Henry Lytton (1867-1936) made his D'Oyly Carte debût as a 17-year-old chorister (under the name of H A Henri) in Glasgow in 1884. His final performance was as Jack Point in 1934 at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. This autobiography is in nine chapters - Youth and Romance, Vagabondage of the Commonwealth, Climbing the Ladder, Leaders of the Savoy, Adventures in Two Hemispheres, Parts I Have Played, Friends On and Off the Stage, Hobbies of a Savoyard, and Gilbert and Sullivan. The stories of the Operas are in an appendix.
Lytton got his chance when George Grossmith was ill less than a week after the opening of Ruddigore in early 1887. "Chosen to step into the shoes of the great George Grossmith ! Faced with such an ordeal to-day I verily believe I should shirk it. But then, the audacity of youth was to carry me through. The supreme chance had come. At all costs it had to be grasped."
He married, very young, Louie Henri, herself a distinguished Savoyard. They had three sons and one daughter. One of their sons was lost during the First World War, serving with the RAF in a night-bombing raid on France. "I well remember the time when my boy was first reported missing. With that anxious sorrow weighing on my mind, it was no small trial to keep alive the semblance, at least, of comedy. Jack Point's song 'Oh, a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon, If you listen to popular rumour' appealed to me with peculiar poignancy during that time of heavy anxiety."
An excellent book, with much historical anecdote. A book any keen Savoyard would want to have.
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