Balfour's World: Aristocracy and Political Culture at the Fin de Siècle by Nancy W. Ellenberger (review)

Nancy W. Ellenberger's absorbing and original study, Balfour's World: Aristocracy and Political Culture at the Fin de Siècle, presents what she calls a "braided narrative" (11). A series of chapters explore successive episodes in the lives of Arthur Balfour, George Pembroke, the sisters Laura and Margot Tennant, and the siblings George and Mary Wyndham in the 1880s and 1890s. All were associated with an informal intellectual and artistic circle named "the Souls," whose conversations and parlor games aspired to treat the serious lightly and the light seriously; a self-regarding, competitive levity engaged both sexes on equal terms (143). Ellenberger's aim is to define what she sees as a new "emotional regime" within which this section of the political elite moved, and to explore the ways in which friendship, marriage, and shifting gender relations were negotiated amid social and political transformation (8). To this task Ellenberger brings a finely-tuned sensitivity to personality and temperament, and draws extensively on archives, letters and diaries, and recent historical scholarship. The enigmatic Balfour and the thoughtful, but troubled, Pembroke are compared as privileged young "men of fortune" (13). Contrasting domestic backgrounds and, on occasion, perilous social encounters then frame the different upbringing and character of the elusive and mercurial Laura Tennant (daughter of a hugely wealthy Scottish industrialist) and the shy and insecure Mary Wyndham (later Lady Elcho and the daughter of Wiltshire gentry). This is followed by a chapter describing the volatile and rebellious Margot Tennant (later Asquith) and the more conventional George Wyndham (later Balfour's private secretary).

Having assembled her main cast, with other players introduced, Ellenberger subsequently examines the changing political and social environment within which the lives of this circle unfolded and the various personas and values each adopted. The impact of the Home Rule Crisis, the mass electorate created by the reforms of 1884 to 1885, the attributes of political performance, the entry of new plutocracies into national politics, the decline of aristocratic engagement in political life, the expansion of the popular press, the exposure of the behavior of elites to mass curiosity, and the nature of celebrity and scandal are brought to bear on the individual choices and fortunes of her subjects. Ellenberger uses the challenging opportunities and dangers open to women looking for a part in public life or in privileged settings of greater mixed-sex sociability, and the conventions of the country house party, to explore the shifting boundaries of what might be deemed appropriate behavior. The conduct and morality of the Souls are compared to the "chaffing" and practical jokes of the "fast set" associated with the Prince of Wales and his Marlborough House clique (141). In the process, Balfour gradually emerges as a skilled political performer, with an aloof and reserved public demeanor, seemingly both languid and detached, with a conversational rhetorical manner inviting his audience to trust in, rather than being commanded to support, his views. Pembroke, meanwhile, assumed the duties of landed paternalism, overseeing his estates in Wiltshire and Dublin and pursuing philanthropic projects, while nursing a debilitating sense of personal inconsequence. After her marriage to Alfred Lyttelton, Laura Tennant died prematurely, in childbirth, in 1886—a tragic loss that haunted her sister Margot, who was afterward tormented by thoughts of her own comparative shortcomings. A diligent and effective lieutenant to Balfour, George Wyndham eventually suffered a nervous breakdown, which forced him to abandon politics. Mary Wyndham, as Lady Elcho, maintained a private, affectionate relationship with the bachelor Balfour over a fifty-year period, compensating for the infidelities and domestic tyranny of her husband. Of this group of friends, only Balfour, who became Prime Minister in 1902 and remained active in politics until 1929, and Margot Tennant, as the wife of the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, attained real prominence in national public life.

While much is deftly done by Ellenberger, the strengths...