Rosina Bulwer Lytton

“ 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. ”

“ Let cynicism utter what it will, let irony do its worst, let men affect to despise the heart-born passions, the chief happiness of every human being is at home; neither Church nor State, nor military glory, nor political conflict, can destroy the supremacy of that instinct which makes joy itself a virtue--the pride of an honest man in his family. ”

“ I expected a fine gentleman, perhaps a fop, like his own Devereux, of like Bolingbroke, and I saw a dirty, stupid, fish-eyed crapulous catamite--if ever human creature bore the impress of that feaful monomania. ”

“ In the daily business of life it is difficult and painful to sever long-contracted bonds; even partners in commerce bear and forbear beyond the ordinary rules of patience, rather than break from old connections, but how immeasurably more binding is the compact between man and wife, how bitter is the gracelessness of the one who rends that sacred tie, and issuing from the cloud to the enjoyment of all the world has to give, dismisses the other to sneers, misrepresentations, and ignominy. ”

“ It is a question of deep importance whether it is not utterly wrong, and most dangerous to the liberties of individuals, that upon the word of two medical men persons may be taken to a madhouse, when if not already insane, they are undoubtedly paced in circumstances in every way calculated, by their horrible and frightful character, to destroy reason and produce insanity. ”

“ 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? ”

“ But when the forsaken woman glides in the shadow of suspicion, who cares to remind us that a cluster of children call her mother; that twenty years of married life should have made her sacred; that even her failings should have been holy to her husband ”

“ IT matters little whether Sir Bulwer Lytton, under Cabinet influence, has found it necessary to save the reputation of the government as well as his own, but it is not to be forgotten that he employed attorneys, nurses and policement to capture his wife; that she was forcibly consigned to a lunatic asylum--that medical certificates were obtained to prove her insanity, and that now, an explosion of national feeling have taken place, she is to be released and allowed to live in personal independence. ”

“ To send to a madhouse a person suspected of lunacy, and afterwards institute an enquiry whether he is mad or not, is a mode of procedure very unworthy of a civilised nation, and which the people of this country ought no longer to endure. Lady Lytton's case will no doubt have the effect of drawing general attention to this great anomaly, and probably it will tend in a great measure to the accomplishment of the desired change. ”

“ We hear of a man who has been compelled to part with the mother of his children, and we know that while she goes into retirement with her happiness blasted in he declining years, his car of triumph rolls on, he is still the ornament and delight of society. ”

“ While selfishness is supreme, while masculine strength prevails over helpless right, while, in fact, the sins of men are popularly condoned, and the mortal distempers of women ranked as mortal sins, the scandal of separation will always attach to a wife as a perpetual and malignat curse, re-echoed by every class of society ”

“ It is right that suspicion against them should be rendered impossible, that no reasonable person should have ground for the supposition that they have committed or connived at an atrocity at which the body shudders and the mind is appalled. ”

“ Without casting a general slur upon a body of men, many of whom are highly respectable, we may state it as the conviction of those who stand above all prejudice in their profession, that the lunatic asylums of this country are frequently applied to the same uses as the Bastille, where the Man in the Iron Mask was immured for life and buried in secrecy because his pretensions were considered dangerous by claimants to estates and titles, or perpetrators of unsearched crimes. ”

“ It will argue a marked development of the national morality when, while these transactions are under notice, some consideration is bestowed upon the possibility that when a woman has been expelled from her husband, cut off from her family interests, buried in social tomb, and stigmatised by her husband's reputation, the real wrong may have been endured by herself, and the cruelty practised by another. ”

“ On every account a power of such awful magnitude should be destroyed, and confinement in a lunatic asylum be possible only after a public enquiry, similar to that which must preced the committal of a person accuesed of felony to the common gaol. Society in general demands this; helpless women require it ”

“ It is but too true that domestic errors are wantonly magnified into crimes, that feminine sympathies appeal sometimes to an unnatural code, but what is the position of a woman in a civilised country compared with that of a man? ”

“ The Lunacy Commissioners, we are reminded, may interfere with its machinery of visitors' inspections and reports, but what is the result? Men might be named who open establishments of this character, accumulate fortunes, and live in affluence, and are pointed at by their neighbours as the creatures of conspiracy. ”

“ Individually she may benefit by the compromise, though it may be that a salutary exposure has been stifled. On one point the public are agreed; the power at present exercised under the lunacy law of England is dangerous to social liberty. Anyone, by obtaining the certificate of two medical men, may imprison wife, child, or other relative, for years, perhaps for life, in a madhouse. ”

“ Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has succeeded in hushing up the scandal of his wife's arrest and conveyance to a madhouse at Brentford. The matters in dispute, so say the persons interested, will be arranged to the satisfaction of all concerned. For the sake of the lady herself the public will rejoice that such a compromise has been extorted fromt he Secretary of State; if the victim be content no one has a right to complain, but it must be remembered that Sir Bulwer Lytton alone has gained by suppression of the enquiry. ”