Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy P.
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
We spent the whole week this week talking about Rosina Bulwer Lytton and by extension, her husband, Edward Bowler Lytton. We sure did.
Wow okay number one.
When I put Edward Bulwer Lytton on the short list, it's just based on It was a Dark and Stormy Night. I had no concept that he had also had like a huge political career in the UK. Did not know about him being Secretary of State for the Colonies, didn't know anything about that. Just like literally was like, who's this guy that wrote it was a Dark and Stormy Night?
What is the story behind him?
And then stumbling onto the fact that he had his wife committed really to try to get her out of the way because she was in many forms continually screaming at him in public. I was like, Okay, I whatever was going on with him? I think this is the more interesting thing to talk about and also upsetting. One of the things that we didn't really talk about directly but kind of alluded to, was like at the time until he had her committed. Generally speaking, a lot of
people were on Edward's side. They were like, Wow, your wife is not in her right mind right, I feel very sorry for you. And it wasn't until he had her committed that a lot of people were like, Okay, that was not okay at all. What are you even doing? But even today, some of the writing about this, like, we know for sure that Edward was like he had extra marital affairs. We know for sure that he kept her from seeing her children after they were separated, We
know for sure that he had her committed. We also have her allegations about his physical abuse, some of which is backed up by other witness statements, some of which we have her word to go on. Either way, we have those allegations also, And sometimes people make it sound like, well, she was shrill though, as though that invalidates all of the many reasons that she had to be outraged about her husband, and the fact that she was so legally powerless to do anything about any of it, which I
hated that part of a lot. There was also there were a number of things that I wanted to try to find scans of some There are a number of things that you can easily find scans of, that our books that each of them wrote, the edition of his letters that was published after Rosina died, the biography that was written of her, the biography that his son wrote of him, Like all of these things that are scans of.
But there are some smaller pieces and pamphlets and stuff that I just wasn't able to find a scan of anywhere. And one of them was from eighteen fifty eight and was called extraordinary Narrative of an outrageous violation of liberty and law and the forcible seizure and incarceration of Lady Lytton Bulwer in the gloomy cell of a Madhouse, followed by three exclamation points. I noted the title of that down. It was like I wish I could find this, and I was not able to find it.
Right. We also talked about how.
This was a time in which women were disproportionately institutionalized, sometimes for nothing having to do with their mental health, having more to do with people finding their behavior unacceptable for whatever reason.
Right, And in June of eighteen fifty.
Eight there was a piece that made reference to three very prominent people from this time, those being Edward Bulwer Lytton, Charles Dickens, and William make Peace Thackeray. And at this point Rosina bul Where Lytton was like writing all of these very angry novels. Dickens's marriage had kind of collapsed, Thackeray's wife had been institutionalized. Rosina bull Were Lytton after this also put in an institution. I think this is
also afterward in the timeline. I didn't take very good notes about this thing that I was going to try to explain in our behind the scenes. Basically, the point was two of these women wound up institutionalized, and there's also some evidence that Dickens thought about institutionalizing his own wife as well. Yeah, it does seem like Thackeray's wife did actually have a mental illness happening, but yet it
was it was a pattern that was going on. We also made reference to the fact that Edward's name, which was already very long, got even longer when he re appended the Litton to the end of it, and in the updated deed of separation after he increased her allowance to five hundred pounds, they just abbreviate the middle part so consistently all the way through it, he is referred to as Sir Edward G. E. L.
B Lytton.
And I was like, yeah, that's a lot. That's too much to write out, too many letters. Yeah, Yeah, this is such an interesting case to me because on the one hand, right, I will concede that she was not in the manner of her writing always doing herself a lot of favors right in terms of like not leading people to think she might have lost touch a.
Little bit with reality.
Yeah, But then the thing that I kept coming back to you in my head as I was looking this over initially is yeah, but this dude bit her in the face so hard she bled down her clothes. Yeah, that would make a completely sane and solid person probably lose it, right, Yeah, Yeah, Like nobody questions that, Yeah, was he crazy? He bit his wife in the face, like in addition to the many other things. But that's
that's such a weird. Yeah, that is like a domestic violence situation that is not just aggressive, it is weird and feral behavior. And nobody was like, you know, I think he's I think maybe yeah problem, some sanity problems, right, and even his his letter about you know, I've just determined I'm not fit to live with another person. It's so manages to make himself sort of the victim of the piece.
Yeah, poor me.
I just was raised in a way that I can't be around other people. It's my nature. But also everything in my life has made me this way, and I'm just.
Like right, get the time machine ready. Yeah.
There are a couple of articles that I read when I was working on this that did kind of a comparison of resinable were Lytton's writing and Caroline Sheridan Norton's writing. So our episode on Caroline Norton is only a couple of years old, and it's also a two parter, so I have not tried to line it up as a Saturday Classic because we don't do two parters as Saturday
Classics that often. But we read at length some of the things that she wrote in that episode, that Caroline Norton wrote in that episode, and they are like such straightforward and assertive but also calm and quote reasonable appeal for the rights of women, explanation of the reality that women were living under at once they got married and basically lost all of their legal rights. There were also people thought that she was going way too far with
the kind of things that she wrote about. But then by comparison, Rosina bul Or Lytton is just kind of screaming in some of her and some of her pamphlets and some of her books. And it really does seem to me like the wealthier Edward became, the more prominent
he became, the more angry. Understandably, the more angry she became, partly because she was like seeing what they had been planning for actually happening for him when she was not really in their marriage anymore, but then also seeing that he was doing things like he inherited a mansion and kept putting a lot of money into renovations on the mansion. And she's like, you're saying, you can't afford to raise my allow it's by one hundred pounds a year, but
you are doing renovations on your mansion. You're importing Carrera Marble, Are.
