Part 6

Amid all this sugar, it is quite refreshing to come across a little acid, and Cyrus Redding speaks out quite plainly of Lady Blessington. He says: “She was a fine woman; she had understood too well how to captivate the other sex. She had won hearts, never having had a heart to return. No one could be more bland and polished, when she pleased. She understood from no short practice, when it was politic to be amiable, and yet no one could be less amiable, bland and polished when her temper was roused, and her language being then well suited to the circumstances of the provocation, both in style and epithet.… The gentry of this country, of all political creeds, are frequently censured for their pride and exclusiveness; but they may sometimes be proud and exclusive to no ill end. The higher ranks have their exceptions, as well as others, of which Lord Blessington himself was an instance. The dissipation of Lord Blessington’s fortune, and the reception of Lady Blessington’s favourite, the handsome youth, D’Orsay, into Lord Blessington’s house, ran together, it has been said, before the finish of his education. Old Countess d’Orsay was scarcely able to do much for her son, owing to the narrowness of her income; but no family could be more respectable than hers. Lord Blessington was a weak-minded creature, and his after-dinner conversations, when the wine was in, became wretchedly maudlin.”

However, exit Lord Blessington and end Act One of our tragi-comedy.

X

A SOLEMN UNDERTAKING

Our hero henceforth will occupy the centre of the stage, as a right-minded hero should do, beside him the shadowy figure of his wife gradually fading away into the background until at last quite invisible, and that of the flamboyant personage of the widow of our hero’s dead patron. Truly ironical; while Blessington lived and was an “obstacle” in the way of the course of true love there had seemed to D’Orsay to be no other way of settling his fortunes than to marry one or other of Blessington’s daughters, he cared not which. Now that the obstacle had been removed and the widow was free to be openly wooed and won, the path he had chosen to pursue appeared of those ways that had been open to him to be the most stupid. The lady who had been shackled was free; the lover who had been free was now shackled. Fortune is a humorist and her jokes are always at our expense, which makes it difficult for us to laugh with her.

Lady Blessington was clever in the choice of her physician, who prescribed company as a cure for depression of spirits. So we read in her ladyship’s Diary:—

“My old friends Mr and Mrs Mathews, and their clever son have arrived in Paris, and dined here yesterday. Mr Mathews is as entertaining as ever, and his wife as amiable and _spirituelle_. They are excellent as well as clever people, and their society is very agreeable. Charles Mathews, the son, is full of talent, possesses all his father’s powers of imitation, and sings comic songs of his own composition that James Smith himself might be proud to have written.”

Old and young Mathews delighted with their songs and recitations a party attended among others by the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche Madame Crawford and Count Walewski.

Later on we find Rogers and Luttrell calling upon her, and the former chatting of Byron. Lady Blessington mentions a lampoon which the great had written on the little poet, and which Byron had read to her and D’Orsay one day at Genoa.

“I thought you were one of Mr Rogers’s most intimate friends, and so all the world had reason to think, after reading your dedication of the _Giaour_ to him.”

“Yes,” said Byron, with a laugh, “and it is our friendship that gives me the privilege of taking a liberty with him.”

“If it is thus you evince your friendship, I should be disposed to prefer your enmity.”

“Oh!” said Byron, “you could never excite this last sentiment in my heart, for you neither say nor do spiteful things.”

Of Luttrell, Lady Blessington held a high opinion: “His conversation, like a limpid stream, flows smoothly and brightly along, revealing the depths beneath its current, now sparkling over the objects it discloses or reflecting those by which it glides. He never talks for talking’s sake; but his mind is so well filled that, like a fountain which when stirred sends up from its bosom sparkling showers, his mind, when excited, sends forth thoughts no less bright than profound, revealing the treasures with which it is so richly stored. The conversation of Mr Luttrell makes me think, while that of many others only amuses me.”

Luttrell, who was a natural son of Lord Carhampton, was born about 1765, dying in 1851.

Charles Greville tells us of these two friends, they were “always bracketed together, intimate friends, seldom apart, and always hating, abusing, and ridiculing each other. Luttrell’s _bons mots_ and repartees were excellent, but he was less caustic, more good-natured, but in some respects less striking in conversation than his companion, who had more knowledge, more imagination, and though in a different way, as much wit.”

