The patrician in literature is always an interesting spectacle. We are
prone to regard his performance as a test of the worth of long descent
and high breeding. If he does well, he vindicates the claims of his
caste; if ill, we infer that inherited estates and blue blood are but
surface advantages, leaving the effective brain unimproved, or even
causing deterioration. But the argument is still open; and whether
genius be the creature of circumstance or divinely independent, is a
question which prejudice rather than evidence commonly decides.
Certainly literature tries men's souls. The charlatan must betray
himself. Genius shines through all cerements. On the other hand, genius
may be nourished, and the charlatan permeates all classes. The truth
probably is that an aristocrat is quite as apt as a plebeian to be a
good writer. Only since there are fewer of the former than of the
latter, and since, unlike the last, the first are seldom forced to live
by their brains, there are more plebeian than aristocratic names on the
literary roll of honor. Admitting this, the instance of the writer known
as "Bulwer" proves nothing one way or the other. At all events, not, Was
he a genius because he was a, patrician? but, Was he a genius at all? is
the inquiry most germane to our present purpose.
An aristocrat of aristocrats undoubtedly he was, though it concerns us
not to determine whether the blood of Plantagenet kings and Norman
conquerors really flowed in his veins. On both father's and mother's
side he was thoroughly well connected. Heydon Hall in Norfolk was the
hereditary home of the Norman Bulwers; the Saxon Lyttons had since the
Conquest lived at Knebworth in Derbyshire. The historic background of
each family was honorable, and when the marriage of William Earle Bulwer
with Elizabeth Barbara Lytton united them, it might be said that in
their offspring England found her type.
Edward, being the youngest son, had little money, but he happened to
have brains. He began existence delicate and precocious. Culture, with
him, set in almost with what he would have termed the "consciousness of
his own identity," and the process never intermitted: in fact,
appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, his spiritual and
intellectual emancipation was hindered by many obstacles; for, an ailing
child, he was petted by his mother, and such germs of intelligence
(verses at seven years old, and the like) as he betrayed were trumpeted
as prodigies. He was spoilt so long before he was ripe that it is a
marvel he ever ripened at all. Many years must pass before vanity could
be replaced in him by manly ambition; a vein of silliness is traceable
through his career almost to the end. He expatiated in the falsetto key;
almost never do we hear in his voice that hearty bass note so dear to
plain humanity. In his pilgrimage toward freedom he had to wrestle not
only with flesh-and-blood mothers, uncles, and wives, _et id genus
omne_, but with the more subtle and vital ideas, superstitions, and
prejudices appertaining to his social station. His worst foes were not
those of his household merely, but of his heart. The more arduous
achievement of such a man is to see his real self and believe in it.
There are so many misleading purple-velvet waistcoats, gold chains,
superfine sentiments, and blue-blooded affiliations in the way, that the
true nucleus of so much decoration becomes less accessible than the
needle in the hay-stack. It is greatly to Bulwer's credit that he stuck
valiantly to his quest, and nearly, if not quite, ran down his game at
last. His intellectual record is one of constant progress, from
childhood to age.
Whether his advance in other respects was as uniform does not much
concern us. He was unhappy with his wife, and perhaps they even threw
things at each other at table, the servants looking on. Nothing in his
matrimonial relations so much became him as his conduct after their
severance: he held his tongue like a man, in spite of the poor lady's
shrieks and clapper-clawings. His whimsical, hair-splitting
conscientiousness is less admirable. A healthy conscience does not
whine--it creates. No one cares to know what a man thinks of his own
actions. No one is interested to learn that Bulwer meant 'Paul Clifford'
to be an edifying work, or that he married his wife from the highest
motives. We do not take him so seriously: we are satisfied that he wrote
the story first and discovered its morality afterwards; and that lofty
motives would not have united him to Miss Rosina Doyle Wheeler had she
not been pretty and clever. His hectic letters to his mamma; his Byronic
struttings and mouthings over the grave of his schoolgirl lady-love; his
eighteenth-century comedy-scene with Caroline Lamb; his starched-frill
participation in the Fred Villiers duel at Boulogne,--how silly and
artificial is all this! There is no genuine feeling in it: he attires
himself in tawdry sentiment as in a flowered waistcoat. What a
difference between him, at this period, and his contemporary Benjamin
Disraeli, who indeed committed similar inanities, but with a saturnine
sense of humor cropping out at every turn which altered the whole
complexion of the performance. We laugh at the one, but with
the other.
