Letters of Antony Lytton - Chapter IV

 

Antony in Pop

Knebworth House Archives

The last year at Eton was a time of change and uncertainties for Antony.   He couldn’t decide whether to leave early, possibly to spend a year in India with his father who had become the Governor of Bengal,  or to complete his studies either at Oxford or Cambridge – another difficult decision.

He started the year ‘in Pop’ (an Eton term for Prefect), and then returned after Christmas, having decided to say goodbye to his parents who left for India in March 1922.  Their parting was difficult to bear for all of them;  Antony wrote

“I can never thank you and Daddy enough for giving me such a wonderful life and making me so very full of happiness.  I only hope that in the time to come I shall be able to show myself worth of it all, and turn out a really grateful and good son to such a marvellous mother and father.  Oh, thank you, thank you, darling, so much for all my wonderful life, and I do hope that you will all be happy and successful in India, and that it will be the greatest fun and the greatest triumph for Daddy and for India……  I can’t think of a present to give you.  Everyone has given you a farewell present except me, but I don’t know what to give you, and so I will give you my heart.  It is going to be very awful for me not having you with me as my castle and my strength, but you know how I love you and how I will try to become a good, wise and strong man while you are away and be worthy of you and all the wonderful things that you have given me”

Antony’s moods were particularly influenced by the weather, and cricket.  If it was hot and sunny, he found himself in high spirits.  But if the summer was cold and wet, then he descended into fits of depression.  Here is an example of one of his depressed moods

“One has to live on one’s own spirits at Eton, and I reckon I’m rather ill tonight.  At best my spirits are very low.  I miss your letters pouring in almost every day, I Miss your visits and I hate feeling that you aren’t in London, where I can get at you easily.  I must say India feels a very long way off tonight and it’s terrible lonesome without you.  Once one starts thinking things over everything always seems terribly depressing.  One can only get on by just not thinking and my just laughing through every day and only seeing fun and enjoyment.  But once my spirits give way I’m right up the pole, and I long for you tonight more than any living soul has ever longed for anybody else in the whole world….”

Cricket bored him, and he played badly.   It was speed in sports that most appealed to Antony’s taste, and cricket was too slow for him, and rowing even worse, describing a visit to Henley as “dreary”

 “In the first place it is bitterly cold, and the only day in the year when you feel unequal to the river. Then it is terribly crowded by aged men with sombre faces and thin white moustaches, clad in the shortest of shorts which meet nowhere and inadequately cover any portion of their anatomy.  They are made of flannel rescued from the dustheap of fifty years ago and worn yearly (without a wash) for fifty-two, which may once have boated the title of white.  On their heads they wear caps just too small for them, which when they started their careers had been the pride of their owners….. The racing itself is such as to sicken any heart accustomed to associate racing with speed.  To watch the race you manipulate your boat against a cold, wet, slippery pole, to which you cling desperately… then two boats filled with half-naked miserable suffering individuals row past very slowly with a cox in the stern of each trying to excite them by exclaiming at intervals ‘Well done, well rowed, keep it up”

As Antony prepared to leave Eton, he decided to go on Cambridge, even though most of his friends were going to Oxford.  In his last letter from Eton, written in July 1922, he wrote to his parents

 “How I wish you were here to help me leave this place……I have just taken leave of the headmaster, which was a terrible ordeal.  He stood up and shook hands and said, ‘Goodbye, and thank you very much for all you have done’.  My God, it nearly killed me, and I don’t feel I have done nearly enough….. Well, then comes Sunday, my last Sunday at Eton – just think of it, It’s a terrible thought, but somehow or other I feel as if I had had my cry, and though speechless with depression I haven’t broken down like I did saying goodbye to Alington.  He preached a wonderful sermon in chapel about Eton and leaving and love, and I went to early service in the morning, which was rather awful too. But there is great comfort in prayer and thinking of God, because the whole idea of religion makes one feel how vast the world is and how very small and insignificant little Eton really is…..”