Lady Constance Lytton Read online

  5 See Joanna Goldsworthy and Marie Mulvey-Roberts, ‘Revolutionary Mothers, Revolting Daughters: Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, Anna Wheeler and Rosina Bulwer-Lytton’, in Carolyn D. Williams, Angela Escott and Louise Duckling (eds.), Woman to Woman: Female Negotiations During the Long Eighteenth Century (University of Delaware Press, 2010), p. 69. The article explains why Wollstonecraft is remembered and Wheeler forgotten.

  6 Lord Cobbold, ‘Rosina Bulwer Lytton: Irish Beauty, Satirist, Tormented Victorian Wife, 1802–1882’ in Allan Conran Christensen, (ed.), The Subverting Vision of Bulwer Lytton (University of Delaware Press, 2004), p. 153.

  7 The story of Bulwer-Lytton and his mistresses really needs a book of its own. These details were pieced together around fifteen years ago by Beth Thomson, a descendent of Edward D’Ewes Tomson, who was brought up by Marion Lowndes. Unfortunately, Beth now lives in Australia and I have not been able to trace her again to ask for permission to quote her research.

  8 Lord Cobbold, ‘Rosina Bulwer Lytton’, in Allan Conran Christensen, (ed.), The Subverting Vision of Bulwer Lytton, p. 153.

  9 E. Neill Raymond, Victorian Viceroy: The Life of Robert, the First Earl of Lytton (Regency Press, 1980), p. 42. Rosina’s pronouncement appears in T. H. S. Escott, Edward Bulwer: First Baron Lytton of Knebworth: A Social, Personal and Political Monograph (Routledge, 1910), p. 297, and it is much too delicious to leave out.

  10 Marie Mulvey-Roberts, ‘Militancy, Masochism or Martydom? The Public and Private Prisons of Constance Lytton’, in June Purvis and Sandra Stanley Holton, Votes for Women (Routledge, London, 2000), p. 168.

  11 Andrew Lycett, Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation (Windmill, 2014), pp. 194–5.

  12 T. H. S. Escott, Edward Bulwer, pp. 331–2, quoted in Marie Mulvey-Roberts, ‘Writing for Revenge: The Battle of the Books of Edward and Rosina Bulwer Lytton’, in Allan Conran Christensen (ed.), The Subverting Vision of Bulwer Lytton, p. 164.

  13 Edward Bulwer-Lytton to Robert Lytton, 1 June 1854, quoted in Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India: An Account of Lord Lytton’s Viceroyalty 1876–1880 (John Murray, 1979), p. 4.

  14 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 4.

  15 Aurelia Brooks Harlan, Owen Meredith: A Critical Biography of Robert, First Earl of Lytton (Colombia, 1945), p. 45.

  16 Barbara Palmer, née Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28285.

  17 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 7.

  18 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 9 and p. 8.

  19 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, undated but approximately 1893, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 23.

  20 Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880 (privately printed, Chiswick Press, 1899), p. 93.

  21 See Elizabeth Longford, A Pilgrimage of Passion: The Life of Wilfred Scawen Blunt (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1979), pp. 45–9 for their initial relationship. Just as Browning had encouraged Lytton’s talent so now Lytton supported Blunt, still finding his feet as a poet.

  22 Elisabeth Lutyens described Constance as ‘a seven-month baby’ but I have not found any other references to this. Brian Harrison Interviews, LSE Library Collections, 8/SUF/B/049.

  23 See Knebworth Archive, DIEK/036/172.

  24 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 1.

  25 David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (John Murray, 2005), p. 309.

  26 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 10 and p. 26.

  27 E. Neill Raymond, Victorian Viceroy, p. 131.

  28 See, for example: David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj, Chapter One, and on this period in Robert’s life, see E. Neill Raymond, Victorian Viceroy, as well as Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India and Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880.

  29 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 14.

  30 David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (John Murray, 2005), p. 229.

  31 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 37.

  32 David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste, p. 227.

  33 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 48.

  34 Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 27.

  35 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 41 and Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 25.

  36 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 48.

  37 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 52 and p. 149.

