‘The truth is I want companionship.’
Lytton Strachey, Diary (April 1898)
For six months after leaving Leamington College Lytton prepared himself for university life. Every week he would go off for isometric exercises with a Scottish doctor who had constructed a system of weights and pulleys to develop the muscles. He also studied with his sister Dorothy, the part-time schoolmistress at Allenswood, who coached him in English, history and French.
There were times during these months when he regretted his decision to leave school. He missed the comradeship. Buried alive in Lancaster Gate, he felt a vague feeling of uneasiness. Even the splendours of Rothiemurchus no longer banished his dissatisfaction. Nature had only sublimities and vastitudes and water and leaves. His desires were for something more intimate: for affection, an answering smile, the eye that understood and the secret touch of someone special.
Mistrustful of strangers, Lytton sensed their presence like a separating wall; and retreated into silence. He made himself feel superior to what he considered their smug mediocrity. What right had they to feel so self-satisfied? Already, at seventeen, he longed to make them squirm and twist in their seats with his derision.
Something of the impression he gave was recorded by the artist and writer Graham Robertson.
‘He was a mere boy of eighteen or nineteen when we came across each other, with all his laurels yet ungathered and his character (presumably) unformed, but in its unformed condition it was, to me, singularly objectionable, and we violently disliked each other – if violence in any form could be attributed to so limp and flaccid a being as was the Lytton of those days. As to the “strong, deep voice” mentioned by Max [Beerbohm] as reserved for his intimates … I suppose his parents, brothers and sisters must be reckoned among his intimates, but I never heard him address them otherwise than in a breathless squeak of an asthmatic rabbit. Voices were not the family strong point. I think they all talked so continuously as to have exhausted the small allotment of voice originally accorded to them.’1
In September 1897 Lytton passed the Preliminary Examination of the Victoria University of Manchester. To Dorothy Strachey, who had written to offer her congratulations, he replied: ‘Let me add my congratulations for your admirable coaching, and also let me bring before you the fact that it is AGAINST MY PRINCIPLES to fail in an examination.’
Since he was still rather young to go to Oxford or Cambridge, his mother decided that he should first attend a smaller university. The family had a special connection with Liverpool University College (as it then was) through Lytton’s cousin, Sir Charles Strachey, who had married Ada Raleigh, sister of Professor Walter Raleigh. It was because of Raleigh’s position there as King Alfred Professor of English Literature that in October 1897 Lytton was sent for two years to Liverpool. He studied Greek, Latin, mathematics, history and English literature. ‘Five burly men spend their days in lecturing me,’ he told his mother, ‘so I really ought to be well instructed.’ The best lecturer of all these, he added, was Walter Raleigh himself, who taught him English literature: ‘He is thoroughly good.’
Lytton soon grew friendly with Raleigh. His wife too delighted him with her outspokenness. ‘What do you think of Mrs Raleigh?’ he asked a friend. ‘Don’t you like her brimstone and vitriol? Have you talked to her about [Bertrand] Russell? They hate each other like poison; he’s a moralist, and she’s an anarchist. And secretly I’m on her side.’ Raleigh was a distinct relief from the more pedantic type of don. Now nearing his forties, he had already written books on The English Novel and Robert Louis Stevenson which Lytton admired, and was then working on a study of Milton. He nourished a secret faith, he admitted, ‘not in refinement and scholarly elegance, those are only a game, but in blood feuds, and the chase of wild beasts, and marriage by capture. In carrying this last savage habit into effect there would be an irresistible dramatic temptation to select the bluest lady of them all.’ His image of himself living on the decks of the world rather than confined in a stuffy cabin was to find an echo in Lytton’s own romanticism. ‘Can anything be more bitter than to be doomed to a life of literature and hot-water bottles,’ Lytton later (1913) asked the mountaineer George Mallory, ‘when one’s a Pirate at heart?’
