ARTHUR BALFOUR's rise to prominence was one of the defining features of public life in the 1890s. His duels with Gladstone and the Irish, leadership in the House of Commons, even the widely caricatured high forehead, side whiskers, lanky frame and ubiquitous golf club made his name and image recognisable far beyond friends and colleagues. Gety Pembroke acknowledged this new pre-eminence when she wrote about the annual house party she was planning at Wilton over the 1890 Easter recess: ‘the great A. Balfour is coming … he is a wonderful man. It is funny to look back to when he used to come here quite quietly and nobody thought anything of him except us – now – he is like a standard and the whole world wish to come and meet him.’

What Gety meant by the ‘whole world’ was actually the ‘world’ as the aristocracy had traditionally understood it – the national political and social elites, the habitués of metropolitan society and professional life most interested in governance. As Arthur's social cache rose, his friends had inevitably found themselves the subjects of gossip and chaff by this ‘shamelessly inquisitive’ conglomerate. Gladys de Grey reported a sporting gathering at Riddlesworth in Norfolk where ‘the old Soul joke continued from the beginning of dinner until we went to bed. They even condescended to “jeux de mots” about fried Souls and other cheap witticisms that bring tears to the eyes.’ Early in 1891, when Lord Wenlock arrived in Bombay on the way to his new position as governor of Madras, the Pall Mall Gazette reported that an Indian newspaper had described the Wenlocks as Souls, members of a society as ‘secret as the Masons’, according to the anonymous London correspondent. The private sociabilities of London were reaching newspaper readers in India, to say nothing of the English provinces, then recirculating back to the city as more news.

Prominent families already knew something of this. As national elites formed in Britain during the Napoleonic era, aristocratic families had begun to use print media to convey information to far-flung acquaintances. The Court Circular column in the London Times reported the entertainments and movements of important people across the country and abroad, starting with royalty but including prominent title-holders as well.