copious supply of books, which ensure amusement during the day. Thence
emerges the modern invention of easy-chairs and sofas to occupy the
smallest space when packed; _batteries de cuisine_, to enable a cook
to fulfil the arduous duties of his _métier_; and, though last, not
least, cases to contain the delicate _chapeaux_, _toques_, _bérets_; and
_bonnets_ of a Herbault, too fragile to bear the less easy motion of
leathern bandboxes crowning imperials.”
Doubtless the noble authoress found it impossible to write unadulterated
Saxon after listening through so many hours to D’Orsay’s gallant but
broken English.
At this time there were many English folk in Rome, to accommodate whose
insular fancies there were English shops, including a confectionery
establishment, which contributed to the indigestions of the British and
the entertainment of the Romans. It was the custom then for English
travellers at Rome to make a point of doing what the Romans did not do;
happily all that has been changed for the better and to-day the Britisher
abroad, and equally his cousins from America, behave themselves with
consideration and becoming modesty, always.
Here, as at Naples, D’Orsay made a large and interesting circle of
friends. Among these was to be numbered the French Ambassador, the Duc
de Laval-Montmorenci, an antique who afforded much amusement. He is
described as having been a curious mixture of opposites; simple and at
the same time acute, well-bred and clownish, ostentatious and prudent,
witty and wise—the last a very rare combination; an old-fashioned _beau_
in spite of his short memory and his deafness, his short sight and
his unfortunate stammer; a capital hand at an anecdote, good-tempered,
good-humoured. One of his quaint peculiarities was the habit of falling
asleep during a conversation; then an awakening after a few minutes’ nap
to exclaim:—“_Oui, oui, vous avez bien raison, c’est clair: je vous fais
mes compliments: c’est impossible d’être plus juste._”
“Middle Ages” Hallam was another friend of these days, when also Walter
Savage Landor was met again.
The time was passed in a round of merry makings by all save the silent
child-wife.
Then in May their backs were turned upon Rome, or as Lady Blessington
has it—“We leave the Eternal City—perhaps to see it _no more_. This
presentiment filled me with sadness when I this evening from the Monte
Pincio saw the golden sun sink beneath his purple clouds, his last beams
tinging with a brilliant radiance the angel on the fortress of St Angelo,
and the glorious dome of St Peter’s.”
Of all their friends the one with whom they were most loath to part was
Sir William Gell, who when bidding farewell to Lady Blessington said:
“You have been visiting our friend Drummond’s grave to-day, and if you
_ever_ come to Italy again, you will find me in mine.”
He died some eight years later, on 4th April 1836. Of his last days
Keppel Craven wrote an account to Lady Blessington:—
“He never ceased, I don’t say for an hour, but an _instant_, to have a
book open before him; and though he sometimes could not fix his eyes for
two minutes at a time on its contents, he nevertheless understood it, and
could afterwards talk of the work in a manner which proved, that while
his mental powers were awake, they were as strong as ever—more especially
his memory; but the state he was in, caused much confusion in his ideas
of time and distance, of which he was aware, and complained of.”
The first Lord Lytton wrote of Gell: “I never knew so popular or so
petted a man as Sir William Gell; every one seems to love him.”
Gell was a capital letter-writer, as the following example will suffice
to show. In April 1824, he writes to Lady Blessington:
“I did really arrive at Rome … having experienced in the way every
possible misfortune, except being overturned or carried into the
mountains. In short, I know nothing to equal my journey, except the
ninety-nine misfortunes of Pulicinella in a Neapolitan puppet-show. I set
out without my cloak in an open carriage; my only hope of getting warmer
at St Agatha was destroyed by an English family, who had got possession
of the only chimney. I had a dreadful headache, which, by-the-bye,
recollecting to have lost at your house by eating an orange, I tried
again with almost immediate effect. Next morning one grey horse fell ill
at the moment of being put to the carriage, and has continued so ever
since, so that I have had to buy another, which is so very (what they
call) good, that it is nearly as useless as the other, so that I never go
out without risking my neck. When, at length, I got to Rome in a storm
of sleet, I found a bill of an hundred and fifty dollars against me for
protecting useless lemon-trees against the frost of the winter, which,
added to the expense of the new horse and the old one have ever since
caused the horrors of a gaol to interpose themselves between me and every
enjoyment, and so much for the ugly side of the question.”
