John Balfour

“ This Wheal Danes, at midnight, puts queer thoughts into one's head."
"John Trevethick was not afraid of coming here," observed Balfour.
"Well, so he always said. He told me at the last that he only pretended to believe in any of the foolish stories that folks talk about, and in favor of which he used to argue. But he's dead and gone, and that don't make this place less uncanny. Nobody since his time has been a-near it; they think he haunts the pit, it seems, so every body gives it a wide berth, both night and day. ”

“ Balfour has helped the people, and in a way which was best calculated to put them permanently on their feet. All to no purpose. You can't go on making lines that will not pay. You can't go on doling out charity for ever. ”

“ I have not heard from Balfour’s brothers,–who live at some distance, one in the State of Washington and the other in Venezuela,–but the other members of his family do not seem able or willing to do anything for the permanent support of the children. ”

“ Lord Salisbury is not so bad as he seems, nor is Balfour altogether beyond hope of salvation. Both are under a kind of Tory terrorism which makes them say the thing that is not, compels them against their wishes to fight, forces them reluctantly to make a show of opposition. ”

“ Worthington is no politician; never has interfered with party questions; has always confined his attention to his business affairs. It was because of this that Mr. Balfour sent for him to confer anent the light railways, which have proved such a blessing to the country. ”

“ The Araners know little of politics, save that the Balfour Government lifted them out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and set their feet upon a rock and established their goings. The Balfour boats are there, the Balfour nets are full of fish, the Balfour [160] boys are learning a useful occupation, and earning money meanwhile. If there is anything in the Aran cupboards, the Araners know who enabled them to put it there. If the young ladies have new shoes, new shawls, new brooches; if the Aran belles make money by mending nets; if the men sometimes see beef ”

“ Far more able and far more interesting in every way is his accomplished kinsman, Mr. Balfour, who, a few days later, was appointed Prime Minister. He is a tall, ruddy, handsome Scotchman, with a rare grace and charm of manner, and an exceptional air of high breeding, who speaks in a manly, straightforward way, with no trace of the bitterness, or even the heat so common in political discussions. When one notes the clearness of his mind, and the attractiveness of his address, it gives a keener edge to the regret that such a man should be on the wrong side of a great question like this. ”

“ Balfour's life had been a model of chasteness and regularity,—though this was owing more to constitutional coldness, and a frugal spirit, than to virtuous forbearance; but, in his schemes for the future, he did not exclude the circumstance of marriage. Having attained a situation secure as the nature of human affairs will admit from the chances of poverty, the way was sufficiently prepared for matrimony. His thoughts had been for some time employed in the selection of a suitable companion, when this rencounter happened with Miss Dudley. ”

“ BALFOUR, ROBERT (known also as Balforeus) (1550?–1625?) , Scottish philosopher, was educated at St Andrews and the university of Paris. He was for many years principal of the Guienne College at Bordeaux. His great work is his Commentarii in Organum Logicum Aristotelis (Bordeaux, 1618) ; the copy in the British Museum contains a number of highly-eulogistic poems in honour of Balfour, who is described as Graium aemulus acer. Balfour was one of the scholars who contributed to spread over Europe the fame of the praefervidum ingenium Scotorum. ”

“ One thinks that he began his descent unconsciously, and that carelessness rather than any inherent badness led gradually to an egoism which has proved fatal to his powers and to his character.
To the self-absorbed, vision is impossible. Mr. Balfour, unable to penetrate the future, has lived from day to day, enjoying the game of politics for the fun of confounding critics and managing colleagues, enjoying too the privilege and dignity of power, but never once feeling the call of the future, or experiencing one genuine desire to leave the world better than he found it. ”

“ He died suddenly at his London residence in South Kensington on 12 March 1909, and was buried at Wroughton, Wiltshire, the parish in which his father-in-law lived. In 1884 Arnold-Forster married Mary, eldest daughter of Mervyn Herbert Nevil Story-Maskelyne [q. v. Suppl. II] . She survived him with four sons.
With the shadow of death long hanging over him, no man, as Mr. Balfour remarked after his death, was 'more absolutely absorbed in a great and unselfish desire to carry out his own public duty.' His speeches in parliament were models of lucid exposition. ”

