Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy P.
Speaker 2: Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 1: We spent the whole week this week talking about Rosina
Speaker 1: Bulwer Lytton and by extension, her husband, Edward Bowler Lytton.
Speaker 1: We sure did.
Speaker 2: Wow okay number one.
Speaker 1: When I put Edward Bulwer Lytton on the short list,
Speaker 1: it's just based on It was a Dark and Stormy Night.
Speaker 1: I had no concept that he had also had like
Speaker 1: a huge political career in the UK. Did not know
Speaker 1: about him being Secretary of State for the Colonies, didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about that. Just like literally was like, who's
Speaker 1: this guy that wrote it was a Dark and Stormy Night?
Speaker 2: What is the story behind him?
Speaker 1: And then stumbling onto the fact that he had his
Speaker 1: wife committed really to try to get her out of
Speaker 1: the way because she was in many forms continually screaming
Speaker 1: at him in public. I was like, Okay, I whatever
Speaker 1: was going on with him? I think this is the
Speaker 1: more interesting thing to talk about and also upsetting. One
Speaker 1: of the things that we didn't really talk about directly
Speaker 1: but kind of alluded to, was like at the time
Speaker 1: until he had her committed. Generally speaking, a lot of
Speaker 1: people were on Edward's side. They were like, Wow, your
Speaker 1: wife is not in her right mind right, I feel
Speaker 1: very sorry for you. And it wasn't until he had
Speaker 1: her committed that a lot of people were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that was not okay at all. What are you even doing?
Speaker 1: But even today, some of the writing about this, like,
Speaker 1: we know for sure that Edward was like he had
Speaker 1: extra marital affairs. We know for sure that he kept
Speaker 1: her from seeing her children after they were separated, We
Speaker 1: know for sure that he had her committed. We also
Speaker 1: have her allegations about his physical abuse, some of which
Speaker 1: is backed up by other witness statements, some of which
Speaker 1: we have her word to go on. Either way, we
Speaker 1: have those allegations also, And sometimes people make it sound like, well,
Speaker 1: she was shrill though, as though that invalidates all of
Speaker 1: the many reasons that she had to be outraged about
Speaker 1: her husband, and the fact that she was so legally
Speaker 1: powerless to do anything about any of it, which I
Speaker 1: hated that part of a lot. There was also there
Speaker 1: were a number of things that I wanted to try
Speaker 1: to find scans of some There are a number of
Speaker 1: things that you can easily find scans of, that our
Speaker 1: books that each of them wrote, the edition of his
Speaker 1: letters that was published after Rosina died, the biography that
Speaker 1: was written of her, the biography that his son wrote
Speaker 1: of him, Like all of these things that are scans of.
Speaker 1: But there are some smaller pieces and pamphlets and stuff
Speaker 1: that I just wasn't able to find a scan of anywhere.
Speaker 1: And one of them was from eighteen fifty eight and
Speaker 1: was called extraordinary Narrative of an outrageous violation of liberty
Speaker 1: and law and the forcible seizure and incarceration of Lady
Speaker 1: Lytton Bulwer in the gloomy cell of a Madhouse, followed
Speaker 1: by three exclamation points. I noted the title of that down.
Speaker 1: It was like I wish I could find this, and
Speaker 1: I was not able to find it.
Speaker 2: Right. We also talked about how.
Speaker 1: This was a time in which women were disproportionately institutionalized,
Speaker 1: sometimes for nothing having to do with their mental health,
Speaker 1: having more to do with people finding their behavior unacceptable
Speaker 1: for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: Right, And in June of eighteen fifty.
