Edith Sophy Lyttelton, née Balfour, 1865-1948
Born in St Petersburg, the daughter of a London businessman who traded and lived in Russia for many years. She was a member of the “the Souls”, a loose-knit group of intellectuals and politicians active at the end of the nineteenth century. Another member was the Liberal Unionist MP Alfred Lyttleton, whom she married in 1892. They bought Wittersham House, a Georgian Rectory in a state of considerable disrepair, and in 1907 commissioned the architect Edward Lutyens to completely remodel and rebuild the property.
In August 1909 she accompanied Percy Grainger on his song-collecting visit to Samuel Holdstock at Mill House, Wittersham. Presumably, knowing that Mr Holdstock had a stock of old songs, she invited Grainger down to Kent specifically to note these down. A letter from Lyttleton to Grainger, dated 10th May 1910, shows that she had visited the old man again, in an effort to note down the full words of his song ‘Mary Thomson’ (PG/15/1).
Following the death of her husband in 1913, she became heavily involved in spiritualism. At the start of the First World War she was a founder of the War Refugees Committee, became deputy director of the Women’s Branch of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1917, and served on the Central Committee of Women’s Employment from 1916–1925. In 1917 she was one of the first people to be awarded the newly-created Order of the British Empire, in recognition of her work with refugees. After the war she served as vice-chairman of the Waste Reclamation Trade Board (1924–1931) and represented the UK at the League of Nations on several occasions. As well as her public work, she wrote fiction, non-fiction and plays. Having married into the Lyttleton family, she was related to Humphrey Lyttleton, the jazz trumpeter, and chairman of the radio programme I’m sorry I haven’t a clue.
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