Some contemporary observers thought they detected a "prima donna" streak in Eden's attitude and appearance. For example, the ageing Earl of Crawford and Balcarres (1871–1940), a snob, thought him "vain as a peacock and all the mannerisms of a "petit maître" the sense of a dandy or fop". One of Eden's permanent secretaries, P. J. Grigg, who rarely had a good word to say of anyone, dismissed him as "a poor feeble little pansy". Less prosaically, W. F. Deedes, a Minister in Eden's Government who, as a journalist, had once commented unfavourably on the colour of Eden's socks, remarked half a century later that, in the modern vernacular, Eden would have been called a "smoothie". The philosopher Bertrand Russell thought Eden "not a gentleman" because he dressed "too well", while a Ministerial colleague R. A. Butler, alluding to Eden's parentage and highly strung nature, is said to have remarked, "that's Anthony half mad baronet, half beautiful woman".