Letters of Antony Lytton - Chapter V

 

Antony as an OTC Cadet

Knebworth House Archives

After leaving Eton, Antony went into the Officer Training Corps, and while staying with Sir James Barrie for a cricket week with a large party of his Eton friends, most of whom were going to Oxford, the feeling came over him that he could not bear to be separated from them when he went to Cambridge.  So he wrote to his mother

“However, this is really a party of boys as far as I am concerned, and I love all these wonderful Eton people.  I feel quite broken-hearted when I realize that it can never be again.  Next year we shall all be men and in two years we shall have forgotten each other…..I feel strangely contented, and yet strangely restless.  I find real happiness and friendships that must last for ever, and at the same time I have a deep-rooted, almost subconscious knowledge that it is the meeting-place of two ways – that here in this very house, this very hour, manhood begins and boyhood passes away into a thing of the past…… the real thing that is exciting me at the moment is the possibility of going to Oxford, which is such a wonderful thought that I am intoxicated with anticipation.  I have really always wanted Oxford, but my own obstinate nature has hitherto made me stick to Cambridge, and now the moment has come when I have said goodbye to all my Eton friends and I have got to face Cambridge alone – and I suddenly realized I couldn’t”

He continued to write weekly letters to his parents in India telling them about his friends, his social activities, his work, his feelings, his dreams and ambitions, and the books he was reading.  The tone of his letters changed with every mood, sometimes gay, sometimes depressed.  Although he went to Oxford determined to be happy, and thought at first he was going to be, yet he found the life there very boring at first, and his letters became more discontented.

“Darling, I can’t tell you how queer I feel.  I’ve got nothing to do, I feel old & yet not old enough, I feel small & insignificant & not wanted – just part of a dull useless machine which goes on for ever and does no good to anything or anybody.   Hopeless is the best word to describe what I’m feeling.  I have been reading one or two war books and they make me wish I was just 8 years older.  Then everyone knew where he was.   He had a definite thing to do….  There’s nothing hanging over me, there’s nothing that I must do.  There’s no great work here for me to do.  There’s no real pleasure because  everything’s pleasure.  I just go on from day to day, work, play, joy, sorrow, all mingled into one great indefinable mass of nothingness…..”

Many of Antony’s letters discussed religion, and the meaning of life and his role within it.  He has many long, deep philosophical discussions with his parents –

“But I long to go round the world alone to see everyone and everything, how men worked & lived and died.  What they care about & lived for – what they killed for & what they were killed for and why?  I want to see the real truths of life as I can only lecture them now, and understand the character of man as opposed that that of God…  …. As a matter of fact, all this religious discourse doesn’t really explain the peculiar things that I feel. I want an incentive to do something.  I have ambition, but no goal & therefore nothing to work for.  Money? I want it, but it doesn’t thrill me.  God? I don’t understand him & he doesn’t fill me.  Passion? Yes, but what does it mean?  How do I get it, what do I do?  Strength?  Yes, but what good is physical strength?  Power is perhaps the only light I can see clearly but that is very dim & very far & the obstacles are incredible, and the pleasure which distract one from getting it too good”.

Antony’s fits of depression were always of short duration and the rest of his letters during his first term at Oxford were cheerful enough.  His life there was thus summarized in a letter to his sister Hermione:

“This is a very queer place.  You can get every type and variety of person and class you can possibly imagine.  I only see the best in all of them, so that I long to know all.  I feel excited in the political set – ambitious, eager.  I feel much the same with the clever people. I love the sporting side – hunting and checks and dogs; and I am slightly ashamed to say that I am terribly happy with the society set…. What a place!  No wonder one feels bewildered and at a loose end sometimes…. It’s a great life – a little world all on its own, and just as bewildering and bewitching as the real big world outside”