[Illustration: BULWER-LYTTON.]
Of course, however, there was a man hidden somewhere in Edward Bulwer's
perfumed clothes and mincing attitudes, else the world had long since
forgotten him. Amidst his dandyism, he learned how to speak well in
debate and how to use his hands to guard his head; he paid his debts by
honest hard work, and would not be dishonorably beholden to his mother
or any one else. He posed as a blighted being, and invented black
evening-dress; but he lived down the scorn of such men as Tennyson and
Thackeray, and won their respect and friendship at last. He aimed high,
according to his lights, meant well, and in the long run did well too.
The main activities of his life--and from start to finish his energy was
great--were in politics and in literature. His political career covers
about forty years, from the time he took his degree at Cambridge till
Lord Derby made him a peer in 1866. He accomplished nothing of serious
importance, but his course was always creditable: he began as a
sentimental Radical and ended as a liberal Conservative; he advocated
the Crimean War; the Corn Laws found him in a compromising humor; his
record as Colonial Secretary offers nothing memorable in statesmanship.
The extraordinary brilliancy of his brother Henry's diplomatic life
throws Edward's achievements into the shade. There is nothing to be
ashamed of, but had he done nothing else he would have been unknown. But
literature, first seriously cultivated as a means of livelihood,
outlasted his political ambitions, and his books are to-day his only
claim to remembrance. They made a strong impression at the time they
were written, and many are still read as much as ever, by a generation
born after his death. Their popularity is not of the catchpenny sort;
thoughtful people read them, as well as the great drove of the
undiscriminating. For they are the product of thought: they show
workmanship; they have quality; they are carefully made. If the literary
critic never finds occasion to put off the shoes from his feet as in the
sacred presence of genius, he is constantly moved to recognize with a
friendly nod the presence of sterling talent. He is even inclined to
think that nobody else ever had so much talent as this little
red-haired, blue-eyed, high-nosed, dandified Edward Bulwer; the mere
mass of it lifts him at times to the levels where genius dwells, though
he never quite shares their nectar and ambrosia. He as it were catches
echoes of the talk of the Immortals,--the turn of their phrase, the
intonation of their utterance,--and straightway reproduces it with the
fidelity of the phonograph. But, as in the phonograph, we find something
lacking; our mind accepts the report as genuine, but our ear affirms an
unreality; this is reproduction, indeed, but not creation. Bulwer
himself, when his fit is past, and his critical faculty re-awakens,
probably knows as well as another that these labored and meritorious
pages of his are not graven on the eternal adamant. But they are the
best he can do, and perhaps there is none better of their kind. They
have a right to be; for while genius may do harm as well as good, Bulwer
never does harm, and in spite of sickly sentiment and sham philosophy,
is uniformly instructive, amusing, and edifying.
"To love her," wrote Dick Steele of a certain great dame, "is a liberal
education;" and we might almost say the same of the reading of Bulwer's
romances. He was learned, and he put into his books all his learning, as
well as all else that was his. They represent artistically grouped,
ingeniously lighted, with suitable acompaniments of music and
illusion--the acquisitions of his intellect, the sympathies of his
nature, and the achievements of his character.
