GODOLPHIN
By Edward Bulwer Lytton
(Lord Lytton)
TO COUNT ALFRED D'ORSAY.
MY DEAR COUNT D'ORSAY,
When the parentage of Godolphin was still unconfessed and unknown, you
were pleased to encourage his first struggles with the world: Now, will
you permit the father he has just discovered to re-introduce him to your
notice? I am sorry to say, however, that my unfilial offspring, having
been so long disowned, is not sufficiently grateful for being acknowledged
at last: he says that he belongs to a very numerous family, and, wishing
to be distinguished from his brothers, desires not only to reclaim your
acquaintance, but to borrow your name. Nothing less will content his
ambition than the most public opportunity in his power of parading his
obligations to the most accomplished gentleman of our time. Will you,
then, allow him to make his new appearance in the world under your wing,
and thus suffer the son as well as the father to attest the kindness of
your heart and to boast the honour of your friendship?
Believe me,
My dear Count d'Orsay,
With the sincerest regard,
Yours, very faithfully and truly,
E. B. L.
PREFACE TO GODOLPHIN.
In the Prefaces to this edition of my works, I have occasionally so far
availed myself of that privilege of self-criticism which the French comic
writer, Mons. Picord, maintains or exemplifies in the collection of his
plays,--as, if not actually to sit in judgment on my own performances,
still to insinuate some excuse for their faults by extenuatory depositions
as to their character and intentions. Indeed, a writer looking back to
the past is unconsciously inclined to think that he may separate himself
from those children of his brain which have long gone forth to the world;
and though he may not expatiate on the merits his paternal affection would
ascribe to them, that he may speak at least of the mode in which they were
trained and reared--of the hopes he cherished, or the objects he
entertained, when he finally dismissed them to the opinions of others and
the ordeal of Fate or Time.
For my part, I own that even when I have thought but little of the value
of a work, I have always felt an interest in the author's account of its
origin and formation, and, willing to suppose that what thus affords a
gratification to my own curiosity, may not be wholly unattractive to
others, I shall thus continue from time to time to play the Showman to my
own machinery, and explain the principle of the mainspring and the
movement of the wheels.
This novel was begun somewhere in the third year of my authorship, and
completed in the fourth. It was, therefore, composed almost
simultaneously with Eugene Aram, and afforded to me at least some relief
from the gloom of that village tragedy. It is needless to observe how
dissimilar in point of scene, character, and fable, the one is from the
other; yet they are alike in this--that both attempt to deal with one of
the most striking problems in the spiritual history of man, viz., the
frustration or abuse of power in a superior intellect originally inclined
to good. Perhaps there is no problem that more fascinates the attention
of a man of some earnestness at that period of his life, when his eye
first disengages itself from the external phenomena around him, and his
curiosity leads him to examine the cause and account for the
effect;--when, to cite reverently the words of the wisest, "He applies his
heart to know and to search, and to seek out wisdom and the reason of
things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and
madness."
In Eugene Aram, the natural career of genius is arrested by a single
crime; in Godolphin, a mind of inferior order, but more fanciful
colouring, is wasted away by the indulgence of those morbid sentiments
which are the nourishment of egotism, and the gradual influence of the
frivolities which make the business of the idle. Here the Demon tempts or
destroys the hermit in his solitary cell. There, he glides amidst the
pomps and vanities of the world, and whispers away the soul in the voice
of his soft familiars, Indolence and Pleasure.
Of all my numerous novels, Pelham and Godolphin are the only ones which
take their absolute groundwork in what is called "The Fashionable World."
I have sought in each to make the general composition in some harmony with
the principal figure in the foreground. Pelham is represented as almost
wholly unsusceptible to the more poetical influences. He has the physical
compound, which, versatile and joyous, amalgamates easily with the
world--he views life with the lenient philosophy that Horace commends in
Aristippus: he laughs at the follies he shares; and is ever ready to turn
into uses ultimately (if indirectly) serious, the frivolities that only
serve to sharpen his wit, and augment that peculiar expression which we
term "knowledge of the world." In a word, dispel all his fopperies, real
or assumed, he is still the active man of crowds and cities, determined to
succeed, and gifted with the ordinary qualities of success. Godolphin, on
the contrary, is the man of poetical temperament, out of his place alike
among the trifling idlers and the bustling actors of the world--wanting
the stimulus of necessity--or the higher motive which springs from
benevolence, to give energy to his powers, or definite purpose to his
fluctuating desires; not strong enough to break the bonds that confine his
genius--not supple enough to accommodate its movements to their purpose.
He is the moral antipodes to Pelham. In evading the struggles of the
world, he grows indifferent to its duties--he strives with no
obstacles--he can triumph in no career. Represented as possessing mental
qualities of a higher and a richer nature than those to which Pelham can
pretend, he is also represented as very inferior to him in constitution
of character, and he is certainly a more ordinary type of the intellectual
trifler.
The characters grouped around Godolphin are those with which such a man
usually associates his life. They are designed to have a certain grace--a
certain harmony with one form or the other of his twofold
temperament:--viz., either its conventional elegance of taste, or its
constitutional poetry of idea. But all alike are brought under varying
operations of similar influences; or whether in Saville, Constance, Fanny,
or Lucilla--the picture presented is still the picture of gifts
misapplied--of life misunderstood. The Preacher who exclaimed, "Vanity
of vanities! all is vanity," perhaps solved his own mournful saying, when
he added elsewhere, "This only have I found, that God made men
upright--but they have sought out many inventions."
This work was first published anonymously, and for that reason perhaps it
has been slow in attaining to its rightful station amongst its
brethren--whose parentage at first was openly acknowledged. If compared
with Pelham, it might lose, at the first glance, but would perhaps gain on
any attentive reperusal.
For although it must follow from the inherent difference in the design of
the two works thus referred to, that in Godolphin there can be little of
the satire or vivacity which have given popularity to its predecessor,
yet, on the other hand, in Godolphin there ought to be a more faithful
illustration of the even polish that belongs to luxurious life,--of the
satiety that pleasure inflicts upon such of its votaries as are worthy of
a higher service. The subject selected cannot adroit the same facility
for observation of things that lie on the surface--but it may well lend
itself to subtler investigation of character--allow more attempt at
pathos, and more appeal to reflection.
Regarded as a story, the defects of Godolphin most apparent to myself, are
in the manner in which Lucilla is re-introduced in the later chapters, and
in the final catastrophe of the hero. There is an exaggerated romance in
the one, and the admission of accident as a crowning agency in the other,
which my maturer judgment would certainly condemn, and which at all events
appear to me out of keeping with the natural events, and the more patient
investigation of moral causes and their consequences, from which the
previous interest of the tale is sought to be attained. On the other
hand, if I may presume to conjecture the most probable claim to favour
which the work, regarded as a whole, may possess--it may possibly be found
in a tolerably accurate description of certain phases of modern
civilisation, and in the suggestion of some truths that may be worth
considering in our examination of social influences or individual conduct.