Raleigh had convinced himself that, by virtue of his piratical spirit, he was for ever being threatened with dismissal from one university post after another. It seemed to be a psychological device by which he reconciled himself to his steady academic career. When alone, immersed in the drudge of authorship, Raleigh’s freedom of expression faltered; but in conversation all his exuberance and wit were released. He loved an audience and excelled before a good one, however large or small, for only then could he translate literature back into the actual movement of life going on around him. Few people who heard him lecture forgot the sparkle and subtlety of these performances. First you saw the spread of his smile announcing that he was coming out with something he knew to be good; then it would burst forth, pointed, epigrammatic, conclusive; and he would stop suddenly, as if in delighted astonishment at his own fluency, glancing round as though to compliment everyone for their cleverness in drawing out of him such pith: ‘There! You’ve got it! That’s the point!’ Lytton was delighted by these theatrical accomplishments.
The Raleighs took a special interest in him while he was at Liverpool, and would invite him to dinner or take him to concerts and theatres. But Lytton often left their company reflecting on his own contrasting lack of charm and energy. His squeaky voice and long, ungainly body preyed more than ever on his mind. He felt that he looked like some zoological specimen. Though wanting desperately to shine, he was more moved by a fear of public humiliation.
In his letters and in occasional diary entries Lytton gave thumb-nail sketches of the other dons whose lectures he attended. The most striking of these was John Macdonald Mackay, Rathbone Professor of Ancient History. ‘Professor Mackay is very weird and somewhat casual,’ he wrote shortly after arriving at Liverpool. ‘The first difficulty is to hear what he’s saying as he speaks in a most extraordinary sing-song. When that has been mastered the connection must be traced between the lecture and Roman History. Lastly, but most important, to prevent and curb shrieks of laughter.’ The professor himself never curbed these outbursts, and as he grew friendly with Lytton – having been at Balliol with his cousin St Loe Strachey – his mannerisms became embarrassing. ‘M is rather too much inclined to think himself funny and laugh at his own jokes. He will look at me when he means to be witty, which is most inconvenient as I feel that I must smile and yet do not like pandering.’
Lytton enjoyed the lectures on Greek by Professor P. Hebblethwaite. ‘H is quite a character,’ he observed, ‘very stout and lame of a leg; with handsome features and grey beard and hair. His eye-glasses are a constant source of amusement to me; and his continual “yes?” which is quite unintended to be answered.’
The other dons were more ordinary. At mathematics he had always been proficient, and he described Professor Frank Carey, the mathematical don, as ‘thoroughly good’. His least favourite subject was Latin. These lectures were consistently dull and Professor Herbert Strong, who gave them, was, Lytton told his mother, the least likeable of all his five burly instructors.
The two years Lytton passed at Liverpool were among the bleakest of his life. He was unable either to excel as he had dreamed of doing, or to find those few intimate friends who would have transformed his existence. ‘My life is a turmoil of dulness,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘My days are spent in a wild excitement over the most arrant details. The putting on of boots is thrilling; the taking off of coat, hat and gloves more so; the walk to the College and back a very procession of agitation. And all carried on with a feverish haste, and a desire to be done with it. As for letters – the expectation of one, no matter from whom is the subject of frenzy.’
With his allowance of one pound a month from his mother, Lytton hired a bicycle which he called ‘the Graphic’. After lunch he would set off for prodigious rides into the country, or to explore distant second-hand bookshops. In less than a year he pedalled a thousand miles on the Graphic – an impressive measurement of his urge to escape from the place. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays he sweated through a course of strengthening exercises directed by a Dr Blüm who ‘is a Swede, and decent enough. The system is entirely different from the Macphearson, and much more scientific. No pulleys, no weights, merely movements of the arms, legs and body, he presses in the opposite direction. Thus the resistance is regulated by the man himself.’ Most evenings he spent alone in his room, writing up the day’s lectures and trying to write poetry until at about eleven he retired to bed.
He was lodging at No. 80 Rodney Street – across the road from where Gladstone had been born. It was a sombre, dignified street of Georgian houses, full of dignified professional men with their sombre families. Typical of the district were Lytton’s landlords, Dr and Mrs Alexander Stookes. They had been apprehensive of having a rowdy student in the house, but ‘the boy has proved a delightful companion and no trouble to either of us,’ Dr Stookes wrote to Lady Strachey after Lytton’s first term. ‘We could hardly have imagined that it would have been possible to have a stranger guest with so little friction.’
