Gilbert Walter Lyttelton Talbot

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Been having a lot, and have had in the past, of requests to place this book on the forum, so here goes.

Gilbert Walter Lyttelton Talbot

Born September 1, 1891. Killed in action at Hooge, July 30, 1915.

"And your bright promise.....

Is touched, stirs, rises, opens, and grows sweet

And blossoms and is you, when you are dead."

Published privately 1916.

Andy

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It seemed to us right to preserve some account of a short life which, as we knew, had given light and warmth to not a few while he was with us here : and had been thought to show promise of future distinction.

Crowned with honour by the manner of its passing from this present world, it may still give out, even here for a while, some light of example and encouragement.

With this hope, as well as with the love which will not be willingly let memory pass, even in "this transitory life," the little memoir is printed.

It has been put together by his Mother. To the many friends whose words enrich it we are truly grateful.

May God be with it - and with him.

Edw. Winton.

Farnham Castle,

June 1916.

[marina]

Ta -Raa - a new memoir! I'm all ready for it...

Marina

[marina]

Here's the sonnet the preface quotation comes from:

II

Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat:

Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,

A merciful putting away of what has been.

And this we know: Death is not Life, effete,

Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen

So marvellous things know well the end not yet.

Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:

Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say,

"Come, what was your record when you drew breath?"

But a big blot has hid each yesterday

So poor, so manifestly incomplete.

And your bright Promise, withered long and sped,

Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet

And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.

Charles Hamilton Sorley

June 12, 1915

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Gilbert Talbot

It was the livliest, merriest little fellow that was born in the Vicarage of Leeds on 1 September 1891. The high spirits and abounding vitality which were Gilbert's - owing no doubt a good deal to his splendid health - gave a great charm and delight to his short life. He very early showed one characteristic - a vivid knowledge of what he wanted, with an equally vivid insistence and ingenuity in securing it, delighting in the little plans and arrangements which triumphed over difficulties. Being a good deal the youngest of his family, he was more in the position of an only child, especially in his nursery days, and it was a disadvantage to his natural tendency to think rather too much of Number One that no one stood in his way or snatched away his toys. The many infectious ilnesses which were his portion were perhaps not unwholesome times of discipline in his little radiant days - not that he emerged from them all impaired to health, but he had to forgo many happy hours in little gay flittings over the house, welcomed everywhere with his sunny smile and insinuating ways. Whe he at about six he had measles, followed rather quickly by scarlet fever, he sent me a message through his nurse - "It is hard that I should have measles and scarlet fever, when I am so happy downstairs !" At all times he was full of life and spring, running about from morning to night, very rarely walking.

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A row of ugly dolls at one time took the place of companions. They were given odd names - "Fruit," "Busgwy," etc. - and games and plots cetred round them with lively imagination. But nothing charmed him anything like so much as the fairy tales of the nursery - Grimm in particular - and all the old-fashioned nursery rhymes. When a much enduring Miss Rosenberg endeavoured to get him quiet for sitting for a miniature when he was about four, the only hope was for one of us to begin "This is the house that Jack built," and so on, through pages of what he knew every word by heart. A little later he knew in the same way the life of Joan of Arc and the history of the old Rochester Tower, etc. One of his great joys at this time was in going any little excursion with his father or me. He went with his father to the "Zoo," and was more full of it afterwards than at the time. Perhaps he was rather subdued by the unexpected hollow roar of the lions, when awaiting their food. His little hand tightened in his father's, and he said, "Shall we have a little fresh air !" Like so many boys - only showing it more - he could not bear being beaten in games, and even at eight or nine there might be a downpour of tears at defeat. On my remonstrances on this baby habit over lawn-tennis, etc., he said cheerfully, "Well, I've left off crying at cricket !" He was very plucky in learning to swim at St. David's, Reigate, and used to jump off a high plank into the arms of a big brother or sister, in the great swimming bat of the School, one Summer holiday.

[marina]

he sounds like a lovely little boy.

