hat we bestow our sympathy
simply upon the grounds of her feeble-mindedness.

In less than three years began the vulgar quarrels which finally ended
the marriage. Bulwer is described by a visitor to the house about this
time as appearing "like a man who has been flayed and is sore all over."
His temperament was by nature extremely sensitive and irritable. And the
combined Bulwer and Lytton blood was hot, turbulent, and at times quite
uncontrollable. There are records of scenes of absolute personal
violence against his wife, and one instance is given where at dinner,
during the momentary absence of the servant, he bit her cheek till the
blood flowed freely. After marriage, his income being cut off by his
mother, he for a time wrote for his bread; and the work, close and
confining as it was, told very much upon his health.

"His feelings became morbidly acute, and all the petty household
worries were to his exasperated brain what frictions and jostlings
are to highly inflamed flesh. His wife had little of his society.
He was nearly always writing or making preparation for writing, and
when they were together his nervous irritability vented itself at
every unwelcome circumstance in complaints, or taunts, or fits of
anger. To harsh words and unjust reproaches his wife returned meek
replies. Any distress his conduct occasioned her she concealed from
him. She was studious to please him, and endeavored to anticipate
every want and wish. Her gentleness and forbearance increased his
gratitude and devotion to her, and whenever he perceived that she
was wounded he was full of remorse."

So says her son, and continues:--

"The mischief was aggravated by the unfortunate occurrence that my
mother being unable to suckle her first-born child, it had been
nursed out of the house. Her maternal instinct, thus thwarted in
its origin, never revived. The care of children was ever after
distasteful to her. Losing this satisfaction to her affections,
unless she had company in the house she was lonely. As it was,
neither of them saw the issue to which the divided life was
tending."

That issue, as all the world knows, was a separation of the husband and
wife, and a life-long quarrel of almost unimagined bitterness. No wonder
that Bulwer's hand faltered when be tried to write of it, and that,
having brought his autobiography up to this point,