Rosina Bulwer-Lytton’s Blighted Life (Part 1)

stormy night. Believe it or not, he was not the first person ever to publish that phrase, but afterward it became widely used and reused and satirized and lampooned, and it even spawned the bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest for Bad First Sentences, which was held at San Jose State University for.

the word serendipity. So that quest led me to Edward Bulwer Lytton's wife, Rosina, who wrote a historical novel about Bianca Cappello in eighteen forty three, and it did not take long for Rose to take her husband's place on my short list and then to move up to the top to do an episode. Edward is still a big part of this episode, though, because it is really about

their marriage and their separation. According to Rosina, Edward was abusive and he definitely had multiple affairs, and because married women in England really had no legal status independently of their husband, Rosina's options in this were incredibly limited. She wrote that novel because she was trying to make ends meet in the wake of their separation. This turned into a two parter Today's episode is about Rosina's early life and the early years of her relationship with Edward up

to their separation. Again, that story is going to involve abuse, and then on Wednesday we will talk about their decades of living in separation and Rosina's very embittered writing about it. Rosina Doyle Wheeler was born on November fourth, eighteen oh two, in County Limerick, Ireland. She was the daughter of Francis

Massey Wheeler and Anna Doyle Wheeler. Francis and Anna had six children together, but only two of them survived their infancy, Rosina and her older sister, Henrietta, who was born in eighteen oh one. Anna Wheeler was known to be clever, witty, well read, and extremely beautiful. She was self educated and that education included things like French philosophy and the writing

of Mary Wolstoncraft. Anna became an advocate for cooperative socialism and for women's rights, and she also co authored a work called Appeal of one half of the Human Race, Women against the pretensions of the other half men to retain them in political and hence in civil and domestic slavery. In reply to a paragraph of mister Mill's celebrated article on government. Her co author in this piece was William Thompson.

Anna and William didn't write this until eighteen twenty five, when Rosina was already an adult, but it does help illustrate the political and legal position of women in the UK at this point, and the kinds of opinions Rosina would have been exposed to through her mother. The paragraph that Anna and William were responding to was written by James Mill in an essay on government that was printed

in Encyclopedia Britannica. That paragraph read quote, one thing is pretty clear that all those individuals whose interests are indisputably included in those of other individuals may be struck off from political rights without inconvenience. In this light may be viewed all children up to a certain age whose interests are involved in those of their parents. In this light, women may also be regarded the interest of almost all of whom is involved either in that of their fathers

or in that of their husbands. Ill co written by Anna Wheeler and William Thompson, calls this paragraph offensive and anti social. The introduction to the appeal is framed as a letter from Thompson to Wheeler, and it read in part quote, You look forward, as I do, to a state of society very different from that which now exists, in which the effort of all is to outwit, supplant

and snatch from each other. Where interest is systematically opposed to duty, where the so called system of morals is little more than a mass of hypocrisy preached by knaves, unpracticed by them to keep their slaves male as well as female, in blind, uninquiring obedience, And where the whole

Botley fabric is kept together by fear and blood. You look forward to a better aspect of society, where the principle of benevolence shall supersede that of fear, Where restless and anxious individual competition shall give place to mutual cooperation

and joint possession. Where individuals in large numbers, male and female, forming voluntary associations shall become a mutual guarantee to each other for the supply of all useful wants, and form an unsalaried and uninsolvent insurance company against all ensurable casualties.

