Inconvenient People (66 page)

Page 208
The Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest was launched in 1982 by Professor Scott Rice of the San José State University in California, to find the worst opening line of a novel. Personally, I can see little wrong (except for the parenthesis) with the start of
Paul Clifford
, the tale of a highwayman, published in 1830, which begins: ‘It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.’ The novel goes downhill from there, though. • Bulwer-Lytton was christened Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, his mother being a Lytton, his father a Bulwer. Upon his mother’s death and his inheritance of Knebworth in 1843, he rearranged his name as Bulwer-Lytton (the hyphen is often not used, especially by his wife). •
Pages 208–9
‘“Edward!” . . . galvanised rag bag’: T. H. S. Escott,
Edward Bulwer, First Baron Lytton of Knebworth, A Social, Personal and Political Monograph
, 1910, pp. 65–7. •
Page 209
‘White shoulders . . . safe and secure distance’: Samuel Carter Hall,
Retrospect of a Long Life
, 2 vols, 1883, vol. 1, p. 264. • ‘Hate
you
? . . . turn into hatred?’ and ‘It is a dim, heavy, desolate evening . . . the church just beyond’: quoted in Victor Alexander Lytton,
Life of Edward Bulwer, First Lord Lytton
, 2 vols, 1913, vol. 1, pp. 168 and 181. • ‘I married my wife against all my interests . . . bound to her’: ibid., vol. 1,
p. 184. •
Page 210
‘If you marry this woman . . . most miserable man in England’: Escott,
Edward Bulwer
, p. 135. •
Page 213
‘Why didn’t you answer me? . . . like a tiger’: Louisa Devey,
Life of Rosina, Lady Lytton, with Extracts from her MS Autobiography
, 1887, pp. 83–4. • ‘You have been to me perfection as a wife . . . leave you all the rest’:
A Blighted Life: A True Story
by Rosina Bulwer Lytton, 1880, p. 33. •
Page 214
‘Other little incidents . . . legally a right to do so’: quoted in Leslie Mitchell,
Bulwer Lytton: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Man of Letters
, 2003, p. 38. • ‘Marriage is Saturnalia for men, and tyranny for women’:
Very Successful!!
, 3 vols, 1856, vol. 3, p. 36. Available online, as are a number of Lady Lytton’s novels. •
Page 215
‘Infernal machine of occult power’:
A Blighted Life
, p. 4. • ‘Consecrated palladium of puffery and party’:
The Budget of the Bubble Family
by Rosina Bulwer Lytton, 1840, preface. Available online. The ‘Bubbles’ are the Bulwers. •
Pages 216–7
‘The next day, Dr Roberts . . . the pea lurks under’:
A Blighted Life
, p. 43. •
Page 217
‘Oh! when you find in her who bears your name/ . . . Being too stingy to pay, his fare o’er the Styx’: both poems quoted in Marie Mulvey-Roberts’s introduction to the 1995 reprint of Lady Lytton’s
Shells from the Sands of Time
, 1876, p. xii. •
Page 218
‘It will be a rather tragical fate . . . pinchbeck’: letter from Thomas Carlyle to his brother John, dated 1 August 1840. The Carlyles’ letters are available to read online at
http://carlyleletters.dukejournals.org
/ •
Page 219
‘The actual cause of her death . . . her murderer’: Devey,
Life of Rosina
, p. 250. In fact, Marshall Hall had been a brilliant pioneer in the discovery of the structure of the spinal cord and the working of human reflexes. But he was widely disliked in England for what was perceived as haughtiness and arrogance. •
Page 220
‘To be forwarded . . . Hotel St James’s London’:
The Collected Letters of Rosina Bulwer Lytton
, 3 vols, ed. Marie Mulvey-Roberts, 2008, vol. 3, p. 202. • ‘Opening a drawer full of dead wasps . . . disgust’: Victor Alexander Lytton,
Life
, vol. 2, p. 267. • ‘To that white-livered little reptile Robert Lytton’: ibid., vol. 2, p. 275. • ‘Dunghill divinity’:
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, p. 136. ‘Pothouse Plutarch’: ibid., vol. 2, p. 256. ‘That patent humbug’:
A Blighted Life
, p. 4. ‘After twenty-five years’ bitter experience . . . sure to follow’: ibid., p. 4. •