Speaker 1: Eight there was a piece that made reference to three
Speaker 1: very prominent people from this time, those being Edward Bulwer Lytton,
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens, and William make Peace Thackeray. And at this
Speaker 1: point Rosina bul Where Lytton was like writing all of
Speaker 1: these very angry novels. Dickens's marriage had kind of collapsed,
Speaker 1: Thackeray's wife had been institutionalized. Rosina bull Were Lytton after
Speaker 1: this also put in an institution. I think this is
Speaker 1: also afterward in the timeline. I didn't take very good
Speaker 1: notes about this thing that I was going to try
Speaker 1: to explain in our behind the scenes. Basically, the point
Speaker 1: was two of these women wound up institutionalized, and there's
Speaker 1: also some evidence that Dickens thought about institutionalizing his own
Speaker 1: wife as well. Yeah, it does seem like Thackeray's wife
Speaker 1: did actually have a mental illness happening, but yet it
Speaker 1: was it was a pattern that was going on. We
Speaker 1: also made reference to the fact that Edward's name, which
Speaker 1: was already very long, got even longer when he re
Speaker 1: appended the Litton to the end of it, and in
Speaker 1: the updated deed of separation after he increased her allowance
Speaker 1: to five hundred pounds, they just abbreviate the middle part
Speaker 1: so consistently all the way through it, he is referred
Speaker 1: to as Sir Edward G. E. L.
Speaker 2: B Lytton.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, that's a lot. That's too
Speaker 1: much to write out, too many letters. Yeah, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is such an interesting case to me because on the
Speaker 1: one hand, right, I will concede that she was not
Speaker 1: in the manner of her writing always doing herself a
Speaker 1: lot of favors right in terms of like not leading
Speaker 1: people to think she might have lost touch a.
Speaker 2: Little bit with reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But then the thing that I kept coming back
Speaker 1: to you in my head as I was looking this
Speaker 1: over initially is yeah, but this dude bit her in
Speaker 1: the face so hard she bled down her clothes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would make a completely sane and solid person probably
Speaker 1: lose it, right, Yeah, Yeah, Like nobody questions that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: was he crazy? He bit his wife in the face,
Speaker 1: like in addition to the many other things. But that's
Speaker 1: that's such a weird. Yeah, that is like a domestic
Speaker 1: violence situation that is not just aggressive, it is weird
Speaker 1: and feral behavior. And nobody was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: think he's I think maybe yeah problem, some sanity problems, right,
Speaker 1: and even his his letter about you know, I've just
Speaker 1: determined I'm not fit to live with another person. It's
Speaker 1: so manages to make himself sort of the victim of
Speaker 1: the piece.
Speaker 2: Yeah, poor me.
Speaker 1: I just was raised in a way that I can't
Speaker 1: be around other people. It's my nature. But also everything
Speaker 1: in my life has made me this way, and I'm just.
Speaker 2: Like right, get the time machine ready. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of articles that I read when
Speaker 1: I was working on this that did kind of a
Speaker 1: comparison of resinable were Lytton's writing and Caroline Sheridan Norton's writing.
Speaker 1: So our episode on Caroline Norton is only a couple
Speaker 1: of years old, and it's also a two parter, so
Speaker 1: I have not tried to line it up as a
Speaker 1: Saturday Classic because we don't do two parters as Saturday
Speaker 1: Classics that often. But we read at length some of
Speaker 1: the things that she wrote in that episode, that Caroline
Speaker 1: Norton wrote in that episode, and they are like such
Speaker 1: straightforward and assertive but also calm and quote reasonable appeal
Speaker 1: for the rights of women, explanation of the reality that
Speaker 1: women were living under at once they got married and
Speaker 1: basically lost all of their legal rights. There were also
Speaker 1: people thought that she was going way too far with
Speaker 1: the kind of things that she wrote about. But then
Speaker 1: by comparison, Rosina bul Or Lytton is just kind of
Speaker 1: screaming in some of her and some of her pamphlets
Speaker 1: and some of her books. And it really does seem
Speaker 1: to me like the wealthier Edward became, the more prominent
Speaker 1: he became, the more angry. Understandably, the more angry she became,
Speaker 1: partly because she was like seeing what they had been
Speaker 1: planning for actually happening for him when she was not
Speaker 1: really in their marriage anymore, but then also seeing that
Speaker 1: he was doing things like he inherited a mansion and
Speaker 1: kept putting a lot of money into renovations on the mansion.
