Lady Constance Lytton Read online

  The Lyttons left London on 1 March 1876, spending more than three weeks on a boat before reaching India. Robert and Edith then separated so that he could start his official duties in the capital while she settled the children in to their new home. This was Government House in Simla, the summer capital of Indian government, where Constance and her siblings would spend six months of the year.

  Simla was an odd place, imagined and built to remind people of a country that they had not seen for years. Each summer, the government packed up and moved 1,200 miles into the hills to avoid the greatest extremes of the climate. There were something like 400 houses, built along a strip a mile long, along with everything that you would expect to find in an English town – a church, library, bank, town hall, a club for the gentlemen – as well as a hall for ‘rinking’, or roller skating.31 The houses were ‘little islands of Englishness’ and ‘the gardens were planted with ferns and roses and familiar vegetables’.32 There was also a valley which was used for cricket, archery, fetes – and as a racecourse. All Anglo-Indian society spent their leave at Simla, so there was a permanent holiday spirit, which the Lyttons entered into enthusiastically. Edith caused something of a stir by the apparently radical innovation of seating dinner party guests in small groups rather than along one long table.33

  Though her first impressions of India were not favourable – ‘everything we touched was baking hot, and the bread at luncheon quite hard, and napkins stiff’34 – Edith liked her new home. Robert hated the way it leaked and resented having to spend any money on it. Having been used to moderate and temperate European cities, the Lyttons now had to adapt to a climate that went rapidly from one extreme to the next: freezing in April and boiling in May; utterly dry in June and rains heavy enough to wash away houses in September. It made Robert ill and for four months he was forced to give up champagne and smoking.35

  Edith diligently threw herself into the extensive duties required by Robert’s social position. Not all of these were tedious, and the Lyttons found pleasure where they could: one of Robert’s biographers describes them as the ‘first Viceregal couple to bring some glamour to Simla’.36 Robert encouraged theatre and the arts, while Edith, a talented piano player, tried to nurture a musical scene and had a tennis court built. Aside from entertaining the British, Edith had a strong interest in education, especially for Indian girls, and made a steady stream of official visits to schools, hospitals and army barracks, to meet the wives and children of British soldiers. She was so busy with her official duties that for the first time, she did not nurse her new baby. This was, to their great relief and joy, a boy, born on 9 August 1876. The Queen had asked to be godmother, and the baby was named after her: Victor Alexander George Robert. A final child, Neville Stephen, would be born in February 1879, between the first and second suppers of a ball.37 When Victor himself served in India in the early 1920s and saw what was expected of the Vicereine, he wondered how on earth Edith had managed to do it all, especially with two babies.38

  Robert did not make a good first impression on the expatriate elite. His first significant intervention was a legal case in which a British man, named Fuller, struck his coachman, who collapsed and later died. It was brought to trial but Fuller was fined only thirty rupees. This became a focus for Indian grievances, and Robert rightly intervened, rebuking the judge. He was supported in this by the Queen and both British and Indian press, but Anglo-Indian society felt he had let them down. In their view, he was not on their side, and so they mistrusted him from the outset.39

  Robert began preparations for the ceremony to proclaim Queen Victoria as Empress. This was to be expensive and extravagant, which began to look grotesque when a series of natural disasters struck. A cyclone in Bombay was followed by an outbreak of famine in Bombay and Madras. The ceremony was held on New Year’s Day 1877 and Robert, for once, stuck rigidly to formality and protocol. There were princes and chiefs, ambassadors and envoys, soldiers and bureaucrats, as well as thousands upon thousands of ordinary people.40 The assembled multitudes were surprised to see Edith and her girls present, though at least Robert was able to refrain from smoking during the ceremony. Constance was seven, old enough to be impressed and young enough to be bored.

