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NOVELS
SIR EDWAED BULWEE LYTTON
Ictttton
HISTOEICAL EOMANCES
VOL. I.
DEVEREUX
SIB EDWABD BULWER LITTON, BART.
LIBRARY EDITION IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLX
rillNTEIi BV WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDIXBfF.UH.
Stack
ftnnex
TO
JOHN AULDJO, ESQ.,
AT NAPLES.
MY DEAR AULDJO,
Permit me, as a memento of the pleasant hours
we passed together, and the intimacy we formed, by the
winding shores and the rosy seas of the old Parthenope,
to dedicate to you this romance. It was written in per-
haps the happiest period of my literary life when suc-
cess began to brighten upon my labours, and it seemed
to me a fine thing to make a name.
The Disowned and Devereux were both completed in
retirement, and in the midst of metaphysical studies and
investigations, varied and miscellaneous enough, if not
very deeply conned. At that time I was indeed engaged
in preparing for the press a Philosophical Work, which 1
had afterwards the good sense to postpone to a riper age
and a more sobered mind. But the effect of these studies
is somewhat prejudicially visible in both the romances I
a
ii DEDICATOKY EPISTLE.
have referred to ; and the external and dramatic colour-
ings which belong to fiction are too often forsaken for the
inward and subtle analysis of motives, characters, and
actions. The workman was not sufficiently master of his
art to forbear the vanity of parading the wheels of the
mechanism, and was too fond of calling attention to the
minute and tedious operations by which the movements
were to be performed, and the result obtained. I believe
that an author is generally pleased with his work, less in
proportion as it is good, than in proportion as it fulfils
the idea with which he commenced it. He is rarely,
perhaps, an accurate judge how far the execution is in it-
self faulty or meritorious but he judges with tolerable
success how far it accomplishes the end and objects of
the conception. He is pleased with his work, in short,
according as he can say, "This has expressed what I
meant it to convey." But the reader, who is not in the
secret of the author's original design, usually views the
work through a different medium and is perhaps, in
this, the wiser critic of the two ; for the Book that wan-
ders the most from the idea which originated it, may often
be better than that which is rigidly limited to the un-
folding and denouement of a single conception. If we ac-
cept this solution, we may be enabled to understand why
an author not unfrequently makes favourites of some of
his productions most condemned by the public. For my
own part, I remember that Devereux pleased me better
than Pelham or The Disowned, because the execution
more exactly corresponded with the design. It expressed
with tolerable fidelity what I meant it to express. That
was a happy age, my dear Auldjo, when, on finishing a
woi'k, we could feel contented with our labour, and fancy
DEDICATORY EPISTLE. Ill
we had done our best ! Now, alas ! I have learned
enough of the wonders of the Art to recognise all the
deficiencies of the Disciple ; and to know that no author,
worth the reading, can ever in one single work do half
of which he is capable.
What man ever wrote anything really good, who did
not feel that he had the ability to write something better ?
Writing, after all, is a cold and a coarse interpreter of
thought. How much of the imagination how much of
the intellect, evaporates and is lost while we seek to em-
body it in words ! Man made language, and God the
genius. Nothing short of an eternity could enable men
who imagine, think, and feel, to express all they have
imagined, thought, and felt. Immortality, the spiritual
desire, is the intellectual necessity.
In Devereux I wished to portray a man flourishing in
the last century, with the train of mind and sentiment
peculiar to the present ; describing a life, and not its
dramatic epitome, the historical characters introduced are
not closely woven with the main plot, like those in the
fictions of Sir Walter Scott but are rather, like the nar-
rative romances of an earlier school, designed to relieve
the predominant interest, and give a greater air of truth
and actuality to the supposed memoir. It is a fiction
which deals less with the Picturesque than the Real.
