Pelham; Or, The Adventures of a Gentleman by Edward George Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Fiction, Classics

by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Pelham's a fine tale, but mostly it's remarkable as a classic "Fashionable Novel" -- in its day, the Fashionable Novel was a genre unto itself, focusing on the manners, habits and lifestyles of the Rich and Famous of the first half of the 19th century -- the jet set of its day. Pelham's sparkling cynicism makes fun of the genre as it executes it gorgeously; it also sheds an amazing light on a time and circumnstance well removed from our own.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, British Literature, English Literature, Classic Literature, 19th Century, Literature

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1828

About the author

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC, was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician. Lord Lytton was a florid, popular writer of his day, who coined such phrases as "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", and the infamous incipit "It was a dark and stormy night."

He was the youngest son of General William Earle Bulwer of Heydon Hall and Wood Dalling, Norfolk and Elizabeth Barbara Lytton, daughter of Richard Warburton Lytton of Knebworth, Hertfordshire. He had two brothers, William Earle Lytton Bulwer (1799–1877) and Henry Bulwer, 1st Baron Dalling and Bulwer.

Lord Lytton's original surname was Bulwer, the names 'Earle' and 'Lytton' were middle names. On 20 February 1844 he assumed the name and arms of Lytton by royal licence and his surname then became 'Bulwer-Lytton'. His widowed mother had done the same in 1811. His brothers were always simply surnamed 'Bulwer'.

Reviews

[Lucy · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, this is what people were reading in 1828. You can see why 9 years later, Pickwick was so popular. It must have seemed like heaven on earth to read Dickens after this sort of laboured, self-conscious tedium. There are flashes of wit in Pelham, there is the germ of a plot, but it is hidden by the need of the time to pad a book out to three volumes with in this case long unnatural conversations about literature and politics. Oh, and some characters who appear for a scene and are totally irrelevant to the plot....it's as if the picaresque novel of the previous century got stifled by Regency manners. It's better than early Disraeli, though......

[Sherwood Smith]

The 1828 edition is the one to read. Bulwer-Lytton later edited it to make it more Victorian, when he tried to make himself into a Serious Author. The original is witty, insouciant, and a splendid view not only of later Regency life, but gives a clue how the "silver fork" (or Regency) novel got its birth.

Also, Pelham is responsible for men wearing black coats, a fashion that took over 100 years to shake.

[Lewis Carnelian · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonder! Edward Bulwer-Lytton's second (and, from all accounts, best novel) lies at the intersection of a number of notable rills: ostensibly a "silver fork" novel—that is, a novel of the conflated aristocracy of the Regency era (think "Bridgerton! Bridgerton! Bridgerton!"), Pelham is much more...subtle and complicated. First of all, rather than *embrace* the 'Ton and all its vagaries, Pelham the Gentleman instead lies rather as an observer—a mute observer? No, by no means. There is definitely a touch of satire here. His particular distance is only matched by his own adroitness at dissembling his peers and...adapting to the circumstances. This reaches its most wonderful height when, in service of his friend, he descends into a thieves' den in London in full disguise accompanied by the charming rogue and rascal Job Johnson! Yes, indeed, while the first half of the novel details Pelham's "adventures" in society, mostly in Paris, the second is neatly divided between his attempts at being a Whig politician (also quite satirical and yet culminating in perhaps the most epiphanic moral episode) and his own investigation of a crime. Thus, Pelham intersects both the dandy novel (there is, in fact, a rather tragic episode involving a character clearly based on Dandy #1, Beau Brummell), the flâneur, and the crime novel. (Some would have this as a proto-detective novel: perhaps, but the detecting is slim. However, the embrace and description of London's criminal underground is joyously scrumptious.) This novel was a BIG influence on Poe: there is an episode in Paris involving a miscreant primate here, need I say more? This would all be rather superfluous and forgettable (but highly enjoyable) if the darned thing didn't have such a wealth of casual philosophy embedded in it that seeds the whole thing ultimately as a very humble, self-deprecating moral tale. Highly recommended for fans of Dickens, the 'Ton, Jane Austen, and lastly, the criminal element of 1820s London. Bulwer-Lytton would go on to have a fruitful career, firmly establishing himself as a writer of the Gothic, amongst other things, but would later become a blasted Tory and imprison his own wife in a mental institution, basically betraying all the ethics he set up here as a young man. I say Poh! to his later years, but this is a wonder. Note to those who strain at 19th century diction and prose: if Dickens seems a chore to you, beware beware beware. This is not for the light-hearted and lovers of simple prose of the 20th century.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel odd rating a book written almost 200 years ago with our current "five star" rating system and my own "modern" sensibilities. It was a slog at times and verbose definitely, but so fascinating to slip into a world that existed 200 years ago. It's the best way to time travel!

