Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy P.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We spent the whole week this week talking about Rosina
Bulwer Lytton and by extension, her husband, Edward Bowler Lytton.
We sure did.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Wow okay number one.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
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?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
What is the story behind him?
Speaker 1 (00:51):
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
(01:15):
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
(01:37):
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
(01:59):
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,
(02:24):
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
(02:46):
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
(03:07):
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
(03:30):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Right. We also talked about how.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Right, And in June of eighteen fifty.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
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,
(04:26):
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
(04:53):
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
(05:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
B Lytton.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
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
(05:55):
people to think she might have lost touch a.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Little bit with reality.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
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,
(06:24):
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
(06:45):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, poor me.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Like right, get the time machine ready. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
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
(07:42):
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
(08:06):
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
(08:27):
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
(08:48):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
You kidding me?
Speaker 1 (09:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, And that screaming about it.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
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
(09:48):
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
(10:14):
person being like, to use the gendered term like shrill,
which has that's a very yeah, reactive is a much
better term.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
But a lot of times.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
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
(10:47):
how works at all. Do we know why Emily was
in a boarding house when she died?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I am not fully clear on.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
That, because that seems messed up.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
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
(11:29):
the role, like.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
The household role of a wife.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
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
(11:54):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
For some reason, it made me think a lot.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
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,
(12:33):
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
(12:53):
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
(13:14):
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
(13:34):
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
(13:56):
his father's way for a while.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Ah, And I'm.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
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
(14:21):
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
(14:44):
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
(15:04):
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
(15:24):
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.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
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
(16:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
But Tracy, he couldn't help it. It was just his
nature and everyone made him that way.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I can't go just not take accountability for anything. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
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,
(16:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
So let's not do that. Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I think both of us might do a lot of screaming.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
And yeah, So anyway, whatever is happening on your weekend,
boy do I hope it's better than anything that we
talked about in.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
This week's episode.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
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
(18:12):
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