Of the principal character thus introduced (Lord Boling-
broke) I still think that my sketch, upon the whole, is
substantially just. We must not judge of the politicians
of one age by the lights of another. Happily we now
demand in a statesman a desire for other aims than his
own advancement ; but, at that period, ambition was
almost universally selfish the Statesman was yet a Cour-
iv DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
tier a man whose very destiny it was to intrigue, to
plot, to glitter, to deceive. It is in proportion as politics
have ceased to be a secret science in proportion as courts
are less to be flattered, and tools to be managed, that
politicians have become useful and honest men : and the
statesman now directs a people, where once he outwitted
an antechamber. Compare Bolingbroke, not with the
men and by the rules of this day, but with the men and
by the rules of the last. He will lose nothing in com-
parison with a Walpole, with a Marlborough, on the one
side with an Oxford or a Swift upon the other.
And now, my dear Auldjo, you have had enough of
my egotisms. As our works grow up, like old parents,
we grow garrulous, and love to recur to the happier days
of their childhood ; we talk over the pleasant pain they
cost us in their rearing, and memory renews the season
of dreams and hopes ; we speak of their faults as of
things past of their merits as of things enduring : we
are proud to see them still living, and, after many a
harsh ordeal and rude assault, keeping a certain station
in the world ; we hoped, perhaps, something better for
them in their cradle, but as it is we have good cause to
be contented. You, a fellow-author, and one whose
spirited and charming sketches embody so much of per-
sonal adventure, and therefore so much connect them-
selves with associations of real life as well as of the
studious closet you know, and must feel, with me, that
these our books are a part of us, bone of our bone, and
flesh of our flesh ! They treasure up the thoughts which
stirred us the affections which warmed us, years ago
they are the mirrors of how much of what we were ! To
the world they are but as a certain number of pages
DEDICATORY EPISTLE. V
good or bad tedious or diverting ; but to ourselves, the
authors, they are as marks in the wild maze of life by
which we can retrace our steps, and be with our youth
again. What would I not give to feel as I felt to hope
as I hoped to believe as I believed when this work
was first launched upon the world ! But time gives,
while it takes away ; and amongst its recompenses for
many losses are the memories I referred to in commenc-
ing this letter, and gratefully revert to at its close.
From the land of cloud and the life of toil I turn to that
golden clime and the happy indolence that so well accords
with it, and hope once more, ere I die, with a companion
whose knowledge can recall the past, and whose gaiety can
enliven the present, to visit the Disburied City of Pom-
peii, and see the moonlight sparkle over the waves of
Naples. Adiexi, my dear Auldjo,
And believe me
Your obliged and attached friend,
E. B. LYTTON.
NOTE TO THE EDITION OF 1852.
IF this work possess any merit of a Narrative order, it
will perhaps be found in its fidelity to the characteristics
of an Autobiography. The reader must, indeed, comply
with the condition exacted from his imagination and faith
that is to say, he must take the hero of the story upon
the terms for which Morton Devereux himself stipulates ;
and regard the supposed Count as one who lived and wrote
in the last century, but who (dimly conscious that the tone
of his mind harmonised less with his own age than with
that which was to come) left his biography as a legacy to
the present. This assumption (which is not an unfair
one), liberally conceded, and allowed to account for occa-
sional anachronisms in sentiment, Morton Devereux will
be found to write, as a man who is not constructing a
romance, but narrating a life. He gives to Love, its joy
and its sorrow, its due share in an eventful and passionate
existence : but it is the share of biography, not of fiction.
He selects from the crowd of personages with whom he is
brought into contact, not only those who directly influence
his personal destinies, but those of whom a sketch or an
anecdote would appear to a biographer likely to have
VI NOTE TO THE EDITION OF 1852.
interest for posterity. Louis XIV., the Regent Orleans,
Peter the Great, Lord Bolingbroke, and others less emi-
nent, but still of mark in their own day, if growing
obscure to ours, are introduced, not for the purposes and
agencies of fiction, but as an autobiographer's natural
illustrations of the men and manners of his time.
And here be it pardoned if I add that so minute an
attention has been paid to accuracy, that even in petty
details, and in relation to historical characters but slightly
known to the ordinary reader, a critic deeply acquainted
with the memoirs of the age will allow that the novelist
is always merged in the narrator.