With Dr Stookes himself – whom he nicknamed ‘Spookes’ – Lytton eventually grew quite friendly. They would discuss literature, religion, sociology and all manner of subjects. It was Dr Stookes who introduced him to some of the local social problems, taking him round Liverpool’s slums. Though Liverpool was growing prosperous as it emerged as one of the largest ports in the world, its new grandness and prosperity did not touch the starving children and drunken beggars in the streets. ‘Nearly every street is a slum in this town, except those with the fine shops,’ Lytton noted in his diary. ‘Here is nothing intermediate. Hardly anyone lives in the town if they can possibly help it. Pitt Street was painful to me in the extreme; it stank; dirty “furriners” wandered in groups over it; and a dingy barrel organ rattled its jargon in a yard.’ Sometimes he would wander through these gloomy slums alone. The dirt and drabness filled him with loathing, seeming to mirror his internal wretchedness. ‘In the afternoon walked down to the docks and thence to the landing-stage,’ one diary entry runs. ‘The crowds of people were appalling. The landing-stage blocked; and all hideous. It gave me the shivers in two minutes and I fled. My self-conscious vanity is really most painful. As I walk through the streets I am agonized by the thoughts of my appearance. Of course it is hideous, but what does it matter? I only make it worse by peering into people’s faces to see what they are thinking. And the worst of it is I hate myself for doing it.’2
Hoping to find companionship Lytton joined several of the undergraduate societies. Tempted by the promise of light refreshments, he told his mother, ‘I attended the University College Christian Union meeting, thus becoming acquainted with some of the students. A very good thing I thought, but why Christian? A prayer terminated the proceedings. The undergraduates are not, I think particularly enlightened, but as yet I have only spoken to the less advanced ones.’ A little later he was elected to the debating society, where he had higher hopes of making friends. For several months he continued going to these debates without uttering a word. Then, in March 1898, to his dismay, he was scheduled to make a speech in defence of slang. ‘The day of the debate on Slang,’ he noted in his diary. ‘I was alarmed, as I had only been able to scribble a few remarks by 2.30. The debate was at 4.30 with a tea at 4.1 managed to put down some absurd notes and then, palpitating with horror, started off for the College. I arrived late of course. The tea was in the Ladies’ Debating Room which was a most charming apartment. I stood dumbly and swallowed a cup of tea. Then, after a long pause while everyone else was talking, we adjourned to the literature room, which was soon pretty well filled. I was horrified to see the swells of the place such as Grundy, Burnett, etc., accumulated there.’ Lytton’s opponents opened the proceedings with the proposition that slang was undesirable, so that as seconder he spoke last. When it was time for him to rise and address the meeting, all went well. ‘Fortunately for me,’ he explained afterwards, ‘I have come to be considered a funny man, so that the audience began to laugh even before I spoke. Perhaps my appearance accounted for this however. I stumbled through my very short oration somehow, and was relieved that it should have gone down so well.’3
After this initial address, he gave several speeches to the society. His strangeness enhanced these performances on the debating platform, and he generally became adept at anticipating and reversing derision. ‘The other day as I was sitting in the drawing-room with my back to the light,’ he told his mother, ‘a lady visitor who had been to inspect the twins, suddenly entered. Rushing up to me she said, “Oh my dear Dr Stookes, I really must congratulate you on your charming children! So pretty; so sweet!” Without a word I slowly rose to my full majestic height and the lady, giving one gasp of horror, fled wildly from the room!’
One new friend was Lumsden Barkway, later Bishop of St Andrews. ‘He is the son of a presbyterian clergyman, and is going in for that profession himself,’ Lytton wrote. ‘But he tries his best not to be bound down, and takes an interest in pictures and such. He is rather melancholy, and has hardly ever been out of the suburb of Liverpool where he lives.’ Another friend was a Miss Combe, the ‘austerely flighty’ headmistress of a large school for girls, whose sister had married Oliver Strachey’s friend, Roger Fry. Miss Combe was a fiery cyclist and had a fund of pastoral sagas involving ‘spring foliage’ and ‘autumn tints’. Their friendship was conducted precariously from two bicycles. Despite a number of these ‘not altogether unsuccessful’ trips, Lytton did not really warm to Miss Combe. ‘Women are such strange creatures,’ he remarked. ‘Miss Combe is not so pleasant. She appeared to me to possess the qualities of a groveller.’
