discovery of so horrifying a nature would not have become wild with
excitement, and fallen into a state closely bordering upon insanity;
but Lady LYTTON sustained throughout these most trying and frightful
circumstances a calm and dignified demeanour. She was indeed the calmest
of the two—herself and her Taunton friend—for the affrighted Miss
RYVES had rushed into the street. She was ushered into another room,
on entering which she observed a figure, like that of Sir EDWARD’S,
hastily retreating by a door at the other end. At first she refused to
yield up her liberty, but the policemen were called, and she then said,
“Resistance being vain, I submit, but under compulsion.” Her friend
insisted upon accompanying her, and she saw on the table in the room a
paper which she presumed to be a certificate of Lady LYTTON’S insanity.
Upon this were the names of two medical gentlemen, and it is believed
of Sir EDWARD. Her ladyship being requested to proceed to the door,
where she was told a carriage was ready to receive her, again refused
compliance except under compulsion; and on this the policemen, each
taking an arm, led her forward—her friend—the only one she could in these
tremendous moments of agony appeal to—endeavouring to console her and
seeming to comfort her by the confident exclamations, “Never mind, Lady
LYTTON; they may take you, but they cannot take me. You may be inside
the Asylum, but I shall be out.” One might suppose that under such
circumstances some gentleman to whom her ladyship was known, some male
friend, would have been requested to attend and witness proceedings which
were so terribly to affect her, which were to convey her to a living
tomb, to worse than death; but, besides the lady to whom we have so often
referred, there was no one present on Lady LYTTON’S part. The policemen
“did their duty,” and her ladyship was constrained to enter the carriage,
her friend forcing herself in immediately after, and refusing to leave
her. One or two gentlemen also seating themselves within it, the party
was rapidly driven to an Asylum at Brentford, kept by a person of the
name of HILL.
Arrived at the gates of the gloomy abode, the ladies were told they must
part, and after a short scene, which we will not attempt to depict,
they separated, the gates closing on “The Insane,” and her friend being
driven back to her lodgings. Previous to this lady’s leaving London,
she received a note from Sir EDWARD’S solicitor, in which it was stated
that the hon. baronet would be glad to see her at his residence, No. 1,
Park-lane. She indignantly declined the interview. Shortly afterwards
the solicitor called and represented that it might be advantageous to
her to see Sir EDWARD; but she gave him a denial in similar terms, and
immediately returned to Taunton.
On the following day the Solicitor came to Taunton, and calling upon
Mrs. CLARKE, demanded all the documents and other papers and such other
property as Lady LYTTON had left; but Mrs. CLARKE refused to deliver and
dared him to remove any of them, alleging as one reason that she had a
lien upon them in the shape of a bill of £300 against her Ladyship; but
in truth she was fortified in her refusal by a letter from Mr. HYDE,
Lady LYTTON’S solicitor, who had previously informed her, if any attempt
should be made to take the property, or any part of it, she would be
justified in calling in the police and giving the party into custody.
Mr. LOADER offered to pay the bill, but the answer to this was, “I would
rather forfeit every shilling of it than deliver the goods to you. They
are in my possession, and I will not allow of their removal.” Finding
persuasion vain, Mr. LOADER retired.
We have said Lady LYTTON’S capture, and the circumstances connected with
it, have caused a great degree of excitement among the inhabitants of
this town, and if any proof of this were called for, or any evidence of
the opinion generally entertained required, we could hardly give more
indubitable testimony than is contained in the following resolutions,
which were adopted at a meeting of inhabitants called by a gentleman who,
though a perfect stranger to Lady LYTTON, felt that a monstrous injustice
had been inflicted upon her, and determined to use the very considerable
influence he possessed to obtain her freedom if really not insane, or at
least to force on such an inquiry into her mental condition as to satisfy
the public that she is not in a fit state to be at liberty. The gentleman
in question arrived in this town only a day or two before the case came
to his knowledge, and immediately upon becoming acquainted with it he
proceeded into the street, called together such of the more influential
inhabitants as he met, and within an hour the meeting took place. After a
discussion of the subject, the resolutions were thrown into the following
form:—
“At a meeting of certain inhabitants of Taunton and the
neighbourhood, held at Clarke’s Hotel on the 6th of July, 1858.
