The present Lord Curzon [Footnote: Earl Curzon of Kedleston.] also drew the enemy's fire and was probably more directly responsible for the name of the Souls than any one.
He was a conspicuous young man of ability, with a ready pen, a ready tongue, an excellent sense of humour in private life and intrepid social boldness. He had appearance more than looks, a keen, lively face, with an expression of enamelled selfassurance. Like every young man of exceptional promise, he was called a prig. The word was so misapplied in those days that, had I been a clever young man, I should have felt no confidence in myself till the world had called me a prig. He was a remarkably intelligent person in an exceptional generation. He had ambition and—what he claimed for himself in a brilliant description—"middle-class method"; and he added to a kindly feeling for other people a warm corner for himself. Some of my friends thought his contemporaries in the House of Commons, George Wyndham and Harry Cust, would go farther, as the former promised more originality and the latter was a finer scholar, but I always said—and have a record of it in my earliest diaries—that George Curzon would easily outstrip his rivals. He had two incalculable advantages over them: he was chronically industrious and self-sufficing; and, though Oriental in his ideas of colour and ceremony, with a poor sense of proportion, and a childish love of fine people, he was never self-indulgent. He neither ate, drank nor smoked too much and left nothing to chance.
No one could turn with more elasticity from work to play than George Curzon; he was a first-rate host and boon companion and showed me and mine a steady and sympathetic love over a long period of years. Even now, if I died, although he belongs to the more conventional and does not allow himself to mix with people of opposite political parties, he would write my obituary notice.
At the time of which I am telling, he was threatened with lung trouble and was ordered to Switzerland by his doctors. We were very unhappy and assembled at a farewell banquet, to which he entertained us in the Bachelors' Club, on the 10th of July, 1889. We found a poem welcoming us on our chairs, when we sat down to dinner, in which we were all honourably and categorically mentioned. Some of our critics called us "the Gang"—to which allusion is made here—but we were ultimately known as the Souls.
This famous dinner and George's poem caused a lot of fun and friction, jealousy, curiosity and endless discussion. It was followed two years later by another dinner given by the same host to the same guests and in the same place, on the 9th of July, 1891.
The repetition of this dinner was more than the West End of London could stand; and I was the object of much obloquy. I remember dining with Sir Stanley and Lady Clarke to meet King Edward—then Prince of Wales—when my hostess said to me in a loud voice, across the table:
"There were some clever people in the world, you know, before you were born, Miss Tennant!"
Feeling rather nettled, I replied:
"Please don't pick me out, Lady Clarke, as if I alone were responsible for the stupid ones among whom we find ourselves to-day."
Having no suspicion of other people, I was seldom on the defensive and did not mean to be rude but I was young and intolerant. This was George Curzon's poem: