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ego, The Times reported that the Countess Grosvenor had married Guy Wyndham of 16th (Queen’s) Lancers, with George acting as best man.⁶ The Wyndhams celebrated the occasion more lavishly on their return to Clouds with a vast tea for Milton’s and East Knoyle’s inhabitants, with a band playing from the terrace, a cricket match for the adults and a bag of sweets and a bun for each child.⁷ When George and Sibell made their first visit as newlyweds, the villagers followed the still fairly widespread tradition of intercepting their carriage and replacing their horses with eighty men who pulled them up the driveway to Clouds themselves.⁸

      While on honeymoon in the Italian Lakes, George received a telegram from Arthur Balfour. In March 1887, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Ireland’s Chief Secretary, had resigned, citing cataracts that had left him nearly blind. The grounds for resignation evoked those of Sir George Trevelyan, Cavendish’s successor, whose hair turned completely white within twelve months of taking the job, and who resigned a year after that, pleading to be released from a post that was, in his words, ‘not a human life at all’.⁹ In a shock appointment, Salisbury now chose his favourite nephew to fill the vacancy. Balfour’s appointment provoked incomprehension at Westminster and jubilation in Dublin: ‘We have killed Cavendish, blinded Beach and smashed up Trevelyan. What shall we do with this weakling?’ taunted the Irish crowds.¹⁰ So startling was Robert Salisbury’s decision that it has prompted the suggestion (probably incorrect) that it gave rise to the popular phrase that suggests when ‘Bob’s your uncle’ anything is possible.¹¹ Now Arthur asked George to join him as his private secretary. Citing the Wyndham tradition of public service, George cut short his honeymoon and hotfooted it back to ‘throw my lot in the political boat’.¹²

      George’s new post was a triumph for the Wyndhams, establishing, in the Souls’ fiercely competitive world, how close the family was to the ‘adored Gazelle’. But both offices were dangerous. Cavendish’s and Burke’s murders were still fresh in people’s minds. Arthur, the tenth Chief Secretary in as many years,¹³ pointed out with typical detachment that Ireland was a place where people tended to lose their reputations, their lives or possibly both.¹⁴ Shortly before Arthur’s departure, Mary visited him at Carlton Gardens. It was a Wednesday afternoon, fast becoming their ritual meeting time when in London, for on Wednesdays the House rose early. Perhaps it was the urgency lent by anxiety that provoked what Mary described as a ‘small very private and personal incident (gear changing!)’ in the same downstairs sitting room where they had first kissed a year before. Mary gave no further clues to what the incident might have been, beyond teasing Arthur that it would not appear in his memoirs.¹⁵

      Some years later, Mary explained to Wilfrid Blunt the exact nature of sexual relations among the Souls. ‘Nearly all the group were married women with husbands whom they loved & by whom they had children, but each had her friend who was a friend only.’¹⁶ Those friends’ relationship was ‘a little more than friendship, a little less than love’. So far as Wilfrid could understand, this meant everything but ‘the conjugal act’; or, from the male perspective, ‘Every woman shall have her man, but no man shall have his woman.’¹⁷ Later correspondence indicates that Mary and Arthur developed a sexual relationship involving role-play and mild sado-masochism (Arthur’s fondness for vigorous spankings lends disappointing force to the accusations frequently levelled at public-school-educated Englishmen). Quite possibly this ‘incident’ was the first time that Mary – then almost three months’ pregnant – and Arthur engaged in such activities.

      Arthur left a few days later, leaving with Frances Balfour a pouch to be opened only in the event of his death. ‘Accidents have occurred to a Chief Secretary for Ireland and (although I think it improbable) they may occur again. If the worst (as people euphemistically say!) should happen,’ said Balfour, Frances was to cut open the pouch with her penknife and ‘read the scrawl inside. It relates to a matter with which only you can deal.’