  Meanwhile, the famine grew worse. Famines were frequent and hardly unexpected, but the government had no structures in place to distribute relief. Nothing in Robert’s previous career had prepared him to face such a crisis and his response did not match the magnitude of the disaster. The last major famine had struck parts of Bihar and Bengal. It had been dealt with successfully by importing rice, setting up an effective distribution system and establishing work programmes, which helped avoid major casualties. But there had also been a great deal of waste, and this led Robert to focus on efficiency rather than human suffering. He introduced tests to determine who was eligible for help, and the systems in place forced people to walk long distances for relief. In Madras, the Governor introduced a much more generous and liberal system of help. Robert tried to put a stop to it, worried about the likely costs, and sent instructions to reduce the rations and cut down the relief operation.

  This famine was one of the worst disasters of the century in India, resulting in five million deaths. As a result, the government created an Indian Famine Commission which drew up a Famine Code, setting out how the government would respond in future. Plans were drawn up for new railways and better irrigation in areas prone to famine, district officers were told how to share out food and organise relief, and provisions were made to reduce taxes and offer loans to help farmers recover. This was a vast improvement on the formerly shambolic and piecemeal approach to famine relief. However, it allowed the British to feel complacent and did not prevent further severe famines over the next few years.41

  Robert’s handling of the delicate situation in Afghanistan did more lasting damage to his own reputation. There was a division of opinion back home about the best policy towards Afghanistan, and by implication, Russia, which was aggressively expanding through Asia every year. Afghanistan was a fragmented and tribal land, and if Russia wanted to invade India, the easiest way to do so was along the huge north-western border between India and Afghanistan. One school of thought held that Britain, through India, needed to have a strong influence over Afghanistan in order to hold Russia back and dissuade any chance of invasion. Another view was that Afghanistan was so divided as to be almost ungovernable, and if it came to a fight with the Russians, that would be easier on the frontier of India than in the mountains of Afghanistan. Disraeli and Salisbury were advocates of the former policy and sent Lytton to India with clear instructions to bring Afghanistan closer to India and thus Britain. They had put their faith in one of the chiefs, Sher Ali. Robert spent months negotiating with him, making very little progress and becoming increasingly frustrated. The issue became more pressing when Russia went to war with Turkey in 1877. The British Cabinet decided to stay neutral but Robert thought this was the wrong decision, believing it would look like weakness to the Russians. After the Turkish war was concluded in July 1878, the Russians sent a mission to Afghanistan. Sher Ali had been resisting a British mission and Robert was outraged. The Cabinet urged him to tread carefully. But instead he sent his own mission to Afghanistan, and when that was turned back, he sent an invasion force. This began the second Anglo-Afghan war.42

  Disraeli and Salisbury were extremely angry. Newly embroiled in war in South Africa, the last thing Disraeli needed was another unpopular war on the other side of the world. Worse, Robert seemed to be deliberately disobeying orders – though actually those orders had never arrived, victims of the late-Victorian inter-continental postal system. Although the invasion force was initially successful – and Sher Ali was killed in the fighting, meaning the British could install a friendlier successor – in September 1879, the British residency in Kabul was attacked, with many casualties. Robert had to pour money and troops into Afghanistan to bring the situation under control. Stability was finally restored after the Batt
le of Kandahar in September 1880, but only at great cost and for little obvious benefit except restoring the status quo.

  The press, both in India and Britain, turned against Robert, and not just his policy but his personality.43 He was attacked again and again in Parliament, but the government was more worried about preserving relations with Russia than protecting their viceroy, so did very little more to defend him. He felt let down and his depression returned with a vengeance.

  Robert’s reputation as a flirt grew during his time in India and his name was consistently linked with two of the most attractive women in Simla, Mrs Batten and Mrs Plowden. There was even a whisper that his godson, Lytton Strachey, may have actually been his son. In truth, Robert’s womanising does not seem to have crossed the line from flirtation into anything more serious. His love life was by no means as colourful as his good friend Wilfred Scawen Blunt’s, and Mrs Batten and Mrs Plowden were actually having affairs with his two aides-de-camp. (Though Robert implored her not to, Blunt also slept with Mrs Batten.)44 To Robert, Blunt represented the life that he might have chosen: romantic, bohemian and free. That didn’t mean he followed Blunt’s example, but neither did he feel at home in the stifling atmosphere of Anglo-Indian society. Robert was courtly and affectionate, an unconventional romantic poet. He liked smoking, and pretty women; he did not attend church. It was his misfortune to find himself in a stuffy, uptight society which saw his chivalrous nature as simply louche. Luckily, he had Edith, who was conscientious where he was rebellious, always ready to smooth over slights and engage in the small talk that Robert loathed. A more serious flaw was Robert’s tendency to spend money wildly. One theatrical production alone in Calcutta cost him £2,000. By 1880 he was beginning to realise the consequences of this, and warned Edith that they would be going home as ‘titled paupers’.45

