George Nathaniel Curzon, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston was the epitome of a Tory grandee in the early 20th century. Born in 1859, he had risen effortlessly through the ranks, including an eventful period as Viceroy of India, and many, not least himself, expected that his career would culminate with the Premiership itself. When Bonar Law resigned as Prime Minister in May 1923 because of ill-health, Lord Curzon, then Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, assumed his moment had come, with only the up-and-coming but relatively unknown Stanley Baldwin as a viable alternative, and he was waiting at his Somerset home, Montacute House, for the summons from the King.
Curzon loved restoring and renovating old properties. As he himself put it in 1920, referring to Montacute: “If you renovate a beautiful house, it does not matter that it will pass from your family. You are preserving a lovely thing for the nation.” He had rented Montacute in 1915, which he thought to be one of the more beautiful smaller houses of the Elizabethan period, though he apparently had only seen it in photographs, not in person.
Curzon had travelled down on Saturday 19 May to Montacute House for the Whitsun break. When Bonar Law backed away from nominating a successor, the King was put in the difficult position of choosing a new Prime Minister directly. The main argument against Curzon becoming PM was that he was in the Lords, not the Commons.
Gradually over that Whit weekend, the tide turned from Curzon to Baldwin, but, crucially, he was left largely unaware of developments, as he had refused to install a telephone (which he described as a “disastrous invention”) at Montacute.
On the morning of the 21st, Whit Monday, he received Bonar Law’s letter informing him of his resignation, which he interpreted as meaning that he would be the new PM. He then spent much of the rest of the day pacing around the gardens waiting for further news.
Finally, in the evening, the local village policeman arrived by bicycle with a telegram from the King’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, asking to meet him in London the next day. Curzon sent a reply that he would be at his London home in Carlton House Terrace by 1:20.
Though the telegram had not mentioned the succession, Curzon assumed he was being summoned prior to his appointment as PM. During his train up to London, he discussed his future plans as Premier with his wife, including a decision to continue to reside at Carlton House Terrace rather than at 10 Downing Street. He beamed confidently at the waiting press photographers at the station and again outside his house.
So, when Stamfordham arrived and told him the news that it would be Baldwin, not him, he was stunned and humiliated. He vainly tried to persuade Stamfordham to transmit his arguments in favour of himself to the King, unaware that Baldwin, someone he regarded loftily as “of the utmost insignificance”, had already been summoned to Buckingham Palace. With grand self-pity, he later wrote: “Such was the manner in which it was intimated to me that the cup of honourable ambition had been dashed from my lips…”
Despite his bitterness, he eventually agreed to remain as Foreign Secretary, and even made the speech proposing Baldwin as Tory party leader. His torture did not last too long, as he died in March 1925.
Montacute House had played a small but crucial role in one of the most dramatic and poignant political melodramas of the last century.
© JB Seatrobe (Barry K Winetrobe & Janet Seaton) 2017 A version of this article was published originally in the March 2018 issue of the Somerset Leveller, #35