You kidding me?
And so it's like, like it makes absolute sense that she would feel like I am trapped and I am just gonna scream about it.
Yeah, And that screaming about it.
Like when even the most reasonable thing is positioned as going too far. Her screaming about it came off to people as like going way way too far right. It's telling though, right that that that all reverses very abruptly at the end. Yeah yeah, where after she is released, he suddenly like, here's your money, everybody. Yeah, cool, we gotta walk this back a little bit. I feel like
we will still see this today. Sometimes in public you know, when public figures go through like a really destructive relationship and breakup, Yeah, sometimes it will like there will be verified accounts of one person being abusive and the other person being like, to use the gendered term like shrill, which has that's a very yeah, reactive is a much better term.
But a lot of times.
It's like, you know, if the person, if a woman in this situation, is being really angry and reactive, like she will be branded as shrill, and people kind of saying, well, that invalidates everything that she's saying that's happening, Like, no, no, it's not. It's not actually how it works, not actually how works at all. Do we know why Emily was in a boarding house when she died?
I am not fully clear on.
That, because that seems messed up.
Yeah.
Yeah, So Rosina claimed that her that her father was making her translate documents for him. It is not totally clear whether that's the case. It does seem like that when she came of age as an adult, that he saw her as potentially, you know, able to take on the role, like.
The household role of a wife.
And I'm not in any way saying in a sexual way, but like the role that house, yeah, managing the house. That he would now have a source of unpaid labor in the turn, in the form of his daughter. I am not clear on why she wound up at this boarding house rather than living at Neworth Nebworth House and possibly like taking on the unpaid role of managing that
household household. I don't know, but Rosina was sure mad about it, yeah, and especially mad that he made it sound like that she had died at Nebworth House instead of in this boarding house where she was.
For some reason, it made me think a lot.
You know that that line that gets set a lot lately, every accusation is an admission, Oh sure, yeah, yeah. In his constant assertion that Rosina you know, actually preferred the dogs to the children and she did not care about the children, I'm like, are you actually talking about yourself, dude, yeacause yeah, other than making your son into your duplicate, you don't seem to really care about these kids. Well, yeah, it's also totally possible that there is a clearly documented
reason for that somewhere. There was an enormous volume of material that was involved in working on this episode and no possible way to really read one hundred percent of it, right, So yeah, it's possible that some of these things that
I confused about are documented somewhere. But even with switching topics completely to take more time with this one later, like I still did, I didn't wind up with satisfying answers on all of the questions that I had a lot of which were about things like that, the particulars of Okay, how did we get in this situation? What exactly happened with Rosina and her son after a few months touring Europe that led them to resume non contact basically?
That also took me by surprise, Yeah, because he seemed so much to be in his father's camp. Yeah, in terms of how he perceived his mother and her behavior. Yeah, I'm like, and yet you wanted to travel together, which I think some of this from my read on, it was that Robert wanted to get his mother out of his father's way for a while.
Ah, And I'm.
There's probably more documentation of like the specifics of that trip somewhere, but it was there was so much in this episode, right, I mean, I'm just like, I can barely manage to travel with, you know, more than two people at a time without going bananas if I adore them both, just because travel is inherently super fun, but also like logistically has stressors and yeah and whatnot. And I'm like, why would anybody opt, yeah, to go on a lengthy travel with somebody they have really been talking
crap about for a while. Yeah, Yeah, that doesn't sound fun. It's also clear that both of the both of the children, Robert and Emily, I don't I could not really say that either of their parents ever had their best interests
in mind right with anything. They both seem to have been like really ready to use their children and their relationships with their children as ammunition against each other, which like they I think the two of them probably came off or had had the worst out of all of this just because of like each of their parents being so so caught up in what was going on with the other one, Right that they never got actual parenting.
It would not have been that unusual for governesses and tutors and people like that who have been a big part of these kids upbringing. But like it, I think the bull were litten dynamic went beyond that in terms of like how how the parents were interacting with their children or not.
Yeah.
This also does put me in mind a bit of like I think we have probably all lived through one of those scenarios where we know people who are perfectly lovely and then they go through a breakup and they become both really quite messy yeah, and even monstrous at times, and it's like, I know there's a reasonable person in there somewhere. Yeah, but I also understand why you're at this breaking point, right, although this seems like it was pretty rough before that.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
But Tracy, he couldn't help it. It was just his nature and everyone made him that way.
I can't go just not take accountability for anything. Yeah.
I think that's probably all I have to say about the Bulwer Lyttons. I am glad that women in the UK and the US to some extent also are no
longer just like a legal entity completely subsumed by their husband. Yeah, we've had a number of episodes at this point about evolution in divorce law and marriage law and things like that, and so with kind of the recent rise in people saying that women should go back to having a traditional role, this is what the traditional role was for a long time in common law in Britain and the US.
So let's not do that. Yeah, it's not.
I don't I don't even know how that would I mean, just like the concept of it. Yeah, selfishly, I don't know how that would work, right. I think I would end up being put in an asylum to get the way.
I think both of us might do a lot of screaming.
And yeah, So anyway, whatever is happening on your weekend, boy do I hope it's better than anything that we talked about in.
This week's episode.
Yes, please, And you know, if you can take a little moment for yourself, I hope you get to do that. We will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow and we will have something brand new on Monday. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.