There were passages I couldn't understand either because of unfamiliar context, or I couldn't follow the author's thought process, but also so many passages I found to be witty and delightful. As a student of history, the best thing of all is seeing how people and circumstances stay the same throughout the centuries. Mr. Russelton's monologue on his life as what we would call a "social influencer" being a prime example. Unfortunately it is way too long to include in this review, but two other examples of people being the same regardless of when they lived I'm including below.

"Who does not know what active citizens private misfortune make us? The public is like the pools of Bethesda- we all hasten there, to plunge in and rid ourselves of our afflictions."

[In regards to required reading in all my English classes:] "There seems, said I, an unaccountable prepossession among all persons to imagine that whatever seems gloomy must be profound, and whatever is cheerful must be shallow."

And lastly this which perfectly summarizes the above point and all I loved about this book:

"There is something pleasingly melancholy in walking over places haunted by history; for all of us live more in the past than the present. And how exactly alike in all ages men have been. On the very spot we are on now, how many have been actuated by the same feelings that now actuate us; how many have made perhaps exactly the same remark just made by you! It is this universal identity which forms our most powerful link with those that have been..."

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Victorians clearly had a lot more time on their hands both for writing and reading. Pelham is a good natured, breezy romp by the eponymous hero that eventually (via many set pieces and diversions) morphs into something more akin to a Gothic novel of sensation. Its an odd mix and you have to wait until the last 100 pages to really find anything akin to a gripping plot but an interesting period piece all the same.

[Lyrrad Retac · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m taking a pause from writing about Benjamin Disraeli’s early novels (having reviewed his first, 1826-27’s Vivian Grey, and his 1828 novella Popanilla) to ruminate upon his friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1828 novel Pelham: The Adventures of a Gentleman. I take on Pelham now not only because that’s how it fits in chronological order but also because the latter apparently offers insight into the novels to come from Disraeli, and into Disraeli himself. Written when Bulwer-Lytton was 25, Pelham is often described as a manual for the dandy, a category to which both authors belonged. To understand Disraeli one should understand where he stood on the spectrum of dandyism in his early years, and Pelham is an invaluable resource in doing so.

Pelham, an exploration of a young man’s journey from dandy to serious adult, combines multiple genres, some of which were not really in existence when Bulwer-Lytton wrote it. First, as discussed, it is a guidebook for the dandy. Second, its relationship to intellectualism was reportedly something new. The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction describes Bulwer-Lytton as “the first 19th-century novelist to project himself as an intellectual, interested in ideas, and how fiction can be their vehicle.” (This sort of intellectualism is actually contrasted with dandyism in Pelham, as we shall see later.) Third, it is a murder mystery, one of the early prototypes for what would later become the mystery genre. And fourth, it is one of literary history’s key examples of the “silver fork novel,” which shows high society in a level of detail that reputedly extends to the metal of the silverware. It’s worth noting that when Disraeli began writing silver fork novels he was not writing from experience, as he was not born to an aristocratic lifestyle. Bulwer-Lytton, by contrast, was writing from personal experience with the “beau monde,” or great world of high society.

