A Homeric Statesman
In the generation of “Bright Young Things,” Frederick Smith (“F.E.,” as he was always called) stood out with the youngest and brightest. He and Winston Churchill advanced like Castor and Pollux into the Edwardian Parliamentary arena. There was no knowing which would last longer or go higher. Smith’s powerful physique made him favorite for the race. Thanks to his regardless enjoyment of life, Smith fell out in middle age, whereas the “Jerome constitution” inherited by Winston has carried him half a lifetime ahead. Smith attained the Lord Chancellorship but missed the Premiership, owing principally to a wanton phrase comparing the Tory chiefs Lords Salisbury and Selborne to the notorious Dolly Sisters, who appear in a recent biography to have effected the ruin of that eminent citizen of Chicago and London, Gordon Selfridge. Stray phrases can have considerable result in English politics. Statesmen flourish or perish by them, and F.E. had a taste for evolving them, though none can have been so disastrous as Mr. Bevan’s recent reference to the top class as “vermin,” which good Socialists believe lost their party two million votes.
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