Mary Lutyens

an appreciation by Colin Amery

The last time I saw Mary was shortly before she died. She was in her favourite place – her bed. She was sitting up looking very elegant and wearing her pearls. Since Joe, her beloved husband, had died in October 1997, Mary had been stoically declining. She made it very clear that she did not want to see the Millennium and that she would welcome her earthly end when it came.

Many of her friends will remember her at the party she held to mark the publication of the latest edition of Joe’s Venice for Pleasure and to celebrate his life just two months after he died. She spoke powerfully and movingly of her love for Joe and for all her family and friends. It was somehow her farewell too.

I met Mary, as so many of us did, because of my interest in the architecture of her father and she became a close friend as we worked together on the committee of the Lutyens Exhibition which opened at London’s Hayward Gallery in 1981. The year before she had completed her memoir, Edwin Lutyens by his daughter – a marvellous and moving account of the private family life behind the architectural career of her brilliant father. It was the intimate story of a marriage that only a writer with Mary’s intense curiosity and imaginative literary gifts could have written. She was fascinated by the most personal details of peoples’ lives and her acute perception made her a fascinating and sometimes alarming companion. It was Joe Links who said that you could count on Mary to put the most breathtaking question that no one else dared to ask…. It was this elegant boldness and her consistent openness to new friends and ideas that made her a truly stimulating friend.

Mary was born in London in 1908, the youngest of five children. She was only two when her mother (formerly Lady Emily Lytton) became a Theosophist. While Sir Edwin was designing the new Imperial capital of India Lady Emily was exploring spiritual and psychic realms and housing in her London home the two young Indian brothers – one of whom the Theosophists hoped would become the new Messiah. It was not to be, but Mary remained loyal to and intrigued by Krishnamurti, the one brother who survived and became a significant religious teacher. Mary wrote three volumes of biography of Krishnamurti and edited his writings and speeches. She was, as a result of her amazing upbringing in the wake of the Order of the Star and the characterful Theosophists, open minded about the beliefs of others and she maintained an interest in the psychic world.

It was her second marriage to Joe Links that really grounded Mary and swung her talents as a writer away from novels and romantic fiction towards biography. Their joint love of Venice inspired her three books about the Ruskins and that city. Their marriage was inspiring for their friends. They were such a devoted partnership and infinitely hospitable and entertaining. Although fascinated by the past they were both completely absorbed by the present. They read the latest books and all the periodicals. Every single evening after a simple supper they sat on each side of the fireplace, and Joe would read aloud to Mary. Their quiet, fulfilling later years were wonderfully happy and creative. It was a happiness they shared with their friends as generously as they poured the martinis.

Mary admired her father enormously and writing the memoir and reading for the first time all his letters had helped her to understand him. The great Lutyens exhibition thrilled her. She took a special interest in the recreation of the interiors and the rediscovery of family furniture. When the Lutyens Trust was set up I think she was very proud to see the wide interest in her father’s work. She and Joe helped the Trust as much as they could and her serious and careful involvement was always an inspiration.

How we will all miss her incisiveness, her passion for accuracy, her laughter and her elegance. She loved her long life until almost the very end and shared it so well.