Page 221
‘One has only to look . . . their fiendish lineaments’: ibid., p. 9. • ‘Vulgar parvenu extravagance . . . penny-a-liner’:
Collected Letters
, vol. 1, p. 285. ‘Sir, As it is my intention . . . sensual, selfish Pigheaded Queen’: ibid., vol. 1, p. 285. • Inspector Field ‘used in all sorts of delicate matters, and is quite devoted to me’: the Pilgrim edition of
The Letters of Charles Dickens
, ed. Madeline House et al., Oxford, 12 vols, vol. 6 (1850–1852), p. 380. •
Page 222
‘For it would have been highly indiscreet . . . even of Landor’: R. H. Super,
Walter Savage Landor: A Biography
, 1957, pp. 307–8. •
Page 223
‘It may be both wise and merciful to place her under personal restraint’: Mitchell,
Bulwer Lytton
p. 46. • ‘Her general behaviour . . . her face with paint’: letter from
Trenchard dated 19 November 1853, Letter Catalogue, Knebworth House Archives. •
Page 223
‘The month of June 1858 . . . publicly expose the ruffian’:
A Blighted Life
, p. 26. •
Page 224
‘A dirty little mean town . . . cold shivers’: ibid., p. 27. • ‘A few open carriages full of enthusiasm and crinoline’: leader column,
Daily Telegraph
, 10 June 1858. •
Page 225
The three competing versions of the hustings furore are found in Escott,
Edward Bulwer
, p. 297; Jane Carlyle’s letter to Thomas Carlyle, dated 12 July 1858; Lord Lytton’s account, Knebworth House Archives, Box 42/75. • ‘The moment the cowardly brute . . . when I went’:
A Blighted Life
, pp. 29–30. Her precise words at the hustings and their reception cannot be verified by any other source. •
Page 227
‘Well, I don’t know . . . at Hertford on Wednesday’: Lady Lytton’s account of the interview at the hotel in Taunton,
A Blighted Life
, pp. 30–32. •
Page 228
‘Impudent-looking, snub-nosed man . . . determined manner’: ibid
.,
p. 31. The account of her seizure and incarceration are found on pp. 32–55 of
A Blighted Life
. •
Page 230
Wyke House, off Syon Lane, had Robert Adam additions and alterations, undertaken in the late 1770s. It became Dr Jamieson’s Boarding School for Young Gentlemen from 1826, and then from 1846 a lunatic asylum. Until 1970, it remained in use as a mental health rehabilitation unit. Despite Grade II listing, a vigorous local campaign to save it and a public inquiry, Wyke House was demolished in the 1970s. • ‘Mr Hill, I sent for you . . . my children’: Lady Lytton’s account of her reception at Wyke House,
A Blighted Life
, pp. 35–6. Dr Hill’s memories of her first day at Wyke House are found in his 1858 journal, Knebworth House Archives, Box 42/94, entry dated 23 June. •
Page 231
‘In this highly moral country (very!) . . . elles appellent un chat un chat’: document at Knebworth House Archives in Box 42/96. • Inverness Lodge: although Lady Lytton would later refer to her place of incarceration as having had a 50-foot banqueting room with a groined roof – which Wyke House, and not Inverness Lodge, is more likely to have had – it is probable that she spent the bulk of her time at the Hill family home, Inverness Lodge, which is today a social club. A number of locals remember being told creepy tales about the building by older relatives – of a hidden attic chamber, secret tunnels leading to Kew and a cat disappearing in the cavity walls (
www.bhsproject.co.uk/prop_invernesslodge.shtml
). It retains a finely decorated ceiling, which, according to one local legend, was raised so that the ‘Swedish Nightingale’ Jenny Lind (1820–87) would have better acoustics when she came to sing there. It is possible this is the ceiling that Lady Lytton was referring to in
A Blighted Life
, p. 42. •
Page 232
‘Feelings are quite perverted . . . extremely dangerous’: The Diary of Robert Gardiner Hill, 1 January to 29 April 1859, entry 11 March, Knebworth House Archives. • Drunk every day of his life’: Hill’s journal, entry 26 June 1858. •
Pages 232–3
‘A man had a right . . . 