  The girls were too young to be concerned by the troubles of their parents. They lived apart for weeks, even months, at a time. This bothered Edith, though there was not much she could do about it. Her duties as a wife came before her duties as a mother. The girls felt the separation intensely. Betty wrote to Edith early in their stay, before they had got used to their new situation: ‘Poor Con often says to me, “Oh, Bina, I wish I could see dear Mother’s face again. I do try to comfort her, although I feel just as unhappy myself.”’46

  All Edith wished for the girls was ‘good health, charm and the power of adapting to their husbands’. She wanted them to be pretty but not too beautiful, as she told her mother: ‘I hate a girl to have enough to be stared at.’47 The girls’ weight was a frequent cause for concern: Constance was always thought too thin, and Betty and Emily too fat.

  The girls’ education was not a priority. ‘Charm, and a power of adapting themselves to their husbands, we consider far more essential than great study which might only ruin their healths,’ Edith told her mother. The girls had a governess but their studies were not especially rigorous, as Edith remarked. ‘A gentleman reads English history with them, and teaches them arithmetic, which amuses them. They are also drilled, and the arm exercises are the best things for making them hold up.’ There was an art teacher, as the older girls loved painting, and Constance was thought to have some talent. ‘I think illuminating on very small things will be her style,’ Edith wrote in her diary.48 A few years into their stay, part of the veranda was closed off into a huge private doll’s house, which they all enjoyed.

  Like Robert, the girls were interested in the theatre. First they watched the adults in amateur theatricals. ‘They looked so pretty in white cachemire [sic] dresses over pink – and had stools in front of us for the Play. Con’s eyes looked as if they would drop out of her head with excitement.’ Later, they were able to get up their own productions. For Constance’s ninth birthday, there was a production of Cinderella in which Constance played the prince, ‘though she is more an actress in originality and really killed me with laughter’, Edith wrote.49

  Otherwise, their main occupation was riding, and the girls shared two horses, Tommy and Bill. Seven-year-old Conny did not mind Tommy rearing, and said, ‘If Tommy likes to go up a tree I shall not mind.’ On important occasions they also rode elephants. For the first part of their time in India, Constance had her own parrot, named Polly, and was disconsolate when he died: especially when the replacement parrot quickly followed suit. ‘I had to scold her,’ their nurse disapprovingly told Edith, ‘because when once she begins crying it is difficult to stop her.’50 Eventually, she was given her own dog, who did survive and even came back to live with them in Knebworth. Constance would keep dogs all her life.

  For all that Constance would later claim that she had been a virtual invalid, she seems to have had no trouble keeping up with her sisters. ‘One day I found the girls all together in their petticoats, with their hair streaming, doing gymnastics on their beds,’ wrote Edith ruefully to her mother. ‘Con had been so often head downwards that her nose was bleeding.’ She was a good eater and seemed to cope with the stifling heat. On another occasion, ‘after a long scrambling walk’, Constance begged to be allowed to run up the hill afterwards.51 These were not quite the perfectly brought-up children to be found in a Victorian picture-book.