But he met no one who answered his needs. ‘Miss C is not good enough,’ he concluded; ‘besides I want someone who can go out for walks with me at any time. Barkway? Dear me, is that all University College can give me? If I could only make friends with Grundy or Bird!4 But my “habitual reserve” is too much for them. Well, well, well, perhaps I shall find someone some day. And then I am sure he – or she – will not belong to University College. Talking of shes, I think it is too much that one cannot speak to a member of “the sex” without being looked upon askance by somebody or other. If only people were more sensible on this point, half the so called immorality would come to an end at once. I wonder if I shall ever “fall in love”. I can’t help smiling at the question – if they only knew – if they only knew! But it is tragedy also.’
On 3 March, two days after his eighteenth birthday, Lytton began a new diary. ‘Many times before have I got a book and written in it my thoughts and my actions,’ he put down. ‘But my previous attempts have always been crowned with failure: – inasmuch as after 2, 3, or possibly 4 entries the diary came to an end. Another effort! God knows there is small enough reason for it. My other autobiographical writings were the outcome of excitements really quite out of the commonplace; but this is begun, at any rate, in the veriest dog days imaginable.’5
This diary covers a period of about six weeks. Though it contains some amusing sketches, many of its pages make depressing reading. ‘My character’, he wrote, ‘is not crystalized. So there will be little recorded here that is not transitory; and there will be much here that is quite untrue. The inquisitive reader, should he peep between the covers, will find anything but myself, who perhaps after all do not exist but in my own phantasy.’ Unwilling to contemplate his image directly, he uses Shakespeare as a convenient looking-glass. ‘Had Shakespeare any character? of his own, that is to say?’ The answer, he goes on, is that he had not, and that Shakespeare was ‘a cynic in his inmost of hearts’. He pretends to rejoice in his enforced isolation. ‘Better so, perhaps; in fact necessarily so. And there are quite sufficient of the other sort.’
The purpose of keeping this diary was to redress the balance between the glamour of his secret dreams and the greyness of actual life. Within its pages he had no fear of making an exhibition of himself, of boring others instead of impressing them. It was, he points out, ‘a safety valve to my morbidity’. Although no longer bullied as he had been at school, his sense of loneliness was more overwhelming. He could not avoid focusing on his appearance, and expressed his misery in terms of physical self-disgust: ‘When I consider that I am now 18 years of age a shudder passes through my mind and I hardly dare look at the creature* those years have made me.’
This feeling of wretchedness was aggravated by his failure to get any of his poetry accepted by the university magazine, The Sphinx. The poems which he submitted – sonnets and epigrams – are not personal like his diary entries, but some of them are competent metrical exercises, such as ‘On being asked for a description of a Roundel’. This was intended perhaps as a parody of Swinburne’s description of a Roundel published in 1883 (and so harmless compared to Swinburne’s earlier ‘Rondel’ which reeked of rotten poppies and white death). But it was not printed until Lytton had gone up to Cambridge, and though eventually coming out in The Granta and not The Sphinx, it belongs to this Liverpool period.
A Roundel is a thing that’s not
So very irksome to compose.
It’s something that one throws off hot -
A Roundel is.
The first thing needful, I suppose,
Is some slight sentiment or plot,
Then start off with a fitting close
Add rhymes (with luck you’ll find a lot)
And, my inquiring friend, – who knows? -
Perhaps you may have here just what
A Roundel is.
At the end of March 1898, Lytton took the Intermediate BA examination and two months later learnt that he had passed in all subjects – mathematics, ancient history, Greek, Latin and English literature. That summer, Lady Strachey arranged for him to spend some weeks with a French family, the Renons, who lived at Loches, about a hundred and thirty miles south-west of Paris, near the gently flowing Indre.
Early in June, with his baggage and bicycle, Lytton set out, travelling by train to Paris and then the next day to Loches itself. Twenty-four hours after arriving there he sent a long letter to his mother describing his adventures.
