EDWARD BULWER FIRST BARON LYTTON OF KNEBWORTH A SOCIAL* PERSONAL* AND POLITICAL MONOGRAPH Ti Hr A ESCOTT VHTMOB Of *’ nrcUMO; m ftfitli« w u n , ntMn»v WITH ItQ l'ti* " <OCm THAHWrflMftTrolll Y IC n fflJ** * C l **. * Km Of Ml* MOV*«. O# Ct>S4Mt>P'M ** m h 1 m < i *-to ile r ♦ m kAftil* **t> Mr^mikFi ” IK TH* Cf^HTTY HOtV t n w a rno.\ nm >* r i O N D O N Gl-ORI i KOI 'TLM'MrE AND SONS, Liu. I Xfltt V'.iftK: K. P. UUITON ANJU CO. 19 1a Digitized by C ^ o o Q i e Digitized by i ^ o o Q i e Digitized by i ^ o o Q i e HrP -b-3H A ? 3 IS DEDICATION TO J. P. STEELE, E s q ., M.D. NOW AMONG THE PEW SURVIVORS AS WELL AS ALWAYS AMONG THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED AND EFFECTIVE MEMBERS OF THE LITERARY RANK AND FILE WHEN BULWBR-LYTTON WAS A LEADER IN APPRECIATIVE RECOLLECTION OP FRIENDLY INTERCOURSE TOGETHER WITH COMRADESHIP OF PEN COVERING MANY YEARS AND IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MUCH HELP RECEIVED FROM HIS BRIGHT INTELLIGENCE, SOUND JUDGMENT, AND VARIOUS KNOWLEDGE NOT LESS IN MANY OTHER WRITINGS THAN IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT WORK THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED BY HIS SINCERELY ATTACHED T. H. S. ESCOTT 3 £ n r- fc-« Q Digitized by ^ o o Q i e Digitized by i ^ o o Q i e PREFACE O writer on the subject of this book can ignore the N original and till then unprinted writings of Bulwer- Lytton contained in the two volumes of memoirs published by his son and literary executor, himself an accomplished prose author as well as graceful poet, whose acquaintance it was the present writer’s privilege to possess. At the same time the first Lord Lytton’s published works of every kind disclose to the patient reader a generally unsuspected amount of self-portraiture and self-narrative. This constitutes a memorial of Bulwer-Lytton more finished, genuine, and even trustworthy than any professedly autobiographical matter which he may have left behind him. Especially applicable to his shorter pieces in , this state­ ment holds equally good of all his novels not less than of many among his essays. The most valuable and instructive sources of this volume have therefore been found in the first Lord Lytton’s own writings, illustrated at one or two political points and undesignedly commented on by the first Earl Lytton’s Fables in Songy as well as by conversations and correspondence between the father and the son, recorded by Lady Betty Balfour in her two clever and charming volumes. Personal and family accidents had made me known to Lord Lytton in my childhood. Years afterwards he was good enough to recognize these early germs of acquaintanceship, and, in the most gratuitously kind and obliging way, to extend to me his observation before any writings of mine had begun to attract attention. Several years later some sketches of Knebworth by Mr. T. R. Macquoid in a periodical publication were accompanied by vii Digitized by ^ o o Q i e viii LIFE OF LORD LYTTON letterpress from my pen. Out of my association with this distinguished artist grew repeated visits to Lord Lytton’s Hertfordshire home during the latest years of his life. Others to whose personal knowledge of Bulwer-Lytton I am most indebted have unhappily passed away. Chief among them were Mr. John Forster and the fourth Earl ^ of Carnarvon. At the latter’s house, Highclere Castle, my acquaintance with Lord Lytton had many opportunities of improving itself, while to Lord Carnarvon almost exclusively ^ I owe the hitherto unpublished narrative of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s parliamentary and official course. Lord Carnarvon, as Under Secretary for the Colonies when Lytton was Secretary of State, not only had his chief’s political confidence, but knew more of his personal habits and private life than did most of his friends, and was one among the very few who stayed with his chief at Knebworth for days and even weeks together when there were no other guests. I have also, in preparing this volume, profited not a little from exclusive information obligingly given me by the late Sir William Fraser and the present Mr. Henry Chaplin, s who, through Lord Henry Bentinck, was acquainted with some purely social aspects of Lord Lytton’s life, naturally not coming within the ken of political or literary friends. T. H. S. ESCOTT. Brighton, January, 191a Digitized by L ^ o o Q i e CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Preface . vii I. Expert Estimates and H ereditary Influences . i II. Preparatory School L ife . 14 III. “ A n E poch both in M ind and H e a r t” . 28 IV. T he Man in his Making and Marring . 