EARLY IN 1893, Arthur James Balfour finally sent his friend Margot Tennant some reactions to an essay she had written months earlier about the role that individual genius played in public affairs. Margot was always on the lookout for masterful men, and she shared the Victorian conviction that just as self-help determined an individual's fate, so titanic personalities shaped the fortunes of the world. Truly historic political actors made their own opportunities and placed a personal stamp on their times. The word ‘charisma’ was not yet in popular use outside its religious meanings, but Margot looked for something like it in her endless scrutiny of the public figures of her day.

Arthur Balfour disagreed. Personal circumstances had long ago convinced him that the most important events in an individual's life were not within personal control. When it came to explaining political success, he attributed most of it to ‘sheer accident’. Arthur's own position as leader of the Conservatives in the House of Commons had been the result of a cabinet colleague's unpredictable breakdown in 1887. His subsequent promotion to the post of chief secretary for Ireland landed him a starring role in the most important parliamentary drama of his generation – the Irish home rule controversy of the late 1880s (see Fig. 1). He might have mentioned other fortuitous events of the decade: the self-destruction of his greatest political rival, Lord Randolph Churchill (Winston's father), or the break up of the Liberal Party over the Irish cause. But with characteristic occlusion, Arthur avoided mentioning what might have been pertinent to Margot's argument. Acquiring the highly visible position of Irish secretary had done nothing to ensure that he would display the qualities necessary for the occasion, much less to become presumptive head of his party within four years.

Arthur's reply to Margot went deeper than what he called this ‘extremely trite’ nod to the Machiavellian calculus of will versus fortuna. ‘What you say about “personality” is in a way true’, he acknowledged. ‘But I do not think you quite realize what a small fraction of what we call personality can really be said to depend upon the person. Personality, as you use the word, really means the power of striking the popular imagination: and this is in every case as much due to favourable accident as to inherent capacities.’