PAUL CLIFFORD
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840.
This novel so far differs from the other fictions by the same author that
it seeks to draw its interest rather from practical than ideal sources.
Out of some twelve Novels or Romances, embracing, however inadequately, a
great variety of scene and character,--from "Pelham" to the "Pilgrims of
the Rhine," from "Rienzi" to the "Last Days of Pompeii,"--"Paul Clifford"
is the _only one_ in which a robber has been made the hero, or the
peculiar phases of life which he illustrates have been brought into any
prominent description.
Without pausing to inquire what realm of manners or what order of crime
and sorrow is open to art, and capable of administering to the proper
ends of fiction, I may be permitted to observe that the present subject
was selected, and the Novel written, with a twofold object: First, to
draw attention to two errors in our penal institutions; namely, a vicious
prison-discipline, and a sanguinary criminal code,--the habit of
corrupting the boy by the very punishment that ought to redeem him, and
then hanging the man at the first occasion, as the easiest way of getting
rid of our own blunders. Between the example of crime which the tyro
learns from the felons in the prison-yard, and the horrible levity with
which the mob gather round the drop at Newgate, there is a connection
which a writer may be pardoned for quitting loftier regions of
imagination to trace and to detect. So far this book is less a picture
of the king's highway than the law's royal road to the gallows,--a satire
on the short cut established between the House of Correction and the
Condemned Cell. A second and a lighter object in the novel of "Paul
Clifford" (and hence the introduction of a semi-burlesque or travesty in
the earlier chapters) was to show that there is nothing essentially
different between vulgar vice and fashionable vice, and that the slang of
the one circle is but an easy paraphrase of the cant of the other.
The Supplementary Essays, entitled "Tomlinsoniana," which contain the
corollaries to various problems suggested in the Novel, have been
restored to the present edition.
CLIFTON, July 25, 1840.
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1848.
Most men who with some earnestness of mind examine into the mysteries of
our social state will perhaps pass through that stage of self-education
in which this Novel was composed. The contrast between conventional
frauds, received as component parts of the great system of civilization,
and the less deceptive invasions of the laws which discriminate the
_meum_ from the _tuum_, is tempting to a satire that is not without its
justice. The tragic truths which lie hid in what I may call the
Philosophy of Circumstance strike through our philanthropy upon our
imagination. We see masses of our fellow-creatures the victims of
circumstances over which they had no control,--contaminated in infancy by
the example of parents, their intelligence either extinguished or turned
against them, according as the conscience is stifled in ignorance or
perverted to apologies for vice. A child who is cradled in ignominy,
whose schoolmaster is the felon, whose academy is the House of
Correction,--who breathes an atmosphere in which virtue is poisoned, to
which religion does not pierce,--becomes less a responsible and reasoning
human being than a wild beast which we suffer to range in the wilderness,
till it prowls near our homes, and we kill it in self-defence.
In this respect the Novel of "Paul Clifford" is a loud cry to society to
amend the circumstance,--to redeem the victim. It is an appeal from
Humanity to Law. And in this, if it could not pretend to influence or
guide the temper of the times, it was at least a foresign of a coming
change. Between the literature of imagination, and the practical
interests of a people, there is a harmony as complete as it is
mysterious. The heart of an author is the mirror of his age. The shadow
of the sun is cast on the still surface of literature long before the
light penetrates to law; but it is ever from the sun that the shadow
falls, and the moment we see the shadow we may be certain of the light.
Since this work was written, society has been busy with the evils in
which it was then silently acquiescent. The true movement of the last
fifteen years has been the progress of one idea,--Social Reform. There
it advances with steady and noiseless march behind every louder question
of constitutional change. Let us do justice to our time. There have
been periods of more brilliant action on the destinies of States, but
there is no time visible in History in which there was so earnest and
general a desire to improve the condition of the great body of the
people. In every circle of the community that healthful desire is astir.
It unites in one object men of parties the most opposed; it affords the
most attractive nucleus for public meetings; it has cleansed the
statute-book from blood; it is ridding the world of the hangman. It
animates the clergy of all sects in the remotest districts; it sets the
squire on improving cottages and parcelling out allotments. Schools rise
in every village; in books the lightest, the Grand Idea colours the page,
and bequeaths the moral. The Government alone (despite the professions
on which the present Ministry was founded) remains unpenetrated by the
common genius of the age; but on that question, with all the subtleties
it involves, and the experiments it demands,--not indeed according to the
dreams of an insane philosophy, but according to the immutable laws which
proportion the rewards of labour to the respect for property,--a
Government must be formed at last.
There is in this work a subtler question suggested, but not solved,--that
question which perplexes us in the generous ardour of our early
youth,--which, unsatisfactory as all metaphysics, we rather escape from
than decide as we advance in years; namely, make what laws we please, the
man who lives within the pale can be as bad as the man without. Compare
the Paul Clifford of the fiction with the William Brandon,--the hunted
son with the honoured father, the outcast of the law with the dispenser
of the law, the felon with the judge; and as at the last they front each
other,--one on the seat of justice, the other at the convict's bar,--who
can lay his hand on his heart and say that the Paul Clifford is a worse
man than the William Brandon.
There is no immorality in a truth that enforces this question; for it is
precisely those offences which society cannot interfere with that society
requires fiction to expose. Society is right, though youth is reluctant
to acknowledge it. Society can form only certain regulations necessary
for its self-defence,--the fewer the better,--punish those who invade,
leave unquestioned those who respect them. But fiction follows truth
into all the strongholds of convention; strikes through the disguise,
lifts the mask, bares the heart, and leaves a moral wherever it brands a
falsehood.
Out of this range of ideas the mind of the Author has, perhaps, emerged
into an atmosphere which he believes to be more congenial to Art. But he
can no more regret that he has passed through it than he can regret that
while he dwelt there his heart, like his years, was young. Sympathy with
the suffering that seems most actual, indignation at the frauds which
seem most received as virtues, are the natural emotions of youth, if
earnest. More sensible afterwards of the prerogatives, as of the
elements, of Art, the Author, at least, seeks to escape where the man may
not, and look on the practical world through the serener one of the
ideal.
With the completion of this work closed an era in the writer's
self-education. From "Pelham" to "Paul Clifford" (four fictions, all
written at a very early age), the Author rather observes than imagines;
rather deals with the ordinary surface of human life than attempts,
however humbly, to soar above it or to dive beneath. From depicting in
"Paul Clifford" the errors of society, it was almost the natural progress
of reflection to pass to those which swell to crime in the solitary human
heart,--from the bold and open evils that spring from ignorance and
example, to track those that lie coiled in the entanglements of refining
knowledge and speculative pride. Looking back at this distance of years,
I can see as clearly as if mapped before me, the paths which led across
the boundary of invention from "Paul Clifford" to "Eugene Aram." And,
that last work done, no less clearly can I see where the first gleams
from a fairer fancy broke upon my way, and rested on those more ideal
images which I sought with a feeble hand to transfer to the "Pilgrims of
the Rhine" and the "Last Days of Pompeii." We authors, like the Children
in the Fable, track our journey through the maze by the pebbles which we
strew along the path. From others who wander after us, they may attract
no notice, or, if noticed, seem to them but scattered by the caprice of
chance; but we, when our memory would retrace our steps, review in the
humble stones the witnesses of our progress, the landmarks of our way.
Knelworth, 1848.