An entry in Henry Greville’s “Diary” is amusing, bearing in mind the above about Rogers and Byron:—

“_Thursday, October 27_ (1836).—Dined with Lady Williams, Lord Lyndhurst, and Rogers. The latter said Lord Byron was very affected, and his conversation rarely agreeable and a constant effort at wit. I said I supposed he knew a great deal and had read. He answered: ‘If you believe Moore he has read everything. I don’t believe he ever read at all!’ Rogers hated Byron, and was absurd enough to be jealous of him.”

Poets do not dwell together in unity.

Rogers even in his young days was known, by reason of his corpse-like appearance, as the Dead Dandy; and later on a wag said to him: “Rogers, you’re rich enough, why don’t you keep your hearse?”

This is a dinner-party that must have been interesting, Lord John Russell, Rogers, Luttrell, Thiers, Mignet, and Poulett Thomson; Lady Blessington says:—

“Monsieur Thiers is a very remarkable person—quick, animated, and observant; nothing escapes him, and his remarks are indicative of a mind of great power. I enjoy listening to his conversation, which is at once full of originality, yet free from the slightest shade of eccentricity.

“Monsieur Mignet, who is the inseparable friend of Monsieur Thiers, reminds me every time I see him of Byron, for there is a striking likeness in the countenance.”

The following reads strangely, so much have our habits and manners changed since 1829:—

“We dined at the Rocher de Cancale yesterday; and Counts S⸺ and Valeski (Walewski) composed our party. The Rocher de Cancale is the Greenwich of Paris; the oysters and various other kinds of fish served up _con gusto_, attracting people to it, as the white-bait draw visitors to Greenwich. Our dinner was excellent, and our party very agreeable.

“A _dîner de restaurant_ is pleasant from its novelty. The guests seem less ceremonious and more gay; the absence of the elegance that marks the dinner-table appointments in a _maison bien montée_, gives a homeliness and heartiness to the repast; and even the attendance of two or three ill-dressed _garçons_ hurrying about, instead of half-a-dozen sedate servants in rich liveries, marshalled by a solemn-looking _maître d’hôtel_ and groom of the chambers, gives a zest to the dinner often wanted in more luxurious feasts.”

Then what shall we say to this for a sleighing-party, save that we would that we also had been there?

“The prettiest sight imaginable was a party of our friends in sledges.… Count A. d’Orsay’s sledge presented the form of a dragon, and the accoutrements and horse were beautiful; the harness was of red morocco, embroidered in gold.… The dragon of Comte A. d’Orsay looked strangely fantastic at night. In the mouth, as well as the eyes, was a brilliant red light; and to a tiger-skin covering, that nearly concealed the cream-coloured horse, revealing only the white mane and tail, was attached a double line of silver-gilt bells, the jingle of which was very musical and cheerful.”

Lady Blessington, the D’Orsays, and Marianne Power remained on for some considerable time in Paris after the death of Lord Blessington, the Revolution of 1830 providing them with some excitement. D’Orsay was always out and about, and though his brother-in-law de Guiche was a well-known legitimist and he himself a Bonapartist, the crowd was quite ready to greet the dandy with good-humoured shouts of “Vive le Comte d’Orsay.” Your crowd of _sans-culottes_ dearly loves a dandy.

Here is a quite pretty picture by Lady Blessington:—

“_6th August._—I walked with Comte d’O(rsay) this evening into the Champs Elysées, and great was the change effected there within the last few days. It looks ruined and desolate, the ground cut up by the pieces of cannon and troops as well as the mobs that have made it a thoroughfare, and many of the trees greatly injured, if not destroyed.

“A crowd was assembled around a man who was reading aloud for their edification a proclamation nailed to one of the trees. We paused for a moment to hear it, when some of the persons, recognising my companion, shouted aloud, ‘_Vive le Comte d’Orsay! Vive le Comte d’Orsay!_’ and the cry being taken up by the mass, the reader was deserted, the fickle multitude directing all their attention and enthusiasm to the new-comer.”