Bulwer-Lytton, after writing this novel, went on to a somewhat distinguished literary career. He wrote The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), which is still remembered today, innovated a certain brand of early science fiction in The Coming Race, and changed men’s fashions forever by writing Pelham. Today he is perhaps best remembered as the author of the line “It was a dark and stormy night,” but he also is responsible for coining the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword.” Lytton eventually became a minister of parliament and a member (under his friend Disraeli) of the cabinet, as Secretary of State for the Colonies.

One of the interesting things about Pelham is the extent to which it was really a manual for a more moderate brand of dandyism than Disraeli’s. It betrays a certain amount of ambivalence about dandyism itself. In the opening pages of the book, the lead character Henry Pelham receives a letter from his mother telling him she prefers him in black rather than green. “I did not like that green coat you wore when last I saw you—you look best in black—which is a great compliment, for people must be very [distinguished] in appearance, in order to do so.” In his 1835 edition of Pelham, Lytton changed the word “green” in that passage to “blue,” which makes Pelham’s style more conservative. After receiving that letter, Pelham takes his mother’s advice, and opts for simplicity in dress:

“On entering Paris I had resolved to set up 'a character' for I was always of an ambitious nature, and desirous of being distinguished from the ordinary herd. After various cogitations as to the particular one I should assume, I thought nothing appeared more likely to be remarkable among men, [In 1835 Lytton changed the word “remarkable” to “obnoxious”] and therefore pleasing to women, than an egregious coxcomb: accordingly I arranged my hair into ringlets, dressed myself with singular plainness and simplicity (a low person, by the by, would have done just the contrary), and putting on an air of exceeding languor, made my maiden appearance at Lord Bennington's."

Disraeli, by contrast, rarely opted for “singular plainness or simplicity.” The night he met Bulwer-Lytton, in the Spring of 1830, at a dinner in Edward’s house, he dressed in a manner one could hardly have described as simple. Lytton’s elder brother, Henry Bulwer, recollects the occasion. Monypenny and Buckle’s Life of Benjamin Disraeli volume one quote Henry Bulwer:

“Disraeli wore green velvet trousers, a canary coloured waistcoat, low shoes, silver buckles, lace at his wrists, and his hair in ringlets. ... If on leaving the table we had been severally taken aside and asked which was the cleverest of the party we should have been obliged to say ‘the man in the green velvet trousers.’”

The prototypical Regency dandy Beau Brummel, who is depicted in Pelham under the guise of the character Russelton, has been credited with popularizing black evening wear, having worn such subdued colors at a time when 18th Century fashions favored wild colors as a matter of fashion. However he apparently disapproved of Pelham’s popularizing black and white as evening wear, which as some writers have pointed out has never since gone out of fashion. As Ellen Moers writes in The Dandy (1960):

“[Brummel] disapproved of Bulwer's views on dress. Captain Jesse once presented himself to Brummell in a formal evening costume of black and white--a combination which now seems inevitable and eternal, but which became the fashion only as a result of Pelham. Brummell, who wore blue, saw fit to admonish Jesse ‘gently’ on his appearance. “My dear Jesse," he protested, "I am sadly afraid you have been reading Pelham; but excuse me, you look very much like a magpie."

A sort of moderate dandyism seems to have been Lytton’s taste from the get-go, but changes he made in later editions of the novel transformed it into an even more moderate document of dandyism. Lytton began editing his novel in the same year it initially came out, 1828. The first edition includes a long passage defining Pelham's (and Lytton’s) particular taste in suits. But later that year Bulwer already issued a second edition that cut out all of that sartorial detail because, he noted in a footnote, fashion had already changed that year. He replaced the passage with a lengthy series of “Maxims” for the dandy, one of which admits that the dandy should always take into account the taste of the present day and not just his own taste ("Never in your dress altogether desert that taste which is general. The world considers eccentricity in great things, genius; in small things, folly.”) By 1835, Bulwer had heavily edited the novel because dandyism began to go out of fashion, in part because of Thomas Carlyle’s attack on the lifestyle called Sartor Resartus. As Moers puts in in her book The Dandy: “It is only in the pages of the first few editions that the true ‘Pelham’ can be read at all. Frightened by what he had read … Bulwer would edit out of his novel all of what was wicked, most of what was naughty and a great deal of what was amusing. … Since 1836, ‘Pelham’ has never been reprinted in its entirety.” It took me a while before I found Jerome McGann’s 1972 University of Nebraska Press edition, which charts all of Lytton’s changes to the novel in the many editions he issued, and uses as its main text the 1828 second edition (as most of the changes from the first edition merely cleaned up the text). This is by far the best way to read Pelham, though the public domain e-book labeled “The Complete” Pelham does use the 1828 text.