Speaker 1: And she's like, you're saying, you can't afford to raise
Speaker 1: my allow it's by one hundred pounds a year, but
Speaker 1: you are doing renovations on your mansion. You're importing Carrera Marble, Are.
Speaker 2: You kidding me?
Speaker 1: And so it's like, like it makes absolute sense that
Speaker 1: she would feel like I am trapped and I am
Speaker 1: just gonna scream about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that screaming about it.
Speaker 1: Like when even the most reasonable thing is positioned as
Speaker 1: going too far. Her screaming about it came off to
Speaker 1: people as like going way way too far right. It's
Speaker 1: telling though, right that that that all reverses very abruptly
Speaker 1: at the end. Yeah yeah, where after she is released,
Speaker 1: he suddenly like, here's your money, everybody. Yeah, cool, we
Speaker 1: gotta walk this back a little bit. I feel like
Speaker 1: we will still see this today. Sometimes in public you know,
Speaker 1: when public figures go through like a really destructive relationship
Speaker 1: and breakup, Yeah, sometimes it will like there will be
Speaker 1: verified accounts of one person being abusive and the other
Speaker 1: person being like, to use the gendered term like shrill,
Speaker 1: which has that's a very yeah, reactive is a much
Speaker 1: better term.
Speaker 2: But a lot of times.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, if the person, if a woman
Speaker 1: in this situation, is being really angry and reactive, like
Speaker 1: she will be branded as shrill, and people kind of saying, well,
Speaker 1: that invalidates everything that she's saying that's happening, Like, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not actually how it works, not actually
Speaker 1: how works at all. Do we know why Emily was
Speaker 1: in a boarding house when she died?
Speaker 2: I am not fully clear on.
Speaker 1: That, because that seems messed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Rosina claimed that her that her father was
Speaker 1: making her translate documents for him. It is not totally
Speaker 1: clear whether that's the case. It does seem like that
Speaker 1: when she came of age as an adult, that he
Speaker 1: saw her as potentially, you know, able to take on
Speaker 1: the role, like.
Speaker 2: The household role of a wife.
Speaker 1: And I'm not in any way saying in a sexual way,
Speaker 1: but like the role that house, yeah, managing the house.
Speaker 1: That he would now have a source of unpaid labor
Speaker 1: in the turn, in the form of his daughter. I
Speaker 1: am not clear on why she wound up at this
Speaker 1: boarding house rather than living at Neworth Nebworth House and
Speaker 1: possibly like taking on the unpaid role of managing that
Speaker 1: household household. I don't know, but Rosina was sure mad
Speaker 1: about it, yeah, and especially mad that he made it
Speaker 1: sound like that she had died at Nebworth House instead
Speaker 1: of in this boarding house where she was.
Speaker 2: For some reason, it made me think a lot.
Speaker 1: You know that that line that gets set a lot lately,
Speaker 1: every accusation is an admission, Oh sure, yeah, yeah. In
Speaker 1: his constant assertion that Rosina you know, actually preferred the
Speaker 1: dogs to the children and she did not care about
Speaker 1: the children, I'm like, are you actually talking about yourself, dude,
Speaker 1: yeacause yeah, other than making your son into your duplicate,
Speaker 1: you don't seem to really care about these kids. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also totally possible that there is a clearly documented
Speaker 1: reason for that somewhere. There was an enormous volume of
Speaker 1: material that was involved in working on this episode and
Speaker 1: no possible way to really read one hundred percent of it, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's possible that some of these things that
Speaker 1: I confused about are documented somewhere. But even with switching
Speaker 1: topics completely to take more time with this one later,
Speaker 1: like I still did, I didn't wind up with satisfying
Speaker 1: answers on all of the questions that I had a
Speaker 1: lot of which were about things like that, the particulars
Speaker 1: of Okay, how did we get in this situation? What
Speaker 1: exactly happened with Rosina and her son after a few
Speaker 1: months touring Europe that led them to resume non contact basically?
Speaker 1: That also took me by surprise, Yeah, because he seemed
Speaker 1: so much to be in his father's camp. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: terms of how he perceived his mother and her behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like, and yet you wanted to travel together, which
Speaker 1: I think some of this from my read on, it
Speaker 1: was that Robert wanted to get his mother out of
Speaker 1: his father's way for a while.
Speaker 2: Ah, And I'm.
Speaker 1: There's probably more documentation of like the specifics of that
Speaker 1: trip somewhere, but it was there was so much in
Speaker 1: this episode, right, I mean, I'm just like, I can
Speaker 1: barely manage to travel with, you know, more than two
Speaker 1: people at a time without going bananas if I adore
Speaker 1: them both, just because travel is inherently super fun, but
Speaker 1: also like logistically has stressors and yeah and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, why would anybody opt, yeah, to go on
Speaker 1: a lengthy travel with somebody they have really been talking
Speaker 1: crap about for a while. Yeah, Yeah, that doesn't sound fun.
Speaker 1: It's also clear that both of the both of the children,
Speaker 1: Robert and Emily, I don't I could not really say
Speaker 1: that either of their parents ever had their best interests
Speaker 1: in mind right with anything. They both seem to have
Speaker 1: been like really ready to use their children and their
Speaker 1: relationships with their children as ammunition against each other, which
Speaker 1: like they I think the two of them probably came
Speaker 1: off or had had the worst out of all of
Speaker 1: this just because of like each of their parents being
Speaker 1: so so caught up in what was going on with
Speaker 1: the other one, Right that they never got actual parenting.
Speaker 1: It would not have been that unusual for governesses and
Speaker 1: tutors and people like that who have been a big
Speaker 1: part of these kids upbringing. But like it, I think
Speaker 1: the bull were litten dynamic went beyond that in terms
Speaker 1: of like how how the parents were interacting with their
Speaker 1: children or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This also does put me in mind a bit of
Speaker 1: like I think we have probably all lived through one
Speaker 1: of those scenarios where we know people who are perfectly
Speaker 1: lovely and then they go through a breakup and they
Speaker 1: become both really quite messy yeah, and even monstrous at times,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I know there's a reasonable person in
Speaker 1: there somewhere. Yeah, but I also understand why you're at
Speaker 1: this breaking point, right, although this seems like it was
Speaker 1: pretty rough before that.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: But Tracy, he couldn't help it. It was just his
Speaker 1: nature and everyone made him that way.
Speaker 2: I can't go just not take accountability for anything. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably all I have to say about
Speaker 1: the Bulwer Lyttons. I am glad that women in the
Speaker 1: UK and the US to some extent also are no
Speaker 1: longer just like a legal entity completely subsumed by their husband. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've had a number of episodes at this point about
Speaker 1: evolution in divorce law and marriage law and things like that,
Speaker 1: and so with kind of the recent rise in people
Speaker 1: saying that women should go back to having a traditional role,
Speaker 1: this is what the traditional role was for a long
Speaker 1: time in common law in Britain and the US.
Speaker 2: So let's not do that. Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't even know how that would I mean,
Speaker 1: just like the concept of it. Yeah, selfishly, I don't
Speaker 1: know how that would work, right. I think I would
Speaker 1: end up being put in an asylum to get the way.
Speaker 2: I think both of us might do a lot of screaming.
Speaker 1: And yeah, So anyway, whatever is happening on your weekend,
Speaker 1: boy do I hope it's better than anything that we
Speaker 1: talked about in.
Speaker 2: This week's episode.
Speaker 1: Yes, please, And you know, if you can take a
Speaker 1: little moment for yourself, I hope you get to do that.
Speaker 1: We will be back with a Saturday Classic tomorrow and
Speaker 1: we will have something brand new on Monday. Stuff you
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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