'Shall we have some fresh air?'

I shall remember that one the next time I'm under stress.

Marina

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Gilbert was devoted to Uty (1) from baby days. With her nursing, her reading aloud - which all the children delighted in - her talk and her games, she kept the little nursery alive. Years later, when he was reading for "Greats," he used to get her to sit opposite him, reading a translation of Heredotus at a little table on the terrace at Farnham, while he took notes from the text. He would be delighted at finding himself alone with her sometimes at home: "Better company you couldn't have," he used to say. He arranged several visits for her to Winchester and Oxford, and she always came with us till quite lately on our summer holidays.(2)

There was something magnetic and with the spirit of a leader of him always. Many guests who only saw him in one visit to Kennington, and can recall the vivid, keen little figure, not a bit shy, taking them to see the house and chapel, giving them any information he could, and always full of spirits and merriment - and polotics ! To a fault, however, he was insistent on claiming attention and in having his say in and out of season, and in arranging and ordering things as he wished.

(1) "Uty" was the pet name of Gilbert's nurse, Mrs. Finch, to whom he was devoted from the first year of his life till the last, and who has now been thirty-six years in the family.

(2) Once she travelled with Giulbert to Switzerland when he was a small boy, to join us there. At Paris all the chaff and coaxing in the world failed to dislodge her from her firm position on her boxes to go outside the station to get some dinner. With much suspicion of foreign food, and anxiety over the boxes, Uty remained where she was; on which Gilbert made his way to a little restaurant close by, and brought offf a very satisfactory French dinner by himself.

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He was fond of talking of his "big brothers," and would describe the games, etc., he would have with them in their holidays. His affection for and belief in his two brothers was very marked always, and he eagerly wanted his special friends to know them. With Ted the tie of both being Wykehamists was very close, and there was endless chaff and fun between them, and I have often heard Gilbert say that "Ted was one of the best arguers he knew."

Two friends wrote of his boyhood:

All we remember of those happy holidays at Timberscombe twelve years ago radiates happiness and exuberant vitality. It is difficult to think of him without a smile.

Timberscombe, a village on Exmoor, was that "time of his life" when he learnt to ride well and fearlessly with the staghounds, being small enough to ride an Exmoor pony no one else could share with him !

And another writer after a visit to Bishop's House:

He was such an attractive, brilliant, generous boy. I shall never forget my first sight of him at Kennington - suspensum loculos - just off to school, and saying good-bye round the breakfast table, like a young collie, fresh and bustling and handsome.

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Two or three almost passionate instincts in him revealed themselves very early - the love of fun and nonsense, and love of beauty. He would repeat the whole of "Dame Wiggins of Lee," the old fashioned humorous poem, with embellishments of his own, and a little later on it was page after page of "Uncle Remus" (Brer Rabbitt), which he poured forth with shining eyes and clear utterance, till we had to cry for mercy. "Punch" he had a very early appreciation of, and one of his constant habits through his life was to pick out the bits in the letterpress which he felt would specially amuse me, and we have often laughed together till we have cried over many a choice bit.

And then the love of beauty. The sound of his own voice reciting bits of Tennyson, Wordsworth, and many others, must have been delightful to him, and made him keen to impress their beauty on others by constantly repeating his favourite lines. May (1) taught him most of his poetry. When so small a boy that he had to stand on a high foot-stool to be properly seen, in a large crowded room, he asked if he might recite to the newly ordained men on an Ordination Sunday afternoon at Kennington. One of his pieces was "Young Lochnivar," another "Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen," and the beautiful poem of Wordsworth, "I wandered lonely as a cloud."

(1) His eldest sister

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It was comic to see the little man, with his baby face and sparkling blue eyes, give out with great feeling and clearness :

And oft when on my couch I lie,

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye, which is bliss of solitutde.

