Lady Constance Lytton

by Lyndsey Jenkins

  His muddled understanding of Freud and his complete lack of training did not stop Lane from setting himself up as a lecturer and consultant in psychoanalysis. Victor supported him wholeheartedly in this new venture, even going so far as to arrange lectures for him. Lane made a splash in certain circles: Betty reported that London had ‘gone mad over Lane’, and that Ethel Smyth had become a disciple.26 Victor also became a patient himself, and attributed a miracle cure to Lane. Like Constance, Victor had suffered with depression: now he felt well enough to accept a senior diplomatic post in India. He saw this as nothing short of a miracle cure. He was evangelical about the benefits of Lane’s therapeutic approach and began recommending other patients to Lane.

  One of these was Constance who was very excited about the prospect of treatment. Psychoanalysis appealed to her interest in modern and progressive thinking. She was even more interested in the promises Lane made. He claimed that he would be able to cure her paralysis and poor health for good.

  The idea of ‘unconscious conflict’ was, Lane believed, at the heart of the patient’s problems. The troubles they suffered from – whether mental or physical – were as a result of their unconscious wishes to escape from their situation. To be cured, patients had to acknowledge and come to terms with these wishes. These are not particularly radical theories, but in Constance’s case, the implications were alarming. Lane attributed her stroke to an unconscious rebellion against her suffragette activities. Her body knew that her actions were wrong and acted to prevent it. Given that this went against all her beliefs, and that she clung to her suffragette past to give her life meaning, it is incredible that Constance accepted this diagnosis. She told Betty (who might have resented her sister’s ongoing belief that all her relatives disapproved of her):

  I don’t understand how the self-sought ill health applies in my case – I at last had found my feet in the Votes for Women movement, was desperately happy in a world of friends. This stroke besides almost quite incapacitating me cast me back among my relations who disapproved of all my work and I was cut off practically from my friends. But no matter – Lane perhaps will find a way out.27

  She began treatment in the summer of 1922. We cannot, of course, know exactly what went on in these sessions, but Lane’s biographer has left an account of his methods and we can only hope she was spared the worst of Lane’s exploitative excesses. Psychotherapy was still very much in its infancy and Lane seems to have been making much of his practice up as he went along. According to his biographer, his patients ‘seem to have enjoyed an experience almost akin to that of the woman with an issue of blood who felt that she need only “touch the hem of His garment”’. Sessions were informal. Lane sat, smoked and talked and the patient was expected to listen.28 Sometimes he would do more than talk. Lane’s biographer suggests that he sometimes conducted sessions where both participants were naked and would even ‘give physical demonstrations of his “love” for a pupil who could be convinced in no other way’; even his biographer concluded this was ‘very stupid’.29 It seems that Lane, who could no longer exploit vulnerable young offenders, now preyed on an equally defenceless group of psychological patients. He also charged a hefty fee for the privilege: two pounds and two shillings a week for Constance’s treatment, which she, mired in debt, could ill afford.30

  Nevertheless, Constance believed the treatment was working. She felt better than she had done for years, though this seems to be down to a shift in her own attitude and self-perception. Betty thought that she was still very breathless and her paralysed arm showed no improvement, but that she was transformed, full of high spirits and certainty that she was going to get well.31 But Lane was not satisfied with her progress. He blamed the suffragettes for her stroke, but he blamed her inability to recover on Edith. She was too dependent on Edith, she had no incentive to recover and they were trapped in an unhealthy relationship because Edith wanted her close at home.32 Edith herself was ignoring the whole thing. ‘I suppose she looks upon it as a mild form of madness,’ Betty reported to Victor, and, later:

  She hates it, doesn’t really believe in it, and grudges the money it costs. Part of herself does not really want Con to get well – she does not want to lose control of her. Besides, the whole thing is unorthodox & not in her scheme of things … nothing will cheer Mother except Con sinking back into high priestess in her illness.33

  Regardless of Edith’s feelings, it seems that Lane said what Constance needed to hear. She decided that she would leave, and move to London again to continue her ‘treatment’. She justified this decision by saying that it was in Edith’s interests as well as her own. ‘My life here was in the grave and not vital or helpful to Mother,’ she told Betty.34 Living on her own again would make her better: a ‘doctor’ said so.