He wrote in various styles, making deliberate experiments in one after
another, and often hiding himself completely in anonymity. He was
versatile, not deep. Robert Louis Stevenson also employs various styles;
but with him the changes are intuitive--they are the subtle variations
in touch and timbre which genius makes, in harmony with the subject
treated. Stevenson could not have written 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' in
the same tune and key as 'Treasure Island'; and the music of 'Marxheim'
differs from both. The reason is organic: the writer is inspired by his
theme, and it passes through his mind with a lilt and measure of its
own. It makes its own style, just as a human spirit makes its own
features and gait; and we know Stevenson through all his transformations
only by dint of the exquisite distinction and felicity of word and
phrase that always characterize him. Now, with Bulwer there is none of
this lovely inevitable spontaneity. He costumes his tale arbitrarily,
like a stage-haberdasher, and invents a voice to deliver it withal. 'The
Last Days of Pompeii' shall be mouthed out grandiloquently; the
incredibilities of 'The Coming Race' shall wear the guise of naïve and
artless narrative; the humors of 'The Caxtons' and 'What Will He Do with
It?' shall reflect the mood of the sagacious, affable man of the world,
gossiping over the nuts and wine; the marvels of 'Zanoni' and 'A Strange
Story' must be portrayed with a resonance and exaltation of diction
fitted to their transcendental claims. But between the stark mechanism
of the Englishman and the lithe, inspired felicity of the Scot, what a
difference!
Bulwer's work may be classified according to subject, though not
chronologically. He wrote novels of society, of history, of mystery, and
of romance. In all he was successful, and perhaps felt as much interest
in one as in another. In his own life the study of the occult played a
part; he was familiar with the contemporary fads in mystery and
acquainted with their professors. "Ancient" history also attracted him,
and he even wrote a couple of volumes of a 'History of Athens.' In all
his writing there is a tendency to lapse into a discussion of the "Ideal
and the Real," aiming always at the conclusion that the only true Real
is the Ideal. It was this tendency which chiefly aroused the ridicule of
his critics, and from the 'Sredwardlyttonbulwig' of Thackeray to the
'Condensed Novels' burlesque of Bret Harte, they harp upon that facile
string, The thing satirized is after all not cheaper than the satire.
The ideal _is_ the true real; the only absurdity lies in the pomp and
circumstance wherewith that simple truth is introduced. There _is_ a
'Dweller on the Threshold,' but it, or he, is nothing more than that
doubt concerning the truth of spiritual things which assails all
beginners in higher speculation, and there was no need to call it or him
by so formidable a name. A sense of humor would have saved Bulwer from
almost all his faults, and have endowed him with several valuable
virtues into the bargain; but it was not born in him, and with all his
diligence he never could beget it.
The domestic series, of which 'The Caxtons' is the type, are the most
generally popular of his works, and are likely to be so longest. The
romantic vein ('Ernest Maltravers,' 'Alice, or the Mysteries,' etc.) are
in his worst style, and are now only in existence as books because they
are members of "the edition," It is doubtful if any human being has read
one of them through in twenty years. Such historical books as 'The Last
Days of Pompeii' are not only well constructed dramatically, but are
painfully accurate in details, and may still be read for information as
well as for pleasure. The 'Zanoni' species is undeniably interesting.
The weird traditions of the 'Philosopher's Stone' and the 'Elixir of
Life' can never cease to fascinate human souls, and all the
paraphernalia of magic are charming to minds weary of the
matter-of-factitude of current existence. The stories are put together
with Bulwer's unfailing cleverness, and in all external respects neither
Dumas nor Balzac has done anything better in this kind: the trouble is
that these authors compel our belief, while Bulwer does not. For, once
more, he lacks the magic of genius and the spirit of style which are
immortally and incommunicably theirs, without which no other magic can
be made literarily effective.