Unless the Author has failed more in his design, than,
on revising the work of his early youth with the com-
paratively impartial eye of maturer judgment, he is dis-
posed to concede Morton Devereux will also be found
with that marked individuality of character which dis-
tinguishes the man who has lived and laboured, from the
hero of romance. He admits into his life but few passions
those are tenacious and intense ; conscious that none
who are around him will sympathise with his deeper
feelings, he veils them under the sneer of an irony which
is often affected and never mirthful. Wherever we find
him, after surviving the brief episode of love, we feel
though he does not tell us so that he is alone in the
world. He is represented as a keen observer and a suc-
cessful actor in the busy theatre of mankind, precisely in
proportion as no cloud from the heart obscures the cold
clearness of the mind. In the scenes of pleasure there is
no joy in his smile ; in the contests of ambition there is
no quicker beat of the pulse. Attaining in the prime of
manhood such position and honour as would first content
NOTE TO THE EDITION OF 1852. vii
and then sate a man of this mould, he has nothing left
but to discover the vanities of this world, and to ponder
on the hopes of the next ; and his last passion dying out
in the retribution that falls on his foe, he finally sits down
in retirement to rebuild the ruined home of his youth,
unconscious that to that solitude the Destinies have led
him to repair the waste and ravages of his own melancholy
soul.
But while outward Dramatic harmonies between cause
and effect, and the proportionate agencies which characters
introduced in the Drama bring to bear upon event and
catastrophe, are carefully shunned as real life does for
the most part shun them yet there is a latent coherence
in all that, by influencing the mind, do, though indirectly,
shape out the fate and guide the actions.
Dialogue and adventures which, considered dramatic-
ally, would be episodical considered biographically, will
be found essential to the formation, change, and develop-
ment of the narrator's character. The grave conversations
with Bolingbroke and Richard Cromwell, the light scenes
in London and at Paris, the favour obtained with the
Czar of Russia, are all essential to the creation of that
mixture of wearied satiety and mournful thought which
conducts the Probationer to the lonely spot in which he
is destined to learn at once the mystery of his past life,
and to clear his reason from the doubts that had obscured
the future world.
Viewing the work in this more subtle and contemplative
light, the reader will find not only the true test by which
to judge of its design and nature, but he may also recog-
nise sources of interest in the story which might otherwise
have been lost to him ; and if so, the Author will not be
viil .NOTE TO THE EDITION OF 1852.
without excuse for this criticism upon the scope and in-
tention of his own work. For it is not only the privilege
of an artist, but it is also sometimes his duty to the prin-
ciples of Art, to place the spectator in that point of view
wherein the light best falls upon the canvass. " Do not
place yourself there," says the painter ; " to judge of my
composition, you must stand where I place you."
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHER'S INTRODUCTION.
MY life has been one of frequent adventure and con-
stant excitement. It has been passed, to this present
day, in a stirring age, and not without aquaintance of
the most eminent and active spirits of the time. Men
of all grades, and of every character, have been fami-
liar to me. War love ambition the scroll of sages
the festivals of wit the intrigues of states all that
agitate mankind, the hope and the fear, the labour and
the pleasure the great drama of vanities, with the
little interludes of wisdom ; these have been the occu-
pations of my manhood ; these will furnish forth the
materials of that history which is now open to your
survey. Whatever be the faults of the historian, he
has no motive to palliate what he has committed, nor
to conceal what he has felt.
Children of an after century the very time in which
these pages will greet you, destroys enough of the con-
nection between you and myself to render me indiffer-
ent alike to your censure and your applause. Exactly
one hundred years from the day this record is com-
x AUTOBIOGRAPHER'S INTRODUCTION.
pleted will the seal I shall place on it be broken, and
the secrets it contains be disclosed. I claim that con-
geniality with you which I have found not among
my own coevals. Their thoughts, their feelings, their
views, have nothing kindred to my own. I speak their
language, but it is not as a native they know not a
syllable of mine ! "With a future age my heart may
have more in common to a future age my thoughts
may be less unfamiliar, and my sentiments less strange ;
I trust these confessions to the trial.
