EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

(1803-1873)

BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE

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