Letters of Antony Lytton - Chapter X

The last years: 1932-1933

By Ann Judge

As Antony continued his Parliamentary duties, his letters speak volumes about his views of the profession.  For example, in January 1932 he wrote to a friend

“Personally I am tired of sitting on his bomb & being not wanted and envied and without security.  The whole world is without security of any kind.  In the next five years the bomb must either be buried or explode.  No one knows which.  The majority of people have lost all real interest in the issue & argue ‘anything may happen, let’s make the best of what we have got & know we have got’….

 I long for it to be settled one way or another, so that I am either to be satisfied to do my duty in that state of life, etc, and be required to do it, or else may have the change of showing the world that I can do it in another state of life a damned sight better than they!…

 I don’t suppose there has ever been such a time in history as this, and no one actually realises it.  The fall of the Roman Empire lasted many hundred of years, but our civilisation may collapse in a year.  I am not sure I wouldn’t be glad if it did…

So let’s grasp what we can, be thankful for what was good, hope for the future, love, laugh 7 praise, and one day perhaps we shall know….”

 And then to his father

“I used to say that the world was divided into two sorts of people – those who see in business, politics and finance high romance and great deeds, and those who see in these things only the same piece of green blotting paper every morning, varied once a week by an efficient Secretary.  I am afraid that I belong by nature to the second category, but by training, environment and heredity to the first, so that even if I let Nature have its way, the force of those other influences would be too strong, and I should not be content.  But I do feel that in this last year of my young life I have been too serious, and had too much to worry about, with the result that now I can’t honestly feel that anything really matters, and only wish that this much prophesied disastrous world crash would be precipitated.  I wish I had been born in time for the War. It would have suited me, and brought me face to face with a physical reality which I don’t feel I shall now ever encounter

My only joy, and indeed my obsession at the moment, is the Air Force, where I get back to the old contentment of school…. I have got more bitten with it even that with skiing, and the summer weather and dreariness of the House of Commons make it seem like good wine to the thirsty and comfort to the wounded….. People say it is a wonderfully interesting time to be living in.  Give me a damned boring one then”.

During the summer Antony made many expeditions in his Moth to various parts of the country.  He would fly down to Knebworth for the weekends, and land on a very uneven part of the park among the trees near the house.  His arrivals and departures always attracted a crowd of admiring schoolchildren, and sometimes he would fly low over the house and church, looping the loop and making wonderful turns in the air, while the villagers gazed and held their breath. At this time, he was also expressing sympathies with Fascism and Catholicism, as shown in this letter to a friend

 “I have a  new philosophy which started politically & has now spread to religion.  I think the whole doctrine of Liberalism which has pervaded and ruled the world since the Renaissance has been one ghastly futile blunder.  Of course, like the war, it may have been necessary, and it has surely had its good points.  But it is now discredited.  I has shot its bolt.  And so we are passing it on with an incredible cynical gesture to India & the East. No-one gives a damn now for liberty.  He knows he can’t be free anyway.  What he wants is work and wages, security, and to be allowed to go about his daily business.  He will accept any government that gives him these things and be thankful.  This is my new political philosophy.  Of course the supreme irony of it is that as the dawn of intellectual enlightenment is breaking over Europe, so in the East, where there has long been a proper understand of these things, the weed of liberty has begun to seed”.

On New Year’s Day 1933, he wrote to his sister

“I have a feeling that 1933 is going to be a year memorable in the life of our country, and of the world, and of our family.  It is the high tide – the high tide and the turn of all that is depressing.  And the year is going to mark the beginning of a new world, a new light, a great hope, and a great happiness.  But it is only a feeling, and had better be left there, with heart in mouth, and a great prayer”

But he only lived for another 4 months.  Flying absorbed him more and more.  He had moved back to Knebworth, and went to town every morning to work at the Army & Navy Stores (where he was on the Board) and every Sunday he went to Hendon to fly in one of the machines of his squadron.  But the day after visiting Knebworth on Sunday 30 April, he left the Stores to take part in a practice formation flight with his squadron in preparation for a special display to be given to the Prince of Wales a week later.

  As the squadron was completing a dipping movement over the aerodrome, the leader dived steeply, and maintained the dive so long that all the three leading machines touched the ground.  Antony was flying to the left of the leading three and was closely watching the leader – his machine struck a slight rise in the ground with great violence, overturned, and he and his passenger were instantly killed.  

His father, Viscount Lytton, writes that his son’s death was in the service of his country, taking all his high hopes and aspirations with him.  And that he will be remembered not for what he did, but for what he was.    

This page was added on 22/03/2012.

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