D’Orsay’s love of the fine arts induced him to make an effort to save the portrait of the Dauphin by Lawrence which hung in the Louvre. To achieve this he sent two of his servants, Brement, formerly a drill-sergeant in the Guards, and Charles, an ex-Hussar; they found the picture, torn to ribbons and the fragments strewn upon the floor.

As another example of his epistolary style we will quote this following from D’Orsay to Landor, dated Paris, 22nd Août, 1830:—

“Je viens de recevoir votre lettre du 10. Il falloit un aussi grand événement pour avoir de vos nouvelles. Le fait est que c’est dans ces grandes circonstances que les gens bien pensant se retrouvent. Vous donner des détails de tout l’héroïsme qui a été déployé dans ces journées mémorables, et difficiles il faudroit un Salluste pour rendre justice, et d’écrire cette plus belle page de l’histoire des temps modernes. On ne sait quoi admirer de plus, de la valeur dans l’action, ou de la modération après la victoire. Paris est tranquille comme la veille d’un jour de fête, it seroit injuste de dire comme le lendemain, car la réaction de la veille donne souvent une apparence _unsettled_, tandis qu’ici tout est digne et noble, le grand peuple sent sa puissance. Chaque homme se sent relevé à ses propres yeux, et croiroit manquer à sa nation en commettant le moindre excès. Vous, véritable philosophe, serait heureux de voir ce qu’a pu faire l’éducation en 40 années; voir ce peuple après, ou à l’époque où La Fayette le commanda pour la première fois, est bien différent; en 1790—l’accouchement laborieux de la liberté eut des suites funestes, maintenant l’on peut dire que la mère et l’enfant se portent bien. Notre présent Roi est le premier citoyen de son pays, il sent bien que les Rois sont faits pour les peuples, et non les peuples pour les Rois. Si Charles Dix eut pensé de même s’il eut été moins Jésuite, nous aurions encore cette Race Capétienne. Ainsi comme il n’y a aucun moyen curatif connu pour guérir de cette maladie, il est encore très heureux qu’il ait donné l’excuse légale pour qu’on renvoye.… La Comtesse et Lady B. ont été d’un courage sublime, elles se portent bien.… Adieu, pour le moment. Votre très affectionné,

“D’ORSAY.”

Before leaving Paris for London we must quote from Madden a passage which proves conclusively that not every Irishman has a saving sense of humour. “Shortly before the death of Count d’Orsay’s mother,” he writes, “who entertained feelings of strong attachment for Lady Blessington, the former had spoken with great earnestness of her apprehensions for her son, on account of his tendency to extravagance, and of her desire that Lady Blessington would advise and counsel him, and do her utmost to counteract those propensities which had already been attended with embarrassments, and had occasioned her great fears for his welfare. The promise that was given on that occasion was often alluded to by Lady Blessington, and after her death, by Count d’Orsay.”

Such a solemn undertaking must of course be carried out by an honourable woman, so when the Paris establishment was broken up by Lady Blessington, Count and Countess d’Orsay followed in her train, so that they might be near by to receive her counsel and advice.

XI

SEAMORE PLACE

The London in which D’Orsay was destined to spend the majority of his remaining years, and of which he became so distinguished an ornament is far away from modern London, farther away from us, in fact, in manners, customs and appearance than it was from the metropolis of the England of Queen Elizabeth. Astounding is the change that has come about since the year 1830; the advent of steam and electricity, the stupendous increase of wealth, the extension of education if not of culture, wrought a revolution during the nineteenth century. The first half of that century has rightly been described as “cruel, unlovely, but abounding in vital force.” London was then a city very dull to look upon, very dirty, very dismal; hackney coaches were the chief means of locomotion for those who could not afford to keep their own chariot, and were rumbling, lumbering, bumpy vehicles, whose drivers were dubbed jarvies. Fast young men were beginning to sport a cabriolet or cab; omnibuses were of the future. “Bobbies” had only come into being recently, taking the place of the watchmen and Bow Street runners, who hitherto had taken charge of the public morals. Debtors were treated worse than we now treat criminals; gaming-houses were in abundance, and to their proprietors profitable institutions. Drinking shops were open to any hour of the night, and drinking to excess was only gradually ceasing to be a gentlemanly, even a lordly, diversion; clubs in our modern sense of the word were comparatively few, coffee-houses, chop-houses, and taverns occupying their place to some extent. Restaurants and fashionable hotels were not, and ladies dined at home when their husbands disported themselves abroad. Prize-fighting was in its heyday; duelling was the fashion.