‘Yesterday morning I sallied forth from the hotel, and, marching down the Avenue de l’Opéra found myself opposite the Hôtel du Louvre … After making a tour of the building seven or eight times I found an entrance, and, giving up my umbrella to a gendarme, was soon lost among the majestic remnants of the Ancient World. I found it all too difficult to tear myself away … But at length, seizing my umbrella, I dashed into a chabriolet … What need be said of the wild journey through the metropolis of the great Republic, the fearful jolts of the vehicle threatening at every moment to snatch me from my bicycle which I still held clasped to my breast? Twice we were nearly killed; twice we escaped death by a hairsbreadth. We reached the Gare d’Orléans a quarter of an hour before time and … proceeded to Tours (changing at St-Pierre) where I had lunch, and took a walk in the town which appeared charming. Thence to Loches. I was met by a jeune homme aged 19, a son of M. Renon. We then drove in an omnibus here – 6 miles – where I was received by the family circle with open arms. M. Renon, Madame, Mademoiselle (15?) et bébé (fils 10) … The house is charming, quite small, with all the rooms opening out of doors. My room is on the ground floor, and can only be approached by a door leading into the garden. Everyone is as polite as peculiar – much more gentle (in its true sense) than in England in corresponding circumstances. I am lured on to talk, and can understand fairly well, though the speed distresses me …’
Much of his time he spent composing a hilarious blank verse tragedy, catching frogs in the garden pond and, during the evening, playing cards. Every day, too, he repeatedly mislaid, until finally smashing, his spectacles. He inspected the dungeons at Loches where Louis XI confined his unfortunate friends, ‘most gloomy and ghastly, with the walls covered with the inscriptions of the prisoners’.
Lytton was struck by the un-English way in which the Renons organized their lives. ‘Life here is more like that on board ship than anything else,’ he explained to his mother. ‘I rise from my couch at 8.30. At 9 I have a petit déjeuner of coffee au lait and toast and butter. At 11.30 Déjeuner, consisting of lots of vegetables, soup, a small quantity of meat and strawberries. At half-past six is dinner, pretty well the same as déjeuner … I don’t much approve of the French system of meals which elongates the afternoon abnormally and abolishes the morning and evening. Before déjeuner I do “traductions” which are quite harmless and amusing. After déjeuner I sleep for one hour – the rarity of meals rendering a vast absorption necessary when there is one.’
On Sundays Lytton went with the rest of the family to church, welcoming the opportunities which the pain bénit afforded him of augmenting his meals. He would later write up accounts of these services in letters to his mother, some of them reading like theatre reviews of amateur musicals. ‘I sat behind the altar, at the very back of the building. From this position the show appeared tawdry. The robes of the Curé were truly splendid, but the tinsel, and the sham marble wallpaper were incongruous. A young man played vilely on the harmonium and the singing rivalled that of an English village church. On the whole I was not impressed, though I ate the holy bread like a martyr.’ As for the Roman Church in general, he was sadly disappointed. ‘I think I shall remain protestant,’ he reassured Lumsden Barkway.
Far more to his liking were the pagan festivities. Often during these Sunday afternoons a fair was set up in the market-place at Loches where the whole town, reinforced by the floating population of several villages near by, would assemble to enjoy themselves late in the long summer evenings. The sight of all this merrymaking exhilarated Lytton. Yet he is always a spectator at the revelries. ‘An awning has been erected beneath which the people were dancing to the sound of clockwork music. It was a most amusing spectacle. The paysannes with their white lace caps, and handkerchiefs tied round their waists to keep their dresses clean, hanging on to their partners with both arms round their necks. When the music stopped they kissed and parted! It was a great relief to see all this happening on a Sunday.’
It had been Lytton’s intention to spend four weeks at Loches, but life there was so congenial that he stayed two months. ‘France is not so bad as it might be,’ he admitted to Lumsden Barkway. ‘I was not so absolutely dumb as I expected to be; the country is charming and the people most kind and polite. The only drawback I have discovered as yet is in what I call the “sanitary arrangement”. It is dark and dank, and full of bluebottles! I hardly dare to venture in – most inconvenient.’
He returned to English civilization in early August, joining his family at Ardeley Bury, ‘a really delightful country house’ near Stevenage in Hertfordshire. Here he spent several weeks reading Tacitus, Thucydides, Thackeray and Paradise Lost which, he told Lumsden Barkway, was ‘the best thing in the English language!’