In the 1835 Pelham Bulwer-Lytton cut most if not all of the references to the words “effeminate“ and “effeminacy.” He also changes descriptions of “masculine” men to “stalwart men,” in contexts where masculinity is clearly contrasted with his hero Henry Pelham. These changes to the language of masculinity beg the question: Were Disraeli and Bulwer-Lytton gay? Since the 1890s, in Oscar Wilde’s day, dandyism has been associated very directly with homosexuality. This was not the case in the 1820s and 1830s, when “homosexual” was not yet a word (it became one in 1869). Some biographers have called Disraeli gay or bisexual, but with little direct evidence. It was certainly true that Bulwer-Lytton’s wife, Rosina Bulwer-Lytton, accused the pair of dandies of sodomy with each other. She alleged that is how Bulwer-Lytton was chosen for the cabinet while Disraeli lead the House of Commons. She wrote the word “queer” in all of Disraeli’s novels in Lytton’s personal library and when her husband stood for parliament she showed up at a campaign event accusing him of all sorts of infidelities. Leslie Mitchell’s biography Bulwer-Lytton: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Man of Letters, the only modern biography of him, contains the best gossip on the subject. In his book The Politics of Pleasure, William Kuhn makes an argument that Disraeli was gay but relies mainly on interpretations of his novels. The most believable of these interpretations may be found in a passage in Disraeli’s novel Contarini Fleming in which the autobiographical lead character describes a crush on a male schoolmate. In his essay “Byronism and the Work of Homosexual Performance in Early Victorian England,”Andrew Elfenbein makes a case that Disraeli and Bulwer-Lytton used Byronic dress and affectations to deliberately draw associations with sexual scandal and homosexuality, in order to attract attention to themselves that helped them gain power despite risks (Modern Language Quarterly in December 1993). “While the question of whether or not they were ‘really’ homosexuals is alluring, it is ultimately unanswerable because of the difficulty of defining what counts as a ‘real’ homosexual,” Elfenbein writes. “What is clear is that both men imitated certain potentially scandalous aspects of Lord Byron's behavior, as they understood it, in a bid to achieve social prominence.“

However much dandyism helped lift Disraeli and Bulwer-Lytton’s prospects in parliament (both men spent time as MPs before Disraeli became prime minister), Disraeli made a conscious decision to stop dressing flamboyantly in 1847. Pelham’s transition, meanwhile, from dandy to serious minister, is one of the chief preoccupations of the book. A bildungsroman, defined as a novel about the spiritual coming of age of a young person, the novel draws a contrast between the unserious life of the dandy and a more serious life after dandyism. In fact, though Lytton goes out of his way to fill the novel with evidence of his intellectualism, including epigrams before each chapter in Latin, French, Italian and English, his character Pelham affects a certain anti-intellectualism that he apparently associates with dandyism. At the end of the first volume of this three-volume novel, when Pelham acquires a seat in parliament and begins reading at his uncle’s suggestion the writings of the main political theorists of the day (including Bentham and Mill), the move is discussed as a departure. In 1848 Lytton wrote an introduction to the latest edition of the novel that said that all the reading the character did was deemed out of character by some critics:

“Mr. Pelham studying Mill on Government and the Political Economists, was thought by some an incongruity in character at the day in which Mr. Pelham first appeared; the truth of that conception is apparent now, at least to the observant. The fine gentlemen of that day were preparing themselves for the after things, which were already foreshadowed; and some of those, then best known in clubs and drawing-rooms, have been since foremost and boldest, nor least instructed, in the great struggles of public life.”