Through Loretto, Ancona, Ravenna, Ferrara, Padua, the Blessingtons and
company made their way to Venice, where they halted for several weeks,
and where once again they forgathered with Landor. Then by Verona and
Milan to Genoa, and in June 1828 they arrived in Paris.
IX
PARIS
Back again in Paris, which lay blistering under the hot summer sun.
Rooms were secured at the _Hôtel de Terrace_ in the Rue de Rivoli; noisy
quarters, and Lady Blessington was not fond of noise.
“On entering Paris,” says Lady Blessington, “I felt my impatience to
see our dear friends then redouble; and, before we had despatched
the dinner awaiting our arrival, the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche came
to us. How warm was our greeting; how many questions to be asked and
answered; how many congratulations and pleasant plans for the future to
be formed.…” Doubtless D’Orsay was again congratulated on having married
a fortune.… “The Duchesse was in radiant health and beauty, and the Duc
looking, as he always does, more _distingué_ than anyone else—the perfect
_beau-idéal_ of a nobleman. We soon quitted the _salle à manger_; for who
could eat during the joy of a first meeting with those so valued?”
The attitude of D’Orsay’s family throughout this strange affair is
amazing. Can they have really understood the situation? Did they thank
Blessington for having provided so munificently for their brother? Did
they express their gratitude to Lady Blessington for the many favours
she had shown to him? We can scarcely believe it so. But however all
these things were, the evening passed pleasantly; the windows of the
_salon_ looked out over the garden of the Tuileries, over their scented
orange-trees and formal walks.
The Comte and Comtesse d’Orsay were also in Paris, later on, and great
must have been their satisfaction at seeing their son so well settled.
Of a dinner at their house Lady Blessington—_la belle mère_ of their
son—says there was a “large family party. The only stranger was Sir
Francis Burdett. A most agreeable dinner followed by a very pleasant
evening.” Did Countess Alfred enjoy it?
The next day Lady Blessington devoted to shopping, visiting among other
high shrines of fashion Herbault’s, where the latest things in caps,
hats and turbans were tried and sentenced; then on to Mdlle. La Touche
where _canezus_ and _robes de matin_ were selected. Three hundred and
twenty francs were given for a crape hat and feathers, two hundred for a
_chapeau à fleurs_, one hundred for a _negligé de matin_, and eighty-five
for an evening cap of tulle trimmed with blonde and flowers.
The hotel was a mere stop-gap, and the Blessingtons settled down in
a house belonging to the Marquis de Lillers, which had once been the
residence of Marshal Ney; it was situated in the Rue de Bourbon, the
principal rooms giving on the Seine and commanding a view over the
Tuileries’ gardens. The sumptuous scale of the decorations is typified
by those of the bathroom, where the bath of marble was sunk in a
tessellated pavement, and over it swung an alabaster lamp hanging from
the beak of a dove, the ceiling being painted with Cupids and flowers;
the walls were panelled alternately with mirrors and allegorical groups.
Furniture, equally luxurious, was hired—dark crimson carpets with golden
borders, crimson satin curtains also bordered in gold, sofas and chairs
upholstered in crimson satin and richly gilded, gilt _consoles_, buhl
cabinets, a multitude of mirrors; a veritable orgy of gold and glitter.
But all else was surpassed by the Blessington’s _chambre à coucher_
and her dressing-room, which she found to be exquisite, at any rate,
to her taste: the silvered bedstead was supported on the backs of two
large silver swans, the recess in which it stood being lined with white
fluted silk, bordered with blue lace; pale blue curtains, lined with
white, closed in its sanctity. There was a silvered sofa, rich coffers
for jewels and for lace, a pale blue carpet, a lamp of silver … “a more
tasteful or elegant suite of apartments cannot be imagined!” For the
housing of beauty and virtue what more fitting than silver, white and
light blue? “Chastely beautiful,” so said its owner. Then, Heaven commend
us to the unchaste.
