Lady Constance Lytton Page 6

  One of the waiters was the living image of Grandfather, his picture at least, and another younger one looked like Lytton-stock, some ten times diluted. I kept on meeting their eyes and it was all I could do not to relieve Grandfather of the salmon … I thought p’r’aps these are stray bits of illegitimacy who, but for the fluke of circumstances, would be sitting here instead of us, and we going round with the plates.27

  Meanwhile, Robert’s carefree happiness was gone forever and he became increasingly weighed down with regret. His personal life also grew more complicated. Shortly after he returned home, Rosina published A Blighted Life, which described her treatment by Edward and her incarceration in the mental institution. Her portrait of Robert was also less than flattering. Robert was horrified and cut off the additional allowance he had been making to her.

  In the past, Robert had always found solace in poetry, but he was unable to settle and instead spent months writing his maiden speech for the Lords. This turned into an epic 22,000-word vindication of every decision he had made in India. When Disraeli caught wind of this, he was appalled. Robert was forced to ditch his 54-page draft and instead make a much blander statement to the House. Having missed this opportunity to put his side of the story, he would find that his opponents’ account of his supposed failures hardened into fact and then history.

  Rosina died in March 1882. There had been no reconciliation, and Rosina was buried in an unmarked grave. But Robert was not yet free of her. He began work on a biography of his father but found it impossible to deal with his parents’ complicated feud. The published biography ended when his father was just twenty-nine. But Rosina still had friends and allies and they objected to Robert’s portrayal of her. They retaliated by publishing their own life of Rosina in 1887 and then a collection of her letters in 1889. Robert could do nothing about this perpetual raking over the past except ignore it.

  His life became sadder and more desperate. He suffered from bronchitis, rheumatism and sciatica. His periodic depression became more frequent. But, rather surprisingly for a distant Victorian father, he discovered and liked his children. If Edith had hardly seen Robert during their years in India, then the children had seen him even less. They barely knew him. Now he began to enjoy their company. Betty was a particular favourite and as Robert began to travel Europe in search of poetic inspiration, she became his travelling companion. She remembered this time with fondness: ‘He was often ill … often melancholy, but always intimately loving, indulgent and the object of my unqualified adoration.’28

  Betty began to take on many of the formal hostessing duties that Robert’s position required, allowing Edith to take a back seat. Charming, gracious and confident, Betty adored an active social life. Betty’s increasing closeness with Robert put distance between her and Constance. Constance loved Betty dearly, but found her friends incomprehensible, her literary interests dull and her general zest for life draining.29 Betty and Constance ‘came out’ at the same time, in 1887, at the ages of twenty and eighteen. For Constance the experience was predictably painful, but Betty enjoyed every moment. One of the most important reasons for ‘coming out’, of course, was to find a suitable husband, and Betty was very quickly snapped up. Gerald Balfour, MP for Leeds Central and nephew of the former Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, was the lucky man. Gerald was extremely handsome and very intelligent. His political career promised to be significant (though it never lived up to this early promise) and Betty was ideally suited, by temperament and training, to the match. She easily fitted into ‘The Souls’, the social set who clustered around Gerald’s brother Arthur – known as ‘King Arthur’, and another future Prime Minister. Gerald’s family welcomed her with open arms. Unfortunately for Victor, his classmates noticed the engagement in The Times and decided to call him ‘Betty’ for the rest of his time at school.30

  Betty’s marriage to Gerald brought Frances Balfour into Constance’s circle of acquaintances. Frances, married to Eustace, another Balfour brother, is an important figure in this story. She was already, very unusually for a woman of her class, an active campaigner for women’s suffrage. She never became a militant suffragette, and represents the acceptable face of suffrage campaigning: the path Frances chose is the path that Constance rejected. At this time, though, Frances was simply the young woman who became Betty’s best friend. Frances described Betty as:

  By common consent one of the most delightful girls alive. She is just 20 but with a mind very much older than her years. She is not pretty but with such a good & charming expression that she makes up for everything. She plays the violin & is very clever … she is very deeply religious & with such a bright unworldly mind.31

  Constance had made up her mind to dislike Gerald but soon warmed to him, and decided to look on the situation as gaining a brother rather than losing a sister.32 She found the enormous Balfour tribe rather cold and their collection of Souls overwhelming. She felt the Balfour brothers were very lucky in their wives: Betty, of course, but Frances too. ‘Hers not the nature that can lie down with either the lion or the lamb,’ Constance wrote admiringly to Betty.33

  Gerald was alarmingly ill before the wedding and Constance wished fervently that she could sacrifice her health for his. Fortunately, he recovered, and the wedding was held at in the upstairs drawing room at Knebworth in 1887. Theirs seems to have been the happiest of the Lytton marriages.

  Meanwhile, Robert was on a romantic adventure of his own, with an American actress named Mary Anderson. While she was more muse than mistress – she was a devout Catholic, as well as being only half his age – Robert’s feelings for her seem to have been serious. He developed an obsession with finding the perfect play to show off Mary’s talents. She was a frequent visitor to Knebworth. ‘We children adored her and thought her – as indeed she was – the most beautiful woman we had ever seen,’ Victor remembered.34 For the first time, Edith was genuinely hurt by his behaviour.