Mr. HITCHCOCK in the chair, it was resolved:—
“On the motion of Capt. JONES, seconded by R. EASTON, Esq.
“1. That the removal of Lady BULWER LYTTON to a Lunatic
Asylum, or other place of confinement, and the circumstances
under which she was incarcerated therein, call for a public
expression of alarm for the rights and liberties of the
subject, and particularly of distrust of the treatment to which
her ladyship is said to have been subjected.
“2. That a Committee be now appointed to watch the result of
the extraordinary measures reported to have been adopted in
Lady LYTTON’S case, to the end that the public mind may be
satisfied, through their report, that in her ladyship’s case
justice may be done.—W. R. HITCHCOCK.
“The meeting was then adjourned for a week.”
Here we will leave this miserable tale, but we are anxious, before
closing our remarks, to avow that in taking it upon ourselves to set it
before the public, we are actuated only by a sense of duty and justice.
For the truth of the narrative, we can refer to the lady who accompanied
Lady LYTTON to London; the details are given as they were furnished to
us—without exaggeration or distortion. If her ladyship’s mind is in
such a state that she is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum, and an
asylum is the only suitable place for her, no harm can come from the
publicity we give to her case; if not, then much good must inevitably
arise from its publicity, to her chiefly and in an immeasurable degree,
but also to society in no unimportant measure. The whole question is,
of course—Is Lady LYTTON actually insane? We have said, from what we
have seen and heard of her, she is not; and this view is entertained by
all we have heard express any opinion on the subject. It is a question
of deep importance whether it is not utterly wrong, and most dangerous
to the liberties of individuals, that upon the word of two medical men
persons may be taken to a madhouse, when if not already insane, they
are undoubtedly placed in circumstances in every way calculated, by
their horrible and frightful character, to destroy reason and produce
insanity. We say nothing of their continued confinement, but of their
being consigned to such a place even for a moment. On every account a
power of such awful magnitude should be destroyed, and confinement in a
lunatic asylum be possible only after a public enquiry, similar to that
which must precede the committal of a person accused of felony to the
common gaol. Society in general demands this; helpless women require it;
and if there are any individuals for the sake of whose character and
reputation before the world the change should be made, they are those who
occupy such a position as Sir EDWARD LYTTON now holds in her Majesty’s
Government. As a Secretary of State, he, as is well known, exercises
great authority in such cases; and men so highly stationed can always
find ready tools for any work, however nefarious. It is right then that
suspicion against them should be rendered impossible, that no reasonable
person should have ground for the supposition that they have committed
or connived at an atrocity at which the body shudders and the mind is
appalled. It is true that investigation into cases like that of Lady
LYTTON is compelled when demanded by the friends of the incarcerated
person; but the system is altogether contrary to the general equity of
British laws and customs. To send to a madhouse a person suspected of
lunacy, and afterwards institute an enquiry whether he is mad or not,
is a mode of procedure very unworthy of a civilised nation, and which
the people of this country ought no longer to endure. Lady LYTTON’S
case will no doubt have the effect of drawing general attention to this
great anomaly, and probably it will tend in a great measure to the
accomplishment of the desired change. Heaven grant it may be so!
THE CASE OF LADY LYTTON.
_To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph._
SIR,—Can you inform me whether Mr. B. W. PROCTER, an intimate friend
of Sir BULWER LYTTON, is a Commissioner of Lunacy? Can you also state
whether Mr. JOHN FORSTER, also an intimate friend of Sir EDWARD, is
Secretary to the Lunacy Commission?—Your obedient servant, DOUBTFUL.
[Our correspondent is correct in assuming that Mr. PROCTER is a Lunacy
Commissioner, and that the Secretary to the Commission is Mr. JOHN
FORSTER.]
NOTE BY THE EDITOR.—This JOHN FORSTER was afterwards rewarded for his
guilty complicity in this most horrible transaction by being made a
Commissioner of Lunacy himself with a salary of £2,000 a year. He died
very rich, no one knowing how his wealth was got. He was on the most
social terms with three very wicked men—DICKENS, LYTTON, and COCKBURN.
