The Souls
Late-Victorian aristocratic intellectual circle organized around Arthur Balfour from the 1880s onward
Also known as: The Souls, the Souls
A late-Victorian and Edwardian aristocratic discussion circle organized around Arthur Balfour, active from approximately 1885 into the Edwardian period. Quigley treats The Souls as the second-generation social-intellectual milieu of the Cecil Bloc — the cohort from which the Milner Group's political and social register would later emerge (AAE 26-27). 'This second generation was much more social in a spectacularly frivolous sense, much more intellectual (in the sense that they read books and talked philosophy or social problems) and centered on a social group known at the time as "The Souls"' (AAE 26).
Origin and Character
The Souls coalesced in the mid-1880s around Arthur Balfour, then nephew and parliamentary lieutenant of Lord Salisbury, and a circle of his intimates — George Wyndham, Margot Tennant (later Asquith), Mary Elcho, Ettie Grenfell, Alfred Lyttelton, and others — most of them in their twenties and thirties, all from the great Whig-and-Tory dynasties. The name was applied 'partly in derision and partly in envy but used by themselves later' (AAE 27). Margot Tennant Asquith preserved the circle for posterity in her autobiography; Oscar Wilde caricatured it in his plays. Quigley reads The Souls as a transitional social formation — the Cecil Bloc's second generation, more frivolous and more bookish than the Salisbury-Gladstone first generation it replaced. 'The frivolity of this group can be seen in Margot Tennant's statement that she obtained for Milner his appointment to the chairmanship of the Board of Inland Revenue in 1892 merely by writing to Balfour and asking for it after she had a too brief romantic interlude with Milner in Egypt' (AAE 27).
Membership Overlap with the Cecil Bloc
The Souls were not a formal organisation; they had no roster, no constitution, no fixed meeting place. They were a social configuration of a generation of aristocratic intellectuals, weighted heavily toward the political-administrative class that became the Conservative-Unionist establishment after the Home Rule split of 1886. Quigley does not attempt a comprehensive list, but the Souls broadly comprised the second of his three Cecil Bloc generations: those 'born in the second third of the nineteenth century, [who] went almost exclusively to Oxford (chiefly Balliol) in the period 1860-1880, and died in the period 1920-1930' (AAE 26). Among the recognisable names: Balfour himself, George Wyndham, the Lytteltons, Margot Tennant Asquith (whose husband H. H. Asquith was both a Soul and a future Liberal Prime Minister), Mary Curzon (wife of George Curzon), and Edith Lyttelton. Their cross-party reach — both Conservative and Liberal Imperialist branches — corresponds to Quigley's analysis of the Cecil Bloc as ultimately broader than party affiliation.
Setting Between Two Generations
Quigley's analytical use of The Souls is structural. They occupy the middle of his three-generation diagram of the late-Victorian elite. The first generation — Salisbury, Gladstone, Devonshire, Goschen — was 'not as social (in the frivolous sense) as the second' (AAE 26). It was a generation of politics, public business, and the writing of state papers. The second generation, The Souls, was social, intellectual, and post-Oxford: it read Pater and Browning, discussed philosophy at country-house weekends, took up psychic research with serious commitment. 'One of the enduring creations of the Cecil Bloc is the Society for Psychical Research, which holds a position in the history of the Cecil Bloc similar to that held by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the Milner Group. The Society was founded in 1882 by the Balfour family and their in-laws, Lord Rayleigh and Professor Sidgwick' (AAE 27). The third generation — born 1865-1895, dominated by Milner — was 'quite different . . . dominated and organized about the Milner Group. It was very serious-minded, very political, and very secretive' (AAE 26-28).
The Souls and the Milner Group
Despite Quigley's emphasis on the generational gap between the (frivolous) Souls and the (serious) Milner Group, the membership overlap was substantial. Milner himself, although a Soul by social proximity, was 'one of the few completely serious members of the second generation' (AAE 28). Balfour, the Souls' central figure, sat as one of the original Circle of Initiates of the 1891 Rhodes secret society (AAE 33) and later appears on Quigley's tentative roster of the Society of the Elect (AAE 258). Edith Lyttelton, Alfred Lyttelton's widow, joined the Milner Group as a member of the Outer Circle of the Association of Helpers (AAE 261). H. H. Asquith — Soul through his marriage to Margot Tennant — was Prime Minister 1908-1916, presided over the start of the First World War, and was one of the four Liberal Imperialists Quigley identifies as having been 'close to the Milner Group politically, intellectually, and socially' (AAE 26). Curzon, another Souls figure, was a Salisbury protégé, All Souls Fellow, Viceroy of India 1899-1905, and Foreign Secretary 1919-1924. The continuity of personnel was decisive.
