… went on holiday together, often to his family’s beloved Scotland Photo: Photo: John Shortland / flickr CC.
Friendship remembered
Antony Barlow reflects on the past, friendship and some links in a chain
In the course of cataloguing some books I came across one that my maternal grandmother had given to my mother and that she, in turn, had given to me. It was published in the years leading up to the second world war and recounted the life of Antony Bulwer-Lytton, viscount Knebworth, who had died in 1933, tragically, in a flying accident at the age of only twenty-nine. He was, by all accounts, a remarkable person, endowed with all the graces of looks, intelligence, charm and ability. The historian Arthur Bryant wrote at the time that ‘had he lived, he would surely have given to the country gifts of leadership and imagination together with selfless service, which none who knew him could doubt for a moment’. The book was written by his father, Victor Bulwer-Lytton, the earl of Lytton, who used Antony’s letters written home from school and university along with the memories of his many friends.
Neverland
The book has a forward by JM Barrie, who himself knew something of the vagaries of fame and early death, having become the guardian of the Llewellyn Davies boys, when their parents both died young. The children, especially Peter Davies, became, of course, the inspiration for the characters of Peter Pan and the other boys of Neverland and for the rest of their lives the children were associated in the public’s mind with their fictional characters.
By chance, at about the same time that I rediscovered this book I also went to see a play in the West End called Peter and Alice by John Logan. The play chronicled a meeting in middle age between Peter Llewellyn Davies and Alice Lidell, who was the inspiration for another writer Charles Dodgson, better known to us as Lewis Carroll, the author of the Alice books. Alice was played by the redoubtable Judi Dench and Peter by the brilliant young actor Ben Whishaw. The play told of the burdens of fame. Dogged all their life by their alter egos, such that their real personae were never allowed to exist, each event in their lives was ruthlessly and insensitively documented by the press as ‘Peter Pan opens a book shop’, ‘Peter Pan gets married’ or ‘Alice in Wonderland has a son’. Eventually, Peter Llewellyn Davies found the pressure and intrusion too much to bear and took his own life by throwing himself under a train at Sloane Square station.
Antony
In the same box that I found my mother’s book about Antony Bulwer-Lytton there was another book about the poet WB Yeats. It was given to me by my childhood friend and namesake on my twenty-first birthday.
In the fall of 1940 and the beginning of 1941 two boys were born in close proximity to each other in Selly Oak in south west Birmingham. One was the son of neighbours of my parents, who became perhaps their closest friends. The other was myself.
The book, mentioned earlier, called simply Antony, inspired many people who read it with its story of a life of great promise cut short before its time. Unbeknownst to either family, both our parents decided to call their boys after the eponymous hero of that book, Antony, spelled without an ‘h’!
My namesake and I grew up together, played together, went to The Downs Quaker school together and went on holiday together, often to his family’s beloved Scotland, where we learnt to fish for trout and salmon, taught by their remarkable grandfather, known to all as Pops. Pops showed us how to tie a fly, how to land a line on the evening water of the loch as light as gossamer and how we should appease the mountain spirits by leaving a sweet buried under a cairn, so that we might all descend home safely, untrammelled by the impenetrable, late-evening mists.
To differentiate us, our families used the initials of our respective surnames, so that he became Antony P or just AP and I, AB. We went to university and AP became a doctor like his father, got married and had children. I became a theatre administrator and settled down with my partner. One day, about forty years ago, out of the blue, I had a call from my mother to say that AP had killed himself. It was a tragedy as brutal as it was unpredictable and his family and ours, and all who had known him mourned the loss of a brilliant friend and human being.
Some years ago his children asked me to tell them about the Antony I had known and remembered. As best I could, I told them of our shared childhood and early years; of the fun we had had, of the discussions, the arguments and of our shared hopes for our lives ahead. The aching gap left by such a terrible loss never goes away and I have often wondered whether, maybe, I missed some signs or perhaps could have prevented it or helped my friend when he most had need – thoughts which haunt me to this day.
The book called Antony was signed by my mother and dedicated to me ‘her dear son’ in the hope that, maybe, I might one day emulate the eponymous title bearer, a burden I fear I have not lived up to.
So, from the memory of one who died young, memorialised by his loving father, through the tragedy of an author’s muse for whom fame was too heavy a burden, to the memory of my dear friend from half a life time ago, with whom I shared a name, still mourned, we are reminded, as Shakespeare says in a sonnet, ‘To love that well, which one must leave ere long’.
Finally, back to the book on Yeats given to me by AP, and the memory of a poem by that great Irish poet that we both loved; the poem which we used to read together, ‘When You Are Old’, which, of course, he never was, but the line ‘How many loved your moments of glad grace’ reminds me always of him.