_Daily Telegraph, July 15th, 1858._
Sir EDWARD BULWER LYTTON has succeeded in hushing up the scandal of his
wife’s arrest and conveyance to a madhouse at Brentford. The matters
in dispute, so say the persons interested, will be arranged to the
satisfaction of all concerned. For the sake of the lady herself the
public will rejoice that such a compromise has been extorted from the
Secretary of State; if the victim be content no one has a right to
complain, but it must be remembered that Sir BULWER LYTTON alone has
gained by the suppression of enquiry. We are now told that he will seal
a treaty of perpetual truce with the woman who was, apparently under his
instruction, dragged by policemen into a carriage, hurried to a lunatic
asylum, and there compelled to sign a compact of forbearance towards the
individual by whom, according to her statement, she had been grossly and
flagitiously wronged. It is with pleasure we record that this ignominious
family war has been terminated, and the accusation of insanity has been
abandoned; that Lady LYTTON is confessedly qualified to treat with her
husband upon terms of equality. Justice may boast of a triumph, for
though it would have been more satisfactory to have forced the entire
transaction before an authentic tribunal, it may suffice to know that
popular opinion has driven Lord DERBY’S choice and brilliant colleague
into a virtual surrender. It matters little whether Sir BULWER LYTTON,
under Cabinet influence, has found it necessary to save the reputation of
the government as well as his own, but it is not to be forgotten that he
employed attorneys, nurses and policemen to capture his wife; that she
was forcibly consigned to a lunatic asylum—that medical certificates were
obtained to prove her insanity, and that now, an explosion of national
feeling having taken place, she is to be released and allowed to live in
personal independence.
All that now remains for investigation is who and what the professional
gentlemen were who handed over this lady to the keepers of a madhouse;
whether she was sane at the time of her capture, and whether she was
not kidnapped by the myrmidons of her flattered and successful husband.
Individually she may benefit by the compromise, though it may be that
a salutary exposure has been stifled. On one point the public are
agreed; the power at present exercised under the lunacy law of England
is dangerous to social liberty. Anyone, by obtaining the certificate
of two medical men, may imprison wife, child, or other relative, for
years, perhaps for life, in a madhouse. The Lunacy Commissioners, we
are reminded, may interfere with its machinery of visitors’ inspections
and reports, but what is the result? Men might be named who open
establishments of this character, accumulate fortunes, and live in
affluence, and are pointed at by their neighbours as the creatures of
conspiracy. Their residences are nobly furnished, their grounds rival
those of the nobility, and when official visitors, after sumptuous
luncheons, pass their patients in review, and an exasperated captive
pours forth his vehement denunciations, “they write him down mad,” and
the wretch is left for another year, to be goaded by a sense of wrong,
wrought upon by the contagious presence of insanity, and at length made
all that his officious friends desire him to be. Without casting a
general slur upon a body of men, many of whom are highly respectable, we
may state it as the conviction of those who stand above all prejudice in
their profession, that the lunatic asylums of this country are frequently
applied to the same uses as the Bastille, where the Man in the Iron Mask
was immured for life and buried in secrecy because his pretensions were
considered dangerous by claimants to estates and titles, or perpetrators
of unsearched crimes.
But a social question of far more universal importance is connected with
the deplorable disclosure in the case of Sir BULWER LYTTON. The baronet’s
wife may be released from the terrible captivity to which, by the
practical confession of her persecutors, she never ought to have been for
a moment consigned, and from which we have made no unsuccessful effort to
deliver her; but what of humbler persons? What of the domestic victims in
whose name no publicity is invoked? We hear of jealous and bitter-tongued
women, of outcast wives, who go down to bury their humiliation in the
shade of equivocal watering-places, of ladies whose “fashionable” manners
shock the propriety of German spas; but when these scandals are the
popular table-talk, in the name of justice let the woman be considered.