  In December, she announced her intentions to Edith – or, as her mother described it to Betty, ‘Con threw a bombshell at me … after nursing & helping her for 10 years it does seem hard … & ah the loneliness for my last days.’ Constance’s siblings thought, though they did not say it in so many words, that this was rather a selfish attitude to take. They tended to agree with Lane’s diagnosis and Edith’s response only confirmed it. Betty tried to express their position gently.

  For 10 years, Con has been on the shelf. You have been angelically & patiently & unselfishly nursing her – what for? Not for death – but for Life. If you had the choice to keep her ill & always with you – or to give her back the great gift of health & with it the freedom to work once more I am sure you love her too much to deny her that freedom, even if it means more loneliness for you.35

  For Victor and Betty, the question was not whether Constance would be made better or worse by the move, but rather whether worrying about Edith would hamper her recovery. Victor wrote weekly letters to Edith from India urging her to let Constance go. Edith, meanwhile, continued her histrionics, telling Betty that perhaps it would be better for Constance if she died. But though Edith may have been emotional in her response, that did not mean she was wrong.36 All the siblings, Constance included, seemed to believe that recovery, and an independent life, was just over the horizon. In Neville’s words, ‘She determined to take up her bed and walk; she was tired of leading an invalid life and she meant to get well or die in the attempt.’37

  Constance felt that she had been given a new lease of life. With a sudden burst of energy, she began working on a cookbook. The idea was to gather recipes ‘from Courts and Palaces – from farm houses and cottages’ from countries around the world and sell it in aid of the League of Nations. She had one recipe from Queen Victoria’s still room, and another (for boiled milk) from the governor of Holloway Prison; she had recipes from Egypt, India and Jamaica as well as from Britain, America and Europe. They were, of course, all vegetarian.38 By January 1923 she felt well enough to make her long-cherished trip to Marie Stopes’s clinic in Holloway and finally meet with the doctor herself.39 Her only worry was how to pay for her ongoing treatment: with no means of earning money, she was still heavily in debt. Victor offered to make her a loan, to be paid back once she was well and working. She planned to start reviewing and writing, and even wrote some poems. She started coming down to breakfast and dinner instead of taking her meals in her room, as a way of demonstrating how well she was, though still no physical improvements were visible to Betty.40

  Then, after more than a decade living with her mother, she left home in the spring of 1923 and returned to London. Her first thought was to go back to the Euston Road, as it was close to Lane as well as being associated with her happiest years. But this was thought unsuitable: too isolated, too cold and too uncomfortable. If she was going to be free, it would have to involve compromises: her siblings discussed a plan to put her in rooms in an occupied house where someone could keep an eye on her. Constance bridled at these restrictions. She was not a child and – at least in her head – no longer an invalid. Instead, Emily found her a flat in Tavistock Square, above the Theosophical Society’s headquarters.
From here, she wrote her last letter to Marie Stopes, explaining that she couldn’t write a projected article on birth control because ‘Mr Homer Lane told me that I must give up that kind of thing for the present’.41 Lane was increasingly dominating her life. In her last few analytic sessions, the story of John Ponsonby came out, upsetting her deeply. She wrote to Victor that she had been reading her old letters, saying, ‘I gave myself to J. P. for him to ask of me whatever he chose … the most upsetting bit of my life.’42 Betty told Constance that Gerald had said she was a saint; Constance answered, ‘Lane says I must be a demon, and I suppose I am.’43

  The number of stairs at Tavistock Square made it unsuitable, and after a few weeks she was forced to return to Homewood. Having made the break, though, she was determined that this homecoming would only be temporary. Adela managed to find her alternative accommodation in Paddington, in lodgings once occupied by Olive Schreiner. The landlady had been dedicated to Olive and would look after Constance for Olive’s sake.44 Towards the end of April, Constance heard the news that Jessie Kenney had at last qualified as a wireless telegraph operator, and wrote that she too was on the verge of a new life. ‘My hand and arm have quite recently begun to come to life again … it seems like a miracle after being for ten years 1/2 dead.’ She told Jessie about the progress of her cookbook (‘what a come down! you will perhaps think’), asked her for a recipe and said she would try to help Jessie if she could, perhaps through Maurice Baring, who had the right connections.45

