Rosina Bulwer Lytton

“ What of the domestic victims in whose name no publicity is invoked? We hear of jealous and bitter tongued women, of outcast wives, who go down to bury their humiliation in the shade of equivocal watering-places, of ladies whose "fashionable" manners shock the propriety of German spas; but when these scandals are the popular table-talk, in the name of justice let the woman be considered. The lord and the lady, the baronet and his wife, the parents of children, do they stand in the eyes of the world upon a level? ”

“ I cannot, as I told him; for with me contempt is a moral bourne from which no affection ever returns. But I am not angry with him. Oh no, I wish I was; for that would pass. No, I am not angry with him; I have left him all I have in the world--not money, for I have none; but all my pictures, books, bronzes, rare carvings, and rarer historical enamel portraits, and miniatures, including a most exquisite one of la belle Ferronière, that belonged to FRANCOIS PREMIER, and a fine miniature of Madame DE MONTESPAN, set in a diamond bracelet, which had belonged to her son, the Duc DE MAINE! ”

“ I exclaimed, "so the sacrilegious monster would even desecrate my poor mother's and father's graves! for what? to bury his life-long victim alive in a Madhouse. It is true, but worse, far worse than that, this unscrupulous demon would, without one touch of remorse, brand with a triple hereditary taint of insanity his only son! at least his only legitimate son, who will have the quite sufficient misfortune of inheriting the name of so infamous a father." "Yes--'pon my soul it's too bad," said the Attorney, "but I'm happy to tell you that I have now got you the £500 a-year for your life." ”

“ Towards the close of the proceedings of the Hertfordshire election, just after Sir Edward had concluded his address with a fervent tribute of admiration to the womany beauty exhibited in the long line of open carriages, chaises and vans, drawn up in front of the hustings, there was an unwonted stir in the crowd, which parted to admit of the passage of a hired brougham from one of the town inns. Two ladies alighted--one an exceedingly handsome woman of about 45 years of age, with fresh complexion and eyes of dazzling beauty. ”

“ The more enquirires we make into the matter the more convinced we are that a great wrong was attempted, and has now been glossed over. That wrong was not done to Lady Lytton alone, but to all society. Her wrath may have been appeased, her personal wounds may have received plaster, and her friends may have been flattered and cajoled into silence, but is the public satisfied, or the wrong to society been atoned for, while the case of Lady Lytton remains uninvestigated, and the conduct of her husband escapes official and public censure? ”

“ But honesty is always not only braver, but shrewder, than rascality, not only because it has nothing to fear, but because all resources are within its grasp, and as his Victim was determined not to yield to this disgusting, though too ridiculous, piece of petty tyranny--a very clever lawyer of hers, and one as honest as he is clever, soon brought that contemptible wretch Sir Janus and his rascally attorney to his senses by writing them word what he would do if this disgraceful swindle which he calls an allowance was not paid instantly. ”

“ What then is to be done, since oblivion is the only seed from which forgiveness can spring, but one thing: pray to God, to give us that forgetfulness which will enable us, not merely in words, but in truth and in spirit, to forgive those who have chronically and irreparably injured us? And oh! what a blessed anchor is it, in life's most worst amongst us, to remember that even that great omnipotent God of Mercy was once also A Man of Sorrow! ”

“ We believe that the man who would immure a perfectly sane Wife in the prisons of a Madhouse would not hesitate at her murder, if he thought himself safe. And it was in that horrible crime that Lord Lytton was detected, and fortunately was foiled. How well we recollect the universal horror which the news of the deed occasioned. The Daily Telegraph was then on its last legs. It had hardly a circulation of 3,000 a day. As each new morning dawned we expected to hear of its death. In a happy moment for the Levy-Lawson-Levis, Lady Lytton was betrayed, seized, and immured. ”

“ The silliest thing that ever tyrant did is to leave his slave nothing to lose, to hope, or to fear, for then comes the reaction: the pigmy springs into an armed giant, and the trampled worm is, for the sake of others, willing to become a martyr to a cause of which they have been so long a Victim; and of this overreaching folly the clever Sir Janus Allpuff had been guilty. ”

“ It is with pleasure we record that this ignominious family war has been terminated, and the accusation of insanity has been abandoned; that Lady Lytton is confessedly qualified to treat with her husband upon terms of equality. Justice may boast of triumph, for though it would have been more satisfactory to have forced the entire transaction before an authentic tribunal, it may suffice to know that popular opinion has driven Lord Derby's choice and brilliant colleague into a virtual surrender. ”