  38 Victor Lytton, Set in Remembrance (unpublished memoir), p. 1.

  39 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 35.

  40 Aurelia Brooks Harlan, Owen Meredith, p. 220.

  41 David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste, pp. 115–16.

  42 On this period see, for example, Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, pp. 103–69.

  43 Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 94.

  44 Other women named by Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 155; godson rumour noted by Jane Ridley, Edwin Lutyens: His Life, His Wife, His Work (Pimlico, 2003), p. 85. On the previous page, she states that his valet tried to steal his nightshirts, hoping Robert’s good luck with women would rub off on him. Mrs Plowden and Scawen Blunt described in Elizabeth Longford, Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 162.

  45 Robert Lytton to Edith Lytton, 22 March 1880, quoted in E. Neill Raymond, Victorian Viceroy, pp. 221–2.

  46 Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 62.

  47 Edith Lytton to Elizabeth Villers, 31 May 1880, quoted in E. Neill Raymond, Victorian Viceroy, p. 226.

  48 Letters from Edith Lytton: Edith Lytton to Elizabeth Villiers, undated by Lutyens, in Mary Lutyens, The Lyttons in India, p. 175; Edith Lytton to Mrs Forster, 21 February 1877, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 99. ‘Illuminating on very small things’ from Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 118.

  49 Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 38 and p. 151.

  50 Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 37 and p. 154.

  51 Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 203, p. 157 and p. 162.

  52 Emily Lutyens, A Blessed Girl: Memoirs of a Victorian Girlhood Chronicled in an Exchange of Letters, 1887–1896 (Heinemann, 1954), pp. 8–12.

  53 Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 189. Edith Lytton to Mrs Forster, 10 October 1876, quoted in Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, p. 51.

  54 Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 240.

  55 Robert Lytton to Edith Lytton, 15 September 1877, quoted in E. Neill Raymond, Victorian Viceroy, p. 168 and Edith Lytton to Mrs Forster, 10 October 1876, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 49.

  56 Edith Lytton to Elizabeth Villers, 31 May 1880, quoted in E. Neill Raymond, Victorian Viceroy, p. 226.

  57 Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 45; Edith Lytton to Elizabeth Villiers, 13 February 1879, quoted in Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, India 1876–1880, p. 190 and Edith Lytton, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, p. 99.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A MISFIT AMONG ECCENTRICS

  ‘Conny had exceptional talent; she had also an infinite capacity for taking pains; she hated society and yet she loved humanity; she had such nobility of character that if she had lived in the gutter she would have purified its mud and yet remained unstained herself.’ 1

  Edith was delighted to leave India. She felt she had hardly seen Robert for four years, and loyally counted the cost to his health, reputation and sense of self. Robert himself was consumed with regret. He never came to terms with his failures in India and he never recovered from the damage to his personal reputation: his period as viceroy is still judged critically today.2 In part, this is because his contemporaries blamed him, to an extraordinary degree, for the famine and the war. Both were regarded as personal rather than poli
tical failures. In the popular parody, Robert was seen as almost single-handedly starting the conflict and killing millions of people. The reality, of course, is far more complicated. Later, his daughter Betty Balfour and his great niece Mary Lutyens wrote more nuanced histories which show Robert’s time in India in a more balanced light but, writing as relations, these were understandably seen as partisan accounts. In any case, the damage had already been done.

  Constance and her family spent the next few years of her life living, as quietly as it is possible to do in a great house, at Knebworth. It had been in the Lytton family for 400 years, and was originally a Tudor manor house, built round a courtyard. Elizabeth Bulwer-Lytton had pulled three sides down, leaving only the west wing, and started an extensive programme of renovations, complete with griffins and gargoyles. This was continued by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who remodelled and redecorated Knebworth to suit his gothic imagination.

