that formidable lady belonged to an earlier generation, and saw no
reason for Quixotic behaviour. Her conscience had been trained in the
eighteenth century, and all her blame was for Rosina Wheeler. Torn
between his duty and his filial affection, Bulwer-Lytton now passed
through a period of moral agony. He wrote to his mother: "I am far too
wretched, and have had too severe a contest with myself, not to look to
the future rather with despondency than pleasure, and the view you take
of the matter is quite enough to embitter my peace of mind." Miss
Wheeler, not unnaturally stung to anger, used disrespectful expressions
regarding Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, and these bickerings filled the lover and
son with indignation. His life, between these ladies, grew to be hardly
worth living, and in the midst of one such crisis this brilliant young
dandy of four-and-twenty wrote:--"I feel more broken-hearted,
despondent, and sated than any old valetudinarian who has seen all his
old hopes and friends drop off one by one, and finds himself left for
the rest of his existence to the solitary possession of gloom and gout."
Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton fought fiercely to the last, and Edward determined to
close the matter; on August 29th, 1827, he married Rosina.
At first, in spite of, and even because of, the wild hostility of his
mother, the marriage seemed successful. The rage of the mother drove the
husband to the wife. Lord Lytton has noted that in later years all that
his grandfather and his grandmother said about one another was
unconsciously biassed by their memory of later complications. Neither
Bulwer-Lytton nor Rosina could give an accurate history of their
relations at the beginning, because the mind of each was prejudiced by
their knowledge of the end. Each sought to justify the hatred which both
had lived to feel, by representing the other as hateful from the first.
But the letters survive, and the recollections of friends, to prove that
this was entirely untrue. It must be admitted that their union was never
based upon esteem, but wholly upon passion, and that from the first they
lacked that coherency of relation, in moral respects, which was needed
to fix their affections. But those who have dimly heard how bitterly
these two unfortunate people hated one another in later life will be
astonished to learn that they spent the two first years together like
infatuated turtle-doves.
Their existence was romantic and absurd. Cut off from all support by the
implacable anger of old Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, they depended on a combined
income of L380 a year and whatever the husband could make to increase
it. Accordingly they took a huge country house, Woodcot in Oxon, and
lived at the rate of several thousands a year. There they basked in an
affluent splendour of bad taste which reminds us of nothing in the world
so much as of those portions of _The Lady Flabella_ which Mrs.
Wititterly was presently to find so soft and so voluptuous. The
following extract from one of Rosina's lively letters-and she was a very
sprightly correspondent--gives an example of her style, of her husband's
Pelhamish extravagance, and of the gaudy recklessness of their manner of
life. They had now been married nearly two years:--
"How do you think my audacious husband has spent his time since he
has been in town? Why, he must needs send me down what he termed a
little Christmas box, which was a huge box from Howel and James's,
containing only eight Gros de Naples dresses of different colours
not made up, four Gros des Indes, two merino ones, four satin ones,
an amber, a black, a white and a blue, eight pocket handkerchiefs
that look as if they had been spun out of lilies and air and
_brodee_ by the fairies, they are so exquisitely fine and so
beautifully worked. Four pieces (16 yards in each) of beautiful
white blonde, two broad pieces and two less broad, a beautiful and
very large blue real cashmere shawl, a Chantilly veil that would
reach from this to Dublin, and six French long pellerines very
richly embroidered on the finest India muslin, three dozen pair of
white silk stockings, one dozen of black, a most beautiful black
satin cloak with very pretty odd sort of capes and trimmed round
and up the sides with a very broad band of a new kind of figured
plush--I forget what they call it (it came from Paris), and a hat
of the same--such a hat as can only be made in the Rue Vivienne.
