Having read so little, his ideas were always fresh he seemed incapable of a commonplace thought. Only to Emily did Ned show the true seriousness of his nature in the thousands of letters he wrote to her during his absences in India and elsewhere. He got the best out of the workmen as well as the clients, for he had a deep respect for their craftsmanship as well as a knowledge and understanding of it from watching them at work in the years he had roamed the Surrey countryside as a boy. He said himself that he had to try to make his clients “purr” with his blandishments while bringing them round difficult corners. He always got them to spend what he wanted them to spend. ‘He was marvellous not only in dealing with materials but with human beings.’ ‘He had a wonderful way with his clients,’ one assistant recalled. Many people who met Ned in later life found it hard to believe that he never lost his intrinsic shyness. He gained the reputation for being the perfect guest, high-spirited and witty. He was more at ease without her he was not afraid of repeating his jokes or of flirting mildly with his hostesses. With a nanny and nurserymaid to look after the children, Emily was bored and dissatisfied, yet, detesting social life, she had always pressed Ned to go out without her, so that now his clients felt no obligation to invite her when he went to visit them, a condition that added greatly to his popularity. She loved reading and he scarcely read anything his main recreation, when he indulged in one at all, was playing patience and, later on, doing The Times crossword puzzle. For all his love for Emily, Ned was not able to give her the companionship she craved. These five children, Barbra, Robert, Ursula, Elisabeth and Mary, were born by 1908. In 1897 Edwin Lutyens married Emily Lytton, daughter of a Viceroy of India, whose father had died five years earlier.
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