Gaiety was the order of the day, as it ever was when Lady Blessington
and D’Orsay were in command; drives in the Bois de Boulogne with the
Duchesse de Guiche; evenings at Madame Crawford’s, whom Lady Blessington
describes as gifted with “all the naïveté of a child. She possesses a
quick perception of character and a freshness of feeling rarely found
in a person of her advanced age.” Here is a truly touching family group
at a leave-taking breakfast: “It was touching to behold Madame Crawford
kissing again and again her grandchildren and great-grand-children, the
tears streaming down her cheeks, and the venerable Duc de Grammont,
scarcely less moved, embracing his son and daughter-in-law, and exhorting
the latter to take care of her health, while the dear little Ida, his
grand-daughter, not yet two years old, patted his cheek, and smiled
in his face.” Doubtless Madame Crawford was not a little proud of her
gallant D’Orsay; we wonder what opinion, if any, she formed of his bride,
and whether she congratulated her on marrying the grandson of a king?
Among other places of interest to which expeditions were made none
can have come more closely home to the heart of Lady Blessington than
D’Orsay, the fortified château of the family with which she was now so
closely connected.
Two letters written by members of the party to Landor are interesting,
not only as showing the terms of friendship between the writers and the
recipient. The first was from Blessington, dated 14th July:—
“Oh! it is an age, my dear Landor, since I thought of having
determined to write. My first idea was to defend _Vavaseur_,[5]
but the book was lent to one friend or another, and always out
of the way when the pen was in hand. My second inclination was,
to inquire after you and yours; but I knew that you were not
fond of corresponding, so that sensation passed away. And now
my third is to tell you that Lady B. has taken an apartment in
the late residence of Marshal Ney, and wishes much that some
whim, caprice, or other impelling power, should transform you
across the Alps, and give her the pleasure of again seeing you.
Here we have been nearly five weeks, and, unlike Italy and its
suns, we have no remembrance of the former, but in the rolling
of the thunder; and when we see the latter, we espy at the
same time the threatening clouds on the horizon. To balance or
assist such pleasure, we have an apartment _bien décoré_ with
_Jardin de Tuileries en face_, and our apartment being at the
corner, we have the double advantage of all the _row_, from
morn till night. Diligences and fiacres—coachmen cracking their
whips, stallions neighing—carts with empty wine-barrels—all
sorts of discordant music, and all sorts of cries, songs, and
the jingling of bells.…”
The second letter is from D’Orsay, who dates his note 4th September, and
writes from the Hôtel Ney:—
“J’ai reçu, mon cher M. Landor, votre lettre. Elle nous a fait
le plus grand plaisir. Vous devriez être plus que convaincu
que j’apprécirois particulièrement une lettre de vous, mais
il paroit que notre intimité de Florence ne compte pour rien
à vos yeux, si vous doutez du plaisir que vos nouvelles
doivent produire dans notre intérieur. Sitôt que je recevrai
les tableaux je ferai votre commission avec exactitude. Je
desirerois bien que vous veniez à Paris, car nous avons de
belles choses à vous montrer; surtout en fait de tableaux. A
propos de cela, je vous envoye ci joint le portrait du Prince
Borghése que vous trouverez j’espère ressemblant.… Nous parlons
et pensons souvent de vous, il est assez curieux que vous soyez
en odeur de sainteté dans cette famille, car il me semble que
ce n’est pas la chose dont nous vous piquiez particulièrement
d’être. Lady B. et toutes nos dames vous envoye mille amitiés,
et moi je ne fais que renouveller l’assurance de la sincérité
de la mienne. Votre très affectionné,
“D’ORSAY.”
Of a visit to the opera this is a pleasant reminiscence:—“Went to the
Opera last night, where I saw the _début_ of the new _danseuse_ Taglioni.
Hers is a totally new style of dancing; graceful beyond all comparison,
wonderful lightness, an absence of all violent effort, or at least of the
appearance of it, and a modesty as new as it is delightful to witness in
her art.… The Duc de Gazes, who came into the Duchesse de Guiche’s box,
was enthusiastic in his praises of Mademoiselle Taglioni, and said hers
was the most poetical style of dancing he had even seen. Another observed
that it was indeed the poetry of motion. I would describe it as the epic
of dancing,” a not very brilliant remark for a woman of reputed wit.