  It is best known today as a venue for rock concerts. Freddie Mercury played his last gig with Queen at Knebworth, while Robbie Williams and Oasis have both played to audiences of over 125,000 in the grounds. The distinctive style also means that Knebworth is much in demand as a popular backdrop for films: it has featured in everything from Batman to The King’s Speech.3

  It was certainly not a comfortable family home when they returned from India. Robert built a third storey on top of the house, where he and Edith and the older girls had their bedrooms, and the younger children had a series of nurseries. The nursery corridor was painted in colours that evoked their Indian garden. With a five-year gap between Constance and Emily, the children naturally divided into two groups, and at Knebworth that became more pronounced. Emily, Victor and Neville were young enough to spend all their time playing. They were outdoors all the time, playing cricket and climbing trees. The younger ones were supervised by a nurse, nanny, nursery-maid and governess and lived almost entirely within the nursery.4 Betty and Constance were now expected to become young ladies. They lived separately, with their own rooms, governesses and maid. Their rooms were called ‘the schoolroom passage’, and much later became known as ‘the bachelor passage’, as it was where single young men would stay.5

  Seventy years later, Victor wrote a memoir of his early years at Knebworth, and though ‘my sister’ appears frequently, this always means Emily. For much of the time, Betty and Constance may as well not have been there at all. They ate dinner in the dining room rather than the nursery and only saw the younger ones for an hour in the evenings. Sometimes they would formally invite their siblings for tea and then dress up as ghosts to entertain them.6

  Their only shared interest was music: aside from Constance’s piano, Betty played the violin, Emily the guitar and Neville the flute. (The family talent passed Victor by.) With her brothers soon off to school, they were almost strangers to Constance until they were grown up. Then they became firm friends: she talked about music and art with Neville and argued politics with Victor.7

  The younger children looked back on this period at Knebworth with great fondness, but Constance was rather less happy. She disliked the memory of her grandfather and did not enjoy being reminded of him constantly; she found the atmosphere at Knebworth rather oppressive. Though her parents were now much less busy, the children still rarely saw them as they were often away. Victor missed Robert’s valet more than he missed Robert himself.8

  Constance would look back at her younger self scornfully. ‘An overmastering laziness and a fatalistic submission to events as they befell were guiding factors in my existence … so far as I know, I was an average ordinary human being, except perhaps for an exaggerated dislike of society and of publicity in any form.’9 That shyness and nervousness was her defining feature even into adulthood. Sylvia Pankhurst recalled that the grown-up Constance suffered from ‘a morbid self-deprecation and fear of giving offence’.10 One on occasion, she was having breakfast alone when Lord Salisbury came in and she was obliged to talk to him, casting desperately around for a suitable subject; she could only come up with jam. In her early twenties she remembered this as the most terrible moment of her life.11

  Unlike many shy girls, Constance wasn’t much of a reader and actively disliked studying (she and Edith agreed that Dickens was ‘so dreadfully vulgar, and the people seemed to do nothing but drink’). She didn’t need to be prepared for a career and was expected to aspire to nothing more than being a dutiful helpmate to a suitable husband. She could talk knowledgeably about art, architecture and sculpture, but also enjoyed making up wild facts and opinions on these subjects, just to amuse herself.12 Emily and Constance grew out of their childhood rivalry and became good friends, but Betty was still Constance’s closest confidante. According to Emily, Constance was the family misfit, quite a badge of honour in this family of eccentrics. Her shyness made her lonely. Betty made friends easily and rather than finding friends of her own, Constance tagged along with them.13

  Her most notable physical feature is very clear in surviving photographs: her height. She carried this height awkwardly, too self-conscious to be elegant or graceful, and was constantly stooping. She was thin, too, with sharp and refined features. Her hair was dark, worn swept up and back with combs and curling a little in wisps around her face.

  She did have two close confidantes among her relations. One was her cousin Adela Villiers. Three years younger than Constance, Adela was the daughter of her mother’s brother Ernest. The second of three sisters, Adela was a thoughtful, sympathetic and tender correspondent. Constance’s other strong supporter was her mother’s strident sister, Teresa Earle, always known as Aunt T. Constance and Aunt T were very different in temperament and outlook but the two were great friends. Constance’s accepted Aunt T’s unsolicited advice and forthright opinions with good humour. She didn’t see these women often, which gave her a certain freedom to be open and honest, secure in the knowledge she would not actually have to discuss her private feelings in person. All the Lyttons were prodigious letter writers, and all became writers who drew on their memories and experiences and committed their personal histories and identities to print.14

  Constance also kept regular diaries and, with a couple of exceptions, these still exist for the years 1893 to 1907.15 They are a series of uniform, fragile black date books, printed with morals at the head of each page and filled with notes in her tidy handwriting. They are a record of lunches and dinners, letters written and books read. ‘Accounts’ is a regular entry; perhaps they troubled her. ‘Hospital’ is noted once or twice, as is ‘In bed’, without further comment. Her memories and feelings are not recorded, and with one or two poignant exceptions, these books contain facts, not emotions.