The Souls and the Society for Psychical Research
Quigley's most striking analytical move on The Souls is his pairing of their characteristic creation — the Society for Psychical Research (1882) — with the Milner Group's characteristic creation, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1919). 'It holds a position in the history of the Cecil Bloc similar to that held by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the Milner Group. The Society was founded in 1882 by the Balfour family and their in-laws, Lord Rayleigh and Professor Sidgwick. In the twentieth century it was dominated by those members of the Cecil Bloc who became most readily members of the Milner Group. Among these we might mention Gilbert Murray, who performed a notable series of experiments with his daughter, Mrs. Arnold J. Toynbee, in the years before 1914, and Dame Edith Lyttelton, herself a Balfour and widow of Arthur Balfour's closest friend, who was president of the Society in 1933-1934' (AAE 27). The parallel matters: for the second generation, the institutional vehicle for elite intellectual coordination was a society devoted to telepathy and survival of consciousness; for the third generation, it was Chatham House devoted to foreign affairs. Same dynastic personnel, different concern. Quigley draws no metaphysical conclusion; the comparison is purely sociological.
Dissolution
The Souls did not dissolve formally because they were never formally organised. They thinned as their members died and as the social configuration that had made them possible — the late-Victorian country-house weekend, the small London Season, the leisurely conversation of an aristocracy with substantial leisure — was eroded by the political seriousness of the post-1900 period, the deaths of the First World War, and the changed economic conditions of the inter-war years. By 1920 the Souls were a memory, preserved in Margot Asquith's memoirs and in Quigley's own footnotes. The third generation — Milner's — had taken over. 'This third generation was serious if not profound, studious if not broadly educated, and haunted consistently by the need to act quickly to avoid impending disaster' (AAE 28). The Souls had read Pater; the Milner Group read the Foreign Office cables. The Souls had taken seances seriously; the Milner Group took the political map of central Europe seriously. The social register continued; the centre of gravity moved decisively to political business. The Souls had been the cradle from which the Milner Group's senior membership was lifted into its post-1910 political work — a place of formation rather than of operation, named in Quigley's analysis but not, in his telling, a working network in its own right.
Significance in Quigley's Architecture
The Souls occupy a small but specific slot in The Anglo-American Establishment: they are the link between the Cecil Bloc's political nepotism and the Milner Group's later conspiratorial organisation. Without the Souls, Quigley's three-generation model lacks its middle term — the social-intellectual cohort that produced the personalities (Balfour, Asquith, Curzon, Edith Lyttelton, Milner himself) who would carry the project across the generational handover. They are not, strictly, a network in the way the Milner Group is a network; Quigley calls them a 'social group' (AAE 26) rather than an organisation. They had no instruments of action — no funded journal, no controlled press chair, no recruiting college, no trust fund. They had instead a style: aristocratic, literary, cross-party, vaguely metaphysical. That style provided the cultural manners that the post-1910 Milner Group's third-generation members would carry forward, even as they replaced the Souls' frivolity with serious political coordination. The Cliveden weekends of the 1930s, in their atmosphere, were Souls weekends with foreign-policy agendas attached.
Cited in
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 26 Quigley
This second generation was much more social in a spectacularly frivolous sense, much more intellectual (in the sense that they read books and talked philosophy or social problems) and centered on a social group known at the time as 'The Souls.'
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 26 Quigley
Socially, the Cecil Bloc could be divided into three generations.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 27 Quigley
The second generation of the Cecil Bloc was famous at the time that it was growing up (and political power was still in the hands of the first generation) as 'The Souls,' a term applied to them partly in derision and partly in envy but used by themselves later.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 27 Quigley
This group, flitting about from one great country house to another or from one spectacular social event to another in the town houses of their elders, has been preserved for posterity in the autobiographical volumes of Margot Tennant Asquith.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 27 Quigley
The frivolity of this group can be seen in Margot Tennant's statement that she obtained for Milner his appointment to the chairmanship of the Board of Inland Revenue in 1892 merely by writing to Balfour and asking for it after she had a too brief romantic interlude with Milner in Egypt.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 27 Quigley
One of the enduring creations of the Cecil Bloc is the Society for Psychical Research, which holds a position in the history of the Cecil Bloc similar to that held by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the Milner Group.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 27 Quigley
The Society was founded in 1882 by the Balfour family and their in-laws, Lord Rayleigh and Professor Sidgwick. In the twentieth century it was dominated by those members of the Cecil Bloc who became most readily members of the Milner Group.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 28 Quigley
The third generation was quite different, partly because it was dominated by Milner, one of the few completely serious members of the second generation.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 28 Quigley
This third generation was serious if not profound, studious if not broadly educated, and haunted consistently by the need to act quickly to avoid impending disaster.