Arthur Balfour - Background and Early Career

Background and Early Career

Arthur Balfour was born at Whittingehame, East Lothian, Scotland, the eldest son of James Maitland Balfour (1820–1856) and Lady Blanche Gascoyne-Cecil (1825-1872). His father was a Scottish MP; his mother, a member of the Cecil family descended from Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, was the daughter of the 2nd Marquess of Salisbury and a sister to the 3rd Marquess, the future Prime Minister. His godfather was the Duke of Wellington, after whom he was named. He was the eldest son, the third of eight children, and had four brothers and three sisters. Arthur Balfour had his early education at the Grange preparatory school in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire (1859–1861), and Eton (1861–1866), where he studied with the influential Master William Johnson Cory. He then went on to the University of Cambridge, where he read moral sciences at Trinity College (1866–1869), graduating with a second-class honours degree. His younger brother was the renowned Cambridge embryologist Francis Maitland Balfour (1851–1882).

Although he coined the saying, "Nothing matters very much and few things matter at all", Balfour was distraught at the early death from typhus in 1875 of his cousin May Lyttelton, whom he had hoped to marry: later in life he was to receive a series of messages from mediums, claiming to pass on messages from her, known as the "Palm Sunday Case". Balfour remained a bachelor for the rest of his life, his serious intention to marry never renewed. Margot Tennant (later Margot Asquith) had wished to marry him, but on being queried about this he replied: "No, that is not so. I rather think of having a career of my own." His household was maintained by his unmarried sister Alice. In middle age Balfour had a forty-year long friendship with Mary Charteris (née Wyndham), Lady Elcho, later Countess of Wemyss and March. Although one biographer writes that "it is difficult to say how far the relationship went" evidence from her letters suggests that they may have become lovers in 1887 and may have engaged in some form of sado-masochism, a claim echoed by A. N. Wilson. Another biographer believes that they had "no direct physical relationship", although he dismisses as unlikely suggestions that Balfour was homosexual, or, in view of a time during the Boer War when he replied to an important message whilst drying himself after his bath, Lord Beaverbrook's famous claim that he was "a hermaphrodite" whom no-one ever saw naked.

In 1874 he was elected Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Hertford and represented that constituency until 1885. In the spring of 1878 Balfour became Private Secretary to his uncle, Lord Salisbury. In that capacity he accompanied Salisbury (then Foreign Secretary) to the Congress of Berlin and gained his first experience in international politics in connection with the settlement of the Russo-Turkish conflict. At the same time he became known in the world of letters; the academic subtlety and literary achievement of his Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879) suggested that he might make a reputation for himself as a philosopher.

Balfour divided his time between the political arena and academic pursuits. Released from his duties as private secretary by the general election of 1880, he began to take a more active part in parliamentary affairs. He was for a time politically associated with Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff and John Gorst. This quartet became known as the "Fourth Party" and gained notoriety for leader Lord Randolph Churchill's free criticism of Sir Stafford Northcote, Lord Cross and other prominent members of the "old gang".