William Henry Lytton Earle Bulwer (1801–1872)

In 1824, inspired by the example of his hero Lord Byron, Bulwer resolved to go to fight as a volunteer in the Greek war of independence, then raging. Instead he became embroiled in a somewhat murky episode. The London Greek Committee had raised a loan in London to aid the Greek cause. Two large instalments, of £30,000 and £40,000 respectively, reached Zante in the Ionian Islands, then under British protection, in the spring and early summer of 1824. Disbursement should have been under the control of several commissioners, of whom Byron was one, but by this time Byron was dead and the other commissioners were unable or unwilling to travel out.

In August the committee appointed two new commissioners, Bulwer and a former official of the Ionian government, James Hamilton Browne. Bulwer subsequently published an account of his mission in An Autumn in Greece (1826). Bulwer and Browne arrived in Nauplia, the temporary Greek capital, in October 1824 at about the same time as the Florida, under Captain Hodgson, arrived with the final instalment of the loan, £50,000 in gold. Bulwer’s account, based on the letters he wrote at the time to a friend, C. S. Sheridan, the son of the playwright, show growing disillusionment. The first two instalments had already been handed over without authority. Bulwer, Browne, and Hodgson all became seriously ill with malaria and Hodgson died after a nightmare journey to Smyrna.

They were rescued by the British consul and Bulwer was eventually shipped off to Malta, where he recovered, thanks to quinine, which he pronounced ‘the most valuable drug in the Pharmacopoeia’ (An Autumn in Greece, 130). Diplomacy, politics, or literature? While still abroad Bulwer had been gazetted a cornet in the 2nd lifeguards on 19 October 1825. He exchanged as an ensign into the 58th foot in June 1826 and obtained an unattached ensigncy the following month.

He was already considering a change to the diplomatic service and was appointed an attaché in Berlin in August 1827. While there he wrote two memoranda, one on the Prussian army, the other on how protestant Prussia governed Catholic Silesia and the Rhineland, drawing parallels with Ireland. They attracted the attention of the foreign secretary, Lord Aberdeen, if only for Bulwer’s enterprise in writing them. He was transferred to Vienna in April 1829, and to The Hague in April 1830.

Bulwer’s first important role was during the Belgian revolt against the Dutch. When the rising began in Brussels in August 1830, he was sent into Belgium to assess the situation. He arrived in Ghent just as trouble broke out. The commissionaire of his hotel was shot at his side in the Grande Place. He proceeded to Brussels and Ath, which the insurgents had just taken, and, by his own account, acquired very full information about the rebels’ plans.

To his indignation, his reports were not entirely believed in London because they conflicted with the official reports from The Hague, but when, after his return to England, they proved correct, Aberdeen sent him back to Brussels to continue to report. He wrote, anonymously, a sympathetic account of Belgian grievances in the Westminster Review (January 1831),which ended with a strong call for action in other oppressed countries.

Aberdeen had proved a useful patron and was to be so again, but he was now replaced by Lord Palmerston, whose more swashbuckling style exactly suited Bulwer.

Their fortunes became inextricably entangled, as Bulwer demonstrated in the official biography he wrote many years later of his former chief. He now felt that he was poised for a rapid take-off in the diplomatic service but, although he became an attaché in Paris in November 1832, he was still hesitating between a diplomatic, a literary, or a political career.

Bulwer contested Hertford unsuccessfully in 1826 but entered parliament for the pocket borough of Wilton in August 1830. The Wilton constituency was abolished by the Great Reform Act of 1832 and Bulwer was returned for Coventry in 1831 and 1833 and for Marylebone in 1835. During his seven years in the Commons he regularly commuted between Lon-don and his diplomatic postings to take part in debates, where he established some reputation as a radical speaker. In fact his views were ‘liberal [rather] than democratic’. He voted for the total abolition of the corn laws but had doubts about the Great Reform Act itself. He could not identify with any one party. He thought the Tories extreme and prejudiced on all questions but, like his friend Disraeli, he found the Whigs a clique of aristocrats, who would not admit anyone else to their circle.

Bulwer wrote for the press and continued to publish: his substantial two-volume study France: Social, Literary and Po-litical of 1834 was followed two years later by The Monarchy of the Middle Classes. His style was florid by modern standards but the work combines information and statistics with personal anecdotes and shrewd comparisons between British and French society, and retains its interest. Bulwer also commented on British politics in The Lords, the Government and the Coun-try (1836).

First postings Bulwer confessed in his autobiography that he always craved ‘adventure … a passion I have had all my life to keep under control’ (Bulwer papers, BUL 1/410/1, 17), and in 1835 he was planning to join General Evans, the MP for West-minster, who was raising a British legion to help the liberal cause in Spain. But in November 1835 Palmerston offered him the post of secretary of legation in Brussels in a now independent Belgium.