Even after that, however, in a sort of Wildean ironic fashion, the character of Pelham affects anti-intellectualism. His mother tells him he is reading too much: “I have, lately, been very much afraid that [your uncle] should convert you into a bookworm,” she says; “after all, my dear Henry, you are quite clever enough to trust to your own ability. Your great geniuses never read.” Pelham responds: “‘True, my dear mother,’ said I, with a most unequivocal yawn, and depositing on the table Mr. Bentham upon Popular Fallacies; ‘true, and I am quite of your opinion.’” Later, when his friend Mr. Vincent asks him, “Do you ever read?” Pelham responds, “I never do read.” Pelham surprises Vincent when he ably discusses Cicero. “I am perhaps less ignorant than I affect to be,” Pelham admits. “It is now my object to be a dandy; hereafter I may aspire to be an orator—a wit, a scholar, or a Vincent. You will see then that there have been many odd quarters of an hour in my life less unprofitably wasted than you imagine.” Then he lapses back “into my usual tone of languid affectation” saying “I shall have too much to do in attending to Stultz [a tailor mentioned in the novel] and Nugee [a famous Regency tailor] amd Tatersall [“a popular gathering place for sportsmen of all sorts,” McGann tells us], and Baxter [a London hatter], and a hundred other occupiers of spare time.” When he begins reading with his uncle, Pelham feels the need to inform us this is a major transformation:

“And I must say, in justification of my studies and my tutor, that I derived one benefit from them which has continued with me to this hour--viz. I obtained a clear knowledge of moral principle. Before that time, the little ability I possessed only led me into acts, which, I fear, most benevolent Reader, thou has already sufficiently condemned: my good feelings--for I was not naturally bad--never availed me the least when present temptation came into my way. I had no guide but passion; no rule but the impulse of the moment. What else could have been the result of my education? If I was immoral, it was because I was never taught morality. Nothing, perhaps, is less innate than virtue. I own that the lessons of my uncle did not work miracles--that, living in the world, I have not separated myself from its errors and its follies: the vortex was too strong--the atmosphere too contagious; but I have at least avoided the crimes into which my temper would most likely have driven me. I ceased to look upon the world as a game one was to play fairly, if possible--but where a little cheating was readily allowed; I no longer divorced the interests of other men from my own: if I endeavored to blind them, it was neither by unlawful means, nor for a purely selfish end: if--but come, Henry Pelham, thou hast praised thyself enough for the present; and, after all, thy future adventures will best tell if thou art really amended.”

That is only the end of volume one, however. How does Pelham’s new morality square with the moral of the book in its entirety? In a preface to the 1840 edition, Lytton told of having written a forerunner to this story, a short tale called "Mortimer, or the Memoirs of a Gentleman." “Its commencement was almost word for word the same as that of Pelham," Lytton wrote, “but the design was exactly opposite to that of the latter and later work. ‘Mortimer’ was intended to show the manner in which the world deteriorates its votary, and Pelham, on the contrary, conveys the newer, and I believe, sounder moral, of showing how a man of sense can subject the usages of the world to himself instead of being conquered by them, and gradually grow wise by the very foibles of his youth.”

It's worth remembering that in the first paragraph of my review of Vivian Grey, I noted that the sort of aristocratic gentlemen with whom Lytton hung out — and Disraeli wished he did — generally did not read, and that when the future prime minister did acclimate to the aristocratic world this illiteracy frustrated Disraeli. Reading that paragraph now is encouraged.

Lytton wrote Pelham perhaps in part as a response to Vivian Grey; there is a paragraph in Lytton’s novel where at a party one of Pelham’s aristocratic conversationalists critiques Disraeli’s novel:

“’In one work, which, since it is popular, I will not name, there is a stiffness and stiltedness in the dialogue and descriptions, perfectedly ridiculous. The author makes his countesses always talking of their family, and his earls always quoting the peerage. There is as much fuss about state, and dignity, and pride, as if the greatest amongst us were not far too busy with the petty affairs of the world to have time for such lofty vanities. There is only one rule necessary for a clever writer who wishes to delineate the beau monde. It is this: let him consider that 'dukes, and lords, and noble princes,' eat, drink, talk, move, exactly the same as any other class of civilized people—nay, the very subjects in conversation are, for the most part, the same in all sets—only, perhaps, they are somewhat more familiarly and easily treated than among the lower orders, who fancy rank is distinguished by pomposity, and that state affairs are discussed with the solemnity of a tragedy—that we are always my lording and my ladying each other—that we ridicule commoners, and curl our hair with Debrett's Peerage.’

