Letters of Antony Lytton: Chapter III

 

Boxing trophies

Knebworth House Archives

The great event for the summer of 1919 was the final conclusion of peace.  Earlier in May, Antony had written

“Tell me all the news about Peace terms and people.  The terms seem terrific to me in the Daily Mirror.  I can’t think they’ll sign”   

Then came the news of the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow.  On 23rd June his mother wrote :

“My mind is full of the German fleet.  It’s the cleverest thing they have done yet, for after all the ships were ours, no longer theirs.  What a disaster”, to which Antony replied

“I don’t agree with you about the German ships.  I think that really it is the best possible thing that could have happened.  We could hardly have claimed them, already having the largest Navy in the world, and we don’t really want them to go to France or Italy. Though it may not be the right thing to say, surely it suits us down to the ground, since it leaves us with far and away the largest Navy, and there is no county except America which could ever afford to build as big a one”.

When the Peace terms were finally signed, Antony wrote that they were going to have a torchlight procession and songs, a concert and a parade.  He later described the celebrations in a letter….

“Oh, I feel an absolute wreck this morning, dead tired and awfully sleepy.  We didn’t get to bed till after 12 last night. Our peace celebrations were great fun.  We had the annual inspection in the morning, which I think was rather unnecessary, but once over we lined the streets for the Windsor procession of demobilised men.  Then Ramsey got a scratch team against us in the afternoon, and gave us an awfully good tea, the only trouble being that it rained nearly all the time, but it was great fun and awfully good of Ramsey.  We then had a sort of yelling sing-song in the school hall with ‘Katie’, ‘Smiles’ etc and ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and we screamed until we burst”.

Early in the Michaelmas school term he wrote to his mother “Do you mind if I learn boxing this half?…This half is perfect.  I adore Eton and am very happy”. A few days later he wrote “Oh, I do love this place, and my friends, and life in general. There is a depressing sort of feeling on waking up in the morning – cold water, whole schoolday, dull all the afternoon.  But when the evening comes, and one just lives, everything is too divine.  I adore football, too, oh yes, I love it. I want to get very strong and well and in tremendous training – boxing and football. Oh, I am going to get so strong….”.

The following year, March 1920, following his success as a boxer, he wrote “… I have just won the ante-final of the Lightweight boxing against D Dawnay.  I won the first bout last night, and tomorrow evening I have to fight the final against one Nettleton K S, a very slow, very heavy bruiser, a terrific hitter who I’m rather afraid of, bit if I keep my head and box well, I might beat him.  Oh I can’t tell you what the joy of winning a fight is…..”

Before the end of school term in 1920, Antony’s thoughts started to turn to his future, “I had got two ideas, of which at present I am in favour of the latter:

(1)     I go into the Diplomatic Service.  I become the greatest Englishman in Europe, sworn by in 5 capitals, deified by the Hindoos, while Viceroy, and eventually Foreign Minister upholding every high-handed action of our agents all over nations, insulting America with impunity, with the whole world cowering at my feet.  Then perhaps P.M. and a grave in Westminster Abbey, the biggest diplomat of the 20th century on a level with Palmerston and Bismark, and leaving England absolutely supreme in the world, with her hand in every pie, grasping, successful, feared and honourable.

(2)     I feel that I might be all this and that I might be one of the biggest men that ever was, and yet I don’t really want to be.  The baby side of my character is so predominant, and what I want to do is to go into a business, marry a divine wife, live in the country at a divine farm, keep animals, etc, and meanwhile pile up a pretty fair sum of money…….”