A Session Between Lord Curzon and Major Leahy

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Setting: A grand office in London during the 1920s. The room is filled with opulent furniture, shelves of medical books, and various pieces of art from India. Major Leahy, a jovial and robust man with a noticeable limp, sits behind his large wooden desk. Across from him is Lord Curzon, the former Viceroy of India, exuding arrogance and superiority.

Major Leahy: (cheerfully) Good morning, Lord Curzon. I trust you found my office without much trouble?

Lord Curzon: (dismissively) Yes, yes, Major Leahy. Though, I must say, your decor is quite… eclectic. Reminds me of the bazaars in Calcutta.

Major Leahy: (laughs) I take that as a compliment, my lord. I do enjoy a bit of variety. Now, how can I assist you today?

Lord Curzon: (leaning back, smirking) I don’t need assistance, Major. I’m here because Lady Curzon insists. She believes I am too… how did she put it… ‘overbearing’ since our return from India.

Major Leahy: (nods, hiding irritation) Well, sometimes those closest to us see things we might miss. Why don’t you tell me more about what you’ve been feeling lately?

Lord Curzon: (haughtily) Feelings, Major Leahy, are for poets and peasants. I deal in actions and achievements. But if you must know, I have been plagued by the utter incompetence I see around me since my return. England seems to have forgotten how to be great.

Major Leahy: (patiently) Greatness, my lord, often looks different depending on one’s perspective. Have you considered that perhaps it’s your perception that might need adjusting?

Lord Curzon: (coldly) My perception is finely tuned, Major. It is England that needs to adjust. The standards are slipping, the commoners are growing unruly, and even the government seems to lack direction. They could all learn a thing or two from how I governed India.

Major Leahy: (chuckles) I’m sure you did a remarkable job, Lord Curzon. However, ruling over a country and living as a citizen in another are quite different experiences. Have you been feeling particularly stressed or frustrated by these changes?

Lord Curzon: (irritated) Frustrated? I am incensed! How could they let this happen? The very fabric of our society is unraveling, and no one seems to care. They just prattle on about progress and democracy as if those things mean anything without strong leadership.

Major Leahy: (leaning forward, serious) Leadership is indeed important, but so is understanding and empathy. Tell me, do you feel isolated in your beliefs?

Lord Curzon: (scoffs) Isolated? Hardly. Surrounded by mediocrity, perhaps. Do you know, Major, I once met with kings and emperors, yet now I’m expected to converse with shopkeepers and laborers as if their opinions matter.

Major Leahy: (smiling kindly) Every person’s opinion has its place, my lord. Even a humble shopkeeper can offer insights that might surprise you. Maybe what you need isn’t to change others, but to adapt yourself.

Lord Curzon: (sneers) Adapt myself? I am a paragon of British aristocracy. It is the world that should adapt to me.

Major Leahy: (sighs) Stubbornness can be a double-edged sword, my lord. It can drive one to great heights, but it can also lead to a lonely path. Perhaps consider your Lady’s advice and try to engage more with the world as it is, rather than as you wish it to be.

Lord Curzon: (standing abruptly) This has been a waste of time. I see now why you are popular among the aristocracy—they love a good Irish madman to humor them. But I seek no such amusement.

Major Leahy: (rising, with difficulty, smiling warmly) Sometimes, my lord, the best advice is the one we least wish to hear. My door is always open, should you ever wish to discuss further.

Lord Curzon: (curtly) Good day, Major Leahy.

Major Leahy: (with genuine warmth) Good day, Lord Curzon. And remember, even the mightiest tree must sometimes bend to the wind.

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Narrator: As Lord Curzon storms out, Major Leahy returns to his desk, shaking his head with a mix of frustration and amusement. The labyrinth of the human mind, he muses, is often harder to navigate than the fiercest battlefields.

Acknowledgements

The above text was written using CHAT GPT, but the inspiration came from a story I was once told about the real Major Leahy actually meeting Lord Curzon

Assessment

This is the assessment of Curzon according to WikiPedia:

Few statesmen have experienced such changes in fortune in both their public and their personal lives. David Gilmour concludes:

Curzon’s career was an almost unparalleled blend of triumph and disappointment. Although he was the last and in many ways the greatest of Victorian viceroys, his term of office ended in resignation, empty of recognition and barren of reward…. he was unable to assert himself fully as Foreign Secretary until the last weeks of Lloyd George’s premiership. And finally, after he had restored his reputation at Lausanne, his last ambition was thwarted by George V.^[34]

Critics generally agreed that Curzon never reached the heights that his youthful talents had seemed destined to reach. This sense of opportunities missed was summed up by Winston Churchill in his book Great Contemporaries (1937):

The morning had been golden; the noontide was bronze; and the evening lead. But all were polished until it shone after its fashion.

Churchill also wrote there was certainly something lacking in Curzon:

it was certainly not information nor application, nor power of speech nor attractiveness of manner and appearance. Everything was in his equipment. You could unpack his knapsack and take an inventory item by item. Nothing on the list was missing, yet somehow or other the total was incomplete.^[79]

His Cabinet colleague David Lindsay, 27th Earl of Crawford provided a withering personal judgment in his diary; “I never knew a man less loved by his colleagues and more hated by his subordinates, never a man so bereft of conscience, of charity or of gratitude. On the other hand the combination of power, of industry, and of ambition with a mean personality is almost without parallel. I never attended a funeral ceremony at which the congregation was so dry-eyed!”^[80]

The first leader of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, paid Curzon a surprising tribute, referring to the fact that Curzon as viceroy exhibited real love of Indian culture and ordered a restoration project for several historic monuments, including the Taj Mahal:^[81]

After every other Viceroy has been forgotten, Curzon will be remembered because he restored all that was beautiful in India.^[82]