“Nothing to Lose & Everything to Gain”: Louis and Marie de Rosset’s Intimate Friendship with Edward Bulwer Lytton
Keywords:
history, literature, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Louis de Rosset, Marie de Rosset, Victorian BritainAbstract
By examining the Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer Lytton’s (1803–73) relationship with Louis (1840–75) and Marie de Rosset (1844–70), this essay gives an insight into Lytton’s final years. The de Rossets, a middle-class couple from North Carolina, fled to Britain during the American Civil War. Their pursuit of status and wealth culminated in an intimate friendship with Lytton. Louis worked as Lytton’s unofficial secretary and agent in the United States. Particularly interesting is the close and affectionate personal relationship between Lytton and Marie, which ended in her death in 1870. Lacking the proper background, connections, and behaviour, the de Rossets were not as successful in social rise as they had hoped. The essay demonstrates how Lytton both supported and satirised their attempt to integrate into British high society and how it inspired his central oeuvres The Coming Race (1871) and The Parisians (1873). By analysing the correspondence of the trio, over 200 letters that have not been studied previously, this article informs scholars of history, literature, and cultural studies.
References
Works Cited
Primary sources
Papers of the Bulwer-Lytton Family of Knebworth House, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Letters received, DE/K/C25/39 and DE/K/C25/40, and General letters sent, DE/K/C28/49, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies [HALS].
Bulwer Lytton, Edward. Letter to Armand de Rosset, Jr [typed copy]. 15 October 1868, folder 123. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. n. d. [c. July 1866], folder 123. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 28 October 1868, folder 124. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 17 April 1869, folder 124. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. n. d. [received 17 December 1869], folder 124. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 3 January 1870, folder 124. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 4 January 1870, folder 124. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset, n. d. [received 7 March 1870], folder 126. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. n. d. [received 16 July 1870], folder 125. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. n. d. [received 20 July 1870], folder 125. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 21 December 1870, folder 125. DFP.
---. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. n. d. [c. March 1869], no. 14, folder 123. DFP.
---. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. n. d. [late 1869], no. 54, folder 125. DFP.
---. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. n. d. [December 1869], no. 55, folder 125. DFP.
---. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. n. d. [c. 1870], no. 24, folder 124. DFP.
---. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. n. d. [early 1870], no. 40, folder 125. DFP.
---. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. n. d. [early 1870], no. 41, folder 124. DFP.
---. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. n. d. [early February 1870], no. 89, folder 126. DFP.
---. A Valentine’s Day card to Marie Finley de Rosset. n. d. [February 1870], folder 126. DFP.
---. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. n. d. [c. March 1870], no. 32, folder 124. DFP.
---. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. n. d. [13 May 1870]. DE/K/C28/49, HALS.
Carlin, James. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. 13 March 1867. DFP.
“CHJ”. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. 12 October 1864. DFP.
DeRosset Family Papers, #214, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [DFP].
DeRosset, Armand Jr. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 17 July 1865. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 6 August 1865. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 19 November 1870. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 3 December 1870. DFP.
DeRosset, Eliza Lord. Letter to Lossie (Eliza) DeRosset Myers. 13 November 1863. DFP.
---. Letter to Kate DeRosset Meares. 30 September 1864. DFP.
---. Letter to Kate DeRosset Meares. 21 January 1866. DFP.
DeRosset, John. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 20 November 1869. DFP.
de Rosset, Louis. Diary. Folder 72, DFP.
de Rosset, Louis. Two letter books. Folders 121 and 122, DFP.
---. Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton. 14 December 1869. DE/K/C25/39, HALS.
---. Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton. 2 January 1870. DE/K/C25/39, HALS.
---. Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton. 5 January 1870. DE/K/C25/39, HALS.
---. Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton. 11 April 1870. DE/K/C25/39, HALS.
---. Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton. 22 June 1870. DE/K/C25/39, HALS.
---. Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton. 6 July 1870. DE/K/C25/39, HALS.
---. Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton. 7 December 1870, DE/K/C25/39, HALS.
---. Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton. 21 January 1871, DE/K/C25/39, HALS.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset. 2 February 1866. DFP.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset. 29 May 1866. DFP.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset. 19 September 1869. DFP.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset. 28 October 1869. DFP.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset. 17 December 1869. DFP.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset. 6 March 1870. DFP.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset. 12 May 1870. DFP.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset. 30 May 1870. DFP.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset. 16 June 1870. DFP.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset and Armand DeRosset, Jr. 19 May 1870. DFP.
---. Letter to Gabrielle de Rosset. 21 July 1874. DFP.
---. Letter to Catherine DeRosset Kennedy. 20 February 1863. DFP.
---. Letter to Catherine DeRosset Kennedy. 23 March 1866. DFP.
---. Letter to Kate DeRosset Meares. 9 January 1870. DFP.
de Rosset, Marie Finley. Letter to Edward Bulwer Lytton. 2 April 1866. DE/K/C25/40, HALS.
---. Letter to Eliza Lord DeRosset. 16 March 1868. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 25 July 1865. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 16 October 1868. DFP.
---. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 20 November 1868. DFP.
---. Letter to W. Carson Finley. 7 November 1869. DFP.
DeRosset, William. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 20 June 1866. DFP.
Hume, W. N. Macdonald. Letter to Louis de Rosset. 14 March 1870. DFP.
Meares, Kate (Catherine) DeRosset. Letter to Louis de Rosset. n. d. [late 1869], folder 79. DFP.
Murray, Margaret. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. 9 May 1870. DFP.
---. Letter to Marie Finley de Rosset. 11 May 1870. DFP.
Secondary sources
Bennett, John D. The London Confederates: The Officials, Clergy, Businessmen and Journalists Who Backed the American South During the Civil War. Jefferson NC: McFarland & Co., 2008.
Bulwer Lytton, Edward. The Coming Race. William Blackwood and Sons, 1871.
---. The Parisians. London: Routledge, 1875.
Campbell, James L. Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Woodbridge CT: Twayne Publishers, 1986.
Christensen, Allan Conrad. Introduction to The Subverting Vision of Bulwer Lytton: Bicentenary Reflections. Ed. Allan Conrad Christensen. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2004.
Cooper, Dana. Informal Ambassadors: American Women, Transatlantic Marriages, and Anglo-American Relations, 1865–1945. Kent OH: Kent State UP, 2014.
Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. Vol. 2, D–G. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2000.
Dixon, Thomas. Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.
Franklin, J. Jeffrey. Spirit Matters: Occult Beliefs, Alternative Religions, and the Crisis of Faith in Victorian Britain. Ithaca NY: Cornell UP, 2018.
Kete, Mary Louise. Sentimental Collaborations: Mourning and Middle-Class Identity in Nineteenth-Century America. Durham NC: Duke UP, 2000.
Langford, Paul. Englishness Identified: Manners and Character, 1650–1850. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.
Link, William A. “Southerners Abroad: Europe and the Cultural Encounter, 1830–1895”. The U.S. South and Europe: Transatlantic Relations in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Ed Cornelis A. van Minnen and Manfred Berg. Lexington KY: UP of Kentucky, 2013. 15–31.
Loftus, Donna. “Entrepreneurialism or Gentlemanly Capitalism.” The Victorian World. Ed. Martin Hewitt. London: Routledge, 2012. 193–208.
Meares, Catherine DeRosset. Annals of the DeRosset Family: Huguenot Immigrants to the Province of North Carolina Early in the Eighteenth Century. Columbia SC: R. L. Bryan, 1906.
Mitchell, Leslie. Bulwer Lytton: The Rise and Fall of a Victorian Man of Letters. London: Hambledon and London, 2003.
Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. 2nd ed. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2009.
Mulvey-Roberts, Marie. “Fame, Notoriety and Madness: Edward Bulwer-Lytton Paying the Price of Greatness”. Critical Survey, 13, no. 2 (2001): 115–35.
Mushal, Amanda R. “Bonds of Marriage: Social Networks and the Development of a Commercial Middle Class in Antebellum South Carolina”. The Southern Middle Class in the Long Nineteenth Century. Ed. Jonathan Daniel Wells and Jennifer R. Green. Baton Rouge LA: Louisiana State UP, 2011. 62–83.
Nayder, Lillian. “Bulwer Lytton and Imperial Gothic: Defending the Empire in The Coming Race”. The Subverting Vision of Bulwer Lytton: Bicentenary Reflections. Ed. Allan Conrad Christensen. Chapel Hill: U of Delaware P, 2004. 212–21.
Pike, Martha V., Janice Gray Armstrong, and Museums at Stony Brook. A Time to Mourn: Expressions of Grief in Nineteenth Century America. Museums at Stony Brook, 1980.
Schor, Esther H. Bearing the Dead: The British Culture of Mourning from the Enlightenment to Victoria. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994.
Seed, David. Introduction to Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race. Ed. David Seed. Middletown CT: Wesleyan UP, 2005. xiii–liii.
Seed, David. “Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race (1871)”. Handbook of the English Novel, 1830–1900. Ed. Martin Middeke and Monika Pietrzak-Franger. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co, 2020. 381–96.
Seville, Catherine. “Edward Bulwer Lytton Dreams of Copyright: ‘It Might Make Me a Rich Man’”. Victorian Literature and Finance. Ed. Francis O’Gorman. Oxford: Oxford UP. 2007. 55–72.
Shain, Charles E. “The English Novelists and the American Civil War”. American Quarterly, 14, no. 3 (Autumn 1962): 399–421.
Sinnema, Peter W. Introduction to Edward Bulwer Lytton, The Coming Race. Ed. Peter W.
Sinnema. Peterborough Ont: Broadview P, 2008. 8–25.
Steinbach, Susie L. Understanding the Victorians: Politics, Culture and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain. London: Routledge, 2012.
Tosh, John. A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999.
Tuffnell, Stephen. Made in Britain: Nation and Emigration in Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: U of California P, 2020.
Weil, François. Family Trees: A History of Genealogy in America. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 2013.
Wells, Jonathan Daniel. The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800–1861. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2004.