Henry Greville writing in 1832 says: “Taglioni is dancing at Covent
Garden; it is impossible to conceive the perfection to which she
has brought the art. She is an animated statue; her motions are the
perfection of grace and decency, and her strength quite marvellous.” And
again in Paris, four years later, when she was still highly proper: “Her
grace and _décence_ are something that no one can imagine who has not
seen her.” The actor complains that nothing remains of his art by which
posterity can judge him; but the dancer can, at any rate, leave behind a
reputation for propriety—while on the stage.
A welcome visitor was Charles Kemble, who dined with the Blessingtons,
and after dinner read to the party his daughter’s, Fanny Kemble’s play,
_Francis the First_. “I remembered,” says Lady Blessington, “those
pleasant evenings when he used to read to us in London, hour after hour,
until the timepiece warned us to give over. I remembered, too, John
Kemble—‘the great John Kemble,’ as Lord Guildford used to call him—twice
or thrice reading to us with Sir T(homas) Lawrence; and the tones of
Charles Kemble’s voice, and the expression of his face, forcibly reminded
me of our departed friend.”
In 1829 an event befell, which probably altered the course of D’Orsay’s
career, and which may be counted as a nice stroke of irony on the part of
Fate, that past-mistress of the ironical.
The question of the repeal of the civil disabilities inflicted upon the
Irish Catholics had grown to be a burning question, and Lord Rosslyn
wrote anxiously to Paris, urging Blessington to go over to London
to support in the House of Lords the Duke of Wellington’s Catholic
Emancipation Act. On July 15th, Blessington set out for England; “his
going,” wrote his wife, “at this moment, when he is far from well, is no
little sacrifice of personal comfort; but never did he consider himself
when a duty was to be performed. I wish the question was carried, and
he safely back again.” While in town he presided at the Covent Garden
Theatrical Fund annual dinner. After an absence of only a few days he
returned to Paris, apparently in improved health, and—indulgent husband
that he was—laden with gifts for his lovely wife.
But disaster was at hand. While riding out in the heat he was seized with
apoplexy in the Champs Elysées. He lingered, speechless, until half-past
four on the following Monday morning when he breathed his last. Lady
Blessington was stunned with grief by the sudden calamity.
The remains were conveyed to Dublin, where they were interred in Saint
Thomas’ Church, Marlborough Street.
What epitaph are we to write? What character to paint of this man,
so well-beloved, yet possessing so little strength, so little
self-restraint, such a pittance of ability? Landor wrote of him to Lady
Blessington—
“DEAR LADY BLESSINGTON,—If I defer it any longer, I know not
how or when I shall be able to fulfil so melancholy a duty.
The whole of this day I have spent in that torpid depression,
which you may feel without a great calamity, and which others
can never feel at all. Every one that knows me, knows the
sentiments I bore towards that disinterested, and upright,
and kind-hearted man, than whom none was ever dearer, or more
delightful to his friends. If to be condoled with by many, if
to be esteemed and beloved by all whom you have admitted to
your society is any comfort, that comfort at least is yours. I
know how inadequate it must be at such a moment, but I know too
that the sentiment will survive when the bitterness of sorrow
shall have passed away.”
And again he writes to her:
“Too well was I aware how great my pain must be in reading your
letter. So many hopes are thrown away from us by this cruel
and unexpected blow. I cannot part with the one of which the
greatness and the justness of your grief almost deprives me,
that you will recover your health and spirits. If they could
return at once, or very soon, you would be unworthy of that
love which the kindest and best of human beings lavished on
you. Longer life was not necessary for him to estimate your
affection for him, and those graces of soul which your beauty
in its brightest day but faintly shadowed. He told me that you
were requisite to his happiness, and that he could not live
without you. Suppose that he had survived you, his departure in
that case could not have been so easy as it was, unconscious of
pain, of giving it, or of leaving it behind. I am comforted at
the reflection that so gentle a heart received no affliction
from the anguish and despair of those he loved.”
Five years later Lady Blessington writes to Landor:—
“I have often wished that you would note down for me your reminiscences
of your friendship, and the conversations it led to with my dear and
ever-to-be-lamented husband; he who so valued and loved you, and who was
so little understood by the common herd of mankind. We, who knew the
nobleness, the generosity, and the refined delicacy of his nature, can
render justice to his memory.…”
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:—