“ Balfour," said he, in a coaxing voice, "come and look at your treasure. It sparkles in the light of my lantern like gold, and you shall have it all if you please; I do not wish to share it with you."
"So you take me for a madman, do you? Look again; look fixedly upon me, Solomon Coe. You do not recognize me even yet? I do not wonder. It is not you that are dull, but I that am so changed by wrong and misery. My own mother does not know me, nor the woman of whom you robbed me nineteen years ago. Yes, you know me now. I am Richard Yorke!" ”

“ Butcher died after a brief illness. This event loosened the ties which bound him to Edinburgh; and, having held his professorship long enough to earn a pension, he resigned in the following year. At a farewell dinner in January 1904 Mr. Arthur Balfour presided, and many speeches, made by distinguished persons, testified to the esteem and affection which he had won. He removed to London, taking a house (No. 6) in Tavistock Square, where he passed the remainder of his life. In 1904 he accepted an invitation to lecture at Harvard University and elsewhere in the United States. ”

“ In his "Philosophical Essays" he wrote against Hume and Lord Kaimes, and in defence of active power and liberty. Like all active opponents of the new scepticism he felt it necessary to oppose the favourite theory of Locke, that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflexion.'
Balfour's mother was a Miss Hamilton, of Airdrie, great-grandaunt of the late Sir William Hamilton, Bart., professor of logic and metaphysics in the university of Edinburgh 1836-1856. ”

“ One thing, however, should not be lost sight of. The continual harping upon one point by caricaturists as well as chroniclers is apt to mislead. Mr. Balfour, for instance, is often supposed to be devoted to nothing but politics and golf, whereas he is best known as the greatest metaphysician of the age. ”

“ That little speech gave one a clearer sense of what through all these years Arthur Balfour has been doing than anything that ever has before come to me. There is something supremely brave about a man of such 136fine understanding, such humorous and distinguished cynicism, standing by through all of the disillusions, disgust, deceptions, forced evil choices of public life, never quitting whatever the temptation. ”

“ He preferred appeals to his intellect rather than claims upon his feelings. Handel in music, Pope in poetry, Scott in narration, Jane Austen in fiction and Sainte-Beuve in criticism supplied him with everything he wanted. He hated introspection and shunned emotion.
What interested me most and what I liked best in Arthur Balfour was not his charm or his wit—and not his politics—but his writing and his religion.
Any one who has read his books with a searching mind will perceive that his faith in God is what has really moved him in life; and no one can say that he has not shown passion here. ”

“ The second day in London, Tom took me to an exhibition important in the art world, or at least in the official life of London. Everybody who was somebody was there. I saw the Princess of Wales and the Marquis of Salisbury, who was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. I saw Mr. Balfour, so handsome and gracious that I refused to believe there had ever been cause to call him “Bloody Balfour.” There was something kingly about him—yet he was simply Mr. Balfour. Years afterward I realized that to know Mr. Balfour is either to worship him or hate him. No one takes the middle course. ”

“ Balfour is in Europe, I believe. How comes it that he is not produced here to tell your Lordships who was his informer, and what he knows of the transaction? They have not produced him, but have thought fit to rely upon this miserable, beggarly semblance of evidence, the very production of which was a crime, when brought forward for the purpose of giving color to acts of injustice and oppression. If you ask, Who is this Mr. Balfour? He is a person who was a military collector of revenue in the province of Rohilcund: a country now ruined and desolated, but once the garden of the world. ”

“ Few men could have borne without hurt such a stream of honorable distinctions, but in young Balfour genius and independence of thought were happily blended with industry and personal modesty; these won for him the friendship, esteem, and admiration of all who knew him. ”

