Lady Constance Lytton

by Lyndsey Jenkins

  With Blunt out of the country, Emily met the architect Edwin Lutyens – Ned – at Hatfield. She very quickly determined she would marry him. There was a genuine spark between these two, but each also had ulterior motives. A connection to the Souls through Emily and Betty would do Ned’s career no harm at all. Emily simply wanted to escape, both from Blunt and from her mother. This meant both overlooked their fundamental differences and ultimate incompatibility. Edith was not in favour of the match, though perhaps she might have approved more strongly if she had known about the narrow escape with Blunt. Ostensibly, she objected to Lutyens because she was worried about his finances. More to the point, Edith was also snobbish about his background. But her brother, Lord Loch, now nominally head of the family, resolved the issue and Emily married in 1897.94 Emily’s wedding night and honeymoon were apparently an unmitigated disaster. Her daughter Mary recalled her mother’s ineffective advice to always keep a pot of cold cream by the bed, and the alarming, unexplained suggestion that ‘whatever happens to you, it’s happened to me too’.95 It is rather surprising that Betty didn’t enlighten Emily about the facts of life. But it is inconceivable that Emily didn’t drop some extremely alarming hints in Constance’s direction. Emily never got over her honeymoon nightmare. She put up with Edwin long enough to have five children, but eventually banned him from her bedroom entirely. The Lutyenses found it very difficult to get on with each other in person but they were extraordinarily prolific and often affectionate correspondents. Emily had spent her teenage years pouring out her heart and soul to an elderly vicar; now her letters flew back and forth to her husband, wherever he was working. This correspondence still exists and runs to thousands of letters.96

  Meanwhile, Judith Blunt spent several years unhappily in love with Victor Lytton. Despite an apparent attraction, he did not pursue her. She had the impression that this was because she was a Catholic, a connection that would be bad for his career. Judith was extremely eligible and had frequent offers of marriage. Many of these were from Neville Lytton, who had been pining for Judith for almost as long as she had wanted Victor. Eventually, realising that the situation with Victor was hopeless, she gave in and said she would think about it. Her father Wilfred seized on this chance and put a notice in The Times as if it were a done deal. Judith was twenty-seven; Neville was just nineteen and barely out of school: they shared a birthday, 6 February. ‘It maddens me that nobody sees how false this whole thing is,’ Judith wrote bitterly.97 Neville did not follow Victor to Cambridge, but went instead to Paris to study art. Constance visited them soon after they got married, and was impressed with their lifestyle, as well as Neville’s talent and his evident dedication to make a living as an artist.98

  Later, Neville and Judith would come back to England to live at the famous Crabbet stud, where Judith’s parents had been breeding exquisite horses. But, predictably enough, this marriage, built on broken dreams on one side and unrealistic expectations on the other, would be no more successful than Emily’s. Judith did not want children, but their makeshift attempts at contraception failed, and their three children were acutely aware of Judith’s lack of maternal feelings towards them.99

  After leaving Cambridge, Victor married Pamela Plowden in 1902. She was the daughter of the Mrs Plowden who had been romantically linked with his father in India. Pamela’s childhood was unhappy: her mother died and her father remarried a woman she disliked. When her sister also married, Pamela felt completely alone in India and returned to an England she barely knew; her only hope being to find a suitable husband. Winston Churchill proposed to her, but was short of money; in the meantime, she met his friend Victor and accepted him instead. Pamela was thought to be one of the most beautiful women of her generation, with elegant manners to match. But the Lytton sisters were snooty about her. She was formal and had a conventional way of looking at things that bored Betty and Emily. Constance, though, was her usual kind and gentle self, which Pamela appreciated. Their marriage, at least in the early years, also had its fair share of difficulties. There are strong suggestions that the youngest son may not have been Victor’s child, though Victor, to his great credit, never treated him any differently. Victor and Pamela could not afford to live at Knebworth for many years, and they lived in London until 1908, when there was a homecoming party. Photos of this occasion show how large and sprawling the Lytton tribe had become. Victor and Pamela kept up the family tradition of extensive renovations, aided by Edwin