43 V. Preparations for a T wo fold C areer Matured . 69 VI. T he Novelist E stablished . 104 VII. T he Beginnings of London L ife . 145 VIII. T he L iterary and Political Platforms Gained 180 IX. T en Y ears of Parliamentary L ife . 203 X. T he Separation, its Cause and Sequel . .224 XI. T he Novelist of N ation and E mpire . .256 XII. A Political C onversion and its Sequel . 280 XIII. At t h e C olonial O ffice .... 303 XIV. Last Y ears and their Work . 329 Index . -343 Digitized by ^ o o Q i e Digitized by i ^ o o Q i e LIFE OF LORD LTTTON CHAPTER I EXPERT ESTIMATES AND HEREDITARY INFLUENCES His place in an order of romance instituted by Sir Walter Scott— “ The very highest genius”—What Thackeray really thought of “ Sir Edwahd”— Dickens on What Will He Do With J. A. Froude and Sir M. E. Grant-Duff on Bulwer-Lytton— Tennyson’s acknowledgment— An interesting conversion— Lytton the product of his generation— Still more of his parentage and early training— “ Justice” Bulwer— General Bulwer— Richard Warburton Lytton— Elizabeth Barbara Lytton— Her marriage with General Bulwer— Edward Bulwer's birth. HE old-fashioned synonym for the novel— the romance — is specially applicable to the prose fiction, mastery in which forms the most enduring title to popularity not only of Edward Bulwer, the first Lord Lytton, but of those among his contemporaries who were, like him, the literary descendants of Sir Walter Scott. Following The Border Minstrelsy, The Lay of the Last , and The Lady of the Lake, Waverley appeared just soon enough to preserve the poetry of the Scotch Highlands, and to hand it on in­ violate to all time. The Red Indians were degenerating into an uninteresting condition, when they were saved by the glamour thrown over them by Fenimore Cooper. After the peace of 1815, the Navy might have lost some of its attractiveness for English boyhood but for the nautical stories of Captain Marryat; the sister service and its chief recruiting ground, Ireland, were parting with the charm of picturesqueness, when both began to be entertainingly idealized by Charles Lever. At the same B Digitized by Google 2 LIFE OF LORD LYTTON time Lever’s life-long friend and partial disciple, Anthony Trollope, was preparing to raise the clerical profession above the prose of everyday life by depicting it in a light-comedy vein, as a theme for facetious fancy or satirical caricature. The novelist whom Trollope took for his master, Thackeray, by the social interiors of Temple Chambers in Pendennis, added a charm to the vicissitudes and interests of a barrister’s career. But the chief effect of Pendennis on the intelligent and well-educated youth of the time was to open up a new and interesting profession, in the work of the writer for the daily paper and of the publisher’s hack. The subject of this monograph did not confine to any one class of subject or characters the medium through which he wished his readers to view human nature as he had found it, in all orders, in all countries, and at a great variety of his­ toric periods. From the first, indeed, he took the reading world, and the popular taste, as he found them. At his earliest start, however, more markedly than had been done by literary predecessors, he showed himself essentially the romancist. Before Bulwer’s career opened, Theodore Hook and Mrs. Gore had brought the silver-fork order of fiction into vogue j to the taste thus created Edward Bulwer appealed in Pelham. The personage, however, who gave his name to that work, was, in his day, a really original conception, with little family likeness to the conventional fops, fribbles, bullies, and bucks who make their exits and entrances through nine volumes of Sayings and , or who swagger in and out of Gilbert Gurney and Jack Brag. Study and reverie sublimated Bulwer’s dandy of the Regency into an Alcibiades, fitted by his natural gifts to advance philosophy and art, as well as to adorn clubs and drawing-rooms. Pelham had scarcely seen the light when its observant author noticed or foresaw the reaction towards realism that was to be at once gratified and stimulated by Charles Digitized by C ^ o o Q i e EXPERT ESTIMATES 3 Dickens and Harrison Ainsworth. Bulwer, therefore, abandoned for a time the metaphysics and erotics of his earliest published attempt at fiction, Falkland (1827), and found his themes in the seamy side of everyday existence. The closing parts of Pelham (1828) had, indeed, pre­ pared his readers for something of this sort. Yet the realism of Paul Clifford does not prevent its being as much of a romance as, in virtue of its Wertherism, was the juvenile Falkland .