I return victorious, the debate won. The good people of Lytton, British Columbia, sided with the “Toff” over the “Prof”! Bribing the audience with Bulwer Lytton bookmarks from the Knebworth House Gift Shop prior to the vote might have had something to do with it, but my American challenger was always going to be at a disadvantage in British Columbia!
What I had not appreciated until this trip was how crucial a role Edward Bulwer Lytton played in the keeping Western Canada out of the hands of the Americans. If Governor James Wallace (interestingly as “black” as Barack Obama) can be said to have mothered British Columbia into existence, Edward Bulwer Lytton was, definitively, the state’s father – providing the “y” chromosome, by pushing the Bill for its creation through the British Parliament at absolutely the crucial moment in the summer of 1858. If Palmerston’s Whig Government had not lost power briefly that year, or indeed if Bulwer Lytton’s Tory predecessor as Secretary for the Colonies had not left the job after three months, it is almost certain that the Pacific Coast between Washington State and Alaska would now be part of the United States.
Thus I was very pleased to find a statue of Bulwer Lytton on the State Building in Victoria. And also very touched by the warm reception I received from the people of Lytton, a small town at the western foot of the Rockies, perched over the meeting of two great rivers, the Fraser and the Thompson. Here Bulwer Lytton is remembered as he should be, as a fine politician and statesman, not simply as namesake to some scurrilous Yankie competition!
Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com