To this London, which, however, was not so dull as it looked, D’Orsay came in November 1830, taking up his residence with Lady Blessington and his wife in St James’ Square. But Lady Blessington soon found that her jointure of £2000 a year could not by any stretching meet the expenses of such an establishment, and that a removal to cheaper quarters was compulsory. D’Orsay and his wife took furnished lodgings in Curzon Street, but later on joined Lady Blessington in the house in Seamore Place, which she had rented from Lord Mountford and furnished with an extravagance worthy of an ill-educated millionaire. As for example, let us take a peep into the library—Lady Blessington was very literary—which looked out upon Hyde Park; the ceiling was arched and from it hung a lamp of splendour; there were enamelled tables crowded with costly trinkets and knick-knacks; the walls were lined with a medley of mirrors and book-cases, with as chief adornment Lawrence’s delightful portrait of the mistress of the house, now in the Wallace Collection. The dining-room was octagonal, and environed by mirrors; it was an age of mirrors and cut glass.

Joseph Jekyll writes on June 20th, 1831: “_Nostra senora_, of Blessington, has a house of _bijoux_ in Seymour (_sic_) Place. Le Comte d’Orsay, an Antinous of beauty and an exquisite of Paris, married the rich daughter of Lord Blessington, and they live here with _la belle mère_.” And on 18th July:—“The Countess of Blessington gave a dinner to us on Friday. Lord Wilton, General Phipps, Le Comte d’Orsay, and myself—_Cuisine de Paris exquise_. The pretty melancholy Comtesse glided in for a few minutes, and then left us to nurse her influenza. The Misses Berry tell me they have dined with the Speaker and wife, who have thrown my Blessington overboard.[6] The English at Naples called my friend the Countess of Cursington.”

In January of the next year Jekyll was again present at a dinner in Seamore Place, other guests being George Colman, James Smith, Rogers and Campbell; “There was wit, fun, epigram, and raillery enough to supply fifty county members for a twelvemonth. _Miladi_ has doffed her widow’s weeds, and was almost in pristine beauty. Her house is a _bijou_, or, as Sir W. Curtis’ lady said, ‘a perfect bougie.’”

At Seamore Place Lady Blessington, with D’Orsay as ally and master of the ceremonies, gathered around her many of the most interesting and distinguished men of the time—statesmen, soldiers, writers, painters, musicians, actors, and many gay butterflies of fashion.

But the triple alliance was soon reduced to a dual, Lady Harriet leaving Seamore Place, her husband and her stepmother—who doubtless had given her much good counsel and advice—in August, 1831. It was not, however, until February, 1838, that a formal deed of separation was executed. This diminution of the number of the household in nowise damped the gaiety of the two who were left behind, indeed the presence of the child-wife must often have been a wet-blanket. As far as D’Orsay was concerned, she had fulfilled her fate by supplying him with an income, which he speedily overspent and frittered away. It is surely a blot upon our social economy that such a man should have been driven to such a course in order to secure the means of living. There ought to be a young-age pension for dandies, and their debts ought to be paid by the State, thus leaving them free to do their duty without harassing cares as to ways and means. A dandy of the first water is a public benefactor and as such should be subsidised.

Nathaniel Parker Willis, an American journalist and verse writer, who wrote much that is now little read, has given accounts of various visits paid by him to Lady Blessington and D’Orsay, to the mistress and to her master, at Seamore Place, and, as was the case with others who went there, apparently accepted the Count’s constant presence as quite natural. In truth, why should he not frequent the house of his adorable stepmother-in-law? Even when he was not chaperoned by his wife?

On the occasion of his first call Willis found Lady Blessington reclining on a yellow satin sofa, book in hand, her bejewelled fingers blazing with diamonds. He tells us that he judged her ladyship to be on the sunny side of thirty, being more than ten years out in his surmise, which proves that either the lady was extremely well preserved or the visitor too dazzled by her beauty or her diamonds to be in full possession of his powers of observation. But then, what man could be so ungallant as to guess any pretty woman’s age at more than thirty?

