PEN PICTURES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 18 June 1936, Page 3

PEN PICTURES

BY SIR CHARLES HOLMES (By Air Mail—From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON, 14th May. Sir Charles Holmes, the well-known Slade Professor at Oxford, and National Gallery expert, has written a most readable volume of reminiscences. His pen pictures include such widely divergent personalities as Oscar Wilde arid Horatio Bottomley, but one of his best anecdotes concerns the famous Lord Curzon of Indian Viceroy and Foreign Office memory. When

Curzon was at the zenith of his political prestige, and it seemed almost certain he was destined to succeed Bonar Law as Prime Minister, he was entertained at dinner by a number of his old Balliol contemporaries. The proceedings were informally bright and intimate, and chaff was mutual between hosts and guest. After the merry party was over Lord Curzon asked one of the company rather dubiously whether he had been giving himself away too freely. The reply to this very human inquiry seems to me to have been an inspired horoscope. “My dear George, had you given yourself away like that more often, you would have been Prime Minister long ago!”