by the loveliness of Miss
Wheeler, judged that it would be best "to regard her as we do some
beautiful caged wild creature of the woods--at a safe and secure
distance." It would have preserved a chance of happiness for
Bulwer-Lytton to possess something of this stranger's clairvoyance. It
was not strange perhaps, but unfortunate, that he did not notice--or
rather that he was not repelled by, for he did notice--the absence of
moral delicacy in the beautiful creature, the radiant and seductive
Lamia, who responded so instantly to his emotion. He, the most
fastidious of men, was not offended by the vivacity of a young lady who
called attention to the vulgarity of her father's worsted stockings and
had none but words of abuse for her mother. These things, indeed,
disconcerted the young aristocrat, but he put them down to a lack of
training; he persuaded himself that these were superficial blemishes and
could be remedied; and he resigned his senses to the intoxication of
Rosina's beauty.

At first--and indeed to the last--she stimulated his energy and his
intellect. His love and his hatred alike spurred him to action. In
August 1826, in spite of the violent opposition of his mother, he and
Rosina were betrothed. By October Mrs. Bulwer had so far prevailed that
the engagement was broken off, and Edward tossed in a whirlpool of
anger, love, and despair. It took the form of such an attack of
"fluency" as was never seen before or after. Up to that time he had been
an elegant although feverish idler. Now he plunged into a strenuous life
of public and private engagements. He prepared to enter the House of
Commons; he finished _Falkland_, his first novel; he started the
composition of _Pelham_ and of another "light prose work," which may
have disappeared; he achieved a long narrative in verse, _O'Neill, or
the Rebel_; and he involved himself in literary projects without bound
and without end. The aim of all this energy was money. It is true that
he had broken off his betrothal; but it was at first only a pretence at
estrangement, to hoodwink his mother. He was convinced that he could not
live without possessing Rosina, and as his mother held the strings of
the common purse, he would earn his own income and support a wife.

Mrs. Bulwer-Lytton, who had a Roman firmness, was absolutely determined
that her son should not marry "a penniless girl whose education had been
so flagrantly neglected, who was vain and flighty, with a mocking