“We all laughed at this speech, the truth of which we readily acknowledged.”

Lytton knew better than Disraeli what these parties were like. His character, Pelham, also knows dandies well; at one point in the novel he promises a leader in the House of Commons that he will bring “a whole legion of dandies to the House door” in support of a particular measure.

Ultimately, in part because he kept changing his version of what a dandy was, Bulwer-Lytton’s version of a dandy comes off as somewhat compromised next to Disraeli’s. Was Lytton insecure? According to Mitchell, he was obsessed with losing his youth. But then so was Disraeli. And on some level you have to love an 1828 male who uses “almond paste” to keep his skin youthful, as confessed in Pelham. But one does wish Lytton had the courage to admit that Pelham was based on himself. Instead, in 1848, he wrote: “I trust that this work may now be read without prejudice from that silly error that long sought to identify the author with the hero.” Disraeli was more forthcoming when he wrote Vivian Grey that the character was semi-autobiographical.

As for the quality of the novel, Bulwer-Lytton was himself disappointed. His mother complained that he could be writing literature of a higher sort. He replied that of course he could and she was the reason he was not, as his mother had disinherited Lytton when he married Rosina, causing him to write fast to make money. But Pelham was a success & deserved to be.

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

With regard to myself I have been more candid. I have not only shewn--non parca manu--my faults, but (grant that this is a much rarer exposure) my foibles; and, in my anxiety for your entertainment, I have not grudged you the pleasure of a laugh--even at my own expense. Forgive me, then, if I am not a fashionable hero--forgive me if I have not wept over a "blighted spirit," nor boasted of a "British heart;" and allow that, a man, who, in these days of alternate Werters and Worthies, is neither the one nor the other, is, at least, a novelty in print, though, I fear, common enough in life.

I had a great time reading this almost 200 years old book that Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote when he was only 25!

[Patrizia · Rating 3 out of 5]

l passo narrativo è lento, l'autore tergiversa per tomi interi prima di dare un vero e proprio avvio alla storia, fino a dar l'idea di voler giocare con l'impazienza dello sprovveduto lettore; per non parlare dei personaggi, in molti dei quali, più che la coerenza e la verosimiglianza, prevale il gioco caricaturale, che sbeffeggia un originale di cui ben poco ormai può interessarci.
Ma chi ha sviluppato una malsana curiosità per l'ottocento inglese, scoprirà in questo libro una vera miniera di informazioni preziose. Vi si ritrovano, negligentemente disseminati qua e là, un po' tutti temi cari alle moderne autrici di 'historical romance': i dandies, lord Brummel, le assemblee da Almack's, i corteggiamenti, i balli, le residenze di campagna e di città, la nobiltà inglese semibarbara e/o raffinata, gli intrighi politici, i duelli, i soggiorni a Parigi, le amanti, gli amori, la piccola delinquenza e il suo gergo fantasioso… e ogni cosa è raccontata in 'presa diretta', con uno sguardo orizzontale e perciò stesso spassionato, minimale, senza la lente deformante fornita da una nostalgica (e incompetente) lontananza.

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastically bad!!!!!!!!! Also has the Rules of Dress; historically interesting because Lytton was a friend of Brummelle, yet he takes the opposite view of the Grandfather of the Dandies. And it foreshadowed the next heir Compte D'Orsay.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

What overblown prose!
Enjoyed it though as the main character was interesting and despite being a beau, he was very moral. A good insight into the times through the eyes of a man and one of a higher class than the usual Bennetts.

[Wax · Rating 5 out of 5]

learn how to be an english gentleman.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious