One Hot Summer

by Rosemary Ashton

  Among the legion of commentators on the Rosina affair, Karl Marx noted in his article ‘Imprisonment of Lady Bulwer-Lytton’, written for the New York Daily Tribune, that Robert’s letter was worded evasively, especially in the ‘studiously awkward passage’ in which he tried to make out that Bulwer Lytton ‘felt the necessity of authoritative medical advice, not for sequestering his wife as insane, but for setting her free as mentis compos’. As was his wont, Marx connected the single case to the larger question, namely ‘whether, under the cloak of the lunacy act, lettres de cachet [warrants for arrest or imprisonment] may be issued by unscrupulous individuals able to pay tempting fees to two hungry practitioners’. He noted that questions had recently been raised in the House of Commons in connection with another case, and that a commission of inquiry into the operation of the Lunacy Act was likely to be demanded early in the next parliamentary session.59

  Meanwhile Rosina stayed in the south of France with Robert and her friend Rebecca Ryves until she fell out with both. In August she wrote from Bordeaux to Edwin James, thanking him for offering to become one of her trustees in the arrangements being made for her future. ‘I do trust you implicitly.’60 By October she had read Robert’s letter to The Times, with those of Forbes Winslow and Conolly. She saw that Edwin James, whom she now dubbed the ‘Old Bailey Mephistopheles’, was employed by her husband; she also suspected ‘that viper’ Rebecca Ryves of conspiring against her. As for poor Robert, from being her ‘Prince Charming’ in August, he was now her chief enemy, the tool of his father.61 On 25 October she addressed a letter to the earl of Shaftesbury in his capacity as chairman of the Lunacy Commission, accusing him of conspiring with Robert and her soi-disant friend Rebecca to get her out of England. She now saw the journey to France as a ‘compulsory journey’ into which she had been ‘half bullied, half cajoled’ by Rebecca.62 Robert, she now believed, had all along taken his father’s side, and she ‘never desire[d] to see his face again’.

  By November she was back in Taunton and Robert was in The Hague, where he held a diplomatic post as attaché to the British embassy. Rosina faded from public view at last, though she published a few more books before her death in 1882, lonely and indebted. Most scandalously, 1880 saw the publication of her unrestrained autobiography, A Blighted Life. There she gave her version of the events of the summer of 1858. When discussing her treatment at Dr Hill’s hands she is inconsistent, on the one hand complaining of privations, on the other describing delightful walks and carriage journeys with Hill’s daughter, with whom she became friendly. She also remembered the great heat, the ‘horrible tepid ditchwater’ she had to drink in Hill’s establishment, and the ‘broiling’ weather on Saturday, 17 July, the day she was released from Inverness Lodge.63 (The Times recorded the maximum temperature in the shade in the south of England as 82 °F, or 28 °C, on that day.64)

  Dr Hill, who kept notes about Rosina’s behaviour in the three weeks she spent with him, noted that she used a lot of rouge (like her husband), accused Bulwer Lytton of having caused her daughter Emily’s death by neglect, repeated her accusation of sodomy against Disraeli – shouting it out of a window at the top of her voice – and said that Forster ‘was drunk every day of his life’. Hill thought her delusional.65 He fell victim to the press’s negative reporting of the story at a time when several Lunacy Commission cases of false imprisonment were also receiving coverage. The Dublin newspaper, Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, printed a letter of complaint from Hill on Friday, 23 July:

  Whilst Lady Bulwer Lytton remained under my care I did not consider myself at liberty to reply to the various injurious reports that have been circulated respecting my share in the affairs of Sir Edward and Lady Lytton, but now that her ladyship is no longer so, having left my home on Saturday last to travel with her son, I think it right, for the vindication of my own character, to unequivocally contradict that Lady Lytton was ‘feloniously deprived of her liberty and consigned to a notorious madhouse at Brentford, the keeper of which is named Hill’ … I deny that her ladyship was ‘forcibly removed by policemen’, or that a policeman ever touched her … I deny that Lady Lytton was ‘consigned to a madhouse’, ‘buried in the depths of a lunatic bastille’, or ‘left alone with individuals in a ghastly state of lunacy’, or that she was even restrained by bolts or bars. Her ladyship had the opportunity of going out whenever she thought proper, and there were no locks to prevent her. I had no other patient in the house, and Lady Lytton’s companions were my wife and eldest daughter … Now, I challenge any one to say that this asylum is otherwise than humanely and respectably conducted.66

  (It is reasonable to assume that Hill tried to get his letter printed in The Times or another London newspaper; certainly a Dublin newspaper would not have been his first choice in which to air his complaint.)