“ Here, as the papers said, his jaw fell like that of a man suddenly struck with paralysis, and he made a rush from the hustings, valiantly trampling down the flower-beds of the house of Mr. STEPHEN AUSTIN, the editor of The Hertford Mercury, which was close at hand, by jumping over the pailings, and heroically locking himself into the dining-room. The moment the cowardly brute took to flight, the mob began to hiss and yell and vociferate, "Ah! he's guilty, he's guilty; he dare not face her. ”

“ There are not many persons in existence, mad or not mad, who on discovery of so horrifying a nature would not have become wild with excitement, and fallen into a state closely bordering upon insanity; but Lady Lytton sustained throughout these most trying and frightful circumstances a calm and dignified demeanour. She was indeed the calmest of the two--herself and her Taunton friend--for the affrighted Miss Ryves had rushed into the street. She was ushered into another room, on entering whcih she observed a figure, like that of Sir Edward's, hastily retreating by a door at the other end. ”

“ L_____ gone, without a word, without a line, my short dream all shattered and shimmering about me! and a cold, black, unfathomable abyss before me,--never shall I forget the first petrifying yet bewildering agony--the severing, as it were, of body and soul--that I felt, and which I am certain must be what one feels when the real severing of them by death comes. ”

“ I never eat strawberries any more than trout; and in the absence of Wenham-lake ice, my reception of her must have been most refreshing, or rather refrigerating. Nothing daunted, this intensely vulgar piece of effrontery (who, I understand, is a natural daughter of that horrid old scamp, Lord LOWTHER: hence her high connexions) spread her furbelows, and, uninvited, seated herself; and seeing the shoeless undertaker creeping upstaris, she had the crowning imperticence to call him in, and introduce him to me, I visibly petrifying the while, and not replying to a single thing he said ”

“ But his terror of his vile father was so great, and now added to it, that of that "beastly disgusting old Spy," as he called her, that even in the heart of the Pyrenees, if he did unburden himself in the least to me, it was in a whipser; and he would turn pale, and look furtively around, as if the very birds of the air would carry his words back to Park-lane, or Downing-street. Poor young martyr! poor young martyr! ”

“ The following is a true Woman's Record of sad suffering. Her wrongs have driven her half mad, and we do not wonder that it should be so, for she has sought redress in vain from almost every source. Her trampler and her tyrant was always victorious in every conflict. The Queen, as she most usually does with all criminals, took him by the hand; petted, favoured and promoted him; while his Victim was driven from Society into poverty and exile, and was for years the unceasing object of abuse, slander and libel. ”

“ For seldom does any flagrant instance of baseness or ingratitude befall us, but the reaction of the blow strikes at other hearts that we ignored till then, and sets the unsealed fountains of their sympathy and sense of outraged justice gushing towards us in a thousand acts of kindness and devotion. ”

“ No wonder then that I should have no admiration for, but a positive contempt for, mere intellect; as intellect without a moral fulcrum is, of all the Devil's levers, the one that raises the most fearful preponderances of evil, and causes them to float buoyantly and triumphantly over the world. ”

“ All my Lord Lytton's infamy, and my fame as a patient Grizzle was pretty well established--and even acknowledge by the wretch who benefitted by it--for one day at a dinner at our house, when some vituperative humbug was going on about poor Lord Byron, and someone said, "No woman could have lived with such a man," my Lord Lytton pointed to me, and said, "There is one that could, for she has lived with me." ”

“ Though as FALSTAFF was not only witty himself, but the cause of wit in others; so Sir EDWARD is not only false, treacherous, and infamous, but is the cause of falsehood, treachery, and infamy in others. Yet, thank GOD,neither by bribery nor intimidation, has he ever, or will he ever, be able to mould me to his purpose; and hence his implacable persecution, and his poisoned treacherous arrows that always fly in darkness, and from an ambush. ”

“ It may be that at an earlier period, as in Lady Lytton's case, she has been his benefactor, his patron, and that through long years she has been more to him than he to her; but all this is forgotten when the opportunity for legal separation arrives, when children are to be parted by an attorney's document from their mother; when malicious friends are to condole with the injured husband, or when obtrusive advisers, who have been unfortunate themselves, rejoice to drag down to their own level the individual who has previously galled them by the superiourity of his personal reputiation. ”

“ What! are they trying to make me out an idiot as well as a maniac, that they, or you, should suppose after such an irreparable culminating outrage as he has inflicted upon me by this incarceration, I will let that scoundrel Sir EDWARD off on the beggarly pittance I would have accepted before it? and oblige him by vegetating upon it in the exile of some living tombe, for the rest of the life he has so poisoned at every source. ”

