LORD BALFOUR'S MEMOIRS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20087, 17 November 1930, Page 3

LORD BALFOUR'S MEMOIRS.

j THE FIRST FORTY YEARS. " UNCLE ROBERT." IPHOK OUR OWK COR3ESPOKCBKT.) LONDON. October 9. Lord Balfour's autobiography, if he had completed it, must have fascinated every reader fitted by temperament to enter into tho working of so unusual a mind. Tho "Chapters of Autobiography," published to-day (Cassell, 10s Gd- not), though only a tantalising fragment, are wholly characteristic of one who at 80 years cf ago could still regard himself with the philosopher's eye. Ho is detached; ho is rather amused, llis attitude is not unlike that of a biologist studying througli the microscope some slice of liio. Mrs Edgar Dugdale, who iuis edited tho book, records that in January, when ho was planning it, ho said to tier : "You know- —when 1 look back at myself, i in appalled by how little 1 have cluuij.',ml in 80 years. If 1 luno to writ© about myself I shall have to show ijooplo what 1 am—a very lazy man who has always had a job on hand. that's what 1 have been always. I'm not erudite —but I've got a smattering of a lot of things." Tho things in which he was not erudite, and the qualities he lacked, are given more prominence than tho others in this glance over his earlier years. Thoy were doubtless of equal importance in the making of the man. "Through no fault of my teachers, I failed to master either Greek or Latin; through no fault of my own, no other languages were ever taught me." But his mother, a lover of French literature, introduced him to that "new language" by means of ''Monte Cristo," though he is not alluding to this only when he says later that all his debts to thos© who influenced him "are as nothing compared to what I owe to her love, her teaching, nnd her example." To two apparently trifling incidents of his boyhood he attributes important psychological effects. One was unex]>ectod commendation from JohnsonCory at Eton. The other was a chance conversation with his uncle Robert (Lord Salisbury, then 3G, nnd 1-oi'd Cr.'tnborne>, which "sprang from nothing in particular, which led to nothing in particular, of which I i"Ciiiember li;> details." In what, then [lie asks], lav its magic? Not solely in the fact that he said interesting things in a very interesting way, thoutrh this was part of the charm, but in tho fact that he spoke a* n man speaks to n man. and not as a man speaks to a boy. Bismarck's Quostlon. Aitfci' ho had entered Parlamcnt as member for Hertford, it was tli<3 knowledge that Lord and Lady Salisbury expected him to give "oytjrt signs oi Parliamentary activity" which persuaded him to make his Viaiden speech. In his diflidenoe, ho took the precaution of choosing Indian silver currency for a theme, and an hour when ha "enjoyed to the fullest extent the advantages of speaking in a silent and friendly solitude." Tho verbal memory which lie wanted then he continued to want. Randolph Churchill could repeat a column of "Tho Times" after a single perusal ... Bo liar Law, smoking comfortably in hiß arm-chair, could compose a speech involving tho most complicated arguments and figures without putting pen to x )a P cr - ... I never could discover, merely by listening, whether Lord Oxford (Asquith) was speaking impromptu, was repeating from memory, or was reading from & manuscript. Always tho right word camo, and alwayss without an effort. This, unfortunately, has never been my case. The Indian currency speech marked the real beginning, he says, of his Parliamentary career. But "no one will ever know what I said on this (to me) all-important occasion; for I have forgotten all tho details myself, and there is little in Hansard to remind mo of them." Two years later, in 1878, on Lord Salisbury's going to the Foreign Office, Arthur Balfour became his Parliamentary private secretary, and accompanied him to the Congress of Berlin. In Berlin he had one brief talk with Bismarck, "not about the Eastern Question." We were introduced at Lady. Odo Russell's; and he must have been in some difficulty as to the kind of thing he should say to a foreign private secretary of whom he had probably never heard before, and about whom, as yet, he know nothing but the name. It was the namo which saved u§. "Are you a descendant," he said, "of the Balfour of Burleigh, who plays his part in Sir Walter Scott's 'Old Mortality'V' It would have amused me to answer in the affirmative. . . • As it was, I had to disclaim tho honour; but in doing so I ventured to express my gratification, as a Scotsman, at the intimate acquaintance with our Scottish novelist !.:iwa bv the gicat German. "Ah," sak. tho Prince, "when we were young we all had to read Sir Walter. He was considered so very proper." Tho Fourth Party. Another literary allusion brings in Lord Randolph Churchill, with whom Arthur Balfour was so closely associated in the Fourth Party. He recalls "Randolph coming into the House of Commons at Question time on a Monday afternoon in the year 1883, and telling me that he had just returned from Eton, where he found the whole scholastic world, old and young, masters and boys, entirely absorbed in the enjoyment of a novel of adventure called 'Treasure Island,' and written by one Stevenson." Lord Balfour closes a summary of Lord Randolph's political achievement by saying that he could never have accomplished all he did. Nt the rate he did it, without the aid of one most powerful ally. "There would ' surely never have been a Churchill had there not also been a Northeote," who was "a scholar and ti gentleman, a man of wide experience, nnd urbane manners, but when it came to a fight no more a match for Mr Gladstone than a wooden threedecker would lie for a Dreadnought." The members of the Fourth Party, as everybody knows, did not always agree. This estrangement among the four friends, though riot displayed in overt Parliamentary action, was sufficiently notorious to occasion Uarcourt's Kibe about tho infinite dlvisability of even the smallest and most insignificant fraction of matter. It con tinued, bfit did not prevent us from sitting together; though I win requested to be careful to place myself between Gorßt and Randolph, who were both prepared to speak to me, though unwilling for many weeks to speak to each other. Lord Randolph, "our very wilful ro'league," overshot the mark in the ''Elijah's Mantle" episode, when he ottered himself »s Lord Beoconsfield's successor in the leadership of the Conservative Party. This was "a display of self-confidence so sublime, so ingenuous. nnd so skilful that none of the familiar canons of criticism seemed to cover the case," Arthur Balfour's loyalty was naturally vowed to Lord Salisbury, and, moreover, he "mildly resented' .".11 thi.s talk about 'Tory democracy'- as if Tory democracy was an invention of the Fourth Party, nnd in some mysterious way mixed up with the proposed changes in Conservative organisation." The pages that follow, on Lord Randolph's scheme for remodelling tho Party machinery, have moro