His chief, Sir Hamilton Seymour, was frequently absent and Bulwer was

chargé d’Affaires most of the time. He decided not to contest Marylebone in the general election caused by the death of Wil-liam IV in 1837, partly because he had quarrelled with some of his constituents but also because he had now decided to be-come a full-time diplomat.

In August 1837 Bulwer was appointed secretary of the embassy in Constantinople. Bulwer recorded his impressions of Constantinople and its cast of characters, including the grand vizier, General Husrev, and a later grand vizier, Mustafa Reshid Pasha, in his biography of Palmerston. At the time he wrote freely to Palmerston of his views. The British ambassador, Lord Ponsonby, entrusted him With concluding a commercial treaty with Turkey and he brought the task to a triumphant conclusion in the summer of 1838.

In October 1838 Bulwer was appointed secretary of embassy at St. Petersburg, at his own request, but he caught a fever just before leaving Constantinople, and when he arrived in London the government was embroiled in the ‘bedchamber’ crisis. As a result of these delays he never took up his Russian appointment and, instead, in June 1839, was appointed secre-tary of embassy in Paris.

He acted as minister-plenipotentiary, in the absence of the ambassador, at various times in 1839, 1840, and 1841. Anglo-French relations became extremely bad in 1840 as a result of France’s sympathy for their protégé Mehmet Ali, the

rebellious pasha of Egypt, while Britain joined the three eastern powers, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, in shoring up the authori-ty of the sultan. Spanish difficulties Bulwer was appointed minister-plenipotentiary to Madrid in November 1843. He tackled the job with his customary energy, and on one occasion went to Morocco to settle a serious dispute involving both France and Spain. For this service he was promised, and in June 1845 duly received, appointment to the privy council.

Other questions proved more difficult. Spain was a potential flashpoint in European diplomacy. The struggles between the Conservatives and the Liberals had resulted in great power intervention in the 1820s and 1830s. Britain and the Orleanist monarchy in France had united in defending the young queen Isabella against her absolutist uncle Don Carlos, who had the sympathy of the eastern powers, but British policy had also been swayed by a determination that French influence should not increase in the Iberian peninsula.

During the period of the first entente cordiale, the British foreign secretary, Lord Aberdeen, and his French opposite number, François Guizot, entered into an informal agreement that Isabella’s younger sister Maria Fernandez might marry one of the sons of King Louis Philippe, but only after Isabella had married and had at least one child. In return Britain promised to give no countenance to a Saxe-Coburg prince as Isabella’s suitor.

Guizot began to regret the agreement and took advantage of the fact that Palmerston, when he replaced Aberdeen at the Foreign Office in 1846, wrote a dispatch to Bulwer, naming Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a possible candi-date, to regard it as void. The double wedding of Queen Isabella to her cousin the duke of Cadiz (who was generally regarded as impotent) and of her younger sister to Louis Philippe’s son the duke of Montpensier swiftly followed. Anglo-French relations became very strained and Bulwer was caught in the fallout, accused of indiscreet support for the Coburg candidate.

Worse was to follow. In the great revolutionary year of 1848 there were liberal risings in Spain against the Conservative government of General Narvaez. Bulwer was accused of being implicated and on 12 May was instructed by Narvaez to leave Madrid within forty-eight hours on the grounds that his life was in danger. Bulwer obviously believed in the reality of the danger (although sceptical of the direction from which it came) and left immediately for London; he arrived

Before the Foreign Office even knew of his expulsion. The incident caused an international sensation and Bulwer seems to have seriously expected the British government to make a military response. The government was more cautious. Bulwer had no difficulty in disposing of the wilder charges against him: that he had dispensed ‘foreign gold’, sent secret agents to ferment provincial unrest, or summoned British warships laden with arms for the rebels, but his contacts with the opposition press had been indiscreet.

The situation was not helped by the fact that only the intervention of friends had prevented him from fighting a duel with the Spanish foreign minister, the duke of Sotomayer, on a private matter.

Bulwer was saved because the opposition chose to concentrate their fire on his political chief, Lord Palmerston, and his policy. The court took the same line, the queen pointing out that Bulwer was ‘her Minister’ and hence she had been insulted, but blaming Palmerston for the provocation. Exile to Washington Bulwer was now a diplomatic embarrassment. The govern-ment formally showed its support by making him a KCB and offered him a new post as minister-plenipotentiary in Washington since diplomatic relations with Spain had been broken off. Bulwer maintained that the government was duty-bound to find an equivalent post for him and only Washington happened to be vacant, but in reality it was a banishment and he recognized it as such.

Only strong persuasion from his friends, including Disraeli, induced him to accept it. In fact Bulwer’s three years in Washington were among the most successful of his career. He liked America and regretted that, as a result of a number of inci-dents over the previous decade, Anglo-American relations were not good. He realized the importance of public opinion and was astute in discovering how to influence it. He became one of the wittiest and most popular after-dinner speakers in the States.

