18 January: Boreham on Bulwer Lytton

Stars and Spangles
Living amidst a raging cyclone of controversy and criticism, Bulwer Lytton, whose death we mark today has always represented a baffling and insoluble enigma.

It would be as easy to review a thunderstorm as to review his tempestuous life story. It is a realm of fierce passions and confused emotions. He is one of those writers whom it is impossible to classify. He followed no precedents, belonged to no school, and associated himself with no recognised set. Dickens confessed that Bulwer Lytton filled him with admiration and with wonder. Edgar Allan Poe insisted that, at many points Lytton stood unique, peerless, incomparable. In Gothic massiveness of thought, in calm confidence and in definiteness of purpose, Poe regarded Lytton as without a rival.

The life of Bulwer Lytton is one of great sins and of great repentances. He was as savage as a tiger and as stubborn as a mule. He would have his way, whatever it might cost him and whatever it might cost other people.

The supreme tragedy of his life was his marriage. It was obvious from the first that the union could only lead to wretchedness and disaster. His mother pleaded, reasoned, and threatened to no purpose. Bouncing from the room and slamming the door, Bulwer left her; vowed that he would never look into her face again; refused point-blank the generous allowance which, in spite of everything she wished to settle upon him, and, greeting poverty with a smile, married the Irish beauty whose utter unfitness to be his wife cast a dark and sinister shadow over his whole career.

The young people soon hated as passionately as they had seemed to love. They separated after nine years of ghastly misery, but, to the end of his life she pursued him with every species of obloquy, indignity, and persecution.

A Tale Of Two Women
Hounded down everywhere by his wife, his affections swung back to his mother, and it is to her that "Pelham," the first of his really great novels, is dedicated. In glowing terms he extols her excellences and expresses to her his devout gratitude. Posterity will turn a blind eye to a good deal that is revolting in the melancholy life story of Bulwer Lytton when it peruses that noble and touching tribute. It is an outburst of genuine piety that may be allowed to cover a multitude of sins. Not, by any means, that this represents his only admirable quality. In the entire pageant of English letters, there is no more valiant, no more courageous, no more indomitable spirit than he.

He was determined to succeed at something; he did not much mind what. If one thing failed, he would try another; but, come what might, he resolved that fame and fortune should eventually be his.

He tried the drama; it was only moderately successful. So he gave himself to poetry. Poetry, even good poetry, proved unremunerative; so he wrote a novel. As a novelist, he soon found himself earning an income of £3,000 a year. He therefore persevered with his fiction until he was in a position to take risks by seeking an ampler fame along other lines. Then he wrote essays, prepared speeches, and at the age of 26, entered Parliament.

Some years later he attained Cabinet rank, and, eventually, having been called to the peerage, figured conspicuously in the House of Lords. Very seldom has a life been, at one and the same time, so tragic a failure and so phenomenal a success. Lord Lytton sounded the darkest abyss to which a struggler can descend, and stood upon the most sunlit summits that it is possible to scale.

Triumph Of Industry And Genius
Happily the qualities in which he failed are the qualities that are soon forgotten; the qualities in which he achieved distinction are the qualities that will always be reviewed with pride. His vices are written in water; his virtues are graven in granite. His novels will endure as long as the language lasts.

In his "Victorian Age in Literature," G. K. Chesterton displays extraordinary skill in grouping the outstanding writers of that wealthy period. He rules a number of columns, gives each column a heading of his own, and then proceeds with the greatest ease imaginable, to enter the names of all the eminent poets, novelists, and historians of the Victorian era in one or other of his lists. But he frankly confesses that one name eludes him. He finds it impossible to classify Bulwer Lytton. "He was not really greater than others," Chesterton explains, "yet somehow he seems to take up more space. Indeed he cuts so striking a figure that you cannot imagine the Victorian Age without him." Most of his critics have regarded Bulwer Lytton as a nigger in the literary woodpile or a wraith gliding hither and thither amidst the drifting mists.

His adventurous spirit survived all the shocks to which it was subjected. At the age of 65 he conceived the idea that his continued success might be due to the glamour of his earlier reputation. He therefore published a novel anonymously and was as excited as a school boy when he read the eulogiums of the reviewers and heard from the publishers of its immense popularity.

It goes without saying that his books, even his best books, are saturated in his personality; the flaws that disfigured that personality are faithfully reflected in them. He is fond of show and colour, of stars and spangles, of pomp and parade. He is always marching at the heads of processions, with the bands playing their liveliest airs. He glories in rainbows, lightning flashes, fireworks, and patchwork quilts. His swagger and his dandyism strut across every page.

Adventurer as he undoubtedly was, he has left us the example of a man who, in defiance of such heavy handicaps as his domestic infelicity and his lifelong deafness, persevered in his labours until he had reached his coveted goal. Whether we regard him as poet, novelist, scholar, or statesman, his handsome figure will always adorn the horizon of the 19th century as that of one of the most striking personages of a most remarkable period.

F W Boreham

Image: Bulwer Lytton