Children of an after century, between you and the
being who has traced the pages ye behold that busy,
versatile, restless being there is but one step but
that step is a century ! His now is separated from
your now by an interval of three generations ! While
he writes, he is exulting in the vigour of health and
manhood while ye read, the very worms are starving
upon his dust. This commune between the living and
the dead this intercourse between that which breathes
and moves, and is and that which life animates not,
nor mortality knows annihilates falsehood, and chills
even self-delusion into awe. Come, then, and look
upon the picture of a past day, and of a gone being,
without apprehension of deceit and as the shadows
and lights of a checkered and wild existence flit before
you watch if, in your own hearts, there be aught
which mirrors the reflection.
MORTON DEVEREUX.
DEVEREUX.
BOOK I CHAPTEE I.
Of the Hero's Birth and Parentage. Nothing can differ more
from the End of Things than their Beginning.
MY grandfather, Sir Arthur Devereux (peace be with
his ashes !) was a noble old knight and cavalier, pos-
sessed of a property sufficiently large to have main-
tained in full dignity half-a-dozen peers such as peers
have been since the days of the First James. Never
theless, my grandfather loved the equestrian order
better than the patrician, rejected all offers of advance-
ment, and left his posterity no titles but those to his
estate.
Sir Arthur had two children by wedlock both sons ;
at his death, my father, the younger, bade adieu to the
old hall and his only brother, prayed to the grim por-
traits of his ancestors to inspire him, and set out to
VOL. i. A
2 DEVEREUX.
join as a volunteer the armies of that Louis, afterwards
surnamed le Grand. Of him I shall say but little ;
the life of a soldier has only two events worth record-
ing, his first campaign and his last. My uncle did as
his ancestors had done before him, and, cheap as the
dignity had grown, went up to court to be knighted by
Charles II. He was so delighted with what he saw of
the metropolis that he foreswore all intention of leav-
ing it, took to Sedley and champagne, flirted with Nell
Gwynne, lost double the value of his brother's portion
at one sitting to the chivalrous Grammont, wrote a
comedy, corrected by Etherege, and took a wife recom-
mended by Eochester. The wife brought him a child
six months after marriage, and the infant was born on
the same day the comedy was acted. Luckily for the
honour of the house, my uncle shared the fate of Plim-
neus, king of Sicyon, and all the offspring he ever had
(that is to say, the child and the play) "died as soon as
they were born." My uncle was now only at a loss
what to do with his wife that remaining treasure,
whose readiness to oblige him had been so miraculously
evinced. She saved him the trouble of long cogitation
an exercise of intellect to which he was never too
ardently inclined. There was a gentleman of the
court, celebrated for his sedateness and solemnity ;
my aunt was piqued into emulating Orpheus, and, six
weeks after her confinement, she put this rock into
motion they eloped. Poor gentleman ! it must have
been a severe trial of patience to a man never known
before to transgress the very slowest of all possible
DEVEREUX. 3
walks, to have had two events of the most rapid
nature happen to him in the same week : scarcely
had he recovered the shock of being run away with
by my aunt, before, terminating for ever his vagran-
cies, he was run through by my uncle. The wits made
an epigram upon the event ; and my uncle, who was as
bold as a lion at the point of a sword, was, to speak
frankly, terribly disconcerted by the point of a jest.
He retired to the country in a fit of disgust and gout.
Here his natural goodness soon recovered the effects of
the artificial atmosphere to which it had been exposed,
and he solaced himself by righteously governing do-
mains worthy of a prince, for the mortifications he had
experienced in the dishonourable career of a courtier.
Hitherto I have spoken somewhat slightingly of my
uncle, and in his dissipation he deserved it, for he was
both too honest and too simple to shine in that galaxy
of prostituted genius of which Charles II. was the
centre. But in retirement he was no longer the
same person ; and I do not think that the elements
of human nature could have furnished forth a more
amiable character than Sir William Devereux presid-
ing at Christmas over the merriment of his great hall.
Good old man ! his very defects were what we loved
best in him vanity was so mingled with good-nature
that it became graceful, and we reverenced one the
most, while we most smiled at the other.
