Lord Salisbury goes so little into general society that his qualities as a talker are not familiarly known.  He is painfully shy, and at a club or in a large party undergoes the torments of the lost.  Yet no one can listen, even casually, to his conversation without appreciating the fine manner, full both of dignity and of courtesy; the utter freedom from pomposity, formality, and self-assertion, and the agreeable dash of genuine cynicism, which modifies, though it does not mask, the flavour of his fun.  After a visit to Hatfield in 1868, Bishop Wilberforce wrote in his diary:  “Gladstone how struck with Salisbury:  ’Never saw a more perfect host.’” And again—­“He remarked to me on the great power of charming and pleasant hosting possessed by Salisbury.”  And it is the universal testimony of Lord Salisbury’s guests, whether at Hatfield or in Arlington Street, that he is seen at his very best in his own house.  The combination of such genuine amiability in private life with such calculated brutality in public utterance constitutes a psychological problem which might profitably be made the subject of a Romanes Lecture.

Barring the shyness, from which Mr. Balfour is conspicuously free, there is something of Lord Salisbury’s social manner about his accomplished nephew.  He has the same courtesy, the same sense of humour, the same freedom from official solemnity.  But the characteristics of the elder man are exaggerated in the younger.  The cynicism which is natural in Lord Salisbury is affected in Mr. Balfour.  He cultivates the art of indifference, and gives himself the airs of a jaded Epicurean who craves only for a new sensation.  There is what an Irish Member, in a moment of inspiration, called a “toploftiness” about his social demeanour which is not a little irritating.  He is too anxious to show that he is not as other men are.  Among politicians he is a philosopher; among philosophers, a politician.  Before that hard-bitten crew whom Burke ridiculed—­the “calculators and economists”—­he will talk airily of golf and ladies’ fashions; and ladies he will seek to impress by the Praise of Vivisection or the Defence of Philosophic Doubt.  His social agreeableness has, indeed, been marred by the fatuous idolatry of a fashionable clique, stimulating the self-consciousness which was his natural foible; but when he can for a moment forget himself he still is excellent company, for he is genuinely amiable and thoroughly well informed.

FOOTNOTES: 

[19] 1897.

[20] Cromartie, 4th Duke.

XVI.

CONVERSATION—­continued.