The lord and the lady, the baronet and his wife, the parents of children,
do they stand in the eyes of the world upon a level? We hear of a man who
has been compelled to part with the mother of his children, and we know
that while she goes into retirement with her happiness blasted in her
declining years, his car of triumph rolls on, he is still the ornament
and delight of society. But when the forsaken woman glides into the
shadow of suspicion, who cares to remind us that a cluster of children
call her mother; that twenty years of married life should have made her
sacred; that even her failings should have been holy to her husband;
that bitterness itself is pardonable when it rises from the fountains
of love, that what by the triumphing “Lord of the Creation” is termed
“incompatibility” may be nothing more than the satiety of a selfish
affection? If manliness, if chivalry, if the noble principles of honour
dominate more supremely than they do in the circles of our English life,
would these published separations so continually feed the mass of scandal
to the detriment of names once invoked in confidence and affection at the
altar? Let cynicism utter what it will, let irony do its worst, let men
affect to despise the heart-born passions, the chief happiness of every
human being is at home; neither Church nor State, nor military glory,
nor political conflict, can destroy the supremacy of that instinct which
makes joy itself a virtue—the pride of an honest man in his family. How
implacable then must the antipathy be that breaks these consecrated
bonds; how utterly exhausted and callous must be the affection that
permits this last repudiation of a moral tie, linking children with
children, and teaching those children to reverence their parents.
As may be imagined the most desperate efforts were at this time made by
FORSTER, DICKENS, and others of the “Press-gang,” to stifle enquiry,
or discussion on this Case. The _Times_ remained silent as to all;
but its impression for July 14th, 1858, contains the following:—“LADY
BULWER LYTTON.—We are requested to state, upon the best authority, that
all matters in reference to this Lady, about whom certain statements
have appeared in some of the public journals, are in process of being
amicably settled by family arrangements, to the satisfaction of all
parties concerned.”
SKETCH OF LORD LYTTON.
A friend of ours, who met Lord LYTTON at dinner, favours us with an
extract from his Diary, June 25, 1864, in which there is a lifelike
sketch. We think it well to preserve it here. “Dined to-night with the
Chief Justice, Lord HOUGHTON, and Sir BULWER LYTTON, and other senators
and ladies. B. L. is the most perfect of snobs. He was shabbily dressed
and sidled into the room with a slimy, slouching air and gait, and held
his hat in his hand, as if he were about to drop it on the floor, and
looked as if he did not know what to do with his legs, and gaped with
lack-lustre eye, and said nothing, but seemed bewildered like an idiot
in fine company, so that it is almost impossible to believe that he ever
wrote the works which pass under his name, or, that if he did, his brain
is now softening, and that he is only the wretched shadow of a man. He
has a great nose like FITZBALL or BARDOLPH, only that it is not so red
as the latter’s; his skin is coarse and dirty; he has cut off his great
beard and the hairs now look scanty and scrubby down his long, lank,
lantern, Don Quixote jaws; his hair is wild and like tow; his voice is
harsh and slimy, and slobbering; he presents an appearance foul and
horrid, like that of JAMES I. when hanging on that odious ‘STEENIE,’ and
kissing his painted cheeks with swollen licking tongue. I do not know
that I ever saw so odious a wretch, and I would not sit near or talk to
him for a thousand pounds, poor as I am. I cannot describe his putrid
corpse-like loathsomeness; I expected a fine gentleman, perhaps a fop,
like his own DEVEREUX, or like BOLINGBROKE, and I saw a dirty, stupid,
fish-eyed crapulous catamite—if ever human creature bore the impress of
that fearful monomania. He took a lady (Mrs. R.) down to dinner, but he
never spoke a word to her during the whole entertainment; he remained
silent or jabbering to himself like an old orangoutang for more than an
hour; and then when he had drank more champagne than he should, he spoke
the most utter rot about Denmark that ever oozed out of Avernus itself.
I think COCKBURN was ashamed of him, and although he asked me specially
to meet him, he did not venture to solicit my opinion of this dirty
creature; but I told him mine, and related the anecdote of SAM WARREN,
whom, PEARSON having one day beaten in a long legal argument before the
Chief Baron, he in the exuberance of his joy bawled out to Serjeant
MURPHY, ‘There’s a b—— man of genius for you.’ I told this to the C.J.,
and made him laugh—but he was ashamed of his dirty guest, as he could
hardly fail to be. And this is the nasty animal that Lady BLESSINGTON
and her set used to call ‘SHAKESPERE.’—GOD help us—I don’t wonder his
wife loathed him. I am so sensitive that I believe if he touched me with
his cold gorilla paw, I should feel a pang through my heart almost like
that of Death itself. He got at last so maudlin that he felt he could not
go upstairs, and he took his leave of the C.J. at the foot of them.”