In early October, he went back to Liverpool. He was now confronted with the decision of whether to read history at Oxford or Cambridge. The family had assumed that he would go to Cambridge, but recently his mother had begun to wonder whether he should prepare himself for entry into the Civil Service, in which case he ought to follow his brother, Oliver, up to Balliol College. ‘If your object is the Civil Service,’ she wrote to him (4 December 1898), ‘you are likely to be better prepared for the examination at Oxford than at Cambridge. So we have settled it that way. Your father met Mr A.L. Smith – the Balliol tutor – at the Royal Society dinner, and he says you are to go to him and he will put you through your paces, and advise accordingly – which is his function; and this you will do during the Christmas holidays. We propose that you should enter at the next October term, and go up for the entrance exam before the Easter term.’
Lytton much preferred the prospect of going to Cambridge, but acquiesced meekly enough to his mother’s plans which involved taking his responsions in March and then, in June, trying for a Christ Church scholarship which would automatically make him eligible for entry to Balliol in the autumn of 1899. His spirits were further lowered by the ordeal of a family Christmas at Lancaster Gate which appears to have been celebrated by the Stracheys one day earlier than normal, and was something he struggled to avoid in later life. ‘My time has been spent as follows,’ he informed Lumsden Barkway,
‘– Dec. 16th–Dec. 24th. Preparations for Christmas festivities, and visits to the National Gallery. Dec. 24th. Official Christmas (very terrible). Dec. 25th. My cousin Charles and his wife Ada (sister of Raleigh) came to dinner (at which I ate and drank far too much). They afterwards sang a charming song called the “Kensit Battle Hymn” written by Charlie and Raleigh. Delightful! Dec. 25th–28th. Severe illness resulting from Xmas festivities.’
Next day some of the family left London and moved to the Bank House in the High Street at Guildford, which belonged to one of Lytton’s uncles who was transferred to fill the vacuum at Lancaster Gate. ‘The house is over a shop,’ Lytton explained to Lumsden Barkway, ‘– rather peculiar, isn’t it? – but charming for all that, though the beds are rather short and hard.’
When he returned to Liverpool in the New Year, he began preparing himself for the Christ Church scholarship in which his special subject was to be the Early Roman Empire, with eighteenth-century England thrown in as an extra. He continued studying Gibbon. ‘I have been reading the Great Gibbon lately,’ he wrote to his mother in February, ‘and have just finished the two chapters on Christianity. They are the height of amusement – his attitude throughout so unimpeachably decorous; but I can’t help thinking it all rather unfortunate. If he had not been so taken up with his scorn of superstition, he might have paid some attention to the extraordinary change which was coming over the world, the change from the pagan idea to the christian idea, which, however unsound the doctrines that contributed to its success, was still dominating Europe (I suppose) at the time Gibbon wrote. He might at least have cast a glance at the old paganism that had gone for ever. But he never touches more than the externals. I suppose his mind was unable to appreciate the real spirit of Christianity.’ This response was similar to some critical reviews he would read of ‘Cardinal Manning’, the first essay in his Eminent Victorians.
On 21 March, Lytton travelled to Oxford, spending four days in a bleak lodging house, No. 4 St John Street. Before the Balliol tutor for responsions, J.L. Strachan-Davidson, he cut an awkward figure. This ordeal over, he went for ten days to Lancaster Gate, bringing with him his Presbyterian friend, Lumsden Barkway, who had just won a scholarship to a theological college. ‘I wish I were you!’ Lytton told him. ‘I have Oxford still before me. Alas.’
A little later he visited Cambridge for a few days in company with Walter Raleigh, who ‘gave a most witty lecture on Chesterfield’. He wished that his mother had decided to send him here. Already he seemed to belong to the place, and his letters home are full of social calls on friends and relations. ‘On Sunday I lunched in Clough Hall where the Sidgwicks6 were present, also the Freshfields7 who were staying with them. On Monday I had dinner with Miss Stephen8 in Sidgwick Hall. The Raleighs also came and paid Pernel [Strachey] a visit in her chamber.’
In the third week of June Lytton finally left University College, Liverpool. Although his time there had not been happy, he felt little excitement at leaving, for he no longer faced the future with quite the same brave spirit as when he had left Leamington. ‘The thought of final departure is indeed painful,’ he wrote to his mother (12 June 1899). ‘Packing will be a sad business.’ But Lady Strachey was well pleased with his progress. He had passed all the examinations, and this in spite of his illnesses. It had been a creditable performance. ‘I think the Liverpool plan has been a success on the whole,’ she told him.