  Lutyens, who is responsible for much of the current garden layout. Lutyens was also commissioned to build a home for Edith and Constance. Built in 1901 a mile away from Knebworth, this was known as Homewood, and it would be Edith’s home for the rest of her life. According to his biographer, Edwin ‘imagined it as a doll’s house where the architect would suddenly remove the front and reveal at each end two women employed after their own hearts’.100 The reality was rather less picturesque. Homewood is a contrast between the vision of one of the country’s foremost architects, paying close attention to tiny details on the windows and doorknobs, and the execution of that vision, as cheaply as possible. As money was so tight, nothing was finished properly and the doors were second-hand. There was only one bathroom, and this was in the servants’ quarters: there would always be a live-in cook and housekeeper. Constance and Edith had hip baths in front of the fire, though this surely must have been out of choice rather than economy. But most noticeable of all was the cold. The front door led onto a long passage down the house which carried the wind straight through the house. Edith’s room was the coldest in the house: it wasn’t until many decades later that it was discovered that the wall inside her wardrobe hadn’t been built properly, allowing the cold to seep in. With little money for maintenance and upkeep, the house almost immediately began to decay.

  Life at Homewood with Edith was quiet, punctuated only by visits from Constance’s siblings and their growing families, and bouts of rheumatic fever which kept her in bed for weeks at a time. She was not, as she would later say in Prisons and Prisoners, ‘more or less a chronic invalid for the greater part of my youth’,101 but by the time she came to write this, illness had become the defining feature of her life. The first serious attack was in 1902, with another one the following year. She probably could no longer imagine a time when she had really been well. ‘Oh! King Pain and his kingdoms! What a king and place they are. Autocratic, tyrannous – if power is a fine thing, they are magnificent,’ she told Betty in 1908, when she was well accustomed to this new ruler.102 Her health problems were vague but persistent and often serious. She had a ‘weak heart’ and debilitating rheumatism. Her belief that she was an invalid now became central to her sense of self and the way she lived her life. Trapped in bed, she turned to books, sometimes making surprising choices. For example, in 1907, probably at Olive Schreiner’s suggestion, she was reading Edward Carpenter’s book Love’s Coming of Age – after which Olive wrote to Edward calling Constance ‘a born socialist’.103

  It’s probably not a coincidence that she became more frequently ill after she had finally given up on John. It seems almost certain that her illnesses were, at least in part, symptoms of her psychological troubles. She brings to mind famous nineteenth-century invalids like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alice James, with their vague and mysterious complaints, their tiredness and lethargy.

  In her vast history of women and mental illness, Lisa Appignanesi has described how the cultural conditions which confronted Victorian women shaped their illnesses. When women’s lives were so entirely circumscribed, it might be a relief – it might even be a conscious choice – to escape onto the sofa. Becoming an invalid let women off the hook from the endless round of family and social duties and, for some, this was irresistible.104 It was all the resistance they could muster. Indeed, Appignanesi sees ‘the escape into illness’ as ‘the mirror image of rebellion’.105 Women who had no recourse to action withdrew entirely, defeated. This seems to have been part of Constance’s strategy. Family obligatio
ns piled up once her siblings embarked on their large families. It was taken for granted that Edith and Constance would be ready at a moment’s notice to help out. Constance was good natured about this, and did like being surrounded by children (though she said to Betty, ‘It’s lucky nieces came first in our tribe, and nephews followed after, for nice as nieces are there’s no comparing them with man-cubs.’).106 Nevertheless, once she had nothing to do but look after other people, regularly hiding herself away must have seemed extremely appealing, especially because she never overcame her shyness. This is not to say that her illnesses were invented, because at certain points they were obviously debilitating, but it does mean that sometimes she used them to escape. Whenever she really needed a burst of energy, she summoned it up from somewhere.