“ But how could this country be anything but the Land of Cant and Crime it is, when we see the irredeemably infamous men who occupy the highest places in literature and politics in England at the present day? ”

“ Often and often, when I saw the poor boy in these dreadful paroxysms of mingled rage and despair, I implored him on my knees to confide in me, and I would help him, if it were even against myself, for I could bear anything and everything, but to feel and find out that my own child, for whom I had sacrificed everything, and in whom I had garnered up all my hopes, was deceiving me! ”

“ For what are perjuries to one who has lived upon them as MITHRIDATES did on poisons, till they have become his daily food? Neither did I send him any original documents, beyond my own written statement of facts. So well am I aware, with regard to the thimble-rig of Politics, of what my fate would be, no matter who were the ins or the outs. I told Lord LYNDHURST not to take the trouble of writing, but merely make his secretary acknowledge the receipt of my papers till he returned them with his opinion. But two months passed and I had no acknowledgment of even the receipt of the packet. ”

“ While then forgiveness of injuries depends so entirely upon the oblivion of them, there are some injuries so chronic, concrete, and ubiquitous, that they are incorporated with not only every source but with every channel of our existence, and therefore we must forget it, before we can forgive them. ”

“ When persons are under a higher influence than any which belongs to mere humanity, they may adopt a higher line of conduct, and submit patiently to whatever befalls them, under a conviction that it is good for them to suffer; but Lady Lytton has never made any pretensions or professions that would justify the higher standard to her case, and therefore should not be too hardly judged. ”

“ If manliness, if chivalry, if the noble principles of honour dominate more supremely than they do in the circles of our English life, would these published separations so continually feed the mass of scandal to the detriment of names once invoked in confidence and affection at the altar? ”

“ For had not my poor, generous Mother accepted me as a hostage, you know the QUEEN'S dominions would not have bribed her to forego the public redress she was so more than entitled to. But this would have been honest and true; and how could Sir E_____'s son, pupil, and tool, be either? And, alas! the Bible is right--as the twig is bent, so will it grow. Poor, poor, unfortunate young martyr! as his Fiend Father has crushed my life from out its setting, so has he crushed that young and once bright soul from out its orbit, and sent it erring through the tenebrous nebula of his own Avernus. ”

“ I was then shown upstairs, after she left me, into a large bedroom, with the two keepers, and the windows duly nailed down, and only opening about three inches from the top. After kneeling down and praying to GOD in a perfect agony, I bathed my face in cold water, and the little keeper was very kind and feeling, and said to me, "Oh pray, my lady, try and keep calm under this severe trial; it does seem to me to be something very monstrous, and depend upon it, GOD will never let it go on." ”

“ No, no, my own angel darling Mother, then you will bind me to you for ever; he cannot, he dare not, after woing his salvation to your generosity--prevent you having me to protect, and be devoted to you all my life, and if anything goes wrong in future, you will always have me to appeal to, and protect you. ”

“ Surely not the iniquitous laws that allowed a woman to be so treated, nor the vicious and immoral society which tolerates such conduct; and least of all the opinion of a certain obsequious clique of the press, which panders to, puffs, and protects such infamy. ”

“ If her ladyship's mind is in such a state that she is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum, and an asylum is the only suitable place for her, no harm can come from the publicity we give to her case; if not, then much good must inevitably arise from its publicity, to her chiefly and in an immeasureable degree, but also to society in no unimportant measure. The whole question is, of course--Is Lady Lytton actually insane? ”

“ Four hundred a-year being unequal to the requirements of a lady who had moved in the higher classes of society--leaving luxuries out of the question--Lady Lytton became involved in debt, which of late has claimed about one half of her income, and of course every year saw her sink deeper and deeper into the mire. ”

“ The dear Conservatives having fallen upon evil days, via their Colonial Secretary, was of course nuts to the dear Whigs, though as far as any amount of dirty work, back-stair climbing, and athletic, indefatigable, political, and every other sort of jobbery, the two parties are in reality "one concern;" and having the same "bonnets," during their alternate ins and outs, always know the exact thimble the pea lurks under. ”

“ And to tell you the truth, I have no compassion for that nice sense of honour which only shrinks from the public odium of exposure, but defies GOD, by never recoiling before the commission of any amount of evil doing that money can conceal, or hypocrisy varnish. ”

“ But it's the expression of his face that is so horrible; the lines in it make it look like an intersected map of Vice, bounded on one side by the Black Sea of Hypocrisy, on the other by the Falsehood Mountains. ”