Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/287

 n s. i. APR. 2, mo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

279

Edward Biilwer, first Baron Lyiton of Knebivorth.

By T. H. 8. Escott. (Kentledge & Sons.) THIS volume is very welcome, and wide in range, though not long in exposition, for here we have Lytton the man of letters and Lytton the poli- tician. Mr. Escott has been able to give us his own special knowledge. Lytton was known to him from childhood, and in after years he paid repeated visits to Knebworth ; while to Lord Carnarvon, who was Under-Secretary for the Colonies when Lytton was Secretary of State, Mr. Escott owes the hitherto unpublished narrative of Lytton's Parliamentary and official career. Lord Carnarvon knew more of Lytton's life than did most of his friends, as he " was among the very few who stayed with his chief for days and even weeks together when there were no other guests."

Mr. Escott opens his preface \fith the remark that " no writer on the subject of this book can ignore the original and till then unprinted writings of Bulwer Lytton contained in the two volumes of memoirs published by his son," to whom Lytton left a letter in which he expressed a hope "that the story of his life, which in one of his manuscripts he had left half told, might perhaps be completed by his son." " This letter," the son states in the preface, " came to me from the grave, with the last and tenderest expressions of an affection which had been the mainstay of my life. . . .The sanctity of a parental injunction was not needed to ensure my devotion to the known wishes of my dearest friend and bene- factor." Words such as these reveal much. To many of the outside world who did not know him well Lytton appeared to be self-conscious and artificial ; but to those who knew him inti- mately he was the courteous gentleman, kindly and sincere.

Of Lytton's complex character we have ample evidence both in the memoirs by his son and in the volume now before us. Owing to an early sorrow, the traces of which were never wholly effaced, he was subject to fits of great dejection, and these melancholy moods were followed by impatient cravings for excitement. From child- hood he was extremely particular about his dress, and fun was frequently made of his " lovely curls." To make the best of his personal appear- ance seemed to him no less an obligation of self- respect than to make the best of his intellectual powers, moral capacities, and physical faculties. It is to be regretted that his education was desul- tory. Mr. Escott rightly refers to it as "educa- tional adventures." His mother took him to Eton with a view to his entering the school, but h<- went no further than Dr. Keate's study, although he wrote so good a copy of sapphics on tin- subject set him as to win unaccustomed praise from the Doctor. The boy, however, persuaded Ins mother that public-school life was not for him. The truth was that the boy of fifteen was already in his own opinion " a finished gentleman."

While Lytton was at Cambridge, Mr. Escott tells us, " sketches of academic characters had appeared from his pen. These were in the nature of undesigned rehearsals for the course of literary

production beginning in 1827." On leaving Cambridge he re-established himself in London, where he seemed to develope a craze for taking houses, among them being two in Hertford Street. Owing to the renumbering of these houses, mistakes have hitherto been made as to those actually occupied by Lytton. Mr. W. A. Frost determined to settle the question ; he made diligent search, and on the 26th of February he showed in ' N. & Q.' that Lytton lived three times in the street twice at the present 36, and once at the present 35A.

On Lytton's first coming to London he brought with him the MSS. of ' Falkland ' and ' Pelham,' both of which he had nearly completed during two years of studious seclusion at Versailles. The former he afterwards suppressed. Many reviewers regarded the book as " unentertaining, sickeningly monotonous and dull " ; but Lady Blessington, who was among the British residents in Paris during the Revolution of 1830, relates : " When balls continually struck against the walls of my dwelling, I forgot all danger while reading 'Falkland.' "

Mr. Escott quotes many other estimates of Bul- wer 's writings. Thackeray told Hannay : " So far from decrying him [Bulwer], I have the highest admiration for him. I would gladly give half of my reputation to be able to put the other half on a basis of scholarship and literature equal to Lytton's." Carlyle " admitted that only less praise belonged to Bulwer than to himself for feeding the popular appetite with the German culture which first came into demand during the earlier half of the Victorian age " ; and his disciple Froude said to his pupils at Oxford : " Go back to Bulwer Lytton. He may have his literary weaknesses ; still, to read him would be to our young barbarians a kind of liberal education."

One of the secrets of Bulwer's success was the pains he took to read up any subject which he was about to treat. We have often met him purchasing books on many out-of-the-way sub- jects, and have seen him just after breakfast a time liked by him for reading carefully studying his purchases, and making notes, while enjoying his hookah, and attired in a dressing-gown of rich maroon velvet. His bocks take such a wide range that mistakes were at times inevitable, and in ' N. & Q.' for 29 Dec., 1855 (1 S. xii. 507), Mr. J. Sansom called attention to an anachronism in ' Harold ' : "At Book V. ch. vii. the author makes Harold to say : ' In my youth I turned in despair or disgust from the subtleties of the school- men, which split upon hairs the brains of Lom- bard and Frank,' &c." "I should think," adds Mr. Sansom severely, " Sir E. B. Lytton's brains must have been split upon something, when he described Harold as having read the schoolmen a full century before Peter Lombard's ' Sen- tences ' were written, and two centuries before Thomas Aquinas flourished." Mr. Escott tells us that Lytton heard from Napoleon III. that ' Harold ' was the book read by him the night before surrendering himself to Prussia, and that it lay on his bedside table for some days following the catastrophe of Sedan.

Of the acceptance by Colburn of ' The New Timon ' Mr. Escott gives an account. Contrary to the advice of his " Readers," Colburn had pub- lished ' Pelham.' This taught Bulwer the value of his opinion ; so he invited him to stay at Kneb-