The serious issue between the United States and Britain at this time was Central America. When the Spanish empire had broken up in the 1820s, a number of independent states had emerged, among them Guatemala and Nicaragua. The Mosquito (Muchilos) Indians, however, denied that they had ever formed part of the Spanish empire and cited agreements with Britain in the seventeenth century. The Nicaraguans, refusing to accept such claims, occupied the Mosquito port of San Juan (Greytown) but were expelled with British help in January

1848. Bulwer was well aware that the United States was only interested in the issue because at that time the Mosquito Coast seemed likely to be the Atlantic entrance to a canal across the isthmus of Panama. He negotiated a treaty with the American secretary of state, John Clayton, signed 19 April 1850, which avoided disputes about territorial rights and concentrat-ed on ensuring that there should be no barriers to the building of the canal, whoever had jurisdiction.

Bulwer himself was very sympathetic to commercial developments in Central America and invested personally in pro-jects, including coffee farming in Costa Rica. Return to European diplomacy Nevertheless Bulwer found the Washington climate trying and wished to return to Europe.

In 1852 he was appointed minister-plenipotentiary in Florence. Although Tuscany was then an independent state, it was something of a demotion. The pill was sweetened by the promise that he should also represent Britain in Rome and that this might make possible the opening of formal diplomatic relations with the papacy. It was hoped that the pope would bring his influence to bear in Ireland and that this would compensate for protestant irritation in Britain, but when Palmerston, who could not be accused of truckling to Rome, was replaced by Lord Granville, who chanced to be married to a Roman Catholic, the question was judged too sensitive and that part of Bulwer’s instructions cancelled. He wished to resign but Spain had just protested at his appointment and withdrawal was therefore impossible.

Politically, Bulwer’s mission to Florence was uneventful but persistent ill health compelled him to return home in 1854. When he went back, he was taken ill again and was granted a pension in April 1855. He suspected he had been poisoned, although a recurrence of malaria seems more likely. The illness may also have been partly psychosomatic.

On 9 December 1848 Bulwer had married at Hatfield House Georgiana Charlotte Mary Wellesley (1817–1878), the youngest daughter of Henry Wellesley, first Baron Cowley, and the niece of the duke of Wellington. He complained to his brother that her health improved, and from July 1856 to May 1858 he was in the Danubian provinces as a commissioner under article 22 of the treaty of Paris, concluded at the end of the Crimean War in 1856.

The commission was to inquire whether Moldavia and Wallachia wished to be united and to supervise elections for this purpose. The first elections were so blatantly irregular that they had to be rerun but the two provinces were eventually united as Romania in 1862, although still at this time remaining part of the Ottoman empire.

In 1858 Bulwer succeeded Stratford Canning as ambassador in Constantinople, and he remained there until his final retirement from the service in August 1865. In his autobiography he analysed fairly why he was not able to play the same role as the great Canning.

Before the Crimean War Turkey had looked to Britain and her fleet for protection against Russia. After 1856 she had little to fear from Russia and had been much more impressed by the French than the British performance during the war. In his last years, in his attempts to get reforms accepted, Canning himself had overplayed his hand. Bulwer had to move cautiously in trying to limit French control of the Suez Canal (completed 1869), which he believed Palmerston had been mistaken in oppos-ing.

While in Constantinople Bulwer bought an island in the Bosphorus and ran an expensive yacht. He was an active freemason, Master of the Oriental lodge and District Grand Master for Turkey. His lifestyle continued to be extravagant, but he was also a good businessman, keenly aware of new openings in developing economies from as early as the 1830s, when he had acted as agent for a number of the Australian colonies.

Although his letters to his wife refer to some financial difficulties, unlike many contemporaries, he never seems to have been seriously embarrassed.

Retirement from diplomacy.

On his return to Britain Bulwer re-entered British politics by becoming Liberal MP for Tamworth in November 1868. Almost his last speech in the Commons was on the disestablishment of the Irish church (Hansard 3, 198.1018–26). His friends believed it to have been one of the ablest speeches on that thorny problem but unfortunately his physical frailty made it inaudible.

Bulwer also returned to literature. In 1870 he published the first two volumes of his biography of Palmerston. A third volume appeared posthumously but the work was still unfinished and was completed by Lord Ashley. Bulwer also

Published Historical Characters, studies of Talleyrand, William Cobbett, George Canning, and Sir James Mackintosh, based partly on personal recollections. Two further sketches, of Sir Robert Peel and Viscount Melbourne, were published posthumously.

Bulwer was raised to the peerage as Baron Dalling and Bulwer in the county of Norfolk on 21 March 1871. He died suddenly in Naples on 23 May 1872, while returning from a visit to Egypt. There were no children of the marriage and the peerage became extinct.

He was immortalized as Mr Tremaine Bertie in Disraeli’s Endymion and by the French writer Hortense Allart de Mer-itens (1801–1879), who had been his mistress in the 1830s, as Mr Henry Warwick in Les enchantements de prudence (1872).

The caricature on the first page depicts Bulwer as he was in 1870. It is captioned “A superannuated Statesman”