"
It was his manliness, spirituality and freedom from pettiness that
attracted Alfred to Laura; he also had infinite charm. It might
have been said of him what the Dowager Lady Grey wrote of her
husband to Henry when thanking him for his sympathy:
"He lit so many fires in cold rooms."
After Alfred's death, my husband said this of him in the House of
Commons:
It would not, I think, be doing justice to the feelings which are
uppermost in many of our hearts, if we passed to the business of
the day without taking notice of the fresh gap which has been made
in our ranks by the untimely death of Mr. Alfred Lyttelton. It is
a loss of which I hardly trust myself to speak; for, apart from
ties of relationship, there had subsisted between us for thirty-
three years, a close friendship and affection which no political
differences were ever allowed to loosen, or even to affect. Nor
could I better describe it than by saying that he, perhaps, of all
men of this generation, came nearest to the mould and ideal of
manhood, which every English father would like to see his son
aspire to, and, if possible, to attain. The bounty of nature,
enriched and developed not only by early training, but by constant
self-discipline through life, blended in him gifts and graces
which, taken alone, are rare, and in such attractive union are
rarer still. Body, mind and character, the schoolroom, the cricket
field, the Bar, the House of Commons--each made its separate
contribution to the faculty and the experience of a many-sided and
harmonious whole.
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