You would think that this 'little Christmas box' would have been
enough to have lasted for some time. However, he thought
differently, for on New Year's morning before I was out of bed,
there came a parcel by the mail, which on opening proved to be a
large red Morocco case containing a bright gold chain, a yard and a
half long, with the most beautiful and curious cross to it that I
ever saw--the chain is as thick as my dead gold necklace, and you
may guess what sort of a thing it is when I tell you that I took it
to a jeweller here to have it weighed, and it weighed a pound all
but an ounce. The man said it never was made for less than fifty
guineas, but that he should think it had cost more."
Rosina, who has only L80 a year of her own, will not be outdone, and
cannot "resist ordering" Edward "a gold toilette, which he has long
wished for.... Round the rim of the basin and the handle of the ewer I
have ordered a wreath of _narcissus_ in dead gold, which, for Mr.
Pelham, you'll own, is not a bad idea."
It would be expected that all this crazy display would lead the young
couple rapidly and deeply into debt. That it did not do so is the most
curious phase of the story. Bulwer-Lytton immediately, and apparently
without the slightest difficulty, developed a literary industry the
sober record of which approaches the fabulous. Walter Scott alone may be
held to have equalled it. The giants of popular fiction did, indeed,
enjoy larger single successes than Bulwer-Lytton did, but none of them,
not Dickens himself, was so uniformly successful. Everything he wrote
sold as though it were bread displayed to a hungry crowd. Even his
poetry, so laboriously and lifelessly second-hand, always sold. He did
not know what failure was; he made money by _Devereux_; even _The New
Timon_ went into many editions. To earn what was required, however--and
in these early years he seems to have made L3000 his minimum of needful
return--to live in the insane style which his wife and he demanded, an
enormous nervous strain was required. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's temper had
always been warm and eager; it now grew irritable to the highest degree.
His mother continued to exasperate him; his wife suddenly failed to
please him; his health waned; and he became the most miserable of men;
yet without ceasing for a moment to be the most indefatigable of
authors. The reader will follow the evolution of the tragedy, which is
of poignant interest, in Lord Lytton's pages. The whole story is one of
the most extraordinary in the history of literature.
It has been a feature of Bulwer-Lytton's curious posthumous fortune that
he has seemed solitary in his intellectual if not in his political and
social action. We think of him as one of those morose and lonely bees
that are too busy gathering pollen to join the senate of the hive, and
are dwellers in the holes of the rocks. It is quite true that, with a
painful craving for affection, he had not the genius of friendship. The
general impression given by his biography is one of isolation; in "the
sea of life" he was one of those who are most hopelessly "enisled."
Nothing is sadder than this severance of a delicate and sensitive
temperament from those who surround it closely and to whom it stretches
out its arms in vain. But a careful reading of these interesting volumes
leaves us in no doubt of the cause of this loneliness. Bulwer-Lytton,
with all his ardour and his generosity, was devoid of the gift of
sympathy. In characters of a simpler mould a natural kindliness may take
the place of comprehension. But Bulwer-Lytton had a lively and protean
fancy which perpetually deceived him. In human relations he was always
moving, but always on the wrong track.
The letters to his mother, to his wife, to his son, exemplify this
unfortunate tendency. They are eloquent, they are even too eloquent, for
Bulwer-Lytton intoxicated himself with his own verbosity; they are meant
to be kind, they are meant to be just, they are meant to be wise and
dignified and tender; but we see, in Lord Lytton's impartial narrative,
that they scarcely ever failed to exasperate the receiver. His dealings
with his son, of whom he was exquisitely proud and sensitively fond, are
of the saddest character, because of the father's want of comprehension,
haste of speech and intolerance of temper. The very fact that a son, a
wife, or a mother could with impunity be addressed in terms of
exaggerated sensibility, because there could be no appeal, was a snare
to the too-ready pen of Bulwer-Lytton, which, poured out its oceans of
ink without reflection and without apprehension. If violent offence were
given, the post went out again later in the day, and equally violent
self-humiliation would restore the emotional balance. But what could not
be restored was the sense of confidence and domestic security.
