Letters of Antony Lytton - Chapter VII

 

Coming of age

Knebworth House Archives

Antony is now in his last year at Oxford and getting ready to take his finals.  But there was still time to write amusing letters, this one to a friend describing a night he spent under the stars

“ I started back at 10.  Just before Slough a man stopped me and said he’d run out of petrol, so I gave him my spare tin, and relieved him of 2/-, which I thought philanthropic!  Six miles short of Oxford at 11.35 the car stopped.  No petrol!  I tried to play the trick the man had played on me with the only two cars that passed, but they both ran me over!   The next village was a mile and a half on, the last 2 ½ miles back.  So I walked the mile and a half, raised an irate pub-keeper and said ‘Oh pub keeper, some petrol please’.  He replied, “Go to hell, you won’t get any in this village”.  I threw a brick at him, then walked back to the mote.  It then occurred to me that it was the most lovely night God ever made – full moon, not a could in the sky, and very warm.  I became romantic and sentimental instead of cross…so I pushed the car into a field and lay down in it and slept all night.  It was really wonderful. I don’t believe there has ever been such beauty in England as there was last night.  No tropical moon, or bright lights on Broadway, could compare with it.  I just gasped at the beauty of it all.  Even more wonderful was the early morning.”

Another major event that year was his ‘coming of age’, celebrated on 24 April 1925.  There were various celebrations, including this one he describes at Knebworth

“They have all gone to church and left me to pack up my things.  I have done all my packing and feel I must write to you.  For today I start upon the last course of my Oxford life, as yesterday and the day before I was welcomed upon the first course of manhood by Knebworth.  I am acclaimed as being twenty-one, and immediately afterwards I have to start forth upon the last stage of the first effort in my life.  I should be an occasion for a glad face and a strong hear, but somehow my heart is heavy and I can only keep on regretting the past.  I wish that I had worked harder during this bit and that I had got more done, but the remedy is in the ensuing seven weeks.  Then again I feel as if once again I was launching out on my own, when I have a perfect longing for the harbour.  I go back to Oxford today and it feels very like the end of my childhood.  When we meet again I  shall have finished with Oxford and shall be a man……  

Last Friday we had a huge luncheon party of the tenants.  Mother is sending you the menu I believe, so I need hardly tell you what we had to eat!  What no one is all probability will dream of telling you is how extraordinarily charming all your tenants are.  I was most extraordinarily touched by the way in which they subscribed to my present and by the sweet way that all behaved & the sweet things they all said.  Considering that half of them I have never even set eyes on, I thought it was very sweet of them….

Then yesterday we had a tea party for the village – all the old ladies and young ladies & children, and they all seemed to enjoy it so much.  They again said such good & sweet things that I felt it was hard for me to be present.  They had a walk in the garden 7 then a cinema.  They showed the film of your arrival in Calcutta, which I hadn’t seen before, and I was so excited that I nearly burst.  I have seldom enjoyed anything so much or been in such a state of giggles & tears & excitement”

Antony took his degree in History and after leaving Oxford, spent some time with the Lutyens  in London before sailing to India to join his parents.   He felt none of the sentimental regrets on leaving Oxford that he had expressed on leaving Eton.  The cloud of a family separation which had overshadowed these last three years was now passing away and he was now on the threshold of manhood, full of high hopes and joyous expectation.