  Constance felt she was hovering on the edge of a miracle, but she was wrong. Once she had moved into Olive’s old flat, she had only days to live. Though her siblings had all urged her to break free, once in London, far from recovering, she quickly began to deteriorate. Yet she did not go home. ‘During the last days in London her love & thought for Mother were intense & yet never for an instant did she regret having left her,’ Betty told Victor. Victor had been writing ‘psychological letters’ to Constance from India; Lane asked Betty to cable to him to tell him to stop; Betty thought it was too late to make a difference. Edith wrote to Victor in anguish: she believed that Victor was against Constance seeing other doctors. Victor wrote back absolving himself: ‘I knew that she was certain to be ill but I never meant her to refuse to see any doctor about her symptoms.’ But it was too late. Marion Vaughan, who had been her doctor after the Jane Warton episode, was brought in to assess her. One day she was able to make jokes with Marion; the next she could not speak. ‘Physiologically it is easy to explain,’ Betty wrote to Victor. ‘The dropsy was caused by bad circulation – the kidney – liver – & lungs also failed to function & then I suppose the whole system became poisoned. I have no doubt the Heroin given during the last 3 days hurried the end but made it peaceful & painless.’46 Lady Constance Lytton died at four o’clock in the afternoon of 22 May 1923 with her sisters beside her. Neville recorded that she said, ‘I am glad to die, and at last to be free of suffering.’47

  Hundreds of people attended her funeral and Knebworth Church was packed. There were representatives of the Actresses’ Franchise League, the Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society, the Women’s Freedom League, and many other groups as well as the WSPU. Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence placed a palm leaf in suffragette colours on the coffin, with the message ‘Dearest Comrade, you live always in the hearts of those who love you, and you live forever in the future race which inherits the new freedom you gave your life to win.’ Afterwards, Neville and a family servant carried the ashes to the Knebworth Mausoleum.48

  Many tributes were made. One told Betty, ‘She was a light to our generation, lighting something which will never go out. To be heroic with a sense of humour is the most sane and lovely thing there is.’49 Old friends like Maurice Baring and Frances Balfour, who had rarely seen her in recent years, wrote to pay their respects. The Times obituary, said Frances, did not do her justice, and told ‘what she did, not what she was’.50

  One of the condolence notes was sent to Victor.

  May I just write to you one word that is to say how deeply, very deeply sorry I am to see the notice in today’s newspaper about Lady Conny. It is too terribly sad and although I haven’t seen Lady Conny for now many years, I shall always remember past days. I won’t write more, and don’t answer but I feel I must just write you a word to tell you how very very sorry I am.51

  It was from John Ponsonby. John Ponsonby remained in the military and commanded the fifth infantry division during the First World War, before going to India. Still single, he eventually married in 1935 when nearly seventy years old. He died in 1952.

  Constance’s rapid end after so many long years of drift and stagnation is startling. If her decline was so swift, how could no one have spotted that she was getting worse? Why did none of them see what appears with hindsight to have been inevitable? Perhaps she realised it herself and was hiding it from them, in order that she could die on her own terms. But it is still heartbreaking to think that her last days were lived in the shadow of Homer Lane, calling her a demon, reopening the old John Ponsonby wounds, attacking Edith and blaming Constance for her failure to get well.