In his contact with other literary men of his own age more restraint was
necessary, and we learn from Lord Lytton's pages of valuable and
prolonged acquaintanceships which were sometimes almost friendships. His
company was much sought after, and occasionally by very odd persons.
Lord Lytton prints a series of most diverting letters from the notorious
Harriette Wilson, who, in spite of the terror into which her "Memoirs"
had thrown society, desired to add the author of _Pelham_ to the aviary
of her conquests. But the snare was set in vain before the eyes of so
shrewd a bird as Bulwer-Lytton; he declined to see the lady, but he kept
her amazing letters. This was in 1829, when the novelist seems to have
had no literary or political associates. But by 1831, we find him
editing the _New Monthly Magazine_, and attaching himself to Lord
Melbourne and Lord Durham on the one hand and to Disraeli and Dickens on
the other. When to these we have added Lady Blessington and Letitia
Landon, we have mentioned all those public persons with whom
Bulwer-Lytton seems to have been on terms of intimacy during his early
manhood. All through these years he was an incessant diner-out and
party-goer, and the object of marvellous adulation, but he passed
through all this social parade as though it had been a necessary portion
of the exterior etiquette of life. Why he fatigued himself by these
formal exercises, in which he seems to have found no pleasure, it is
impossible to conceive, but a sense of the necessity of parade was
strangely native to him.
He had, however, one close and constant friend. John Forster was by far
the most intimate of all his associates throughout his career.
Bulwer-Lytton seems to have met him first about 1834, when he was
twenty-eight and Forster only twenty-two. In spite of this disparity in
age, the younger man almost at once took a tone of authority such as the
elder seldom permitted in an acquaintance. Forster had all the gifts
which make a friend valuable. He was rich in sympathy and resource, his
temper was reasonable, he comprehended a situation, he knew how to hold
his own in argument and yet yield with grace. Lord Lytton prints a very
interesting character-sketch of Forster, which he has found among his
grandfather's MSS. It is a tribute which does equal credit to him who
makes it and to him of whom it is made:--
"John Forster.... A most sterling man, with an intellect at once
massive and delicate. Few, indeed, have his strong practical sense
and sound judgment; fewer still unite with such qualities his
exquisite appreciation of latent beauties in literary art. Hence,
in ordinary life, there is no safer adviser about literary work,
especially poetry; no more refined critic. A large heart naturally
accompanies so masculine an understanding. He has the rare capacity
for affection which embraces many friendships without loss of depth
or warmth in one. Most of my literary contemporaries are his
intimate companions, and their jealousies of each other do not
diminish their trust in him. More than any living critic, he has
served to establish reputations. Tennyson and Browning owed him
much in their literary career. Me, I think, he served in that way
less than any of his other friends. But, indeed, I know of no
critic to whom I have been much indebted for any position I hold in
literature. In more private matters I am greatly indebted to his
counsels. His reading is extensive. What faults he has lie on the
surface. He is sometimes bluff to rudeness. But all such faults of
manner (and they are his only ones) are but trifling inequalities
in a nature solid and valuable as a block of gold."
This was written with full experience, as the names of Tennyson and
Browning will remind us, for Bulwer-Lytton was slow to admit the value
of these younger talents. His relations with Tennyson have always been
known to be unfortunate; as they are revealed in Lord Lytton's biography
they approach the incredible. He met Browning at Covent Garden Theatre
during the Macready "revival" of the poetic stage, but it was not until
after the publication of _Men and Women_ that he became conscious of
Browning's claim, which he then very grudgingly admitted. He was
grateful to Browning for his kindness to Robert Lytton in Italy, but he
never understood his genius or his character.