She was dressed in blue satin, which against the yellow of the couch must have produced an hysterically Whistlerian fantasia. Willis describes her features as regular and her mouth as expressive of unsuspecting good-humour; her voice now sad, now merry, and always melodious.

To them enter D’Orsay in all his splendour, to whom the fascinated Willis was presented.

Thereon followed tea and polite conversation, the talk very naturally turning upon America and the Americans, Lady Blessington being anxious to learn in what esteem such writers as the young Disraeli and Bulwer were held in the States.

“If you will come to-morrow night,” she said, “you will see Bulwer. I am delighted that he is popular in America. He is envied and abused—for nothing, I believe, except for the superiority of his genius, and the brilliant literary success it commands; and knowing this, he chooses to assume a pride which is only the armour of a sensitive mind afraid of a wound. He is to his friends the most frank and noble creature in the world, and open to boyishness with those whom he thinks understand and value him. He has a brother, Henry,[7] who is also very clever in a different vein, and is just now publishing a book on the present condition of France.[8] Do they like the D’Israelis in America?”

Willis replied that the _Curiosities of Literature_, _Vivian Grey_ and _Contarini Fleming_ were much appreciated.

To which Lady Blessington graciously responded:

“I am pleased at that, for I like them both. D’Israeli the elder came here with his son the other night. It would have delighted you to see the old man’s pride in him, and the son’s respect and affection for his father. D’Israeli the elder lives in the country, about twenty miles from town; seldom comes up to London, and leads a life of learned leisure, each day hoarding up and dispensing forth treasures of literature. He is courtly, yet urbane, and impresses one at once with confidence in his goodness. In his manners, D’Israeli the younger is quite his own character of ‘Vivian Grey’; full of genius and eloquence, with extreme good-nature, and a perfect frankness of character.”

After some further desultory chat, Willis asked Lady Blessington if she knew many Americans, to which the reply was—

“Not in London, but a great many abroad. I was with Lord Blessington in his yacht at Naples when the American fleet was lying there … and we were constantly on board your ships. I knew Commodore Creighton and Captain Deacon extremely well, and liked them particularly. They were with us frequently of an evening on board the yacht or the frigate, and I remember very well the bands playing always ‘God save the King’ as we went up the side. Count d’Orsay here, who spoke very little English at the time, had a great passion for ‘Yankee Doodle,’ and it was always played at his request.”

Thereupon D’Orsay, in his pleasant, broken English, inquired after several of the officers, who, however, it turned out were not known to Willis. The conversation afterward turned upon Byron, and Willis asked Lady Blessington if she knew the Countess Guiccioli.

“Yes, very well. We were at Genoa when they were living there, but we never saw her. It was at Rome, in 1828, that I first knew her, having formed her acquaintance at Count Funchal’s, the Portuguese Ambassador.”

In the evening Willis availed himself of the invitation he had received, finding Lady Blessington now in the drawing-room, with some half dozen or so of men in attendance. Among these was James Smith, an intimate of D’Orsay’s, in whose gaiety and _savoir-faire_ he delighted. A pleasant story is this of later days, when Smith met the Countess Guiccioli at Gore House. After dinner these two chatted confidentially for the remainder of the evening, chiefly of their reminiscences of Byron, Leigh Hunt and Shelley. D’Orsay saw Smith home to his residence in Craven Street, and as he parted with him, asked—

“What was all that Madame Guiccioli was saying to you just now?”

“She was telling me her apartments are in the Rue de Rivoli, and that if I visited the French capital she hoped I would not forget her address.”

“What! It took all that time to say that? Ah! Smeeth, you old humbug! That won’t do!”

James Smith, who, with his brother Horace, was the author of the _Rejected Addresses_, was born in 1775.[9] He was a wit in talk and in prose as well as on paper and in verse. Here are some lines he addressed to Lady Blessington when she moved westward to Gore House—

“You who erst, in festive legions, Sought in _May Fair_, _Seamore_ Place, Henceforth in more westward regions Seek its ornament and grace.