Where perfect freedom of opinion and perfect equality will reign amongst the cooperators, and where the children of all will be equally educated and provided for by the whole, even these children longer the slaves of individual caprice.

married immediately. Frances seems to have been outwardly amiable, but he also drank excessively and his behavior could be threatening. According to Rosina's account, when she was born, her mother's attendants were terrified to tell Francis that she was a girl, because he had been so adamant about wanting a son that they were legitimately scared of what his reaction would be. In eighteen twelve, Anna left to Francis and she took Henrietta and Rosina with her. They went to Guernsey, where

Anna's uncle, Sir John Doyle, was Lieutenant Governor. He had been something of a surrogate father to Anna after her own father's death. Mother and daughters moved into rooms at the Government House, which was a lot more lavish than where they'd been living in Kilross, Ireland. The girls had a French governess and an assortment of tutors, and Rosina described the atmosphere of the house as quote sort of

perpetual saturnalia that was allowed, unchecked to go on. She also developed a flare for mimicry, imitating their governess and their tutors and various guests who came to the Government House. While this was a financially comfortable situation, Rosina still found these years difficult. Henrietta was clearly their mother's favorite, and Rosina later wrote, quote, I soon became that most miserable of created beings, the neglected sister of a favorite and

favored child. Not that I envied Henrietta for being loved, indulged, and privileged on all occasions, For it was impossible not to love one so gentle, so gifted, and so good. I thought it was a matter of course that everyone must do. So still I did long for a little of my mother's love. The family left Guernsey in eighteen sixteen, and we'll get to that after a sponsor break. Sir John Doyle left office as Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey in eighteen sixteen, so at that point the family no longer

had a place at the government house. Rosina and Henrietta were sent to a private school in Kensington in London, while their mother went to France. Their animde connections to socialists, activists and philosophers, and she was nicknamed the Goddess of Reason. She started to call for a redistribution of wealth that will allow women to live independently of men. In eighteen twenty, Rosina's father, Francis died and her older sister Henrietta inherited

his property in Ireland. Their mother started supplementing her income with writing, lecturing, and translating work from French.

for another few years. Rosina described him as quote unmistakably gentlemanlike, and he had a reputation for being simultaneously a dandy and an intollal. Edward's acquaintances included novelist Lady Caroline Lamb, who had become famous in part for her relationship with George Gordon Lord Byron, who had died the previous year.

She's the person who described Lord Byron as mad, bad and dangerous to know, according to Rosina's notations on Edward's letters later on, at one point Caroline told her, quote, don't let Edward Bulwer hunt you down. They are a bad set. After meeting at a social event, Rosina and Edwards started corresponding. For the most part, Edward's letters are

the ones that we have today. There are some published collections of Rosina's letters, but they're not widely available in the United States, and they are mostly letters to other people. In his letters, Edward seems deeply enamored. Here's an example of something that he wrote to Rosina. Quote, I have twice begun to write, and twice I have destroyed what I have written. This same restraint which oppressed me in speaking,

seems to operate also upon this method of uttering. The feelings you have inspired, no matter their nature, you have discovered, love, admiration, passion are not the less deeply felt for being imperfectly expressed. The trembling of the voice, the embarrassment of manner, the difficulty of expression, which diminished the eloquence due justice, at least to the reality of feeling. From the first moment

I saw you, I was attracted towards you. The sentiments you inspired carried me back to years of more fresh and unsullied remembrance. They had no place among the ordinary attachments which the world had more lately afforded me. I could not define their nature. I could not reason them away. In another letter later on, he wrote, Oh, my dear Rose, where shall I find words to express my love for you?

Your kiss still dwells upon my lips, My hand still thrills beneath your touch, and your breath still lingers on my remembrance. Fraught, indeed with more treasures than in India Sea. Eventually he started addressing his letters with endearments like my dearest Rose and darlingest Poodle, which I must admit I find kind of fun and affecting a sort of baby talk writing style, like writing the word you as ooh two o's yes as they got into the baby talk, which is also the way that you might talk to

like a puppy that you're feeling very affectionately toward. I found them. I was having like the vicarious embarrassment response to reading them. A number of people have described them in words like embarrassing and cringey. Edward, though, also wrote a lot about his mother, Elizabeth Warburton Lytton, and his fears that she would not approve of his relationship with Resina.

His father, William Earle Bulwer, had died when he was only four, and by then Edward's older brothers had been sent away to school, so it was just him and his mom. His mother treated him almost like an only child. He was her favorite, and she doted on him and gave him an extravagant allowance, but that allowance was totally

at her prerogative. The only money he was actually legally guaranteed was two hundred pounds a year from his father's will, so Edward was really afraid of his mother cutting him off. Rosina's sister, Henrietta, died in May of eighteen twenty six, and Rosina inherited their father's property in Ireland at that point. One of Edward's letters around this time attempted to console her both about her sister's death and the state of her relationship with her mother. Quote, your alienation from your

sister seems formerly to have given you much pain. Now that very fact makes your consolation. Separation from your mother threw you into a situation which, to say the least, was disadvantageous and unpleasant. But had you gone with her to Paris, it is more than probable that we should never have met. Let me trust that the last event

will not be the most unfortunate in your life. Sometime in the months surrounding her sister's death, Rosina and Edward became engaged, and his letters to her at this point still sounded just besotted. Here's one quote, my darling, darling, love and poodle. The more I think of you, the

more I love you. I dote upon you, even to madness, your beauty so singularly perfect, your kind, noble, warm heart, your temper so feeling, yet so subdued, Your generous and devoted love, which my unworthiness, not my reason ever questions, all impress themselves upon my mind. The deeper in proportion to the consideration they receive. I see other women, I turn from them, wearied and disgusted, because I compare them

with you. All that this world offers only seems to me weary, stale, and unprofitable compared with one recollection of you.

but she definitely wasn't wealthy or even financially comfortable. She was also irish and outspoken, and at six months older than Edward, too old in his mother's opinion. Rosina was also extremely beautiful, and even that was somehow suspect. In September of eighteen twenty, Edward wrote Rezina a letter in which he talked about his ambitions for the future. His mother wanted him to distinguish himself, and he thought that if he did that, then she could have no objection

to anybody that he might want to marry. He thought he might earn this distinction by becoming a Member of Parliament, but there were income and property ownership requirements for MPs that he did not meet, so he thought he might make up the difference but in income requirements by writing. So that became the plan. He would earn enough money through writing to become eligible to be an MP. He would get elected, and then he would disclose his engagement

to his mother, and then they would get married. In my head, there's a cartoon where he has a flow chart of how his life is going to work does kind of seem that way. I mean, so much of it depends on things he cannot control, working out exactly as he plans right. In October eight, eighteen twenty six, Edward told his mother about the engagement, even though he

had not yet sold his first novel. This did not go well, and Edward described a letter his mother had written him this way quote, there is not in this letter one kind expression to redeem its want of almost human consideration for my feelings, and it ends with saying that if I marry, I should have not her consent, but her curse. The next several months of Edward and

Rosina's relationship sound chaotic and stressful. Edward was trying to write a book, and Rosina was reading his drafts and offering her opinions while also doing some writing work of her own. Knowledge of his mother's disapproval seemed to just underpin everything that they did. Edward's mother also allegedly sent

people to Ireland's to investigate Rosina's family. There, the couple kept setting dates for a wedding and then postponing it, and at least three times Rosina called the engagement off entirely, but then they resumed the relationship. Edward sold his first novel, Falkland, in eighteen twenty seven. It was not the financial success that he hoped it would be, but he and Rosina got married in Piccadilly on August twenty ninth of that year.

His mother did not come to the wedding, and afterward, as she'd threatened to do, she cut off his allowance, leaving him only with his inheritance from his father and what he could earn on his own. She also refused to see him, and she returned all of his letters unopened for more than a year. In one of his many letters, Edward had told Rosina that because of this whole situation with his mother and his reduced income, they

might have to live abroad in total isolation. Instead, they moved to a secluded house in Oxfordshire, where Edward kept trying to be a successful writer with Rosina's on ongoing help. We will talk about how their marriage evolved from this after we pause for another sponsor break.

help with that writing. He still had an eye on a seat in Parliament, and by eighteen twenty eight he started hinting to Rosina that it might be possible that he could claim the Doyle baronetcy threw his marriage to her. By that point, Rosina was pregnant, and her first allegation of Edward's physical abuse was during that pregnancy. She said she had been helping him.

June twenty seventh. Soon after this, Edward decided that Emily should be sent to a wet nurse because if she stayed at home, she would take up too much of Rosina's time when he needed her help with his writing. By mid July, Rosina was having eye trouble, which a doctor attributed to her constant weeping at being separated from her daughter. The doctor ordered her to spend three months recovering at the seaside town of Weymouth. Edward claimed that Rosina.

requirements to become an MP. This law changed the parliamentary map, getting rid of so called rotten boroughs that had two members of Parliament but almost no population to represent. It also reduced the number of MPs in smaller districts, including Saint Ives, which dropped from two MPs to one. This law also loosened up the property ownership requirements for becoming an MP, which allowed Edward to sell Rosina's property in Ireland, which he did for a little more than thirty seven

hundred pounds. Rosina had no say at all in this decision, again because of those same laws about how marriage worked. After this reform bill passed, Edward was elected MP for Lincoln, and that was a seat that he held until eighteen forty one. In the fall of eighteen thirty three, Edward and Rosina took a trip to Naples, arriving there that November. Edward is described as exhausted at this point from years of writing incessantly to try to maintain their income and lifestyle,

but he also wrote. While they were there, he finished most of his novel The Last Days of Pompeii, which would be published in eighteen thirty four and become his most successful book. Edward had been having extramarital affairs which Rosina knew about, and this included being involved with a married woman on this trip, and he also again became violent with Rosina while they were in Naples. Rosina's lady's maid, Rosetta Byrne, gave a sworn statement about what had happened

later on, and here is what she wrote. Quote, Mister Edward Lytton Bulwer did her ladyship not only as to cruel neglect and infidelity, but also as to acts of

brutal personal violence, amongst others. On one occasion, when traveling in Italy in eighteen thirty three, one night at the Lake of Bolsano, he so nashed the things about and at her ladyship that even Luigi the courier avowed he would not continue the journey with him again at Naples, after having, in one of his brutal rages, kicked and banged her ladyship against the stone floor at the Hotel Vittoria till she was black and blue and had to

keep her bed. A few days after because people began to talk of this at Naples, he made her poor lady get up and dress herself to go to a great dinner at Lord Hertford's. Edward and Rosina returned to England in early eighteen thirty four, and there was another major violent incident that July. Rosina's lady's maid described this in the same sworn testament quote. After we got back to London, and his temper continued awful towards her ladyship for having asked him for money to pay the house

bills left unpaid when they were abroad. So one day in July eighteen thirty four, at dinner at their house thirty six Hertford Street, Mayfair, London, he seized a carving knife and rushed at his wife when she cried out, for God's sake, Edward, take care what you are about. Then he dropped the knife and sprang on her like a tiger made his teeth meet in her left cheek until her screams brought the men servants back into the

dining room. In Rosina's account, this started when she told her husband that she was going to a christening and he asked who she was going with. Rosina told him, and he reportedly said, my mother calls her that ugly old woman, like over and over again. And when Rosina just didn't acknowledge him, Edward asked if she had heard him. She said that she had, and when Edward asked why she hadn't answered him, she said she didn't think it required an answer, and that was when he had come

at her with a knife. Shortly after this incident, Edward wrote Rosina a letter that's said, in part quote, I am now convinced of what I have long believed. I am only fit to live alone. God and nature afflicted

me with unsocial habits, weak nerves, and violent passions. Everything in my life tended to feed these infirmities until they have become a confirmed and incurable disease, which nothing but a gentle pity, a forbearing soothing, watchful compassion as of a nurse over a madman can render bearable to me or others. They decided to separate, and Edward said that he would provide Rosina with six hundred pounds a year,

paid out quarterly. He advised her to sell the house because she wouldn't be able to afford it on that amount, and he said that where she and the children lived and how were up to her, although he might decide to have an influence on their son's education when he got a little older. At this point, their daughter was six and their son was three. This was an informal separation, and over the next few years Rosina and Edward made