What, however, we read with no less pleasure than surprise are the
evidences of Bulwer-Lytton's interest in certain authors of a later
generation, of whom the general public has never suspected him to have
been aware. Something almost like friendship sprang up as lately as 1867
between him and a man whom nobody would suppose him to admire, Matthew
Arnold. It sometimes happens that a sensitive and petulant artist finds
it more easy to acknowledge the merits of his successors than to endure
those of his immediate contemporaries. The _Essays in Criticism_ and
_The Study of Celtic Literature_ called forth from the author of _My
Novel_ and _The Caxtons_ such eulogy as had never been spared for the
writings of Thackeray or Carlyle. Matthew Arnold appeared to
Bulwer-Lytton to have "brought together all that is most modern in
sentiment, with all that is most scholastic in thought and language."
Arnold was a guest at Knebworth, and brought the Duke of Genoa with him.
He liked Bulwer-Lytton, and their relations became very cordial and
lasted for some years; Arnold has given an amusing, but very
sympathetic, account of the dignified hospitalities of Knebworth.
No revelation in Lord Lytton's volumes is, however, more pleasing or
more unexpected than his grandfather's correspondence with Swinburne. It
is thought that he heard of him through Monckton Milnes; at all events,
he was an early reader of _Atalanta in Calydon_. When, in 1866, all the
furies of the Press fell shrieking on _Poems and Ballads_, Bulwer-Lytton
took a very generous step. He wrote to Swinburne, expressing his
sympathy and begging him to be calm. The young poet was extremely
touched, and took occasion to beg the elder writer for his advice, the
publisher having, without consulting him, withdrawn his volume from
sale. Bulwer-Lytton's reply was a most cordial invitation to stay with
him at Knebworth and talk the matter over. Swinburne gratefully
accepted, and John Forster was asked to meet him. It was Bulwer-Lytton,
it appears, who found another publisher for the outraged volume, and
helped Swinburne out of the scrape. He was always kindness itself if an
appeal was made to his protection, and to his sense of justice. However,
pleasant as the visit to Knebworth was, there is no evidence that it was
repeated. Bulwer-Lytton considered Swinburne's opinions preposterous,
and indeed if he told Swinburne, as in 1869 he told his son Robert, that
Victor Hugo was "but an epileptic dwarf in a state of galvanism," there
must have been wigs on the green at Knebworth.
The student of the biography, if he is already familiar with the more
characteristic works of Bulwer-Lytton, will find himself for the first
time provided with a key to much that has puzzled him in the nature of
that author. The story itself, apart from the tragic matrimonial trouble
which runs through it like a blood-red cord, is of unusual interest. It
is a story of strife, without repose, without enjoyment, but with a good
deal of splendour and satisfaction. Almost to the end Bulwer-Lytton was
engaged in struggle. As an ambitious social being he was fighting the
world; as an author he was battling with his critics; as a statesman he
was always in the wild storm of party politics. As a private individual
he was all the time keeping his head up against the tide of social
scandal which attacked him when he least expected it, and often
threatened to drown him altogether. This turmoil contrasts with the calm
of the evening years, after the peerage had been won, the ambition
satisfied, the literary reputation secured.
Few writers have encountered, in their own time and after their death,
so much adverse criticism, and yet have partly survived it. It is hardly
realised, even perhaps by Lord Lytton, how unwilling the reviewers were
to give credit to his grandfather. He never found favour in their eyes,
and it was a matter of constant resentment with him that they did him,
as he thought, injustice. The evidence of his wounded feelings is
constant in his letters. The Quarterly Review never mentioned him
without contempt until 1865, when the publication of his works, in
forty-three volumes, forced it to consider this indefatigable and
popular writer with a measure of respect. Sir Walter Scott, with his
universal geniality, read _Pelham_ in 1828 and "found it very
interesting: the light is easy and gentlemanlike, the dark very grand
and sombrous." He asked who was the author, and he tried to interest his
son-in-law in the novel. But Lockhart was implacable: "_Pelham_," he
replied, "is writ by a Mr. Bulwer, a Norfolk squire, and horrid puppy. I
have not read the book, from disliking the author." Lockhart, however,
did read _Devereux_, and three years afterwards, when reviewing some
other novel, he said of the historical characters in that romance: "It
seems hard to disquiet so many bright spirits for the sole purpose of
showing that they _could_ be dull." That was the attitude of the higher
criticism to Bulwer-Lytton from, let us say, 1830 to 1860; he was "a
horrid puppy" and he was also "dull."