  Hill suffered at the hands of the Lunacy Commission, which stated in March 1859 that Inverness Lodge was not a ‘suitable abode’ for a Mrs Burkitt. Hill was furious with Forster and Shaftesbury. He claimed his business was suffering because of the unfair publicity following the Lytton affair and implicated both Forster and Shaftesbury in the plan to put Rosina in an asylum in the first place. There was truth in this. Shaftesbury had written to Bulwer Lytton on 29 July 1858 that he was ‘quite convinced that your course was just and necessary in placing Lady L. under care and treatment’.67 Now Forster feared Hill’s threat to go to law over the dispute about who was responsible for the apprehension of Rosina, telling Bulwer Lytton on 14 March 1859 that if the true sequence of events were to come to light, ‘it would be a momentous scandal, and would require a public inquiry into the lunacy laws and practice’.68 Shaftesbury and Bulwer Lytton held firm, denying any conspiracy between Bulwer Lytton and the Lunacy Commission, and it was Hill whose business went into decline.

  As for Bulwer Lytton, he was already hated and despised by Thackeray, Fraser’s Magazine, and the Punch writers, all of whom made sport of his ridiculous vanity and snobbery. But he survived the onslaught of July 1858, partly because, though the papers supported Rosina’s right to a fair hearing, they were quite aware of her outrageous and unbalanced behaviour. Indeed, both husband and wife came in for criticism as incorrigible self-publicists on the edge of insanity. Edmund Yates wrote on 17 July in the Illustrated Times that he had heard that ‘Lady Bulwer’s troubles are to be brought to an “amicable arrangement”’, adding cheekily that ‘a rigid abstinence from pen and ink should form part of the conditions, for the public’s sake’.69

  Neither did the Derby government suffer from the general condemnation of Bulwer Lytton’s treatment of his wife, though the Daily Telegraph constantly reminded its readers that Bulwer Lytton the tyrannical husband was a member of Derby’s government. Derby’s administration was now popular because it was seen to be tackling the Thames problem, had rectified the troubles in India, and, mainly thanks to Disraeli’s energy and determination, was bringing various pieces of legislation to a satisfactory conclusion before the end of the session. Bulwer Lytton himself proved to be a thorough administrator, if a poor orator, making good decisions about the provinces of Australia and Canada, which he was keen to see self-regulating as soon as possible. He told parliament in December 1858 that he favoured ‘that safe and gradual independence which should be the last and crowning boon that a colony should receive from a parent state’, and in 1860 he displayed prophetic insight when he said that the time would come when ‘these new Colonies will be great States’, raising fleets and armies which would rush to Britain’s rescue if need be. ‘Across the wide ocean ships will come thick and fast’ to help ‘the mother of many free Commonwealths’ in her hour of need.70

  Nonetheless he did not last long in office. By December 1858 he was complaining of physical and psychological ailments and begging Derby to let him resign. He used Disraeli as a go-between, sending him a letter from his doctor to prove his inability to continue, to which Disraeli replied brutally, not least because he and Derby were having thei
r reform proposals blocked by a number of powerful colleagues and feared their administration might fall. Disraeli mixed some flattery with his aggression:

  I have no opinion of Dr Reed, or of any Doctors. In the course of my life I have received fifty letters from physicians like that which you enclosed to me, and which I return. Had I attended to them, I should not be here, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in robust health …

  I hope you will reconsider your position, and not sacrifice a political career at a public emergency, and when you have gained, on all hands, credit for the masterly administration of your Department. It will cause you regret hereafter.

