The great Bulwer scandal, which The London Times thought to 
be “fortunately” hushed up by an amicable family arrangement, is 
far from having subsided into a state of quiescence. It is true that, 
despite the great party interest involved, the metropolitan press, 
with some trifling exceptions, did everything in its power to hush 
the case by a conspiracy of silence—Sir Edward Bulwer being one 
of the chiefs of the literary coterie which lords it more despotically 
over the heads of the London journalists than even party 
connection, and to openly affront whose wrath literary gentlemen 
generally lack the necessary courage. The Morning Post first 
informed the public that Lady Bulwer’s friends intended insisting 
upon legal investigation*; The London Times reprinted the short 
paragraph of The Morning Post,” and even The Advertiser, although 
it certainly has no literary position to hazard, did not venture 
beyond some meager extracts from The Somerset Gazette. Even 
Palmerston’s influence proved for the moment unavailing to extort 
anything from his literary retainers, and on the appearance of the 
flippantly apologetical letter of Bulwer’s son,° all these public 
guardians of the liberty of the subject, while declaring themselves 
highly satisfied, deprecated any further indelicate intrusion upon 
the “painful matter.” The Tory press, of course, has long since 
spent all its virtuous indignation on Lord Clanricarde’s behalf, and 
the Radical ptess, which more or less receives its inspirations from 

4 The Morning Post, No. 26369, July 5, 1858.— Ed. 

b The Times, No. 23038, July 6, 1858.— Ed. 

No. 23049, July 19, 1858.— Ed. 

the Manchester school,’ anxiously avoids creating any embarrass- 

ment to the present Administration. Yet, along with the respecta- 
ble or would-be respectable press of the metropolis, there exists an 
irrespectable press, absolutely swayed by its political patrons with 
no literary standing to check them, always ready to coin money 
out of its privilege of free speech, and anxious to improve an 
opportunity of appearing in the eyes of the public as the last 
representatives of manliness. On the other hand, the moral 
. instincts of the bulk of the people once awakened, there will be no 
need of further maneuvering. The public mind once worked into 
a state of moral excitement, even The London Times may throw off 
its mask of reserve, and, with a bleeding heart of course, stab the 
Derby Administration by passing the sentence of “public opinion” 
on such a literary chieftain even as Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton. 
This is exactly the turn things are now taking. That Lord 
Palmerston, as we hinted at first,’ is the secret manager of the 
spectacle is now un secret qui court les rues,’ as the French say. 

“On dit,”» says a London weekly, “that Lady Bulwer-Lytton’s best friend in this 
affair has been Lady Palmerston. We all remember how the Tories took up the 
cudgels for Mr. Norton when Lord Melbourne was in trouble about that 
gentleman’s wife. Tit for tat is fair play. But on reflection it is rather sad at this 
time of day to find a Secretary of State using the influence of his position to 
commit acts of oppression, and the wife of a Minister playing off the wife of 
another Minister against an Administration.” 

It is often by the crooked ways of political intrigue only that 
truth becomes smuggled into some corner of the British press. 
The apparently generous horror at a real outrage is after all but a 
calculated grimace; and public justice is only appealed to in order 
to cherish private malice. For aught the chivalrous knights of the 
inkhorn would care about it, Lady Bulwer might have remained 
forever in a lunatic asylum, at London; she might have been 
disposed of more quietly than at St. Petersburg or Vienna; the 
conventionalities of literary decorum would have debarred her 
from any means of redress but for the happy circumstance of 
Palmerston’s keen eye singling her out as the thin end of the 
wedge wherewith possibly to split a Tory Administration. 

A short analysis of the letter, addressed by Bulwer’s son to the 
London journals, will go far to elucidate the true state of the case. 
Mr. Robert B. Lytton sets out by asserting that his “simple 
assertion”? must be “at once believed in,” because he is “the son of 

Lady Bulwer-Lytton, with the best right to speak on her behalf, 
and obviously with the best means of information.” Now, this very 
tender son had neither cared for his mother, nor corresponded 
with her, nor seen her, for nearly seventeen years, until he met 
her at the hustings at Hertford on the occasion of his father’s 
re-election. When Lady Bulwer left the hustings and visited the 
Mayor of Hertford in order to apply for the use of the Town Hall 
as a lecturing room, Mr. Robert B. Lytton sent a physician into 
the Mayor’s house with the mission of taking cognizance of the 
state of the maternal mind. When, afterward, his mother was 
kidnapped in London, at the house of Mr. Hale Thompson, 
Clarges street, and her cousin Miss Ryves ran out into the street, 
and seeing Mr. Lytton waiting outside, entreated him to interfere 
and procure assistance to prevent his mother being carried off to 
Brentford, Mr. Lytton coolly refused to have anything to do with 
the matter. Having acted first as one of the principal agents in the 
plot laid by his father, he now shifts sides and presents himself as 
the natural spokesman of his mother. The second point pleaded 
by Mr. Lytton is, that his mother “was never for a moment taken 
to a lunatic asylum,” but, on the contrary, into the “private house” 
of Mr. Robert Gardiner Hill, surgeon. This is a mere quibble. As 
the ““Wyke House,” conducted by Mr. Hill, does legally not belong 
to the category of “asylums,” but to that of “Metropolitan 
Licensed Houses,”’ it is literally true that Lady Bulwer was thrown, 
not into a “lunatic asylum,” but into a lunatic house. 

Surgeon Hill, who trades upon his own account in “lunacy,” has 
also come out with an apology, wherein he states that Lady Bulwer 
had never been locked in, but, on the contrary, had enjoyed the 
use of a brougham and driven almost every evening during her 
detention to Richmond, Acton, Hanwell or Isleworth. Mr. Hill 
forgets to tell the public that this “improved treatment of the 
insane,” adopted by him, exactly corresponds to the official 
recommendation of the Commissioners in Lunacy. The friendly 
grimaces, the smiling forbearance, the childish coaxing, the oily 
twaddle, the knowing winks and the affected serenity of a band of 
trained attendants may drive a sensitive woman mad as well as 
douches, straight waistcoats, brutal keepers and dark wards. 
However that may be, the protests on the part of Mr. Surgeon Hill 
and Mr. Lytton amount simply to this, that Lady Bulwer was 
treated as a lunatic indeed, but after the rules of the new instead 
of the old system. 

“T,” says Mr. Lytton, in his letter, “put myself in constant communication with 
my mother, ... and I carried out the injunctions of my father, who confided to me 

implicitly every arrangement ... and enjoined me to avail myself of the advice of 
Lord Shaftesbury in whatever was judged best and kindest to Lady Lytton.” 

Lord Shaftesbury, it is known, is the commander-in-chief of the 
host who have their head-quarters at Exeter Hall. To deodorise a 
dirty affair by his odor of sanctity might be considered a coup de 
théatre worthy of the inventive genius of a novel writer. -More than 
once, in the Chinese business, for instance, and in the Cambridge » 
House conspiracy, Lord Shaftesbury has been employed in that 
line. Yet Mr. Lytton admits the public only to a half confidence, 
otherwise he would have plainly declared that on the kidnapping 
of his mother an imperious note from Lady Palmerston upset Sir 
Edward’s plans, and induced him to “avail himself of the advice of 
Lord Shaftesbury,” who, by a particular mischance, happens to be 
at once Palmerston’s son-in-law and the Chairman of the 
Commissioners in Lunacy..In his attempt at mystification, 
Mr. Lytton proceeds to state: 

“From the moment my father felt compelled to authorize those steps which 
have been made the subject of so much misrepresentation, his anxiety was to obtain 
the opinion of the most experienced and able physicians, in order that my mother 

should not be subject to restraint for one moment longer than was strictly 
justifiable. Such was his charge to me.” 

From the evasive wording of this studiously awkward passage it 
appears, then, that Sir Edward Bulwer felt the necessity of 
authoritative medical advice, not for sequestrating his wife as 
insane, but for setting her free as mentis compos.* In fact, the 
medical men upon whose consent Lady Bulwer was kidnapped 
were anything but “most experienced and able physicians.” The 
fellows employed by Sir Edward were one Mr. Ross, a city 
apothecary, whom, it seems, his license for trading in drugs has all 
at once converted into a psychological luminary, and one Mr. Hale 
Thompson, formerly connected with the Westminster Hospital, 
but a thorough stranger to the scientific world. It was only after 
gentle pressure from without had set in, when Sir Edward felt 
anxious to retrace his steps, that he addressed himself to men of 
medical standing. Their certificates are published by his son—but 
what do they prove? Dr. Forbes Winslow, the editor of “The 
Journal of Psychological Medicine,” who had previously been 
consulted by Lady Bulwer’s legal advisers, certifies that, “having 
examined Lady B. Lytton as to her state of mind,” he found it 
such as “to justify her liberation from restraint.” > The thing to be 

proved to the public was, not that Lady Bulwer’s liberation, but on 
the contrary, that her restraint was justified. Mr. Lytton dares 
not touch upon this delicate and decisive point. Would not a con- 
stable, accused of illegal imprisonment of a free-born Briton, be 
laughed at for pleading that he had committed no wrong in 
setting his prisoner at large? But is Lady Bulwer really set at 
large? 

“My mother,” continues Mr. Lytton, “is now with me, free from all restraint, and 
about, at her own wish, to travel for a short time, in company with myself and a 
female friend and relation, of her own selection.” 

Mr. Lytton’s letter is dated “No. 1 Park lane,” that is, from the 
town residence of his father. Has, then, Lady Bulwer been 
removed from her place of confinement at Brentford to a place of 
confinement at London, and been bodily delivered up to an 
exasperated foe? Who warrants her being “free from all re- 
straint?” At all events, when signing the proposed compromise, 
she was not free from restraint, but smarting under Surgeon Hill’s 
improved system. The most important circumstance is this: While 
Sir Edward has spoken, Lady Bulwer has kept silence. No 
declaration on her part, given as she is to literary exercise, has met 
the public eye. An account written by herself, of her own 
treatment, has been cleverly withdrawn from the hands of the 
individual to ‘whom it was addressed. 

Whatever may be the agreement entered upon by the husband 
and the wife, the question for the British public is whether, under 
the cloak of the lunacy act, lettres de cachet* may be issued by 
unscrupulous individuals able to pay tempting fees to two hungry 
practitioners. Another question is, whether a Secretary of State will 
be allowed to condone for a public crime by a private compromise. 
It has now oozed out that during the present year, while 
investigating into the state of a Yorkshire asylum, the Lunacy 
Commissioners discovered a man, in the full possession of his 
mental faculties, who, for several years, had been immured and 
secreted in a cellar. On a question being put in the House of 
Commons by Mr. Fitzroy, in regard to this case, Mr. Walpole 
answered that he had found ‘‘no record of the fact,” an answer 
which denies the record but not the fact. That things will not be 
allowed to rest at this point, may be inferred from Mr. Tite’s 
notice that “on an early day next session he would move for 

a select committee to inquire into the operation of the Lunacy 
act.” * 

Written on July 23, 1858 Reproduced from the New-York 
Daily Tribune, No. 5393, August 4, 1858