Closely associated with his love of beautifuul language was his love of music. During part of our life in London he was immensely occupied with a great enthusiasm for the choir of the Cathedral Church of Southwark, then in the charge of a very talented organist, Dr. Madeley Richardson. The personal friendship with him and his keen following of all his musical views interested and absorbed him, and during many holidays he would be at the afternoon weekly service as often as possible - besides Sundays - getting to know the whole choir personally, as well as entering into the music - the anthems, the "masses" for choral celebration and especially the Psalms. Dr. Richardson had written musoc for the whole Psalter, drawing out the meanings of the words with extreme care. Gilbert's great love of beauty and of melody in music and in words made him enter very keenly into this musical-dramatic interpretation of the Psalms

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Dr. Richardson has sent me the following words about their time together:

Some of the happiest memories of my life are connected with dear Gilbert's association with Southwark Cathedral, beginning when a lad of ten years old.........

After some singing lessons from myself, his interest in his own singing passed on to what I was doing at the Cathedral. He began coming to sit with me on the organ seat during the services, when he would take pleasure in finding the places in my music books, starting the water power and helping in other ways, evidently liking to feel that he had some active part in contributing to the general result. Then later he began to attend the choir practices, and came more and more frequently.

He gradually became quite absorbed in the Cathedral music and the work of the choir. He appeared to apply all his mind to it, and acquired a considerable knowledge - unusual in one so young. I was sometimes surprised to find how much he really knew about Church music; and he would say things that showed sound judgement and taste. His interest in the personnel of the choir, and especially of the boys, was very strong.......

When he went to Winchester I thought that perhaps the new life and associations would his interest in the Cathedral music. But it seemed to make no difference. On returning home he would come straight to the Cathedral, to his old place at the organ.....

[marina]

he seems to have been very quick minded and talented.

Marina

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This marked love of beauty, whether of poetry and beautiful things, of buildings in lovely surroundings, such as Winchester or Oxford, or of a mountain, coast, or home scenery - such as the Chalet des Melezes, S. Gervais les Bains (1), Harlech, Flaconhurst, etc. - gave a thread of romance to all Gilbert's life and was at the bottom of his extreme delight in living at Farnham his last four years. London meant, of course, so much to him of keen enjoyment, social and political, with his immense delight in plays, that I could scarcely believe the change to Farnham at nineteen would have been so happy a one. I cannot recall one word of regret for the "flesh-pots" of London, once we began to live at Farnham. The place took the strongest hold of him, and he was swept away by the hot, radiant beauty of the summer of 1911, when many of his friends came and enjoyed it all with him. I remember on turning into Castle Street one day, coming home, he said quite passionately to me: "Mother, you adore Farnham, don't you, as I do, when we come in sight of it like this - each time ?" And then the skilful and anxious work of the repairing of the Keep, in 1913 - 14, the glory of the flowers and flowering shrubs, the distant views and the great cool spaces in the summer time were a constant delight.

(1) Twice Gilbert joined a Reading Party with Mr. Urquhart, Fellow of Balliol, at the Chalet.

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Of Christmas Eve 1911 at Farnham he wrote:

.....We had rather a pretty little show here last night. My eldest brother was made up as Father Christmas, and the nephews - with a few other children - waited for him at the drawing room window. He came round the moat, by the old wall of the castle, carrying a lantern: the effect was really charming, and the children completely deceived. Richard in my arms became like a little fire football with quite delirious excitement, mingled with a touch of terror at the first sight of him. He came in and gave presents all round, and talked a lot most cleverly to the children, and then disappeared again into the garden and away round the moat. It was all quite fascinating.

Meanwhile May did her best to convey to her children the theological significance of Christmas, the main result being that her second son asked whether "God came down from Heaven by a rope, and if so did he hold on very tight ?"

In March 1912, again:

.... This morning is a perfect spring day, though a little windy. I'm absolutely knocked down by the beauty of the place. It's almost too good to be true. Everything is fresh and green and budding with the promise of spring - in the air, grass, flowers, trees and everything else. The daffodils, hyacinths, violets and heaps of brilliant flowers are everywhere in the garden and among the rocks of the keep. The top of the keep is really a sort of paradise. I've never seen it all look so beautiful as after breakfast this morning, the sun flooding the whole place, and with that extraordinary feeling of vigour and youth and beauty which is never quite so good at any other time of the year.......