One peculiarity had he, which the age he had lived
in and his domestic history rendered natural enough,
viz., an exceeding distaste to the matrimonial state :
4 DEVEREUX.
early marriages were misery, imprudent marriages
idiotism, and marriage, at the best, he was wont to
say, with a kindling eye and a heightened colour
marriage, at the best, was the devil ! Yet it must
not be supposed that Sir William Devereux was an
ungallant man. On the contrary, never did the beau
sexe have a humbler or more devoted servant. As
nothing, in his estimation, was less becoming to a wise
man than matrimony, so nothing was more ornamental
than flirtation.
He had the old man's weakness, garrulity : and he
told the wittiest stories in the world, without omitting
anything in them but the point This omission did
not arise from the want either of memory or of humour,
but solely from a deficiency in the malice natural to
all jesters. He could not persuade his lips to repeat a
sarcasm hurting even the dead or the ungrateful ; and
when he came to the drop of gall which should have
given zest to the story, the milk of human kindness
broke its barrier, despite of himself, and washed it
away. He was a fine wreck, a little prematurely
broken by dissipation, but not perhaps the less in-
teresting on that account ; tall, and somewhat of the
jovial old English girth, with a face where good-nature
and good living mingled their smiles and glow. He
wore the garb of twenty years back, and was curiously
particular in the choice of his silk stockings. Between
you and me, he was not a little vain of his leg, and a
compliment on that score was always sure of a gracious
reception.
DEVEREUX. 5
The solitude of my uncle's household was broken by
an invasion of three boys none of the quietest ; and
their mother, who, the gentlest and saddest of woman-
kind, seemed to follow them, the emblem of that prim-
eval Silence from which all noise was born. These
three boys were niy two brothers and myself. My
father, who had conceived a strong personal attach-
ment for Louis Quatorze, never quitted his service,
and the great king repaid him by orders and favours
without number ; he died of wounds received in battle
a count and a marshal, full of renown, and destitute
of money. He had married twice : his first wife, who
died without issue, was a daughter of the noble house
of La Tremouille; his second, our mother, was of a
younger branch of the English race of Howard. Brought
up in her native country, and influenced by a primitive
and retired education, she never loved that gay land
which her husband had adopted as his own. Upon
his death, she hastened her return to England, and, re-
fusing, with somewhat of honourable pride, the magni-
ficent pension which Louis wished to settle upon the
widow of his favourite, came to throw herself and her
children upon those affections which she knew they
were entitled to claim.
My uncle was unaffectedly rejoiced to receive us. To
say nothing of his love for my father, and his pride at
the honours the latter had won to their ancient house
the good gentleman was very well pleased with the
idea of obtaining four new listeners, out of whom he
might select an heir, and he soon grew as fond of us as
6 DEVEREUX.
we were of him. At the time of our new settlement, I
had attained the age of twelve ; my second brother (we
were twins) was born an hour after me ; my third was
about fifteen months younger. I had never been the
favourite of the three. In the first place, my brothers
(my youngest, especially) were uncommonly handsome,
and, at most, I was but tolerably good-looking ; in the
second place, my mind was considered as much inferior
to theirs as my body. I was idle and dull, sullen and
haughty; the only wit I ever displayed was in sneering
at my friends, and the only spirit, in quarrelling with
my twin brother ; so said or so thought all who saw us
in our childhood ; and it follows, therefore, that I was
either very unamiable or very much misunderstood.
But, to the astonishment of myself and my relations,
my fate was now to be reversed, and I was no sooner
settled at Devereux Court, than I became evidently
the object of Sir William's pre-eminent attachment.
The fact was, that I really liked both the knight and
his stories better than my brothers did ; and the very
first time I had seen my uncle, I had commented on
the beauty of his stocking, and envied the constitution
of his leg : from such trifles spring affection ! In
truth, our attachment to each other so increased that
we grew to be constantly together; and while my
childish anticipations of the world made me love to listen
to stories of courts and courtiers, my uncle returned
the compliment, by declaring of my wit, as the angler
declared of the river Lea, that one would find enough
in it, if one would but angle sufficiently long.
DEVEREUX. 7
Nor was this all ; my uncle and myself were exceed-
ingly like the waters of Alpheus and Arethusa nothing
was thrown into the one without being seen very shortly