  Later, there was another intimate relationship, this time with a writer, Marie Louise Rame – known by her pen-name, Ouida – which he soon regretted. Nevertheless, it was Mary Louise Rame who suggested to the Foreign Secretary’s wife that Robert would be ideally suited for the vacant post of ambassador to Paris. Robert was ashamed when the story got out but was pleased to accept the offer. The family left for Paris immediately after Betty’s wedding. Constance’s beloved dog, Punch, died around the same time. She was bereft. She felt Punch was the only creature who loved and accepted her for who she was; he was the repository of all her secrets and confessions, and always comforting.35

  Robert wanted to recapture some of the ease and glamour of his earlier career in Europe – which he did, and made a great success of this last post. This was his natural habitat and the four years he spent in Paris offered him a chance to redeem his career and his reputation. In Paris he was once more able to enjoy the company of artists, writers and musicians, and he had a thoroughly good time. ‘He used often to say that he worked himself almost to death in India and got nothing but abuse; in Paris he only enjoyed himself and got nothing but praise,’ said Victor.36 But he was increasingly ill. He wrote to Teresa Earle from Paris, ‘My health is not good just now and I feel very depressed and weary, and all the long dinners through which I have to eat my way like a caterpillar don’t improve the state of my peptics.’37

  In Paris, Constance was naturally expected to step into the breach and fill the gap left by Betty’s departure. She makes her first appearance in the social pages of The Times at Robert’s introductory reception in Paris, in January 1888. She hated every second of this new life. But she interpreted her sacrifice as the price she had to pay for Gerald’s recovery; this was the bargain with God she had made. Where Betty was easy, graceful and sociable in company, Constance was awkward, halting and silent. Nevertheless, she did her best at ‘trying to talk when I had nothing to say, trying to please without wishing to be pleased’.38 ‘Her life … was one of uncongenial duty uncomplainingly performed,’ said Emily.39 Constance
found solace from unremitting family duty in playing her piano. Her instrument was the one thing that brought her to life. Neville remembered her as being ‘all on fire with passion for music’,40 and this is striking because of the contrast with the quiet docility her family otherwise remembered. She practised for hours each day, as many as could be spared, and used a silent keyboard with stiff keys to exercise the muscles of her fingers. She was encouraged by her music teacher, Fräulein Oser, whom she worshipped and adored. But her talent, passion and dedication were entirely her own. ‘Her interpretation of music was so personal and so successful that it is impossible to listen to other renderings of the same music,’ Neville recalled with sadness. She began to harbour dreams of studying music seriously, perhaps even becoming a professional, and told Aunt T:

  When I was alone and playing, I felt as if my body couldn’t and didn’t contain the spirit that was in me, but seemed to get out and be everywhere, so happy was I in the dream of the artist I would one day be, or better still in the actual joy of the music itself.41

  Music was the way she could transcend the trivialities and troubles of her everyday life.

  It is impossible to judge how realistic her dreams of becoming a serious musician were. Betty, for example, remembered her playing as beautiful, ‘but never professional in accuracy and faultlessness of execution’, and suggested that Constance’s talents were better suited to accompaniment than solo performance.42 But a move to Austria for intensive study was certainly discussed. Surely Robert, remembering how Edward had poured cold water on his poetic ambitions, could not have repeated this so heartlessly. At the same time that Constance was immersing herself in music, Neville was discovering art by watching students painting at the Louvre, and Robert could not do enough to help nurture this talent.43 But then, a career for a young man was a very different prospect. In Neville’s view, the reason that Constance never went to Austria was not that life as a professional musician was unsuitable, or even unobtainable, for her, but that her parents could not bear to part with her.44

  In the autumn of 1891, Robert’s illnesses became worse. He was suffering from a painful bladder inflammation. Edith’s support became more important than ever; he deeply regretted the sorrow he had caused her over the Mary Anderson affair. Constance looked at Edith with new admiration for her quiet, unwavering loyalty. He was in a great deal of pain in these last weeks, as the infection reached his kidneys. Constance went in to see him on what would be the last day; he said he wouldn’t talk as he wasn’t sure if it would be a good or bad day, but scribbled away at a poem quite contentedly. When the end came, it was unexpected and painless, from a blood clot.45

  Robert Lytton was sixty years old when he died. So much more sensible and mild-mannered than his father, he was amiable, good-humoured and delightful company, with friends across all artistic fields. One was Oscar Wilde, who dedicated his play Lady Windermere’s Fan to Robert’s memory. Robert was always sorry that his poetry had taken second place in his life to diplomacy. His children loved him deeply, while acknowledging his flaws. Constance in particular felt that Edith had tolerated the intolerable during the Mary Anderson affair. Many years later, Constance wrote a foreword to a new collection of Robert’s work which tried to convey ‘the magic of a personality in which gloom and radiance, the perfect and the imperfect, had their part and yet the whole was deeply revered’. Constance acknowledged that she had been hard on him at the time of his death: ‘Being of a somewhat puritanical turn of mind, I was out of sympathy with several of his theories of life.’46 In a family of strong and opinionated personalities, this is only natural. She also commented on his hatred for hypocrisy, even when it got him into hot water; his generosity; his unconventionality. These were qualities she only admired more as she became older and more open minded.

