Four years later, he became private secretary to his uncle, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, then Foreign Secretary in Benjamin Disraeli’s government. In 1874 he was elected the Conservative Member of Parliament for Hertford. He enjoyed music and poetry, and was first known as a renowned philosopher, publishing “A Defense of Philosophic Doubt,” “The Foundations of Belief” and “Theism and Humanism.” Although one biographer writes that “it is difficult to say how far the relationship went,” her letters suggest they may have become lovers in 1887.īalfour was a leading member of the social and intellectual group The Souls.īalfour’s initial interests were not political. In middle age, Balfour had a 40-year friendship with Mary Charteris (née Wyndham), Lady Elcho, later Countess of Wemyss and March. I rather think of having a career of my own.” His household was maintained by his unmarried sister, Alice. Margot Tennant (later Margot Asquith) wished to marry him, but Balfour said, “No, that is not so. Lavinia Talbot, May's older sister, believed that an engagement had been imminent, but her recollections of Balfour's distress (he was “staggered”) were not written down until thirty years later.īalfour remained a lifelong bachelor. She died of typhus on Palm Sunday, March 1875 Balfour arranged for an emerald ring to be buried in her coffin. After her two previous serious suitors had died, Balfour is said to have declared his love for her in December 1874. His younger brother was the Cambridge embryologist Francis Maitland Balfour (1851–1882).īalfour met his cousin May Lyttelton in 1870 when she was 19. He then went up to the University of Cambridge, where he read moral sciences at Trinity College (1866–1869), graduating with a second-class honors degree. He was the eldest son, third of eight children, and had four brothers and three sisters.īalfour was educated at Grange Preparatory School at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire (1859–1861), and Eton College (1861–1866), where he studied with the influential master, William Johnson Cory. ![]() His godfather was the Duke of Wellington, after whom he was named. His father was a Scottish MP, as was his grandfather James 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. Arthur James Balfour was born on July 25, 1848, at Whittingehame House, East Lothian, Scotland, the eldest son of James Maitland Balfour (1820–1856) and Lady Blanche Gascoyne-Cecil (1825–1872).
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