I insisted that, come what may, Freddie should finish school and go to university; he was immensely talented and, more importantly, devoted to learning. My arguments prevailed; he gave up all fine notions of working to support the family, and eventually proceeded to Balliol to read Greats and become, ultimately, a Fellow of Trinity, living out his life in studious contentment, rarely straying from the narrow acreage bounded by the High Street in the south and Crick Road in the north. Eventually, his mother came to live with him and died last year, cutting an ever-stranger figure pottering around the streets dressed in the widow's weeds of twenty years ago.
For my part, I gave up the prospect of a similar trajectory with only nominal reluctance; I was not as clever as Freddie nor as disciplined, even though my love of reading was as great as his and my gift for language greater. But part of me had always hankered after something more, although I had never been able to decide what that was. I spent a few months in an architect's office, but found it uncongenial, although drawing delighted me then as it still does. I next moved to work in one of the great finance houses in the City, but discovered that while the strategy of high finance had its interest, the daily grind of counting money drove me to distraction. I might have made a splendid Baring, but as one of that family's clerks I was sorely tried.
Still, I did this for several years and gained greatly by the experience – I spent a whole year in Paris, much time in Berlin and even, on one occasion, was sent for two months to New York. At no stage did it occur to me that I was receiving remarkable treatment for a young man with no connections, unproven ability and minimal experience. I realised that most people of my sort spent their time, six days a week, in a dreary office from eight in the morning until seven at night, but I assumed it was merely good fortune on my part that I was not one of them. I was picked for one job and acquitted myself well, and so was chosen for another. And so on. The idea that any other factor was involved did not come into my thoughts.
In July 1887, though, I received a letter from a Mr Henry Wilkinson. This was shortly after my twenty-fourth birthday. A grand man indeed, Deputy Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, a post he had occupied for some twenty years. He was not much known outside the minuscule world of diplomacy, and the name meant nothing to me, but I knew that the invitation to lunch could not be ignored. And when I requested permission from my chief to absent myself, it was given very speedily. No one seemed curious about what it was all about. Which was not really surprising, as they knew perfectly well already.
I went the following Wednesday to the Athenaeum, and met the man who was to be in effect my employer until he died, still in harness, six months ago. Many people have the idea that civil servants are sleek, well-groomed and well-bred people, suave in manner and given to murmuring incisively instead of indulging in ordinary speech like the majority of the population. Such people exist, but the Diplomatic Service in those days still found a place for the eccentric, the unusual and – in at least two cases I have met – the certifiably insane.
Henry Wilkinson did not look like a senior civil servant. He was dressed in a tweed jacket, for a start, which violated all codes of conduct for his class, his employment and his club, which would have denied entry to most members who dared commit such sacrilege. He was much given to grunting and loud exclamations. His emotions, far from being closely controlled and disciplined, overflowed all over the room, and his conversation was filled with loud laughs, groans, chuckles and sighs. He fidgeted incessantly, so much so that I came to dread sharing a meal with him, because his hands were always picking up the salt cellar and banging it on the table, or twiddling his fork around while he was listening. Or he would cross his legs, uncross them and cross them again, leaning back and forward in his chair as he spoke. He never sat still, never relaxed, even when apparently enjoying himself. He also ate virtually nothing; a meal consisted of chasing a piece of meat around the plate for a few minutes before he consented with the greatest reluctance to push a sliver of carrot or a fragment of potato into his mouth. Then, a few moments later, he would thrust the plate aside as if to say – thank heavens that's over!
He was a wiry man, with a thin, foxy face redeemed only by a most charming smile. He also had the annoying habit of almost never looking directly at you; this he kept for special occasions, and when he did, his eyes bored straight through you as though he could count the dots on the wallpaper through your head. Every now and then during our lunch, some grandee would bow discreetly at him, but he waved them all aside without even looking at them.