  Robert’s financial affairs had serious repercussions for his wife and children. He had entrusted his money to a man who went bankrupt eighteen months later. Edith, Constance and Emily returned home from Paris – the boys were at school – to tremendous uncertainty. Victor was only fourteen, not old enough to assume the responsibilities of running Knebworth and they could not afford to move back in and maintain it anyway. It was let for a decade, and the Lyttons moved to London. Their lack of money became one of the defining features of their lives. Emily could not ‘come out’, as Betty and Constance had, because of the enormous associated expenses, and had to be presented privately at court. This is, of course, relative poverty. No matter how bad things got, they always had several servants and didn’t have to do much for themselves.

  The girls did not take their situation seriously at all. They had been long used to Robert’s extravagance and trusted that some solution would present itself. ‘Con and I are finding so much amusement out of the smash that it is quite dreadful considering how miserable mother is,’ Emily reported, with a trace of guilt. At first, they proposed that Edith should go and live at Hampton Court while Constance, mocking her own situation in more ways than one, decided she would go into flats specially designed for ‘poor spinsters of the gentry class’. A couple of days later, their plans had escalated. They would let their home and take off round the country in a gipsy cart. Edith was to become a fortune teller and Emily would dance to the music of a hurdy-gurdy, which Constance would play. Constance took pleasure in selling off old jewellery to the pawnbroker and found she had quite a talent for striking a bargain. At this time, Constance was giving her eccentricity free rein. She and Edith decided that ‘to breathe very hard through the nose is as good a form of exercise as you can have. So when they have nothing better to do, they both begin snorting violently for exercise, which is terrible to listen to,’ Emily complained.47

  But Edith was spending most of her time worrying rather than snorting. She knew only too well how uncomfortable genteel poverty could be. In her married life she had been totally dependent on servants – she did not even put up her own hair – and she was totally unprepared for a widowhood spent scrimping and saving. A widow at just fifty years old, Edith’s life now bore an unpleasant resemblance to her mother’s: precarious, impecunious and dependent on her male relations for protection and advice. But she was determined the make the best of the situation for the four children still at home, particularly so the girls could marry well.

  Just before Robert died, Betty had commented that Constance would ‘never fall in love while she has Mother at her side and her best chance of its coming to pass is that she should be allowed here and there to go about independently by herself’.48 Betty believed marriage was in Constance’s best interests, as a way to loosen her ties with Edith. But Constance, all awkwardness and shyness in public, didn’t seem likely to find the right man in the social circles that the Lyttons moved in. She didn’t like balls, as none of the men she knew seemed to want to dance with her. Neville remembered her trying to dance with the men who were being left on the sidelines so that they would have a better time.49 She found the men at country house parties dull and dim-witted. As they never seemed to remember her, no matter how many times she met them, presumably she did not make a favourable impression either. ‘What would they do if I suddenly unbuttoned and shook up Deborah upon them in one of her maddest moods?’ she asked Emily, Deborah being the family name for Constance’s eccentric side.50 To find the right man, she would need to be in a different environment altogether, where she could relax, be herself and find someone who could see beneath the awkwardness to the genuine qualities that lay beneath.

  NOTES

  1 Neville Lytton, The English Country Gentleman (Camelot, 1925), p. 256.

  2 For example, ‘Parsimony in famine policy, combined with an expensive and pointless war against Afghanistan, were the main features of an irresponsible Viceroyalty,’ says David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste, p. 115.

  3 See Knebworth House: Hertfordshire Home of the Lytton Family since 1490 (Heritage House Group, 2005).

  4 Victor Lytton Set in Remembrance, pp. 6–10.

  5
Hermione Cobbold, Memory Lane: Tales of Long Ago, 1905–1930 (unpublished memoir), p. 23.

  6 Victor Lytton, Set in Remembrance, p. 5.

  7 Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 88.

  8 Emily Lutyens, A Blessed Girl, p. 18 and Victor Lytton, Set in Remembrance, p. 11.

  9 Constance Lytton, Prisons and Prisoners, p. 2.

  10 Sylvia Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement: An Intimate Account of Persons and Ideals (Longmans, 1931), p. 332.

  11 Emily Lutyens to the Reverend Whitwell Elwyn, 17 November 1892, in Emily Lutyens, A Blessed Girl, p. 177.

  12 Emily Lutyens to the Reverend Whitwell Elwyn, 9 September 1891 and 23 July 1892, in Emily Lutyens, A Blessed Girl, p. 58 and p. 146.

  13 Emily Lutyens, A Blessed Girl, p. 18.

  14 Emily in particular was extremely indiscreet. Aged thirteen, she began an intimate friendship with a 71-year-old clergyman, the Reverend Whitwell Elwyn, exchanging correspondence which describes her feelings and fears with great honesty. This series of letters was published as A Blessed Girl in 1953 and is a tremendously interesting record of Lytton family life at this time, albeit seen through the eyes of an often disgruntled teenager.