THE REMAINS OF A
VANISHED GIANT
See Also: CHARLES DICKENS; SAUCES, PICKLES & CONCENTRATES Bovril
Edward
Bulwer-Lytton was born the youngest son of a dysfunctional landowning
family. His heiress mother doted upon
him as a means of finding consolation for the emotional aridness of her
marriage. The child proved to be
precocious.
At the
age of 24 Bulwer-Lytton married Rosina Wheeler.
His mother had disapproved of the prospective match. Following the wedding she terminated his
generous allowance. This had enabled him
to conduct his life in an aristocratic manner.
His residual income was derived from a modest legacy that his father had
bequeathed him. He and his bride were
able to rent a house in the Oxfordshire countryside. The youth had already acquired a modest
reputation for his literary compositions.
He endeavoured to discover whether his skills as a wordsmith were
sufficient to earn him a living.
Bulwer-Lytton s
first novel was Falkland (1827).
The book's sales proved to be modest.
His second was Pelham (1828).
It was a satire of dandyism. It
proved to be a major success and established his literary reputation. The work also had a lasting impact upon
attire. It helped to establish black tie
as the formal evening wear for men.
In the
years that followed, the fellow wrote novels in several different genres. The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) is his
best-known one. He extended historical
fiction as a form by basing it upon rigorous research. He flaunted his investigative labours by
means of inserting numerous footnotes.
In addition, he produced poetry, history, social commentary, short
stories, and plays.
An
element of Pelham had been the way in which the protagonist had matured
into accepting his social obligations.
Bulwer-Lytton appears to have felt that he was bound by the same
duty. The income that his sales
generated enabled him and his wife to return to London life in 1829. He began to lay the foundations for a
possible political career.
Literary
labouring, social demands, and political ambition led Bulwer-Lytton to neglect
his marriage. It was placed under
additional strain by his philandering.
In parallel, he and his mother began to re-establish a cordial
relationship with one another. In 1833-4
Bulwer-Lytton and his wife visited Italy in an attempt to rekindle their
union. He was captivated by what they
encountered, her reaction was the inverse.
The distance between them continued to grow. They separated legally in 1836. She spent the rest of his life trying to
persecute him whenever an opportunity to do so arose. She wrote a series of novels that lampooned
him and his output.
Dickens
and Bulwer-Lytton were friends who admired one another's work. The latter's novel A Strange Story
(1862) appeared initially as a part-work in the former's magazine All The
Year Round. Dickens, with his
advance access to the material, was able to comment upon it prior to its
publication. Bulwer-Lytton noted the
criticisms. His associate's counsel
prompted him to change the story's original d nouement.
The
influence was mutual. It was because of
Bulwer-Lytton's opinion that Dickens in turn altered the way in which Great
Expectations (1861) ends. He gave it
a happier tone than had been his intention originally. In some of his books he ploughed a furrow
that had already been cut by his associate.
The crime novel Oliver Twist (1838) had been preceded by Paul
Clifford (1830), while the French Revolution setting of A Tale of Two
Cities (1859) echoed that of Zanomi (1842).
A
by-product of the growth of the railways was that the demand for fiction
surged. Therefore, sales of
Bulwer-Lytton's backlist persisted year-in, year-out. Dickens was the only writer to outsell him
during their lifetimes. The former
proved to be able to work successfully in more forms and genres than the latter
was able to.
After
Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton was the most translated English novelist of the 19thC. Richard Wagner became famous through his
opera Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (1842). This was based upon the writer's historical
novel Rienzi, Last of The Roman Tribunes, which had been published seven
years earlier. Bulwer-Lytton's The
Coming Race (1871) was a dystopian satire that was set in a subterranean
world. The anonymously published tale
was effectively a work of science fiction.
It is reputed that many leading members of the Theosophical movement
took the volume to be factual. It is said
to have been one of the favourite books of a certain Adolf Hitler, who was also
besotted by Wagner's Rienzi.
Bulwer-Lytton
was first elected to the Commons as an independent radical in 1831. Over the following two decades his politics
drifted in a rightwards direction. This
process was abetted by his friendship with Benjamin Disraeli, who had
established himself as a novelist before entering Parliament. By the 1850s Bulwer-Lytton had become almost
deaf. However, he proved to be an
effective frontbench speaker for the Tories.
In 1858 the 14th Earl of Derby appointed him to serve as
Colonial Secretary. Ill-health caused
the M.P. to resign from the office the following year. In 1866 a peerage was conferred upon him.
One of
the principal reasons for Bulwer-Lytton's vast sales was that his output
reflected the era in which it was written.
The works possessed a large element of moralising. When the prevailing ethos changed, interest
in his books was to largely vanish. His
haughty aristocratic worldview was a boon while he was alive. However, with the passage of the years, it
proved to be a liability for the durability of his literary standing. During his lifetime his reputation rode the
crest of the wave of High Gothic.1
However, ultimately High Gothic was a fashion and like all fashions it
passed.
Bulwer-Lytton s
ornate prose when it was first published was held to be fine writing. However, with time, it came to be regarded as
being almost a parody of itself. His
novels do not form part of the canon of English literature. Yet, the very floridity of his language did
manage to render some of his phrases resilient.
The survivors include The pen is mightier than the sword and It was a
dark and stormy night . In The Coming
Race he coined the word vril to describe a physically empowering
draught. This has survived in the brand
name of the beef extract Bovril.
The
writer is commemorated by the Bulwer-Lytton Contest. This competition bestows a prize upon the
person who can craft the worst opening line that a novel could start with.
Location:
26 Hertford Street, W1J 7SA. The first
townhouse that Bulwer-Lytton rented. (blue, yellow)
Website:
www.bulwer-lytton.com (The Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest was founded in 1982 by Professor
Scott Rice of San Jose State University, California) www.knebworthhouse.com (The novelist's country home)
1. In 1843 he inherited Knebworth, his
mother's ancestral seat in Hertfordshire.
He Gothicised the building.
David
Backhouse 2024