British politics were moving into an exceptionally bitter phase as the Liberals, or ‘Radicals’ as the Conservatives preferred to call them, attempted to push through their ambitious social, financial and constitutional programme. It seemed to some Conservatives that they were engaged in a class war with enemies such as the Welsh Liberal politician Lloyd George and the socialists of the Independent Labour Party. Yet in the Lyttelton household the political creed of the latter was a suitable subject for humour: ‘I went to the Mission [in the East End of London],’ Oliver told his mother in 1908, ‘but I am still not yet a socialist. The “staff” are particularly nice as is only natural considering they are Old Etonians.’9 Alfred seemed ‘opposed to any actions except quiescence’ and was not in favour of the House of Lords wrecking Liberal legislation. He and his friends, ‘comfortable in rich metropolitan seats’, did not seem to register the depth of the crisis: if the Tories did not resist with all their might and main ‘we should look upon ourselves as a dejected indeed a defeated party’.10
The unpleasantness of politics communicated itself to Oliver: ‘I hope,’ he wrote to his mother from Eton in 1909, the year of Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’, ‘we are very full for Christmas, I don’t mind sleeping on the floor, even if everybody is over thirty. I do hope there won’t be any ghastly election or any other political absurdity this time.’11; Unfortunately the political absurdity was unstoppable. In November Lloyd George described the peers as a useless group randomly chosen from among the unemployed and the House of Lords threw out his budget. That Christmas was ruined by an election in January 1910. The next Christmas was ruined by an election in December 1910. The elections solved nothing. The Liberals were weakened, indeed reliant on Irish nationalists for their parliamentary majority, but still in power. In front stretched the crisis of the 1911 Parliament Act, which was designed to cripple the power of the peers. Electoral failure in 1910 also brought about the fall of Balfour and the advent of the Scottish ‘hard man’ Andrew Bonar Law as Conservative leader. Alfred had tried to persuade his party to avoid conflict. Although he had supported Law for the leadership, once it was clear that Balfour had no stomach for the fight, politics could no longer be an adventure shared by friends.
If the political crisis of 1909 onwards dispirited the Lyttelton family, it reinvigorated the Cecils. Bobbety – ‘a ridiculous name but the one by which I am known to my friends’ – Cranborne grew up in a house full of ‘die-hards’ fighting the good fight for their family and class.12 The dominating figure of his early years was his grandfather, the 3rd Marquess. By his exertions Lord Salisbury had lifted the Cecils of Hatfield from centuries spent as political ciphers back to the heights of power they had enjoyed at the turn of the sixteenth century. He was in all ways an awe-inspiring figure, luxuriantly bearded, of huge stature, lapidary judgement and, in the outside world, prime minister until his retirement in 1902, when Bobbety was nine years old. The Cecils were by then the nearest Britain possessed to an imperial family.
Although Lord Salisbury himself had had to struggle hard and rise through his talents, once he reached the pinnacle he buttressed his rule by employing members of his own family. Although he had to look to his sister’s son Balfour as a political lieutenant and eventual successor, three of Salisbury’s five sons also entered politics: the eldest and his heir, Jim (or Jem), Bobbety’s father, and two younger brothers, Lord Robert and Lord Hugh, known as Linkie. It was said of the Cecil boys that ‘their ability varies inversely with their age’. Jim was thus regarded as the least talented, Hugh as the most. By the time Bobbety was old enough to take an interest in the public lives of his father and uncles, the rolling political salons that were Hatfield and Salisbury House in Arlington Street had become his homes. Yet the memory of the great 3rd Marquess still cast a long shadow. Not only did outsiders persistently compare him to his sons, to their perpetual disadvantage, but they themselves were prey to deep feelings of inadequacy. Since 1883 Jim Salisbury had suffered from periodic bouts of depression brought on by ‘these festering feelings of failure’.13
If Oliver Lyttelton grew up in awe of his father, Bobbety grew up in a household of men in awe of his grandfather’s dominating presence. This perhaps contributed to the family traits of fierce pride in the gens, intractability and odd diffidence. On the other hand, the dominant figure in his early life was not his father but his mother, Alice, the daughter of an Irish peer, whom James Cranborne had married in 1887. Although not a public figure as her friend Didi Lyttelton became after her husband’s death, Alice Salisbury was the undisputed chatelaine of Hatfield. She had no compunction about dabbling in politics: she made herself instrumental in the downfall of the Viceroy of India, George Curzon, by acting as the ‘back channel’ between his enemies and Balfour. More than her secret interest in political affairs, however, she provided the social flair and taste for entertaining on a magnificent scale from which her husband shied. She was to prove, behind the scenes, the mainstay of both her husband and her son.14
Lack of appreciable talent did not stop Lord Salisbury raising his son to ministerial rank as under-secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1900. Quips about Cecil nepotism struck and stuck because they were so obviously true. To nobody’s surprise, least of all his own one suspects, Jim Cranborne was not a success in his performance as a Foreign Office minister. He was not impressive in the House of Commons, never having got over his nervousness at speaking. He was thus ‘forbidden to give answers to supplementary questions’ in case he said something damaging. Unfortunately, since he did not have the parliamentary skill of avoiding a question by saying nothing at length, he simply refused to respond to any inquiry that had not been properly notified in advance and for which he had no clear brief. This procedure caused ire and mirth in the House in equal measure. There was soon in existence ‘a universal belief in Jim Cranborne’s complete and invincible incompetence’.15
In the short term, matters did not seem set to improve. In 1903 Lord Salisbury died and Jim Cranborne succeeded him, becoming the 4th Marquess. His translation to the Upper House was a blessed relief. He felt more at home among men who were literally his peers; he was accorded the respect to which his position in society entitled him, with none of the rowdyism of the demotic Commons. His cousin Balfour brought him into the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal at the same time as Alfred Lyttelton became colonial secretary in October 1903.
As Jim Salisbury was entering into his inheritance, the Conservative party started to tear itself to pieces over the issue of Tariff Reform, the campaign launched by Joseph Chamberlain in May 1903 to convert the party from laissez-faire to protectionism. Chamberlain hit on a sore point. The party had nearly destroyed itself over the issue of Free Trade in the 1840s, had condemned itself to a generation of political impotence and had only fully re-established itself as the natural party of government under Jim’s father. The Cecils were avowed Free Traders, yet the manner in which they prosecuted their campaign did not initially enhance their reputation.
Immediately after the crushing election defeat of 1906, Salisbury circularized all Unionist MPs in order to identify them as Free Traders or Tariff Reformers, or ‘food taxers’ as he called them. The move did not receive a warm response. ‘I am bound to say,’ wrote Lord Balcarres, ‘that I resent this catechism from one whose incompetence has been a contributory cause to our disaster. Good fellow as [ Jim] is, his tact is not generally visible: and it would not be unfair to reply that the taxation