The long-faced, lanky figure of John Foster Dulles was familiar. So was that of worldlywise, world-weary little Georges Bidault. The new face at the diplomatic table in Washington this week would be that of a lean Englishman who is pinch-hitting for Anthony Eden. He is the Tory Party's hidden siege gun in foreign affairs.
His friends nickname him "Bobbety" with cause. His full name is Robert Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil (pronounced Sessil), and he is fifth Marquess of Salisbury, eleventh Baron Cecil of Essendon. By birth and marriage, Lord Salisbury, 59, is a blueblood of bluebloods, related to half the noble families in the British Isles. It is said that "a Cecil never smiles except when another Cecil enters the room."
With his bony, inbred face and mild Edwardian lisp, Salisbury at first meeting may look like a slightly astringent edition of a P. G. Wodehouse hero. But behind the prim manner and pained eyebrows lurks a will as strong as Churchill's. Salisbury, says one of his admirers, has the same political acumen as Laborite Herbert Morrison, but with this difference: the marquess has been at the game 450 years longer.
Little Beagle. Fifteenth century records list the Cecils as "municipal worthies" in the Lincolnshire city of Stamford. They were ancient and loyal vassals of the Tudor kings, and when Henry VIII confiscated the lands of the Roman Church, the Cecils got their share.
William Cecil, first Baron Burghley, served Elizabeth I as chief adviser and Lord High Treasurer. It was he who sent Mary, Queen of Scots, to the block. His son, Robert, brought the Stuart dynasty to England in 1603, lived to hear King James I dub him his "little beagle."
Century after century the Cecils served king and country, and earned a rich reward. In Victoria's day, Robert, the third Marquess, was three times Tory Prime Minister. It was he, Bobbety's grandfather, who drove Winston Churchill's father out of his cabinet and out of public life.
Of Willow & Oak. Historian Thomas Macaulay penned a hard judgment on the founder of the Cecil family: "Of the willow and not of the oak." Bobbety is of the willow, pliable when he needs be to fill the job of Tory leader of the House of Lords, but he is also of the oak when principle is involved. Principle No. 1 is that Britain is not to be pushed around (his speech on the "scuttle" of Abadan was the most violent of all); principle No. 2 is that Britain's international conduct should be moral. Salisbury, the aristocrat, is aloofly superior to any cynical bargain, be it with Moscow or Peking, even when Churchill, the politician, may not be.
Polo in the Streets. At 17, Bobbety was a trainbearer at George V's coronation; thence, he trod a well-worn road: Eton, Oxford (where he and the Prince of Serbia were fined for playing bicycle-polo in the streets), and the Grenadier Guards. Wounded in France, Viscount Cranborne, as Salisbury was known while his father was alive, got a medical discharge and married Betty Cavendish, niece of the Duke of Devonshire.