  Neither was this an entirely idyllic childhood, however much freedom and fun there may have been. Emily recalled a ‘sense of being a prisoner, caught in a long tunnel of childhood which would never end’. She and Constance despised each other as children and there was a constant tension between them which occasionally exploded into rows. Constance was deeply sarcastic about Emily’s excessive piety, and took a vow not to speak to her. Emily experienced an ongoing sense of injustice and felt it deeply. ‘No child was believed or treated with respect,’ she wrote later. ‘One had just to endure the wrongs in silence and grow bitter with brooding over them.’52

  Betty had her father’s eyes and expression; otherwise she was a Villiers in temperament. ‘She is quiet, but chatty and cheerful and answers gently if contradicted,’ said Edith. Emily was forthright and independent, unafraid of speaking her mind. ‘I wonder’, she pondered to her nanny, ‘if I should be prettier if I was better, but naughtiness will come and I can’t help it.’ Constance was a quieter and more thoughtful child, ‘generally so much more silent than Bina’, wrote Edith to Mrs Forster.53

  Conny is tall and very thin and stoops a good deal; the heat tires her so that she is perhaps more silent and sad than she was, but she has the same lovely eyes and active movements, and her character always gentle and easy, and she never gets into a scrape with anyone.54

  Robert believed that Constance bore a ‘haunting resemblance’ to Rosina, but Edith saw her differently: ‘Such a mixture of Villiers and Lyttons, and will be like my father I think.’55 At eleven, Constance’s figure was just as Edith’s had been as a child. Edith wrote to her mother that she had really beautiful eyes, and hoped that, ‘the lower part of her face’ would improve in time.56 Victor, by comparison, was ‘rather like an owl and a monkey, with long skinny arms, but with eyes that redeem all the other features’. Neville was thought to look like Constance, with the same dark hair and chin. Edith’s fears about the climate proved to be groundless, as ‘the children are all very rosy and perfectly strong, and much better than they could be in England’.57

  In March 1880, Disraeli dissolved Parliament and called an election. The Conservatives were hopeful of victory, but the Liberals, led by William Gladstone, went on the attack. People had been suffering with poor harvests and high prices. Gladstone offered peace and prosperity compared with Disraeli’s unpopular and expensive wars. As a result, Robert came in for renewed abuse over the Afghanistan war. Robert was not accustomed to being dragged into party politics and found this extremely difficult to cope with, especially as Edith’s family at home remained prominent Liberal supporters. But halfway around the world he was unable to defend himself.

  Gladstone won the election and Robert resigned his post. Viceroys usually served a five-year term, but Robert believed that ther
e was no way that the two could have worked together effectively. His reputation took a further battering when Gladstone’s first Cabinet discovered a major miscalculation in the costs of the war. Fitzjames Strachey had underestimated these by millions of pounds. The mistake was Strachey’s rather than Robert’s, but Robert was still ultimately responsible and this catastrophic error was yet another stick to beat him with.

  Robert was gratified and consoled to find that both Disraeli and the Queen remained loyal. The Queen had made him an Earl as thanks for his service in India and Disraeli wrote to ask for Robert’s continuing support when he entered the House of Lords. The people of Knebworth were also very supportive and lined the streets to welcome the family home, on 9 August 1880. It was Victor’s fourth birthday.

  NOTES

  1 C. M. Woodhouse, unpublished biography of Victor Lytton, p. 1. Christopher ‘Monty’ Woodhouse was Victor’s son-in-law.

  2 For Bulwer-Lytton’s career insofar as it influenced his son Robert, see, for example, Aurelia Brooks Harlan, Owen Meredith: A Critical Biography of Robert, First Earl of Lytton (Columbia University Press, 1946), Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India: An Account of Lord Lytton’s Viceroyalty 1876–1880 (John Murray, 1979) pp. 3–10, and E. Neill Raymond, Victorian Viceroy: The Life of Robert, the First Earl of Lytton (Regency Press, 1980) pp. 1–100; see also his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and T. H. S. Escott, Edward Bulwer: First Baron Lytton of Knebworth: A Social, Personal and Political Monograph (Routledge, 1910).

  3 For Anna Wheeler’s career, see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Barbara Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (Virago, 1983), especially pp. 22–3 and pp. 59–65.

  4 See, for example, Susie Steinback, Women in England 1760–1914: A Social History (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2004), p. 235.