  I say nothing of the effect on the position of the Government by the retirement of any of its members at this moment.71

  Bulwer Lytton countered with complaints about his deafness, his weak pulse, his tendency to consumption, and his fear of ‘organic heart disease’ and ‘sudden paralysis’.72 Disraeli worked on him and was able to inform Derby on New Year’s Day 1859 that he had persuaded Bulwer Lytton to stay on in order to avoid a cabinet crisis; he added callously, ‘He expects to die before Easter, but, if so, I have promised him a public funeral.’73 As the government valiantly tried to introduce a Reform Bill during the spring of 1859 Bulwer Lytton played his part. Disraeli reported to the queen on 22 March that his irritating friend had just given one of the ‘greatest speeches ever delivered in Parliament’, despite his disadvantages: ‘Deaf, fantastic, modulating his voice with difficulty sometimes painful, at first almost an object of ridicule to the superficial, Lytton occasionally reached even the sublime, & perfectly enchained his audience. His description of the English Constitution, his analysis of Democracy – as rich & more powerful, than Burke.’74

  This was generous, but Disraeli bated Bulwer Lytton once too often about his hypochondria. His friend took offence and resigned from the cabinet on 4 April, though the following month he stood for election as an MP once more in Hertford (without a surprise visit from Rosina).75 In any case, by the end of June 1859 Derby’s government had resigned over internal disagreements about its ill-fated Reform Bill. The greatest achievement of the short-lived ministry was the passing, after much wrangling, of the bill to cleanse the Thames. Close attention to Disraeli’s tactics and to the response of an alert press reveals his masterly handling of the matter, a moment in his career which has been curiously ignored or undervalued by many historians.76

  Disraeli tames the Thames

  Now that a parliamentary committee had been formed to inquire into the state of the Thames and to come up with a plan to improve it, the papers, led by The Times, kept the committee itself under constant review. With its influential members, including Sir Benjamin Hall and Alderman William Cubitt (a member of the great Cubitt architectural and building firm), and various representatives of vestries, not to mention Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston, it carried a great deal of weight. It also came in for a lot of suspicion and scepticism, since Hall and others had been kicking the topic of metropolitan drainage to and fro for several years. Now, with parliamentary committees fleeing the Houses of Parliament with handkerchiefs to their noses on 30 June, and with Disraeli driving things forward, the committee got to work in earnest. On Thursday, 1 July The Times reported in some detail the committee’s meeting the previous day.

  Parliament’s own heating engineer, Goldsworthy Gurney, had been called to give evidence and advice. He outlined his plan to form ‘two channels 30 yards wide and three yards deep’ in the river, with ‘a slope of 1 in 12’, by which means he considered ‘that the mud which is now cast upon the banks of the river will be removed, and so get rid of the nuisance’ within the Thames itself. George Bidder, a civil engineer, followed and made objections to Gurney’s plan: the formation of the two channels would be an inconvenience to shipping, he thought, and in any case he did not believe that a slope of 1 in 12 would prevent the deposit of mud in the river. ‘I agree with Mr Bazalgette’, he said, ‘that the sewage lodging on the mud banks is the cause of great evil.’ Another expert, James Lawes, gave his opinion that Gurney’s plan to send the sewage into the river itself would not work. ‘As long as we have a mass of floating sewage in the Thames, Mr Gurney’s plan will not remove it. In warm weather there is a great escape of the noxious gases.’ But he also thought that if the sewage were to be discharged at Barking Creek (Bazalgette’s plan), it would return to London on the tide. The committee more or less agreed that throwing lime into the river to deodorise it would only work in the short term, and would be expensive.77 More experts were called, and more disagreements among them emerged, over the next week or so, as the committee reconvened again and again.

  In its editorial on 1 July The Times showed impatience:

  Committee after Committee, Commission after Commission, has sat on the question, collecting facts enough to build on them a hundred different systems of drainage … They are now doing nothing but throwing a few boatloads of lime into the river, in the vain hope of sweetening the classic shores of Lambeth and Millbank, or pottering somewhere or other with the mouths of the sewers. All that will make mighty little difference this time next year. We want something that will go to the heart of the evil, and that without a day’s longer delay than is absolutely necessary.

  Changing tack from gloom to national pride, the article exhorts the engineers and politicians to emulate the spirit of those who designed the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851. That was ‘a thing of brick and mortar, an architectural triumph’. Even more impressive was the dismantling of the great glass edifice and the rebuilding of it in Sydenham three years later, a work achieved with ‘wonderful cheapness, speed, punctuality’, and stability. The key was ‘a few iron types’. ‘Why cannot the most noxious part of our sewage … be conveyed in iron pipes along and just under the banks of the river far enough for the purpose?’ the editor asked.78

  Though none of the newspapers, which all took up the cry in favour of making a decision and going to work on it as soon as possible, had much sympathy for the politicians who were suffering more than anyone from the Great Stink, The Times did publish an agonised letter the following day from ‘a hard-worked and nearly stifled mp’, who begged for understanding of his and his colleagues’ plight:

  During the whole month of June the condition of the Thames, which rolls its inky waters underneath our windows, has been in the last degree abominable; and yet a very considerable number of members have during that month given an average attendance of from 12 to 15 hours a-day to the business of the House … Take, as an illustration, the case of a committee of which I have the honour – certainly not the happiness – to be a member.