if she was pretty enough’: ibid., entry 5 July 1858. •
Page 233
Procter ‘by far the best and most gentlemanlike’ of the Commissioners; and ‘Those letters, I confess, startled me’:
A Blighted Life
, p. 40. • Women dressed as men at Knebworth: Hill’s journal, entry 2 July 1858. • ‘I must really say . . . promissory notes’:
A Blighted Life
, p. 31. •
Page 234
Dr John Conolly ‘would sell his mother for money’: ibid., p. 39. • ‘Examine as carefully and pathologically . . . evidence of diseased intellect’: Lytton’s letter to Hood, undated but from the summer of 1858, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, DE/K C28/22. •
Page 235
‘If Liberty generates such trifles . . . among the insane?’: Robert Gardiner Hill,
Lunacy: Its Past and Its Present
, 1870, p. 84, quoted in ‘Non-Restraint and Robert Gardiner Hill’ by Justin A. Frank,
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
, vol. 41, no. 2, 1967. • ‘I feel my health is giving way’: letter dated 7 July 1858,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, p. 101. ‘From one of those terrible dreams . . . walls and house-tops.’ ibid., p. 106. •
Page 236
Locked up in Buckingham House or the Palais des Tuileries:
A Blighted Life
, p. 49. • Account of the defence committee meeting in Taunton:
Somerset County Gazette and West of England Advertiser
, 13 July 1858. • ‘Her undoubted peculiarities of temper . . . the sole invention of such a genius’: ibid., 9 July 1858. •
Page 240
‘The right honourable novelist . . . crinoline’:
Daily Telegraph
, 10 June 1858. • ‘The case looked very bad against Bulwer’: Jane Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle, 12 July 1858; ‘No more mad than I am . . . that abstruse matter’: Thomas to Jane, 13 July 1858. •
Page 241
‘Insolent, rude and feckless . . . quite hors de combat’: Mitchell, pp. 208 and 209. • ‘If we give up these places . . . primitive barbarianism’: Escott,
Edward Bulwer
, p. 317. • ‘Began tapping that bay window of a paunch of his’:
A Blighted Life
, p. 50. ‘The dulcifluous Dr Forbes Winslow’: ibid., p. 54. •
Page 242
‘I think it but an act of justice . . . unjustifiable’: all three letters appeared in the
Daily Telegraph
, 19 July 1858, and were syndicated to other national newspapers. • Winslow’s worries were expressed in a speech reported in the
York Herald
, 17 August 1858. •
Page 244
‘. . . suitable abode . . . sold by Sir Edward BL’: the Burkitt row, and subsequent dispute about Lady Lytton’s incarceration, is reported in Hill’s diary, 11–31 March 1859. • ‘I have not at present . . . determined not to be defeated’: letter from Hood to Lytton, 19 March 1859, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, DE/K O25/199. •
Page 245
‘Most violent and excited way . . . to know this’: copied into Hill’s diary, on 18 March 1859. • ‘I am quite convinced . . . care and treatment’: letter, Knebworth House Archives in Box 42/79. • ‘Pray, pray be careful . . . to get medical men to certify’: Mitchell,
Bulwer Lytton
, p. 63. • ‘More bad than mad’: Victor Alexander Lytton,
Life
, vol. 2, p. 326n. • ‘. . . in cases where there is method . . . the opportunity’: undated letter (‘Saturday afternoon’) from John Forster to Lytton; and ‘until success is absolutely obtained’, dated 11 October 1857, both Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, DE/K C23/72. •
Page 247
‘I was not your
“adviser”’: Mitchell,
Bulwer Lytton
, p. 3. • ‘It would be a momentous scandal . . . views I held and suppressed’: Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, DE/K C23/72. • ‘It seems impossible . . . so formally’: Pilgrim edition of
The Letters of Charles Dickens
, vol. 8 (1856–1858), p. 583. •
Pages 247–8
I read the allegation that Dickens wrote to Dr Harrington Tuke about having his wife committed in ‘The Tukes’ Asylum in Chiswick’ by Pamela Bater in
Brentford and Chiswick Local History Journal
, no. 14, 2005, pp. 7–10. Harrington’s great-grandson, David Tuke, told me in a phone conversation of 2 September 2011 that his late second-cousin, Yolande, had read the relevant correspondence and told him of its contents. •
Not So Bad As We Seem
had also ‘starred’ Robert Bell, co-proprietor of nearby Manor House Asylum, and Rosina claimed that Bell had been trying to get her declared mad for years. •
Page 248
‘Her mind has, at times, been certainly confused’: Pilgrim Dickens
Letters
, vol. 8, p. 559. • ‘As if the very birds in the air . . . Downing Street’:
A Blighted Life
, pp. 56–7. • ‘Smuggled abroad in such electric telegraph haste’: letter from Lady Lytton to Lord Shaftesbury, 25 October 1858, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, DE/K C29/5. •
Page 249
‘The great failure of your book . . . my own husband’: Escott,
Edward Bulwer
, pp. 331–2. • ‘Great trash’: Kenneth Robinson,
Wilkie Collins, A Biography
, 1951, p. 137. • ‘Had whispered . . . inconvenient wife’: letter quoted in ‘Rosina Bulwer-Lytton and the Rage of the Unheard’ by Virginia Blain,
Huntington Library Quarterly
, Summer 1990. •