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.”
[Illustration: D’ORSAY (1830)
[TO FACE PAGE 96]
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.
[Illustration: 10 ST JAMES’S SQUARE
[TO FACE PAGE 100]
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.
“Would you _see more_ taste and splendour,
Mark the notice I rehearse—
Now at Kensington attend her—
Farther on, you _may fare_ worse.”
Gout and rheumatism afflicted him sorely in his latter years, though
his face retained its hale good looks. At Seamore Place—and on similar
occasions—he was compelled to move about with the aid of a crutch, or
in a wheel-chair, which he could manœuvre himself, his feet sometimes
encased in india-rubber shoes. Despite his infirmities his smile was
always bright and his tongue ready with a witticism.
When Jekyll asked him why he had never married, the response came in
verse—
“Should I seek Hymen’s tie?
As a poet I die,
Ye Benedicts mourn my distresses.
For what little fame
Is annexed to my name,
Is derived from _Rejected Addresses_.”
But we must return to the drawing-room in Seamore Place.
On the other side of the hostess, busily discussing a speech of Dan
O’Connell, stood a dapper little man, rather languid in appearance, but
with winning, prepossessing manners, and a playful, ready tongue; Henry
Bulwer. There were others, such as a German prince and a French duke and
a famous traveller. And—there was D’Orsay, a host in himself in both
senses of the word, the best-looking, best-dressed, most fortunate man in
the room; yet despite it all—there he sat in a careless attitude upon an
ottoman.
It was nearly twelve o’clock, the witching hour, before Mr Lytton Bulwer
(“Pelham”) was announced, who ran gaily up to his hostess, and was
greeted with a cordial chorus of “How d’ye, Bulwer?” Gay, quick, partly
satirical, his conversation was fresh and buoyant. A dandy, too!
Toward three o’clock i’ the morn James Smith made a move and Willis his
exit.
In June 1834, Willis dined at Seamore Place, the hour appointed being the
then unusually late one of eight o’clock. Again the company, who were
awaiting the arrival of Tom Moore, was of mingled nationalities—a Russian
count, an Italian banker, an English peer, Willis an American, and for
host and hostess, a French count and an Irish peeress. Lady Blessington
took the lead—so says Willis, and he should know for he was there, lucky
dog—in the war of witty words that waged round the dinner-table, and we
may be sure that D’Orsay was not among the hindmost.
The talk was turned by Moore upon duelling—
“They may say what they will of duelling; it is the great preserver of
the decencies of society. The old school, which made a man responsible
for his words, was the better. I must confess I think so.” He then told
an amusing story of an Irishman—of all men on earth!—who “refused a
challenge on account of the illness of his daughter,” and one of the
Dublin wits made a good epigram on the two—
“Some men, with a horror of slaughter,
Improve on the Scripture command;
And ‘honour their’—wife and their daughter—
‘That their days may be long in the land.’”
The “two” being the gentleman above referred to, and O’Connell, who had
pleaded his wife’s illness as an excuse upon a similar occasion.
“The great period of Ireland’s glory,” continued Moore, “was between ’82
and ’98, and it was a time when a man almost lived with a pistol in his
hand. Grattan’s dying advice to his son was: ‘Be always ready with the
pistol!’ He himself never hesitated a minute.”
This we must take as a mere spark from the coruscations of brilliancy
that fell from the lips of the beautiful hostess and her clever guests,
from whom she had the art of drawing their best.
Coffee was served in the drawing-room. Moore was persuaded to sing.
Singing always to his own accompaniment and in a fashion that more nearly
approached to recitation than to ordinary singing, Moore was possessed
of peculiar gifts in the arousing of the emotions of his hearers, and
accounted any performance a failure that did not receive the award
of tears. On this occasion, after two or three songs chosen by Lady
Blessington, his fingers wandered apparently aimlessly over the keys for
a while, and then with poignant pathos he sang—
“When first I met thee, warm and young,
There shone such truth about thee,
And on thy lip such promise hung,
I did not dare to doubt thee.
I saw thee change, yet still relied,
Still clung with hope the fonder,
And thought, though false to all beside,
From me thou could’st not wander.
But go, deceiver! go—
The heart, whose hopes could make it
Trust one so false, so low,
Deserves that thou should’st break it.”
Then when the last note had died away, he said “Good-night” to his
hostess, and before the silence was otherwise broken—was gone.
Dizzy was party to a famous duel which did not come off, consequent
on fiery language used by O’Connell, who courteously rated him thus:
“He is the most degraded of his species and his kind, and England is
degraded in tolerating and having on the face of her society a miscreant
of his abominable, foul and atrocious nature. His name shows that he
is by descent a Jew. They were once the chosen people of God. There
were miscreants amongst them, however, also, and it must certainly have
been from one of these that Disraeli descended. He possesses just the
qualities of the impenitent thief that died upon the cross, whose name I
verily believe must have been Disraeli.”
Dizzy put himself in D’Orsay’s hands, but the latter thought that it
would scarcely be becoming for a foreigner to be mixed up in a political
duel, though he consented to “stage-manage” the affair, which never came
off, owing to O’Connell’s oath never again to fight a duel.