  He tells of the dilemma in soaring heat between being ‘half choked and half poisoned’ by the disgusting smell if the windows are kept open and being ‘literally baked’ if they close the windows and sit in the room ‘for six mortal hours’ at a time, ‘gasping for a mouthful of pure air’. On one occasion the committee members tried opening the door instead of the window, but ‘in vain! – the stench was there as well’.

  How long, sir, is this state of things to last? Are we to wait until half-a-dozen peers, including a bishop or two, perish by this living poison? … Is it possible that Parliament can sit any longer in London if the Thames is not purified? … Unless the remedy be found and applied between this and next session men will not consent to peril their lives by sitting for days and nights by the side of a festering cesspool, and both Houses of Parliament will have to be removed to some salubrious locality – to Edinburgh, to Oxford, or to Dublin.79

  Another anonymous MP wrote the same day, complaining less and suggesting remedies. A workable scheme should ‘contain three objects’, he wrote: first ‘the purification of the Thames’, second ‘the embankment of its shores in its course through the metropolis’, and third ‘the utilization of the vast mass of productive matter that is now worse than wasted’.80 Of these three objects, the first two were soon to be implemented by Baz
algette.

  On Saturday, 3 July the Illustrated London News welcomed the ‘vigorous measures’ at last being put in place, with 200 or more tons of lime being thrown into the Thames near the mouths of the sewers, and, more importantly, the fact that the plan of ‘Messrs. Bidder, Hawksley, and Bazalgette’ to embank the river looked like being accepted.81 On the same day the ‘Big Cut’ in Punch was a drawing of ‘Father Thames introducing his Offspring to the Fair City of London (A Design for a Fresco in the New Houses of Parliament)’, the offspring being Diphtheria, Scrofula, and Cholera.82 And to drive the point home further, a short poem parodying Tennyson’s ‘Break, break, break’ was printed on 3 July too. Entitled ‘To the Thames (After Tennyson)’, it begins:

  Bake, bake, bake,

  O Thames, on thy way to the sea!

  And I would that thy stink could poison

  A Bishop, Peer, or M.P.83

  Not to be outdone, the Era weighed in on Sunday, 4 July with its demand that action be taken as soon as possible. On the question of who should pay, the paper believed that the whole nation should contribute so that the Thames would no longer be ‘a reproach to the capital of the world’. Why waste time by holding endless parliamentary meetings on the subject, when everyone knew that the plan to take the sewage out of London to Kent and Essex must be implemented? The task of Londoners, egged on by their newspapers, was not to trust the Board of Works, but to keep a constant eye on it and chivvy it out of its customary state of apathy. Like all the commentators, this one subscribes to the mistaken airborne theory of infectious disease; the Era reported that an ‘unfortunate clergyman’ at Lambeth had lost his wife and four children that week to the ‘noxious miasmata of the Thames’.84

  More meetings of the parliamentary committee on the Thames, and of the universally maligned Board of Works under its hard-working chairman John Thwaites, took place as the temperature, having dipped in the first few days of July, rose again to 80 °F (27 °C) and more. Bazalgette was called to give evidence; on 8 July he reported to the board that he had already put in place the temporary measure of deodorising the river by putting lime into the sewers (at a cost of £180 a day), a procedure which would continue as long as the weather remained hot.85 On Monday, 12 July the parliamentary committee on the Thames was attended by such a large number of its members that, appropriately, ‘the heat of the room was almost insupportable’, according to The Times. The committee was ready to finalise its decision to accept the plan put forward by Bazalgette and his partners to take the sewage out of London by means of intercepting sewers, and to release it far enough from the city to ensure that it would not return on the tide. The idea of using the sewage as fertiliser had been rejected, since, as Thomas Hawksley told the committee, deodorised sewage was no longer useful as a fertiliser, and no one could make a commercial business out of selling it for re-use.86