_Daily Telegraph, July 15th, 1858._
In the daily business of life it is difficult and painful to sever
long-contracted bonds; even partners in commerce bear and forbear beyond
the ordinary rules of patience, rather than break from old connections,
but how immeasurably more binding is the compact between man and wife,
how bitter is the gracelessness of the one who rends that sacred tie, and
issuing from the cloud to the enjoyment of all the world has to give,
dismisses the other to sneers, misrepresentations, and ignominy. Not but
that in the instances present to public memory the blame of this bitter
rancour may have been divided. It is but too true that domestic errors
are wantonly magnified into crimes, that feminine sympathies appeal
sometimes to an unnatural code, but what is the position of a woman in
a civilised country compared with that of a man? What is the wife when
appealing against the husband? It may be that at an earlier period, as
in Lady LYTTON’S case, she has been his benefactor, his patron, and that
through long years she has been more to him than he to her; but all this
is forgotten when the opportunity for legal separation arrives, when
children are to be parted by an attorney’s document from their mother;
when malicious friends are to condole with the injured husband, or when
obtrusive advisers, who have been unfortunate themselves, rejoice to drag
down to their own level the individual who has previously galled them by
the superiority of his personal reputation. In almost every instance the
woman is the sacrifice; to her the public insinuations point; upon her
contemptuous pity is lavished; her name is set up as a mark for jibes
and insults; she bears the miserable burden, and her husband continues
to shine as the accomplished writer, the favoured magistrate, or the
statesman expecting a peerage.
It may be beating the air to dwell on this anomaly of our social code.
While selfishness is supreme, while masculine strength prevails over
helpless right, while, in fact, the sins of men are popularly condoned,
and the mortal distempers of women ranked as mortal sins, the scandal of
a separation will always attach to a wife as a perpetual and malignant
curse, re-echoed by every class of society; but it may seem an object of
justice to suggest that while scandals of twenty years’ duration have
been revived, while honour is recalling a thousand anecdotes of domestic
differences and compromises, it has not been by men that the most
unpardonable injuries have been suffered. This we say without any direct
reference to the case of Lady LYTTON. Against her, as far as we know, a
calumny has never been hinted, in spite of her ill-conceived diatribes
against her husband; but the tendency of public opinion, we are sorry to
acknowledge, runs in the direction of malevolence when the characters of
separated wives are in question. It will argue a marked development of
the national morality when, while these transactions are under notice,
some consideration is bestowed upon the possibility that when a woman has
been expelled from her husband, cut off from her family interests, buried
in a social tomb, and stigmatised by her husband’s repudiation, the real
wrong may have been endured by herself, and the cruelty practised by
another.
After this came the letter of Mr. ROBERT LYTTON, our present Viceroy in
India, which we publish; and which speaks for itself, even if his mother
did not. How Mr. EDWIN JAMES came into the transaction we are not told;
but the value of Mr. FORBES WINSLOW’S certificate is well known in the
profession. No one explains how it was that this lady, who was locked up
as being insane, early in July, all of a sudden, recovered the perfect
use of her senses. Dr. CONNOLLY has got a splendid and lucrative place
since he wrote his strange certificate, and we congratulate him upon it.
_To the Editor of the “Daily Telegraph.”_
SIR,—As the son of Lady BULWER LYTTON, with the best right to speak on
her behalf, and so obviously with the best means of information as to
warrant the hope that my simple assertion will be at once believed in the
matter to which I am compelled to refer, I beg to say that the statements
which have appeared in some of the public journals are exaggerated and
distorted, and that they are calculated to convey to the public mind
impressions the most erroneous and unjust. As was natural, I put myself
into constant communication with my mother, and with the gentleman in
whose family, in his private house, she was placed (for I beg distinctly
to state she was never for a moment taken to a lunatic asylum), and I
carried out the injunctions of my father, who confided to me implicitly
every arrangement which my affection could suggest, and enjoined me to
avail myself of the advice of Lord SHAFTESBURY in whatever was judged
best and kindest for Lady LYTTON.
My mother is now with me, free from all restraint, and about, at her own
wish, to travel for a short time, in company with myself and a female
friend and relation, of her own selection.
From the moment my father felt compelled to authorise those steps which
have been made the subject of so much misrepresentation, the anxiety
was to obtain the most experienced and able physician, in order that my
mother should not be subject to restraint for one moment longer than was
strictly justifiable. Such was his charge to me.