But this was far from being the opinion of the reading public. We have
seen that he never failed, and sometimes he soared into the very
empyrean of popularity. In 1834, when he published _The Last Days of
Pompeii_, again in 1837 when he published _Ernest Maltravers_, the
ecstasy of his adorers discovered their favourite in a moment under the
mask of anonymity which he chose to assume. This was just before the
outburst of the great school of Victorian novelists; Bulwer had as yet
practically no one but Disraeli to compete with. These two, the author
of _Pelham_ and the author of _Vivian Grey_, raced neck and neck at the
head of the vast horde of "fashionable" novel-writers; now all but them
forgotten. In Bulwer-Lytton's romances the reader moved among exalted
personages, alternately flippant and sinister; a "mournful enthusiasm"
was claimed for the writer by the readers of his day. It was the latest
and most powerful development of that Byronic spirit which had been so
shortlived in verse, but which was to survive in prose until
Bulwer-Lytton adopted his _Caxtons_ manner in the middle of the century.
As always in Byronic periods, the portrait of the author himself was
searched for among his most fatal conceptions. To the young library
subscriber the stoical, solitary figure of Mordaunt, in _The Disowned_,
was exactly what was wanted as a representation of the mysterious
novelist himself. Pelham was the apotheosis of the man of fashion, and
it is amusing to read how, when the Bulwer-Lyttons travelled, they were
gazed at in reverence as the Pelham and the Pelhamess.
It would be difficult to improve upon the language used so early as 1832
by one of the very few critics who attempted to do justice to
Bulwer-Lytton's merits. The _Edinburgh Review_ found in him "a style
vigorous and pliable, sometimes strangely incorrect, but often rising
into a touching eloquence." Ten years later such was the private opinion
of D.G. Rossetti, who was "inspired by reading _Rienzi_ and _Ernest
Maltravers_, which is indeed a splendid work." Now that we look back at
Bulwer-Lytton's prodigious compositions, we are able to perceive more
justly than did the critics of his own day what his merits were. For one
thing, he was extraordinarily versatile. If we examine his books, we
must be astonished at their variety. He painted the social life of his
own day, he dived into spectral romance, he revived the beautiful
ceremonies of antiquity, he evoked the great shades of English and of
Continental history, he made realistic and humorous studies of
middle-class life, he engaged in vehement controversy on topics of the
hour, he prophesied of the order of the future, he wrote comedies and
tragedies, epics and epistles, satires and lyrics. His canvasses were
myriad and he crowded every one of them with figures. At his most
Byronic moment he flung his dark cloak aside, and danced in motley
through _Paul Clifford_, with its outrageous caricature of George IV.
and his Ministers as a gang of Hounslow highwaymen. Perhaps his best
claim to regard is the insatiability of his human curiosity, evinced in
the almost infinite variety of his compositions.
The singular being who wrote so large a library of works and whose
actual features have so carefully been concealed from the public, will
be known at last. The piety of his grandson has presented him to us with
no reservations and no false lights. Here he stands, this half-fabulous
being, not sheathed in sham armour and padding the stage in buskins, but
a real personality at length, "with all his weaknesses and faults, his
prejudices, affectations, vanities, susceptibilities, and
eccentricities, and also with all his great qualities of industry,
courage, kindness of heart; sound judgment, patience, and perseverance."
Lord Lytton has carried through to the close a biographical enterprise
of unusual difficulty, and he deserves the thanks of all students of
English literature.
THE CHALLENGE OF THE BRONTES[7]