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Of his last sight of the place he wrote on 19 May 1915:

..... I went to Farnham for the last time in the afternoon. The place never looked more lovely, flooded with sunshine, and the blossoms and wallflowers in full blaze. I wandered round it all with Uty and the dogs.....May I see it all again soon !......

London, it must be said, kept one great charm for him in the fact of the beautiful Govenor's House at Chelsea being in his Uncle Neville's hands. It was a second home to him; he was often visiting there. And he was an enthusiastic playgoer, with an intimate knowledge of all that world of theatres and London music halls - not easily shocked by plays or novels. But he vehemently drew the line at the last half of the second volume of "Sinister Street": "I shouldn't like to think of any girl or woman I know reading it"

[marina]

http://www.information-britain.co.uk/showP...m?Place_ID=1815

Farnham Castle.

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When Gilbert was about eight years old the South African War broke out. His interest in it knew no bounds. The fact that Neville, already in the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, was going out of course gave it at once a personal interest. When Neville started from home in September 1899, the small brother squeezed a hot shilling into his hand as he was getting into the cab. During the early and exciting period of the war there was no detail Gilbert missed. He could have stood a cross examination in all the battles, small or big, and in the generals and heroes on the Natal side of the fighting. He got hold of the newspapers the moment they came into the house, and guests were disturbed now and again by his running through the passages with the dinner-bell, shouting out the news of an insignificant victory. He and Oliver (son of his uncle Alfred Lyttelton) shared classes together in Great College Street (and later went together to Mr. Bull's private school in Marylebone), and both enjoyed doing endless military things together and playing the war in games. But it never became a question with either of them of going into the army till the call came in August 1914.

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In September 1905 Gilbert went to Winchester to the house of Mr. Bramston (known to all Wykehamists as "Trant"). His eldest brother, Edward (himself a keen Wykehamist), took him there, in the absence of his father abroad. He writes the following sketch of the six years at Winchester:

Never did a boy (he was barely 13) enter a public school with a lighter heart than Gilbert. I can see him now on the first day, as I left him to buy his experience. His untidy clothes and a free and easy manner to new acquaintances betrayed no sign of apprehension or self-consciousness; and he was full of talk on various subjects till the last moment.

He was in those early days, I make no doubt, a fit object of the suspicion which schoolboys have for one who "jaws," and who assumes that he can treat with those older than himself on equal terms. Indeed, Gilbert's first year and a half at Winchester contained much adversity and even misery. Much of the fault was his. He was too self-confident and assertive, and did not take pains enough with his "sweating" duties. But even this period was ennobled by a deep shrinking from uncleaness and by the isolation which resistance to it brought upon him.

It speaks well for the good-will of his House and for Gilbert's courage that he started so soon on the happiness which steadily grew through the following years. The spell at Trant's broad and lovable humanity, which has charmed so many generations of Wykehamists, won all Gilbert's warm and loayl affection. To critics of Trant's system, he used to reply that Trant was his own system, and in that fact he found compensation for some of the early troubles to which, perhaps, a certain lack of discipline contributed. He became one of the most devoted Wykehamists, passionately enthusiastic over the school and his years there. "Eb=very minute is precious and every stone a jewel," he says of his last days at school.

"He lost no opportunity," so writes Mother, "of visiting Winchester after he left, over and over again, and he and Winny (1) and I spent there his last Sunday in England, with the charm and beauty of that place at their highest.

(1) Gilbert's second sister.

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In Chapel the hymn

'Jesus, still lead on

Till our rest is won'

was sung. The last service before going to the front in the Chapel of so many loved associations could not fail to be very moving.

