Life and Career
Lytton was born Henry Alfred Jones in Kensington, London, England, the son of Henry Jones, a jeweller, and Martha Lavinia Harris. He was attended St Mark's School, Chelsea, where he took part in amateur theatricals and boxing. He wrote that he was also a boy soloist in the choir of St. Philip's Church, Kensington, London. Biographer Brian Jones concludes that Lytton tells a number of untruths about his teenage years and early career in his 1922 memoir, Secrets of a Savoyard. In fact, at the age of fourteen Lytton left school and was apprenticed to the young artist William Henry Hamilton Trood, to study painting and sculpture, around 1880. Lytton's father hoped that he would outgrow his interest in the theatre. Lytton probably met his future wife, Louisa Webber, later known on stage as Louie Henri, at St. Philip's.
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