So I’ve read two novels by Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton,LucretiaandA Strange Story.My bottom line, a significant metaphor when considering the Victorian three volume novel, would be that the form exacerbated what would normally be a positive: Lytton’s facility. He would have been a better writer if he had found it more difficult to write. His prolixity would have been checked and the disappointing habit of creating interesting characters and then leaving them marooned in volume one might have been avoided. Had he hoarded his darlings like Trollope fully expanding their intricate motivations the novels would have been the better for it. In ‘Strange’ for instance the ruler of her exclusive neighbourhood Mrs. Colonel Poyntz gave a promise which Lytton didn’t keep. Was she in love with Dr. Allen the protagonist and narrator. Dr. Allen is too much of a gentleman to speculate, he couldn’t possibly comment. Easily a Trollope novel there with elaborate humiliation, exquisite comeuppance, and extra added cringe.
I readLucretiafirst and that novel with an omniscient author gave Lytton too much scope for moral commentary. The tell and show ratio was unwieldy and crippling. However there is a pleasant level of reality in the depiction of a vengeful woman and was again a pleasant counter to the usual Victorian treatment of the female of the species. The triumvirate of evil Lucretia, Dalibard and Verney his son are superb. How evil originates in pride and domination and manifesting in psychopathic cruelty, and murder, leads in the end to a grisly fate is the story in brief. There is ample room in the three volume format for filler unrestrained by authorial ignorance but along with that are many good descriptions and ruminations.
The usual criticism of Lytton’s novels is that he is euphuistic and prone to fustian and that is true judged from the perspective of a taste formed by modern literature that values the simple declarative sentence. I consider the novels to bear the same relation to the realistic novel as the opera does to drama. Their language has a more expansive, ample scope than the normal narrative. Right off in‘Lucretia’Dalibard brings his son by the actress mother who has betrayed him to her execution by guillotine.
Cytherea and the Graces, what relentless fate has conducted thee to the shambles? Butterfly of the summer, why should a nation rise to break thee upon the wheel? A sense of the mockery of such an execution, of the horrible burlesque that would sacrifice to the necessities of a mighty people so slight an offering, made itself felt among the crowd. There was a low murmur of shame and indignation. The dangerous sympathy of the mob was perceived by the officer in attendance. Hastily he made the sign to the headsman, and as he did so, a child’s cry was heard in the English tongue,—“Mother! Mother!” The father’s hand grasped the child’s arm with an iron pressure; the crowd swam before the boy’s eyes; the air seemed to stifle him, and become blood-red; only through the hum and the tramp and the roll of the drums he heard a low voice hiss in his ear “Learn how they perish who betray me!”
Say what you will, not to descend into bathos after such a start is a triumph of characterisation. Put aside that trifling tape measure enjoy the grotesquerie. I did.
More anon on an author that is unduly neglected.
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