  In the meantime, Aunt T persuaded her to become a vegetarian, then an extremely faddish and unconventional choice. Always willing to humour others by following their advice or giving in to their suggestions, Constance found it actually made a difference. She felt stronger and healthier as a result.107 Being a vegetarian also suited her kind and sympathetic nature.

  Constance resigned herself to remaining unmarried and settled down at home, becoming that Victorian stereotype, the maiden aunt. There were legions of spinsters – by the 1890s, one in every six women would remain unmarried – but in popular culture they were viewed with suspicion. Celibacy was thought in medical circles to be potentially damaging, while women who remained unmarried were considered abnormal in some way.108

  On the surface, Constance was the very model of an Edwardian dutiful daughter. With her half-begun relationship and thwarted career, she had once or twice hesitantly tapped at the limits of what was appropriate, but each time obediently retreated at the slightest hint of maternal disapproval. Her family believed Constance had accepted her personal disappointments and was resigned to a quiet, uneventful life. ‘For aught you or I know, I may become an electioneering propagandist woman … or anything else, before the next 10 years run out,’ Constance told Betty in 1899. ‘But this is unlikely, and I’ve reached that place in the lane of life when the probable alternatives of the future are fairly visible. I can’t honestly say they please me much, but how few people are really pleased?’109 Nevertheless, Constance felt her losses more deeply than she was prepared to let on. ‘It seems like waiting, not like actually living,’ she continued to Betty. Though no one noticed, each disappointment and failure – music, writing, love – was locked away inside her. They were no less painful as the years passed. Outwardly, she was docile and compliant. She filled her days with routine domesticity and derived her own happiness by making other people happy. But, inside, Constance craved much, much more. In fact, she was quietly seething. She told Aunt T that ‘the first symptom of robustness with me is to lose my temper, and long to hurl stones at windows or break something with my hands’.110 She only needed a spark to set her off.

  In the summer of 1908, Constance saw John Ponsonby at a production of a Maurice Baring play in London. It was, she told Adela, ‘just plain real joy with no effort and no sham and no alloy. Just plain wonder joy.’ Then the Ponsonby family invited her to visit them, like old times. John would be there. ‘It’s such Paradise temptation!’ Constance exclaimed. Precisely because of this attitude, Edith didn’t want her to go. Fearing old wounds being reopened, she said it would be better if Constance and John did not meet until he was married. Victor persuaded Edith that it would be fine, and Constance was allowed to go. It was beyond her wildest dreams. ‘All more divinely natural and easy than I had dared hope … He is simply exactly the same. The whole thing is like magic. I feel a wee bit dazed but immensely happy. He is most dear, and easy and charming to me,’ she told Adela.111 It seemed as though she was in danger of falling for John Ponsonby all over again. Instead, she met the suffragettes.

  NOTES

  1 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, July 1893, Knebworth Archive, 01274.

  2 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 4 December 1892, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 37.

  3 See Ruth First and Ann Scott, Olive Schreiner (André Deutsch, 1980).

  4 Rachel Holmes, Eleanor Marx: A Life (Bloomsbury, 2014), p. 218.

  5 Constance Lytton to Olive Schreiner, 2 November 1892, Balfour Papers, National Archives of Scotland, GD433/2/307.

  6 Rachel Holmes, Eleanor Marx, p. 219.

  7 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, undated 1893, Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 43.

  8 For the full history of this interesting couple, see William M. Kuhn, Henry and Mary Ponsonby: Life at the Court of Queen Victoria (Duckbacks, 2003).

  9 Martha Vicinus, Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women 1778–1928 (University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 133. On the same page, Vicinus suggests that ‘after her husband’s death, Lady Ponsonby moved almost exclusively in a world of women who loved women’.