“ The memory of his father made him popular in the country: he himself had been at first courted, afterwards neglected by the government of the Stuarts, and seemed to have some claim against them. The ease with which the Parliamentary army was levied was ascribed to his name and zeal: he chose as his subordinates men conspicuous in the dominant party. Balfour served as lieutenant-general; among the colonels of foot we find Brooke, Mandeville, Hollis, Hampden: among the captains of horse Cromwell, Fiennes, and Haslerig. ”

“ He was appointed physician in ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1900 and honorary physician to King Edward VII in 1901.
In 1899 Balfour retired from Edinburgh to Colinton, the home of his youth, where he died on 9 Aug. 1903. Of impassive demeanour, he charmed his friends by his quaint humour and culture. Although probably the best auscultator of his time, he lacked all appreciation of music. A portrait, by R. H. Campbell, hangs in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Balfour was thrice married: (1) in 1848 to Agnes (d. 1851) , daughter of George Thomson, by whom he had one son, Lewis ”

“ With a fearful shriek—the more startling from his habitual composure—Balfour sprung to his feet, like Richard in the tent-scene; with hair erect, blanched face, and large drops of perspiration gathering on his brow, he staggered back, shouting:
“Oh, God! the man’s alive!”
I dashed at him, horror-struck myself, not at what had occurred—for I saw how it had happened—but at the abject terror of my companion, appalling to the last degree. Clasped together we hustled each other into a corner of the room, giving, in our passing struggles, a sharp gyration to the suspended skeletons. ”

“ He knew well enough, of course, that of the operation he would feel nothing. But the sight of the hard, white, narrow pallet on which he had to lie, the cold glint of the remorseless instruments, the neatly folded packages of lint and cotton-wool, and the faint, horrible smell of chloroform turned him rather sick for a minute. Then he glanced downwards, with a sense of almost affectionate yearning, at the limb he was about to lose. "Good-bye, dear old leg!" he murmured, with a little laugh which smothered a rising sob. "We've had some lovely ramps together, but the best of friends must part." ”

“ In some ways he seems to me to have been too good a Stoic to be entirely a good Christian; or rather (to put it more correctly) to feel, like the rest of us, that he was a bad Christian. . . . There was much more in him of the Scotch Puritan than of the English Cavalier.
It is supremely characteristic of the present Parliamentary atmosphere that everybody accused Lord Balfour of incomprehensible compromise and vagueness, because he was completely logical and absolutely clear. Clarity does look like a cloud of confusion to people whose minds live in confusion twice confounded. ”

“ Those MacTavishes poison my soul just as arsenic poisons the body, and I won't have my soul poisoned if I can help it. It's very sad to see how blind she is to the art and philosophy of life. But she'll have to learn it, and the sooner she begins the better."
Here he left the high road, and turned into a long, narrow lane enclosed between high banks, which led into a pleasant meadow by the river side. This shortened the way considerably, and when he reached the stile at the further end of the meadow he found himself only some ten minutes' walk from the park gates. ”

“ Stratford sent a note to the headquarters of the trolley line addressed to Balfour and inviting him to tea. On the appointed evening he made his appearance at Red Knoll.
"It is not often," he said, "that I can get enough time off to accept an invitation of this kind; but I can tell you that it's very delightful to be among friends. That's the worst of going so far from home. You're among strangers and nobody cares especially for you."
Although Martine and her mother were both somewhat curious as to what had brought Balfour to this corner of the world, for the moment they asked no questions. ”

“ I was about to have signed here, but that would leave the purport of my question doubtful; and in my own case I ken the answer. So fill up here with good advice. Do not be too blate, [25] and for God's sake do not try to be too forward; nothing sets you worse. I am
"Your affectionate friend and governess,
"BARBARA GRANT."
I wrote a word of answer and compliment on a leaf out of my pocketbook, put it in with another scratch from Catriona, sealed the whole with my new signet of the Balfour arms, and despatched it by the hand of Prestongrange's servant that still waited in my boat. ”