Editing Arthur Balfour (section)

==Personal life==
Balfour met May Lyttelton in 1870 when she was 19. After her two previous serious suitors had died, Balfour is said to have declared his love for her in December 1874. She died of [[typhus]] on [[Palm Sunday]], 21 March 1875; Balfour arranged for an emerald ring to be buried in her coffin. Lavinia Talbot, May's older sister, believed that an engagement had been imminent, but her recollections of Balfour's distress (he was "staggered") were not written down until thirty years later.<ref name="Adams2007">{{cite book|last=Adams|first=Ralph James Q. |author-link=R. J. Q. Adams|title=Balfour: The Last Grandee|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q0ITAQAAIAAJ|year=2007|publisher=John Murray|isbn=978-0-7195-5424-7}}</ref>{{rp|29–33}}

Historian [[R. J. Q. Adams]] points out that May's letters discuss her love life in detail, but contain no evidence that she was in love with Balfour, nor that he had spoken to her of marriage. He visited her only once during her serious three-month illness, and was soon accepting social invitations again within a month of her death. Adams suggests that, although he may simply have been too shy to express his feelings fully, Balfour may also have encouraged tales of his youthful tragedy as a convenient cover for his disinclination to marry; the matter cannot be conclusively proven.<ref name="Adams2007"/>{{rp|29–33}}

In later years mediums claimed to pass on messages from her{{snd}}see the "[[Cross-Correspondences]]".<ref>{{cite book |title=The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914 |first=Janet |last=Oppenheim |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-521-34767-9 |pages=132–133 }}</ref><ref name="Wilson 2011 530">{{cite book |title=The Victorians |first=A. N. |last=Wilson |author-link=A. N. Wilson |publisher=[[Random House]] |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-4464-9320-5 |page=530 }}</ref>

Balfour remained a lifelong bachelor. [[Margot Tennant]] (later Margot Asquith) wished to marry him, but Balfour said: "No, that is not so. I rather think of having a career of my own."<ref name=Tuch46/> His household was maintained by his also unmarried sister, Alice. In middle age, Balfour had a 40-year friendship with [[Mary Constance Wyndham|Mary Charteris (née Wyndham), Lady Elcho]], later Countess of [[Hugo Charteris, 11th Earl of Wemyss|Wemyss and March]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/27.67 |title=The Wyndham Sisters: Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane, and Mrs. Tennant |publisher=[[The Metropolitan Museum of Art]] |orig-year=1899 |date=February 2010 |access-date=4 June 2012 |last=Sargent |first=John Singer |author-link=John Singer Sargent}}</ref>

Although one biographer writes that "it is difficult to say how far the relationship went", her letters suggest they may have become lovers in 1887 and may have engaged in [[sado-masochism]],<ref name="Adams2007" />{{rp|47}} a claim echoed by [[A. N. Wilson]].<ref name="Wilson 2011 530"/> Another biographer believes they had "no direct physical relationship", although he dismisses as "unlikely" suggestions that Balfour was homosexual, or, in view of a time during the [[Boer War]] when he was seen as he replied to a message while drying himself after his bath, [[Lord Beaverbrook]]'s claim that he was "a [[hermaphrodite]]" whom no-one saw naked.<ref name="Mackay1985">{{cite book|last=Mackay|first=Ruddock F. |title=Balfour, Intellectual Statesman|url=https://archive.org/details/balfourintellect00mack|url-access=registration|year=1985|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-212245-2|page=[https://archive.org/details/balfourintellect00mack/page/8 8]}}</ref>

Balfour was a leading member of the social and intellectual group [[The Souls]].