  If all this was not enough, he then left Betty with the sense that she and the rest of the family were actually responsible for Constance’s death. ‘I am not sad for Con,’ Betty told Victor. ‘But I am fearfully disappointed & feel a glorious experiment has failed.’ She was more saddened still by the impression that ‘Lane in his heart thinks her family killed her’.52 ‘Did he feel all along that it was a fight between Con & her family & that if only we had all stayed away from her she would have lived?’ she asked him. ‘But how could I leave her – alone in a strange house with no loved one near her & the Dr saying it was a question of hours & nothing could save her.’53 In Constance’s last days and hours, Betty, Emily and Edith had of course been constantly at her side and Lane believed this was ‘a failure – not of psychoanalysis but of the attempt to apply it’. In the same letter, Betty explicitly says that ‘it is much more true to say Lane killed her’, but she goes on to say, ‘Better make the attempt to live & fail, than see her a prisoner.’54 She went on picking at the events of the last days, at Lane’s motives and actions, unable to understand what he had been doing. But she did not distance herself from Lane or repudiate him. On the contrary, she was desperate to see him. Lane’s behaviour, though, is rather easier to understand: he seems to have been trying to blame Betty and the rest of the Lyttons so that Constance’s death could not be laid at his door; then he went into hiding to let the dust settle.

  Rather surprisingly, given that she had been preparing for death in 1919, Constance did not make a will. It is odd that she did not make any personal bequests to her mother, her sisters or her suffragette comrades; perhaps she believed that she had nothing worth leaving. In September, Edith’s twin sister, ‘Aunt Lizzie’, came to stay, and Edith insisted that she take something from Constance’s room to remember her by. Betty watched Aunt Lizzie standing in the middle of the room ‘looking unutterably miserable’, surrounded by pamphlets about suffrage and books about prison reform. ‘It did seem hard for Aunt L to make her choice. It almost made me giggle & I thought how Con would have laughed.’55 Everything passed to Edith as Constance’s next of kin, but Edith did not take any steps to administrate the estate and after she died, probate was granted to Victor. Constance is described in the probate documents as ‘a Spinster without Father’.56 Edith did, however, send some mementos to Annie Kenney, including Constance’s treasured medals. Annie eventually donated these to the suffrage collection housed in the Museum of London.57

  Betty took on the responsibility for putting Constance’s affairs in order. Rachel Peace – ‘the poor mad thing’, as Betty called her – was the most immediate question. Betty felt particularly obligated to help Rachel, because she ‘was one of Con’s great incentives to get well’, as she told Victor. ‘She wanted – if cured herself – to cure her, & Lane was confident he could!’58 Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence suggested that the ex-suf
fragettes might club together and care for her as a memorial to Constance, but this seems to have come to nothing.59 Many suffragettes were struggling financially. An appeal a few years before to raise money for a house for Mrs Pankhurst had not been very successful. Betty and Adela each paid for a week in the private asylum; then Rachel was moved to a public asylum in Kent.60 George Blackshaw also briefly resurfaced for one last time, as Betty told Victor: ‘Con’s unfortunate ex-prisoner friend who was to bring out her cookery book is again in prison.’61 Betty had the cookbook itself typed up as a Christmas present for Edith, though unfortunately it seems to have later disappeared.

  A few years later, Betty collected and edited her sister’s letters, just as she had done for her father. It was the best possible tribute and though, as we have seen, the collection is incomplete, it is also invaluable. Having seen how miserable the John Ponsonby letters made her towards the end of her life, Betty and Victor decided to leave those out. Betty was reading Annie Kenney’s autobiography while finishing off her collection, and compared Annie’s ‘buoyant cheerfulness’ with Constance’s apparent sadness. ‘She suffered vicariously too much for effectiveness in this life,’ Betty concluded.62

  In 1925, the family of another of Homer Lane’s patients complained to the police that he was taking advantage of her. It was discovered he had been relieving her of large sums of money. There was a trial. Betty testified on his behalf and Victor wrote increasingly desperate letters from India, but to no avail. Lane was deported, having failed to keep to the terms of his visa, which required him to notify the police when he changed address. He died in Paris in September, missed and mourned by Victor, who continued to try to vindicate him. Pamela was the only one of the Lyttons who seems not to have been taken in. ‘My last talk to him, two years ago, just after darling Con died, completely disillusioned [me] as to him being a good man.’ She acknowledged that he had been ‘the strange hand that held a lamp to light Victor’s way’, but still ‘something in me shrinks from him’.63