  Constance preferred spending time with her pets to spending time with people. She loved arranging flowers, but her favourite hobby was cleaning, which annoyed her family, as she was perpetually shining door knobs and indulging in other such demeaning activities. She cleaned all her copper coins with relish. Her birthday treat was to clean the lavatory.16

  Constance was a believer, in a quiet, authentic sort of way; a ‘true Christian’, Neville called her.17 She disliked what she saw as the hypocrisies of the church and instead cultivated a direct and profound relationship with Jesus Christ. Allied to this was a strong sense of justice and determination. ‘What a mistake it is to allow oneself to care for little things, or to care for things a little,’ she wrote to Betty in her early twenties. ‘If one only cares enough, there is strength enough to overcome every obstacle, or at least to endure every martyrdom.’18 Both by nature and inspired by her religious belief, Constance was extremely sympathetic to the needs of others, even to the point of rubbing her more forthright brothers and sisters up the wrong way. Constance was desperately good, and found her greatest happiness in catering to other people, especially if she could go without in order to do so. ‘Con is such an angel and seems to make everyone happy,’ wrote the sixteen-year-old Emily enviously, and ‘when there is someone very good near me, it seems to make me feel ex
tra bad.’19 Neville said that she ‘went through life full of mercy, pity and sympathy, and by a wise dispensation of her gentleness and sweetness, she relieved countless cases of hopeless suffering’.20 Edith was the main beneficiary of this selflessness. Constance could anticipate what her mother would need and then quietly address that need, unnoticed and unrewarded.

  Luckily, Constance was also blessed with a tremendous sense of humour, which saved her from becoming totally unbearable. She had a knack for grave asides and a strong sense of the ridiculous. She would break into a serious conversation with a witty observation and completely transform the mood. When she laughed, ‘there would be a few seconds of absolute silence, and then a long shrill note, increasing in loudness, would draw everyone’s attention to the fact that she was overcome with merriment’.21 She was constantly giggling and making her siblings laugh with her. Emily remembered this as ‘delicious’, though, while at school, Neville pleaded with her not to embarrass him in front of his friends.22

  She appears to have been periodically laid low with depression. ‘She was never strong in health, but she had no serious illness – certainly nothing that could account for such a look of sorrow which was her normal expression,’23 Neville said. Depression was a family complaint and, interestingly for a family of this time and situation, their shared experience appears to have been openly acknowledged and discussed. Emily describes her grandfather, father and the children as all being, to varying degrees, prone to ‘moods of black melancholy’24 – Robert himself called these his ‘blue devils’. This family tendency was most marked in Constance.25 Neville remembered her, albeit clearly influenced by the knowledge of how her life had turned out, as having ‘a destiny of sadness that surrounded her’.26

  Like all the Lyttons, Constance was shaped by a strong sense of family. But while it is impossible for the modern reader not to draw links between Anna’s feminist thinking, Rosina’s suffering and Constance’s campaigning, the reality was that this generation of Lyttons was defined by Edward and Robert, their famous male relations. This didn’t mean they always met with approval. Constance was scathing about what she saw as the moral failings of her grandfather. According to family legend, as a child Constance, sensitive and attuned to suffering, vowed to seek out Bulwer-Lytton’s illegitimate children and help them. It certainly seems in keeping with her character, but it does not appear that when she became an adult, she actually carried out those good intentions. Perhaps the obstacles seemed too difficult or the responsibilities too great, or her natural shyness held her back. But the problem bothered her occasionally. At a family dinner towards the end of the century, as she wrote to Aunt T,