      Arthur did not need to elaborate on these instructions, or on his request that in such an event Frances check through his papers for any incriminating correspondence (Arthur’s preparations for his departure included burning a multitude of letters, many, presumably, from Mary). Fifty years later, an elderly Frances and Mary sat down together to open the pouch. ‘My dear Frances,’ wrote Balfour:

      I write this in a great hurry, but as you will only have to read it in the event of my death you will forgive my handwriting. I think you and all whom I love will be sorry that I am not any longer with you. But you will be able to talk it freely over with each other and all whom such an event may concern. There is however one who will not be in this position. I want you to give her as from yourself this little brooch which you will find herewith: and to tell her that, at the end, if I was able to think at all, I thought of her. If I was the means of introducing any unhappiness into her life I hope God will forgive me. I know she will.¹⁸

      The year 1887 marked Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. The Queen was reluctantly persuaded out of purdah for a Season glittering with magnificent balls, processions and banquets. Mary spent it more quietly in intellectual self-improvement. She was a keen attendee of weekly ethics classes organized by her sister-in-law Hilda Brodrick, who hired a Girton graduate as tutor. The day chosen was Wednesday, so male Souls could join. The small group that gathered each week included Mary, Betty Balfour, Charty Ribblesdale, Lady Pembroke and Ettie Grenfell. The sessions, on themes including ‘Conscience self love etc’ and ‘Kant’, were a qualified success. ‘Miss Anderson gave us a lecture which as none of us (except Betty) knew anything about the subject or had read anything was rather above our heads,’ Mary told her diary, noting that week’s essay: ‘Is it necessary for ethical reasoning, to assume or establish an ultimate end to rational action?’ Attendance diminished as the Season wore on. Mary was just one of three participants at the final class in early July, although their numbers had been boosted when Willie Grenfell and Tommy Ribblesdale joined after the House rose. The triumphant ethicists went out for a ‘farewell ethical luncheon’ that continued into the early hours of the morning: ‘we argued about the word implied & implicit till 1 o’clock & then couldn’t sleep from excitement’, Mary recorded.¹⁹

      A brief respite followed, as Mary, Hugo, the Ribblesdales and their eldest son Thomas went for a few days to Lyndhurst in the New Forest, staying in the Crown Hotel. The weather was baking, and the Forest even more lovely than Mary had expected. ‘We have been out all today laying [sic] on our backs looking up at the trees [while] Charty read aloud,’ Mary told her mother. Later in the day Hugo, Tommy and little Tommy raced around, hot, flustered and excited, trying to catch butterflies in nets. That night both couples dined with Sir William Harcourt, who had served in Gladstone’s most recent Cabinet as Chancellor, and Harcourt’s wife Elizabeth, and then took a moonlit drive back to their hotel. The trip was a ‘great success’ for the two flirtatious couples.²⁰

      Shortly afterwards, Mary went to Clouds. Hugo quickly absented himself, busying himself in London for the Season’s final weeks. Madeline Wyndham proposed that Mary should stay at Clouds for the rest of the summer rather than return to Stanway. With some misgivings, Mary broached the idea with Percy. After ‘incubating’ the issue for a few days, Percy expressed himself in favour. ‘Pupsie is like Migs & likes to make up his mind & face a thing slowly but then definitely for ever! (not like weathercock Wash),’ Mary told Hugo. To her amusement, Percy had seized on the plan as a means of protection ‘against Mumsie’s indiscriminating hospitality’: using Mary to keep ‘away people he don’t like!’ ‘I hope the poor mad sister won’t be forbidden as being bad for Migs i.e. disagreeable for Pup,’ added Mary.²¹ The ‘poor mad sister’ was Madeline’s sister Mary Carleton. Widowed early, with two small children, Dorothy and Guy, and little money, she was one of Madeline’s many lame ducks. Percy found her intensely annoying.

      Throughout the summer Mary had misgivings about Hugo. She knew his inclination for flirting with other women – ‘pairing off with a conk & having long tête-à-tête & purely (or impurely) personal conversations’²² – and feared he was neglecting his Commons’ duties. ‘You see too much of Violet [Manners] & [I] am getting uneasy,’ she told him in early August,²³ for Violet, the most artistic of all

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