'Pelham,' written at twenty-five years of age, is a creditable boy's
book; it aims to portray character as well as to develop incidents, and
in spite of the dreadful silliness of its melodramatic passages it has
merit. Conventionally it is more nearly a work of art than that other
famous boy's book, Disraeli's 'Vivian Grey,' though the latter is alive
and blooming with the original literary charm which is denied to the
other. Other characteristic novels of his are 'The Last Days of
Pompeii,' 'Ernest Maltravers,' 'Zanoni,' 'The Caxtons,' 'My Novel,'
'What Will He Do with It?' 'A Strange Story,' 'The Coming Race,' and
'Kenelm Chillingly,' the last of which appeared in the year of the
author's death, 1873. The student who has read these books will know all
that is worth knowing of Bulwer's work. He wrote upwards of fifty
substantial volumes, and left a mass of posthumous material besides. Of
all that he did, the most nearly satisfactory thing is one of the last,
'Kenelm Chillingly.' In style, persons, and incidents it is alike
charming: it subsides somewhat into the inevitable Bulwer sentimentality
towards the end--a silk purse cannot be made out of a sow's ear; but the
miracle was never nearer being accomplished than in this instance. Here
we see the thoroughly equipped man of letters doing with apparent ease
what scarce five of his contemporaries could have done at all. The book
is lightsome and graceful, yet it touches serious thoughts: most
remarkable of all, it shows a suppleness of mind and freshness of
feeling more to be expected in a youth of thirty than in a veteran of
threescore and ten. Bulwer never ceased to grow; and what is better
still, to grow away from his faults and towards improvement.
But in comparing him with others, we must admit that he had better
opportunities than most. His social station brought him in contact with
the best people and most pregnant events of his time; and the driving
poverty of youth having established him in the novel-writing habit, he
thereafter had leisure to polish and expand his faculty to the utmost.
No talent of his was folded up in a napkin: he did his best and utmost
with all he had. Whereas the path of genius is commonly tortuous and
hard-beset: and while we are always saying of Shakespeare, or Thackeray,
or Shelley, or Keats, or Poe, "What wonders they would have done had
life been longer or fate kinder to them!"--of Bulwer we say, "No help
was wanting to him, and he profited by all; he got out of the egg more
than we had believed was in it!" Instead of a great faculty hobbled by
circumstance, we have a small faculty magnified by occasion and
enriched by time.
Certainly, as men of letters go, Bulwer must be accounted fortunate. The
long inflamed row of his domestic life apart, all things went his way.
He received large sums for his books; at the age of forty, his mother
dying, he succeeded to the Knebworth estate; three-and-twenty years
later his old age (if such a man could be called old) was consoled by
the title of Lord Lytton. His health was never robust, and occasionally
failed; but he seems to have been able to accomplish after a fashion
everything that he undertook; he was "thorough," as the English say. He
lived in the midst of events; he was a friend of the men who made the
age, and saw them make it, lending a hand himself too when and where he
could. He lived long enough to see the hostility which had opposed him
in youth die away, and honor and kindness take its place. Let it be
repeated, his aims were good. He would have been candid and
un-selfconscious had that been possible for him; and perhaps the failure
was one of manner rather than of heart.--Yes, he was a fortunate man.
His most conspicuous success was as a play-writer. In view of his
essentially dramatic and historic temperament, it is surprising that he
did not altogether devote himself to this branch of art; but all his
dramas were produced between his thirty-third and his thirty-eighth
years. The first--'La Duchesse de la Valliere' was not to the public
liking; but 'The Lady of Lyons,' written in two weeks, is in
undiminished favor after near sixty years; and so are 'Richelieu' and
'Money.' There is no apparent reason why Bulwer should not have been as
prolific a stage-author as Molière or even Lope de Vega. But we often
value our best faculties least.
'The Coming Race,' published anonymously and never acknowledged during
his life, was an unexpected product of his mind, but is useful to mark
his limitations. It is a forecast of the future, and proves, as nothing
else could so well do, the utter absence in Bulwer of the creative
imagination. It is an invention, cleverly conceived, mechanically and
rather tediously worked out, and written in a style astonishingly
commonplace. The man who wrote that book (one would say) had no heaven
in his soul, nor any pinions whereon to soar heavenward. Yet it is full
of thought and ingenuity, and the central conception of "vrii" has been
much commended. But the whole concoction is tainted with the deadness of
stark materialism, and we should be unjust, after all, to deny Bulwer
something loftier and broader than is discoverable here. In inventing
the narrative he depended upon the weakest element in his mental
make-up, and the result could not but be dismal. We like to believe that
there was better stuff in him than he himself ever found; and that when
he left this world for the next, he had sloughed off more dross than
most men have time to accumulate.
[Illustration: Signature:]