers did not, however, realise this. And his cocksure ways and disposition for talk grated on men living hard and dangerous lives-three of these very men were killed in Chitral a few months after Curzon's visit-and qualities of high value in Westminster were not equally valued in Curzon on the Indian frontier.

We all recognised, indeed, that he was a man who would certainly go far. But from the necessity of our circumstances we had to take stock of men with the directness of children, and I recorded in my diary at the time that his industry and ability would take him to all but the highest position, but that the lack of sympathy in him would stand in the way of his attaining the highest position of all.

After all that he subsequently did for me, it seems base ingratitude on my part to recall this now. But I am drawing a picture of him as I saw him; and if the picture is to be true, I must say this, though I should in justice add that I was afterwards to discover that this impression of hardness and inconsiderateness which he produced was not inconsistent with extreme tenderness of personal friendship.

I should note here also another of what seemed to me his deficiencies. I was at that time, and have, indeed, been ever

since, deeply interested in the fundamental nature of things. Having travelled much in remote regions and mixed with a great variety of peoples, it is natural that I should be. I had, therefore, at Chitral many books on science and philosophy. But Curzon, glancing at the philosophical books, said, in his decided way, that I would not get much out of them. He may have been right in the sense that I was wanting in the capacity to get much out of them. But in the sense that there was nothing in them worth getting out he was altogether wrong. And I notice that in the obituary notice of him in The Times it is stated that nothing abstract took hold of his practical mind, and that it was probably his want of interest in philosophy that accounted for his failure to secure a First in Greats at Oxford. I was disconcerted at the time at finding this highly cultured man of affairs taking so disparaging a view of philosophy. But I afterwards came to think that this revealed a distinct deficiency in him. A man who aspired to directing the affairs of so great and varied an Empire as ours should have his views grounded on the best available knowledge of the whole great world, of which even the British Empire is only a minute component part, and of the spirit by which it must necessarily be directed. And if Curzon had laid his foundations deeper and surer, he might have been better equipped for his task.

From Chitral Curzon went off on his very adventurous journey to Kabul, taking with him a fancy uniform which he had discussed with me, and which, as a cavalry officer, I regarded with the utmost horror, as it was compounded of features from Lancer, Hussar and Dragoon uniforms indiscriminately mixed together. I have not heard that he ever had the face to be photographed in it!

By the time he had returned to England I also had returned home, and I used to see him in his flat in what was then called St. Ermine's Mansions. As always, he was working very hard, and he told me that he used to make from 1000l. to 1200l. by his books and various other writings, in addition to the 500l. a year private income. He did not at that time publish any account of his journey in Afghanistan, but he gave to the Royal Geographical Society a description of the visit to the Pamirs which he had made just before he came to Chitral. In the lecture he described the various branches of the Oxus on the Pamirs and appraised their claims to be considered the true source of the Oxus, and having given the palm to the most southerly branch, he then showed how he had visited the source of this branch in a glacier, and he left the impression that he had thereby discovered the source of the Oxus. After he had spoken the President asked if Captain Younghusband had anything to say. I thereupon said I had visited the different branches,

including the southerly one, three years before, and had not only been to the source of the river, but also to the source of the glacier from which it sprang. People came up to me afterwards and congratulated me on the way in which I had 'taken down George Curzon,' and I then realised how much his unfortunate manner irritated people. But I had not the slightest idea of taking him down. I was a very matter-of-fact young man, and I was merely stating facts to a scientific society. About ten years later, when Lord Curzon, as Viceroy of India, sent me on a mission to Tibet, the Daily Mail, in an article on 'The Leader of the Mission,' gave a somewhat fanciful description of this incident, and said that Lord Curzon evidently bore me no malice for it. And most evidently he did not, for he cut out the article and sent it to me in Tibet as 'something to amuse' me.

Meanwhile events of the most serious nature had been happening in Chitral. The chief who had dined with us had been murdered by his brother. British officers had been killed. A British force was besieged in Chitral fort, and an expedition had been sent up from India to relieve them. Acute controversy raged as to the wisdom of our retaining a political officer in so remote and exposed a position. And Curzon threw himself into this with the greatest vigour. I managed to get out with the relief expedition as correspondent of The Times, and when I returned I found the Conservative Government in office again and Curzon included in it as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He was now married and was installed in Carlton House Terrace.

And here in the summer of 1895 he gave a dinner to all those in England at the time who had been in Chitral, and to meet them he had invited Lord Roberts, Lord Lansdowne and Lord George Hamilton, the new Secretary of State for India. And I mention this dinner because of its sequel. Colonel Townshend (afterwards Sir Charles Townshend, the defender of Kut) during the dinner pencilled notes to Curzon and me asking us to come on afterwards to supper at the Savoy to meet Sir Herbert Kitchener and Arthur Roberts, the music-hall comedian, for whom Townshend had a most inordinate admiration. A more incon

gruous party I never attended. But Kitchener improved the gloomy hour by impressing upon the new Foreign Under-Secretary the urgency of sending an expedition to Khartoum.

Hardly four years later Mr. George Curzon was, to our astonishment, appointed Viceroy of India, at the same time being raised to the peerage. He was not yet forty years of age. I was the political agent in some native State in Rajputana, in the interior of India. In accordance with his unvarying friendship, he wrote to me asking me not to look upon him as Viceroy, but as an old