I think that the early experience of unpopularity had two effects. It was only letterly that he ceased altogether to be on the defensive. He was sensitive to criticism, and Hermione (1) says that even later it was a surprise to him to find that people liked him. The other effect was the determination so characteristic of his later school-life to destroy the evil in his house which had so oppressed his early days. Into this determination he flung a certain chivalrous ardour, the creature of his won experience. He may have been for a time even over preoccupied in this direction. Perhaps preoccupation was given its particular shape by the "political" mould of his thoughts. He loved devising a "campaign" and enjoyed the drama of personal alliancce and collision.

(1) His cousin, third daughter of General Sir Neville and Lady Lyttelton.

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And so at Winchester, in later years he was always both in conversation and in his letters forecasting new policies and reckoning up the forces upon which he could rely on for the government of his House. "I have not made you realize," he writes as a prefect, "how extraordinarily thrilling a job I have got here, or how difficult a one." The nascent politician speaks there, but also the boy.

"Adorned sensualism" was his comment on a book whose style I had praised. And this instinct was unfailing - in a way the more remarkable because from the beginning he had an eager and unbashed appreciation of comforts and luxuries. It was not till the last year of his life, I should suppose, that he tasted the virtue of spare and orderly living. But he had a wholesome recoil from certain types of evil not merely as wrong, but as things which poison the springs of youth and joy.

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Writing from Winchester he says:

"I don't know how I should get along without books, poetry, beautiful things, etc.," and again he writes: "What a lot such words [as the Pope's, etc., in the "Ring and the Book"] brings into one's life of beauty and help !"

He goes on to insist that the lack of positive interests and ignorance of the beauty of goodness are largely responsible for moral evil.

As a boy he was already by instinct a man of affairs, with the keenest relish for the management of a situation, and a desire to be in the current of things happening, which was altogether too strong for the habits of concentrated study work. "It is all intensely thrilling and absorbing," he writes of a term in which he is governing his house, training a Commoner XV, editing the "Wykehamist," speaking in Debating Societies, steering the small boys through their early years, following with increasing rage the infamies of a hated Liberal Government, dreaming of his own future and plotting in advance what Mother used to call his "holiday campaign." In all this he moved with a certain mateur sagacity and with a precocious skill in the thrust and parry of arguement. He seemed to combine a child's zest and impatience with the width of interest of a much older man.

[marina]

Funny how some boys fit in and others don't = precociousness and a sense of self are not appreciated by the young. Sad that it should leave him feeling surprised that he could be liked.

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As an athlete Gilbert never achieved much success, though Mr. Fort (1) records a pleasant impression of him on the football field: "he went forward [to the front] as he used to do in the old football days - not like a born runner, if the truth be told, but so filled with the spirit of the fight, and with the idea of getting forward, that there was no room left for any fear, and no power on earth could have turned him back."

As a small boy he showed good promise amusingly formed in the "grand manner." He had the bad luck to miss a year's football owing to the effects of a serious but quite temporary heart illness, brought on from overstrain in walking at the Riffel-Alp, and though he was put in Commoner's six that year with a view to his being 2nd Captain, he had to stand down to following year - a bitter disappointment which he met with admirable good temper.

(1) Second Master at Winchester.

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Throughout his schooldays as indeed always, Gilbert's loyalty to his home was unwavering. From it he instinctly derived his estimate of values - in it he was most unaffectively happy.

He had none of the mauvaise honte of many boys when their "people" descend upon their school, and he was always pleading for one or the other of his family to visit him. I remember the almost embarassing fashion in which he "boomed" one of his brothers who was to preach in chapel, an occasion which surely would justify an agony of apprehension in a school-boy. Indeed though I never heard him boast of his own considerable triumphs in debate and elsewhere he always greatly enjoyed any success achieved by any of us. Abopve it all was Mother with whom Gilbert shared unfailingly both his sorrows and ambitions. She was his constant audience, and he never lost the tender ways of a child with her.

He used to turn back to his home with eager delight in its distinctive atmosphere. And from beginning to end he was a centre of extraordinary interest and vitality.