Home Life of Great Authors

by Hattie Tyng Griswold

At the early age of seventeen this precocious young man, who had already been several years in society, felt his first sensations of love; and he talked of it to the end of his days as being the one genuine passion of his life. He tells the pretty story very feelingly, and no doubt it was a genuine boyish romance. Hear him:—

"Ah, God! how palpably, even in hours the least friendly to remembrance, there rises before me when I close my eyes that singularly dwarfed tree which overshadowed the little stream, throwing its boughs half-way to the opposite margin. I dare not revisit that spot, for there we were wont to meet (poor children that we were!), thinking not of the world we had scarce entered, dreaming not of fate and chance, full only of our first-born, our ineffable love. It was so unlike the love of grown-up people; so pure that not one wrong thought ever crossed it, and yet so passionate that never again have I felt any emotion comparable to the intensity of its tumultuous tenderness."

When the meetings so feelingly described became known to the lady's father, she was sent away at once, and Bulwer never saw her again. Very soon after, she was forced into a marriage against which her heart protested. For three years she strove to smother the love which consumed her; and when she sunk under the conflict, and death was about to relieve her, she wrote to Bulwer informing him of the sufferings she had undergone, affirming her deathless love, and begging him to visit her grave.

His son says:—

"The impressions left on my father by this early phantom of delight were indelible and colored the whole of his afterlife. He believed that far beyond all other influences they shaped his character, and they never ceased to haunt his memory. Allusions to it are constantly recurring in all his published works, and in none of them more than in the last of all. He was much affected by them, and not knowing to what they referred, we wondered that the creations of his fancy should exercise such power over him. They were not creations of fancy, but the memories of fifty years past."

After the abrupt end of his first romance he conceived a sort of friendship for Lady Caroline Lamb, which came very near the verge of love. Lady Caroline was between thirty and forty years old at this time, it being subsequent to her intrigue with Lord Byron. She looked much younger than her age,—thanks, perhaps, to a slight rounded figure and a child-like mode of wearing her pale golden hair in loose curls. She had large hazel eyes, good teeth, and a pleasant laugh. She had to a surpassing degree the qualities that charm, and never failed to please. Her conversation was remarkable, and she was the only woman, Byron said, who never bored him. She was a creature of caprice, and impulse, and whim, and had been known to send a page around to all her guests at Brocket at three o'clock in the morning to say that she was playing the great organ on the staircase, and requested the pleasure of their company. And it is added that the invitation was never refused, and that daylight would find them listening, spellbound and without a thought of bed. Here is Bulwer's own account of the close of this little episode with Lady Caroline. He was staying at her house, and had become very jealous of a Mr. Russell.

"I went downstairs. Russell sat opposite me. He wore a ring. It was one which Lord Byron had given Lady Caroline: one which was to be worn only by those she loved. I had often worn it myself. She had wanted me to accept it, but I would not, because it was so costly. And now he wore it. Can you conceive my resentment, my wretchedness? After dinner I threw myself upon a sofa. Music was playing. Lady Caroline came to me. 'Are you mad?' said she. I looked up. The tears stood in my eyes. I could not have spoken a word for the world. What do you think she said aloud? 'Don't play this melancholy air,—it affects Mr. Bulwer so that he is actually weeping.' My tears, my softness, my love were over in a moment. When we broke up in the evening I said to her, 'Farewell forever. It is over. Now I see you in your true light. Instead of jealousy I only feel contempt. Farewell. Go and be happy.'"

This account reads very much like a page from "Pelham" or "Devereux," and the whole account of his affairs of the heart is written in a similar manner.