At the end of June, Lytton returned to Oxford where he took the Christ Church scholarship examination. From here he travelled alone to Rothiemurchus, where he stayed in lodgings. ‘In the evening, when the sun is setting, one cannot help being a little sad,’ he wrote in a stilted rhapsody to Lumsden Barkway, ‘it is the sadness of regret. The days of childhood, with their passionate pains and pleasures, are with us; days nearer to us, too, with their precious moments of bitterness and love; and the present day that is fading beneath the hills for ever.’ His examinations no longer seemed important. He idled pleasantly through the summer days. ‘Here, among the mountains,’ he wrote, ‘the Vision of Balliol itself seems to dwindle and appear insignificant.’
The actuality of Balliol was also dwindling. While he was in Rothiemurchus the result of his entrance examination came through. In the course of a long letter to Lady Strachey, J.L. Strachan-Davidson wrote:
‘We have read the papers, and have come to the conclusion that the Essay is decidedly promising, but that the Classical work is insufficient. The Latin translation was fair but the Greek was not up to the mark, and the Latin Prose was bad.
I am not sure that this disappointment will not prove all for the best. I was struck by the extreme shyness and nervousness displayed by Mr Strachey, and much doubt whether he would be happy in a large College like Balliol. I am afraid that the pace would be too quick for him, and that he would find himself outside of the life and society of the place.’
As an alternative to Balliol Strachan-Davidson suggested Lincoln College which, with his special recommendation, would almost certainly accept him. This college, he explained, consisted of about sixty-five undergraduates, most of whom had not passed through the great public schools, and its more modest climate would be better suited to a boy like Lytton, silent, maladroit and literary.
Lady Strachey was angered by this exclusion of her son from Balliol based, she felt convinced, on a superficial estimate of his character. She rejected absolutely the notion that Lytton would be better placed at Lincoln College, and in her reply to Strachan-Davidson she made a shrewd analysis of Lytton’s personality.
‘I am sure you are mistaken in your diagnosis of his disposition, though I am not surprised at the impression produced. He has a very unfortunate manner which was no doubt at its worst in circumstances where a certain amount of nervousness is not inexcusable; but as a matter of fact it is more manner than anything else; he is both self-reliant and equable in a rather unusual degree. He has hitherto got on exceedingly well with other boys and young men wherever he has been placed, so that I should not feel very anxious about his eventually settling down comfortably in such a society as that of Balliol. At any rate, in sending him to College we look for the advantage to be gained by a larger, fuller life than would be obtained in one of the smaller colleges.’
Up in Scotland Lytton received the news with mixed feelings. He hated failure of any kind and, as he had joked to his sister Dorothy, it was AGAINST HIS PRINCIPLES to miss the mark in an examination. But once he let his mind contemplate the life which might await him at Cambridge, he felt happier. His mother had made up her mind to send him to Trinity which, with over six hundred undergraduates, was the largest college in Cambridge. She could no longer see her son in the role of Lord Lytton, but might he not be another Lord Tennyson? ‘I think you are to be congratulated on the change,’ she told him, ‘especially as it is a sign from above that you are to be a poet – the coming man in that line could never have been allowed to be anywhere but at Cambridge.’
Lytton returned to Lancaster Gate early in August and then moved down with the family to Selham House, near Petworth. Surrounded by books and sisters, he spent his mornings preparing for the Previous Examination (then commonly known as the ‘little-go’), and reading Swinburne who was ‘VERY GOOD’ and Boswell’s Johnson which was ‘most delightful’. But dominating all other thoughts was the prospect of Cambridge. ‘As to Cambridge,’ he told Lumsden Barkway, ‘I am looking forward to it with more dread than you. Though I am sure it will be charming in the long run – but the beginning I fear will be painful – as most beginnings are to me.’
Towards the end of September, he left Petworth and, having passed both parts of the little-go, was admitted to Trinity. At about the same time, a letter from Walter Raleigh arrived at the college announcing that among its freshmen that Michaelmas would be a certain ex-pupil of his, an undergraduate of unusual promise.