Emily Lutyens


Emily Lutyens, née Bulwer-Lytton was an English Theosophist.

Life

Emily Lytton was born on 26 December 1874 in Paris, the daughter of Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton and Edith Villiers, Countess of Lytton. She was brought up in Lisbon, India and Knebworth House, where she was educated by governesses.
From 1887 to 1891 she lived in Paris, where her father was British ambassador, and became a correspondent of the elderly Norfolk clergyman Whitwell Elwin. She returned to England after her father's death, and fell in love with Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 35 years her senior:
She became the lifelong friend of Blunt's daughter, Judith.
In 1897 she married the architect Edwin Landseer Lutyens. She had five children, including Mary Lutyens and the painter Robert Lutyens. Lutyens interested herself in social and political questions, such as the state regulation of prostitution. She was a visitor to the local lock hospital, a member of the Moral Education League, and a supporter of women's suffrage. She introduced her older sister Lady Constance Bulwer-Lytton to the suffrage movement, though was herself opposed to militancy and resigned from the Women's Social and Political Union in 1909.
In 1910 she joined the Theosophical Society. She became a kind of surrogate parent to the young Krishnamurti, brought back from India with his brother by Annie Besant in 1911. Appointed by Besant as the English representative of the Order of the Star in the East, Lutyens toured the country lecturing on behalf of theosophy. She edited the theosophical journal Herald of the Star, and attracted wealthy converts to theosophy, such as Mabel Dodge. She became a strict vegetarian. In 1916, at the same time as her husband was busy designing an imperial capital at New Delhi, she held meetings for an all-India home rule movement in her drawing-room in London. She continued to protect and care for Krishnamurti, to whom she was devoted. As a young adult Krishnamurti wrote to her daily from France. In the 1920s she toured the world with him, convinced that he was the Messiah. In 1925 she founded the League of Motherhood, but by this time theosophy was divided over Krishna's claims. She supported Krishnamurti trying to dissolve the Theosophical Society, and in 1930 followed him in resigning from theosophy.
In her eighties Lutyens published two autobiographical works: A Blessed Girl was a memoir of her upbringing, and Candles in the Sun told the story of her theosophical involvement. The Birth of Rowland was a collection of her parents' letters.
She died at her home in London on 3 January 1964.

Works