  10 Quoted in Martha Vicinus, Intimate Friends, p. 134.

  11 William M. Kuhn, Henry and Mary Ponsonby, p. 117 and p. 185.

  12 She was a Magdalen not a Margaret, and seems most often to have been called Maggie, but Constance usually called her Maggy and so have I. Princes Louise had several tangential connections to Constance: she was a patron of Edwin Lutyens in the first part of his career and was Frances Balfour’s sister-in-law and friend. Unlike the Queen, she was a supporter of suffrage. See Lucinda Hawksley, The Mystery of Princess Louise: Queen Victoria’s Rebellious Daughter (Chatto & Windus, 2014), p. 271.

  13 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, 7 November 1893, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 48.

  14 Betty Balfour to Constance Lytton, July 1893, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 1.

  15 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, 7 November 1893, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 47.

  16 Leo Maxse was married to Kitty, said to be the model for Mrs Dalloway.

  17 Emily Lytton to Rev. Whitwell Elwyn, 3 October 1893, in Emily Lutyens, A Blessed Girl, p. 238.

  18 Constance Lytton, National Review, January 1894, p. 713.

  19 However, I did not see another review attributed to Constance Lytton in the National Review, nor did I see an unsigned review which might be attributed to Constance. It is not clear to me, therefore, where all this work was going, or if it was simply practice.

  20 Constance Lytton to Aunt T, 25 August 1900, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 28.

  21 Emily Lytton to Rev. Whitwell Elwyn, 15 December 1893 in Emily Lutyens, A Blessed Girl, p. 263.

  22 For example, Journals of Constance Lytton, 30 December 1893.

  23 Constance Lytton to Teresa Earle, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 3.

  24 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, August 1894, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 4.

  25 See Journals of Constance Lytton for 1895, Knebworth Archive, box 110.

  26 John’s remarks were copied out for Betty’s benefit. Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, August 1894, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 4. Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, September 1894, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 5.

  27 Constance Lytton to Aunt T, 25 August 1900, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 28.

  28 Constance Lytton to Aunt T, March 1895, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 50.

  29 Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 50.

  30 Ethel Smyth, As Time Went On (Longmans, 1930), p. 91.

  31 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, 16 May 1895, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 7.

  32 Constance Lytton to Betty Balfour, 27 May 1895, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 8.

  33 Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 124.

  34 Letter from the Queen, Edith Lytton, ed. by Mary Lutyens, Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, 1895–1899 (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961), preface; Gerald’s role in Edith’s decision on p. 13.

  35 Journals of Constance Lytton, 26 October, 22 November and 28 December 1895.

  36 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, April 1896, Kneb
worth Archive, 01274, p. 8.

  37 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 12 July 1896, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 65.

  38 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 26 August 1896, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 10.

  39 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 23 November 1896, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 11.

  40 Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 39.

  41 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, January 1897, in Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 71.

  42 Journal of Constance Lytton, 12 February 1897, Knebworth Archive, box 110.

  43 The busy day on 28 May is from Mrs C. W. Earle, Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden (Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1919), p. 120; weeding on p. 104, instructions for the blacksmith on p. 154 and thoughts on celeriac p. 29.

  44 Mrs C. W. Earle, Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden, p. 328 and p. 331.

  45 Mrs C. W. Earle, Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden, preface.

  46 Patricia Miles and Jill Williams, An Uncommon Criminal: The Life of Lady Constance Lytton: Militant Suffragette 1869–1923 (Knebworth House Education and Preservation Trust, 1999), p. 9.

  47 Constance Lytton to Aunt T, 25 August 1900, Knebworth Archive, 01274.

  48 Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 72.

  49 Journals of Constance Lytton, 5 August 1897, Knebworth Archive, box 110.

  50 Betty Balfour (ed.), Letters of Constance Lytton, p. 78.

  51 Journals of Constance Lytton, 2 August and 17 September 1897, Knebworth Archive, box 110.

  52 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, 5 November 1897, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 12.

  53 John Ponsonby to Constance Lytton, 22 December 1897, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 13.

  54 Constance Lytton to Adela Villiers, December 1897, Knebworth Archive, 01274, pp. 13–14.

  55 Constance Lytton to Mrs Mansel, 23 March 1898, Knebworth Archive, 01274, p. 14.