“It is indeed a dream to me that I should be writing to you on this delicious afternoon, under the oak-tree on the lawn of my grandmother’s garden – the bees humming, the birds hopping, the children capering around me – the sheep-bells drowsily tinkling from the distant Park – and Budget dozing in the mossiest turf at my feet, and the air bathed in the manifold scents of an English August.” Robert Lytton, 1880.
My great-great-grandfather wrote these words the day he returned to Knebworth from four tumultuous years governing the Indian Raj as Queen Victoria’s Viceroy. He had hosted 63 Indian princes and maharajas for the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi; he had faced the challenges of severe famine affecting 60 million people; he had survived an assassination attempt and lands still riddled with deadly cholera; he had ordered troops into Afghanistan when the British Mission in Kabul was massacred… and now he was sitting under this oak-tree in the peace of Knebworth House Garden with his little dog Budget (who’d accompanied him back from India) and his children playing around him.
It puts life into perspective when I sit under this oak-tree and contemplate what I’ve been up to for the last four years! But a visit to this oak-tree was a fitting end to the conference we hosted in May for the University of Singapore to discuss Robert Lytton’s challenges in India. And, goodness, what peace and tranquility this magnificent tree still spreads across this garden.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH
