Lost classic: “Pelham; or, Adventures of a Gentleman”, Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1828)

“It was a dark and stormy night.” That literary cliché of an opening sentence, regarded as the qualitative antithesis to Jane Austen’s “It is a truth universally acknowledged…” and popularized by the cartoon character Snoopy, is all that most of the modern world recognizes of the work of Edward Bulwer-Lytton. It was even the inspiration for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, to find the opening sentence of the worst possible novel.

The Lytton novel of which that phrase was the opening line was “Paul Clifford”, published in 1830. Two years earlier, however, Bulwer-Lytton had published the novel on which his literary reputation deserves to rest: “Pelham; or, Adventures of a Gentleman”. This work developed the dandyism pioneered by George Brummell from a pose into a philosophy – even, arguably, an ideology and a radical one at that.

To précis the complex plot would take several pages. In brief, it chronicles the career of the eponymous protagonist Henry Pelham, grandson of an earl, from Eton and Cambridge, to a false accusation of murder levelled against his old university friend Reginald Glanville. Thereafter the plot plunges into the criminal underworld, with Pelham disguised as a clergyman, until the real murderer’s reluctant accomplice testifies to the truth, Glanville is acquitted, the true murderer is sent for trial and Pelham marries his friend’s sister.

Granted all of that seems to reflect the banality of a typical early 19th-century novel, the impression is misleading. “Pelham” is a remarkable book and very well written. The first-person narrative is used cleverly to convey the dandy philosophy. Bulwer found his literary tradition in Restoration drama, replete with Sir Foplings, and he draws effectively on that source. George “Beau” Brummell had been known for a few epigrams but mostly they had relied for their impression on his inimitable delivery.

Bulwer’s wit revelled in the printed page. “Riding is too severe an exercise for men,” observes Pelham, “it is only fit for the robuster nerves of women.” Of Cambridge University he writes: “To say truth, the whole place reeked with vulgarity.” Although the central figure in the novel and the facilitator of the plot, Pelham maintains a pose of dandified detachment: “I have always had a great horror of being a hero in scenes, and a still greater antipathy to ‘females in distress’.”

The cynical, amoral tone of the “World”, the small circle of Exclusion that rules London society, is ironically conveyed: “Mr. Conway had just caused two divorces; and of course all the women in London were dying for him – judge then of the pride which Lady Frances [Pelham’s mother] felt at his addresses.”

Recalling that these epigrams were written in 1828, it is obvious that Bulwer did not only invent Henry Pelham – he invented Oscar Wilde. Wilde’s whole persona was based on the dandy tradition, of which “Pelham”, described as “the hornbook of dandyism”, was the vade mecum for the 19th century. Bulwer partially invented Disraeli too. In the advice given to Pelham in a letter by his worldly mother, “Never talk much to young men – remember that it is the women who make a reputation in society,” we hear an axiom paraphrased and practised by Disraeli in his novels and in the forging of his political career.

Yet the readers who flocked to make “Pelham” what would nowadays be called a bestseller did not realize that the novel was radical in intent, a moral satire on Exclusion and with a serious purpose underlying its impudent frivolity and exaggerated aristocratic disdain. It was also incredibly variegated. It was ostensibly a “silver-fork” novel, of the 1820s-1840s genre so amusingly satirized by Thackeray in “Pendennis”.

At the same time, it belonged to a contrasting genre, the “Newgate novel”, set in the criminal underworld, a tradition going back to Henry Fielding and reaching its acme in Dickens’s “Oliver Twist”. There were echoes, too, of the Gothic tradition.

It is from this book that the convention of black evening dress for men, now established for almost two centuries, derives. Beau Brummell, who wore blue in the evening, disapproved of Bulwer’s influence. When Captain Jesse, his biographer, appeared in formal evening dress of black and white Brummell said: “My dear Jesse, I am sadly afraid you have been reading ‘Pelham’; but excuse me, you look very much like a magpie.” This, from the man who had persuaded the Prince Regent out of salmon-pink, spangled satin evening coats, exemplified the way in which all revolutions overtake and leave behind their initiators.

To the discerning reader, Bulwer made his true agenda subtly evident. Pelham intends to pursue a political career, but is careful to conceal this serious purpose. He observes everything, while maintaining a pose of detachment. While “Pelham” inspired a generation of post-Brummell dandies, Bulwer quickly became embarrassed by the more extravagant features of the book and repeatedly censored subsequent editions. To the Victorians “Pelham” became an object lesson in Regency decadence and the need to shun it.

It inflamed Thomas Carlyle and added vitriol to his denunciations in “Sartor Resartus”, citing “Pelham” and ridiculing as religious “Articles of Faith” the rules of dress laid down in the novel. Carlyle does not seem to have appreciated the author’s satirical intention. “Pelham” made a huge impression in France, strongly influencing both Baudelaire and Barbey d’Aurevilly, as dandyism became merged with aestheticism.

If “Pelham” had been Bulwer’s sole production it would have been sufficient to earn him a place in literary history. In fact he had a prolific literary career of very mixed quality but enormous importance because of his extraordinary facility for inventing new genres. In 1830 he brought the Newgate novel to its climacteric, publishing “Paul Clifford” – the “dark and stormy night” composition – which, in tandem with a similarly emerging genre in France, became the forerunner of the “mystery” novel. “Night and Morning”, published by Bulwer in 1841, was such a novel, in a style also being pioneered by Edgar Allan Poe (who reviewed it) and Wilkie Collins.

Beyond that, Bulwer developed the old Gothic novel genre into the occult/dark fantasy model in “Zanoni” (1842) and “A Strange Story” (1862). In “The Haunted and the Haunters” he created the haunted house story, not set in a crumbling gothic pile but in an urban mansion. In “The Last Days of Pompeii” Bulwer pioneered the notion of novels set in ancient Rome, a forerunner of Henryk Sienciewicz’s “Quo Vadis?” and other later classics. In 1871 Bulwer published “The Coming Race”, placing him alongside Jules Verne in the early emergence of science fiction. Wagner’s opera “Rienzi” and Verdi’s “Aroldo” were based on novels by Bulwer-Lytton.

In the 1850s Bulwer-Lytton was the leading novelist in England. Sales records are non-existent but it is possible that “Pelham” sold more copies than any other novel in 19th-century Britain. Bulwer’s strikingly eclectic literary output was combined with a political career that culminated in his holding the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies and his elevation to the peerage as Baron Lytton.

His private life was tempestuous: he married an Irish beauty, Rosina Doyle Wheeler, who refused to acquiesce in his infidelity and they finally separated in 1836. Rosina pursued a vendetta, writing a novel satirizing her former husband. In 1858, during an election, she denounced him at the hustings; in reprisal, Bulwer had her incarcerated in an asylum but public opinion compelled her release. Yet it was the happiness he enjoyed during the early honeymoon months of his marriage that had inspired Bulwer to write “Pelham” so confidently.

Bulwer was also a master at creating memorable phrases: “the pen is mightier than the sword”; “the Great Unwashed”; and the “pursuit of the almighty dollar” are all terms coined by Edward, Lord Lytton. Surely this writer deserves to be remembered for more than “It was a dark and stormy night.”