Father & Son

ANTONY--The Earl of Lytton--Scribner ($3).

Sons have frequently written books about their fathers, but fathers rarely write books about their sons. A glaring modern exception was Author A. S. M. Hutchinson, who five years ago let himself go all swimmy in print over the nursery innocence of his infant boy (The Book of Simon, TIME, Dec. 8, 1930). Last week Antony gave readers a better example of paternal pride. But Antony Knebworth will never reproach his noble author for saying fatherly things about him, because Antony is a posthumous biography. Antony was killed in an airplane crash in 1933, when he was 29.

To U. S. readers Antony will seem a rare bit of old England. The book is largely made up of letters written by Antony, mostly to his father and mother, with occasional replies and explanatory comment, and never do these aristocratic characters step out of the role to which it pleased their forefathers to call them. Ripped from the context of a commoner's life these letters would still be unusual; from the pen of a viscount they seem extraordinary. Those who think that the good old breed of English aristocrat has vanished will realize after reading Antony that one example has only recently died and that at least one other is still alive.

Antony Knebworth's lines were cast in pleasant places. He was born the eldest son of the Earl of Lytton, in a pre-War England that might well have seemed his family's garden. His godfather, Edward VII, confirmed the prestige of his birth; his fairy godmothers gave him health, wealth, happiness. Sargent made a drawing of him as a six-year-old. He soon delighted his parents by giving precocious signs of being a sportsman. At the age of 8 he took a 7 1/2-hr. ski trip in Switzerland with his father, successfully negotiating a 2,600-ft. descent. And he gave early signs of a forceful originality. Reporting Antony's convalescence from measles, his father wrote: "Antony has had a very good day and is quite peaceful. He asked for buttered eggs, sardines & blood!" Day before he was sent to boarding school he kept repeating, "Life is hard!" but his first postcard was reassuring: "I am just going out to play footer. I am getting on very well. I have not made many enimas, much love." From his first school Antony went on to Eton, where he spent six happy years, getting into scrapes, making numerous friends, winning prizes for both scholarship and athletics. Boxing was his principal sport.

After Eton, Oxford seemed dull. His family was off in India where his father was serving as Governor of Bengal and the bright spots in Antony's life were skiing vacations in Switzerland. He was "sent down" for a fortnight for playing in a roulette game, worried his distant family by his frank reports of dissipation ("No wonder people get drunk at Oxford! It is a silly life!"). But he won his "blue" for boxing, made more friends, did some studying and began to think for himself. His first encounter with Carlyle did not impress him: "What a queer man! At first his style reminded me of an illiterate Japanese journalist writing for an English paper in Australia!" His letters to his father began to bristle with awkwardly unanswerable questions.

Emerging from Oxford with a respectable Second in Modern History, Antony cast about for a career, finally settled on politics. A Conservative by tradition, he was under no illusions about the political future of Conservatism: "We are trying to make a political issue out of a class one. Perhaps we are right, and I have no doubt that we have wisdom on our side. But we have nothing else. ... I put no faith in the creeds, the politics, the business issues at stake, I put it only in the personnel, but when that begins to fail--and surely it is failing fast & with education will fail faster--we are doomed. . . ." He lost his first contest but was carried into Parliament in the National Conservative landslide of 1931.

Antony was rapidly becoming a serious young man. Like many of his peers he looked askance at post-War cynicism; he was getting fed up with the War generation: "Give them their due--they were good. But any fool can fight a war, because he has to. There is no alternative. It is simple. It is straightforward, & when you are dead, you are great. But to live a peace is difficult, tedious, heartbreaking, complicated, twisty & uncertain. And when you are dead you are little." If Antony had lived he might have become a Roman Catholic, a Fascist. His father thinks it was his respect for authority that caused his death. He had become an adept pilot and had joined the Auxiliary Air Force. On a formation flight with his squadron the leader dived so low that his wheels touched the ground. Antony followed his leader, crashed, was instantly killed.

Many a reader will silently applaud this father's apologia for his son's life: "But if he is remembered, it will be for what he was, and not for what he did. What he was is best set forth in his own letters. That is why we who received and treasure them have wished to share some of them with others, in the hope that many may come to realize, as we do, that at the thought of him this old world seems to recapture the vigour of youth, hopes soar high, despair vanishes, hearts grow bold and limbs are strong again."

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