some attempts to reconcile. The final straw that led them to legally separate seems to have happened in eighteen thirty six. Edward had told Rosina that he was going to have dinner with her, and then at the last minute, a servant brought word to her that he was ill. Rosina went to his rooms to see if he was okay and to take care of him if necessary, and she

found him with a woman named Laura Deacon. Edward very indignantly claimed that Rosina had jumped to conclusions and attacked him after simply seeing that there were two teacups on the table, but this relationship with Laura Deacon was ongoing, and the two of them ultimately had three children together. The only way to obtain a divorce in the UK at this point was through an act of Parliament. A man could initiate ate a divorce bill on the grounds of adultery, and a woman could do so on the

grounds of adultery and also cruelty. Only very wealthy people could afford to do this, really wealthier than Edward and Rosina, probably, but beyond that, Edward had no proof that Rosina had ever been unfaithful, although there had been some rumors that she had flirted with a prince while they were in Naples. Rosina might have been able to prove Edward's infidelity, but she would also have to prove that he was cruel

That would have been a lot harder. That sworn statement from her maid is something that was written much later on, and even if she had had something like that to use as evidence, Edward would have gone to great links to defend himself from allegations of cruelty. That was just not something that he would have been willing to admit to.

from each other for the future. And whereas the said Edward George Earl Lytton Bulwer has proposed to allow unto or intrust for the said Rosina and Bulward during the said separation the yearly sum of four hundred pounds as a provision for her maintenance and support.

or a couple or whatever. So the best way to get to that is to go to Defined Destinations dot com and click on tours and it's the one called a Taste of Morocco. And yes, now I do have listener mail. This listener mail is from Gary, who wrote after our Triple Nichols episode. Gary wrote, Dear Tracy and Holly, I know I've been writing a lot lately, but I've been listening to your podcast a lot lately, and I

have thoughts. As a white male boomer and a lifelong resident of Oregon, I didn't expect the Triple Nichols episode to hit so close to home, but it did in several ways. First, my ears perked up at the mention of Fort Benning. My mom's first husband attended officer Training school at Fort Benning when my mom was about twenty one years old. She took a train across the country

to join him there. In later years, she told me that that train ride through the South and her time in Georgia were very upsetting to her because of the widespread poverty and the treatment of black people. Her husband was killed in a non combat vehicle crash somewhere in

Europe shortly after V Day. When I was going through her things after she passed away in two thousand, I found materials from his time at Fort Benning, including a booklet listing all of his fellow graduates, among whom was a William Gates Senior, the father of Microsoft's Bill Gates. Just a fun fact. Then you got to the part about the Mitchell Party tragedy in Bly and the connection to the creation of smoke jumpers, including the Triple Nichols

participation in them. My dad's family has lived in that area since the late nineteenth century, and I too, lived in nearby Lakeview for several years and have visited the monument. One of my older brother's best friends earned money for college as a smoke jumper based out of Cave Junction near where we grew up in Grant's Pass. But I really wasn't aware of the five point fifty five or their connection to the balloon bomb case or the smoke jumpers.

And I'm always really happy when I learned new historical facts, especially about things and events that have touched my life. So thanks again for a really interesting episode. I'm attaching another photo of Judo, the Red Standard poodle, this time on a little hike with us. She's posing on a trail surrounded by blooming larkspur. She just turned ten years old earlier this month, but she's still a very active

girl and loves walking in the forest with us. She recently pulled a muscle chasing a deer or squirrel, so we're having to keep her quiet, which is quite a challenge while at heels. Thanks again for your good work, Gary. I like how the options of chasing include a deer and a squirrel, two dissimilar animals. Oh my goodness, dissimilar but in similar places, similar places, similar fleeing from dogs,

I would imagine. Yeah, what a cute poodle. She's precious, very cute, with a brown just brown like brown fur, and a very This face looks very pensive to me. It is sort of like she's thinking, is it okay for me to go on ahead of you? Do you want me to wait? Can I go?

about that. So, thank you so much, Gary. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast or a history podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts. 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,