seen.
Opinions differ about beauties as about other matters, so it will not
hurt to hear what Henry Reeve has to say:—
“October 15th (1839).—I have been a good deal at Gore House lately,
attracted and amused by Mme. de Guiccioli, who is staying with my lady.
Having recently made the acquaintance of Lady Byron, it is very curious
to me to compare the manners and character of her celebrated rival. The
Guiccioli is still exceedingly beautiful. She has sunbeams of hair, a
fine person, and a milky complexion. Her spirits are wonderful, and her
conversation brilliant even in the most witty house in London. Besides
which, she alone of all Italian women knows some things. Besides a fine
taste, which belongs to them by nature, she has a good share of literary
attainments, which, as her beauty fails, will smooth a track from
coquetry to pedantry, from the courted beauty to the courted blue.”
She and D’Orsay were very good friends; there are constant messages
to her from him in Lady Blessington’s letters:—“Count d’Orsay charges
me with the kindest regards for you; we often think and talk of the
pleasant hours passed in your society at Anglesey, when your charming
voice and agreeable conversation, gave wings to them.” And: “Comte
d’Orsay charges me with _mille choses aimables_ to you; you have, _malgré
all discussions_, secured a very warm and sincere friend in him.” And,
writing from Gore House on 15th August 1839: “Your friend Alfred charges
me with his kindest regards to you. He is now an inmate at Gore House,
having sold his own residence; and this is not only a great protection
but a great addition to my comfort.” A quite pleasantly frank confession
to the mistress of a great poet from the mistress of a great dandy. But
there have been greater poets than Byron, not any greater dandy than
D’Orsay, so the Blessington was the prouder woman of the two.
[Illustration: THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
(_By D’Orsay_)
[TO FACE PAGE 164]
The following, written in January 1845, must be quoted in full, and
read with the remembrance to the fore that Lady Blessington posed in
conversation and in print as having been on terms of intimate friendship
with Byron. “… You have, I daresay, heard that your friend Count d’Orsay
has within the last two years taken to painting, and such has been the
rapidity of his progress, that he has left many competitors, who have
been for fifteen years painters, far behind.
“Dissatisfied with all the portraits that have been painted of Lord
Byron, none of which render justice to the intellectual beauty of his
noble head, Count d’Orsay, at my request, has made a portrait of our
great poet, and it has been pronounced by Sir John Cam Hobhouse, and all
who remember Lord Byron, to be the best likeness of him ever painted! The
picture possesses all the noble intelligence and fine character of the
poet’s face, and will, I am sure, delight you when you see it. We have
had it engraved, and when the plate is finished, a print will be sent to
you. It will be interesting, _chère et aimable amie_, to have a portrait
of our great poet, from a painting by one who so truly esteems you: for
you have not a truer friend than Count d’Orsay, unless it be me. How I
wish you were here to see the picture! It is an age since we met, and I
assure you we all feel this long separation as a great privation. I shall
be greatly disappointed if you are not as delighted with the engraving as
I am, for to me it seems the very image of Byron.”
“Our great poet” would have torn the hair of his noble head if he had
read this quaint production. La Guiccioli did approve the engraving to
the contentment of the artist.
Shee tells us that the Countess on her visits to Gore House was
overwhelmed by her more showy hostess, and by her sister, the Countess
Saint Marceau, the latter forming a fine foil to the more exuberant Lady
Blessington, being slight, short, small-featured, but extremely pretty
and piquant, and, as Madden tells us, “always courted and complimented
in society, and coquetted with by gentlemen of a certain age, by
humourists in single blessedness, especially like Gell, and by old
married bachelors like Landor.”
Landor visited Lady Blessington in 1837; he writes to Forster: “I shall
be at Gore House on Monday, pray come in the evening. I told Lady
Blessington I should not let any of her court stand at all in my way.
When I am tired of them, I leave them.”
It is very strong proof of the fascination exercised by D’Orsay that
such men as Landor, Carlyle and Forster, each one of whom we would think
impervious to his charms, should have succumbed to them.
Landor’s enslavement by Lady Blessington or her sister is understandable,
but what attracted him in D’Orsay? Chorley gives us a glimpse of Landor
dining at Gore House when its master was absent: “Yesterday evening, I
had a very rare treat—a dinner at Kensington _tête-à-tête_ with Lady
Blessington and Mr Landor; she talked her best, brilliant and kindly, and
without that touch of self-consciousness which she sometimes displays
when worked up to it by flatterers and gay companions. Landor, as usual,
the very finest man’s head I have ever seen, and with all his Johnsonian
disposition to tyrannise and lay down the law in his talk, restrained and
refined by an old-world courtesy and deference to his bright hostess, for
which _chivalry_ is the only right word.”
Landor conceived quite an affection for D’Orsay; perhaps at heart
they _both_ were dandies? Here is a pleasant bit of chaff from Landor,
written to Lady Blessington: “By living at Clifton, I am grown as rich as
Rothschild; and if Count d’Orsay could see me in my new coat, he would
not write me so pressingly to come up to London. It would breed ill-blood
between us—half plague, half cholera. He would say—‘I wish the fellow had
his red forehead again—the deuce might powder it for me.’ However, as I
go out very little, I shall not divide the world with him.”
Once when Landor was dining at Gore House, his attire had become slightly
disordered, to which fact D’Orsay smilingly drew attention as they rose
to join the ladies. “My dear Count d’Orsay,” exclaimed Landor, “I thank
you! My dear Count d’Orsay I thank you from my soul for pointing out to
me the abominable condition to which I am reduced! If I had entered the
drawing-room, and presented myself before Lady Blessington in so absurd
a light, I would have instantly gone home, put a pistol to my head, and
blown my brains out!”
In January 1840, Henry Reeve was at dinner at Gore House, and gives a
capital account of the fun there:—
“Our dinner last night was very good fun, but we made rather too many
puns. Landor rode several fine paradoxes with savage impetuosity:
particularly his theory that the Chinese are the only civilised people
in the world. I am sure the Ching dynasty has not a firmer adherent than
Landor within its own imperial capital. Landor, you know, is quite as
vain of not being read, as Bulwer is of being the most popular writer
of the day. Nothing can equal the contempt with which he treats anybody
who has more than six readers and three admirers unless it be that saying
of Hegel’s, when he declared that nobody understood his writings but
himself, and that not always. Lady B(lessington) said the finest thing of
Carlyle’s productions that ever was uttered; she called them ‘spangled
fustian.’”
Forster and D’Orsay got on very well together, which was perhaps due
to the almost if not quite exaggerated respect paid by the former to
the latter. He was heard above the roar of talk at one of his dinners,
absolutely shouting to his man Henry: “Good heavens, sir, butter for the
Count’s flounders!” D’Orsay contrived to misunderstand him very nicely on
an occasion. Forster when expecting a visit from the Count was urgently
summoned to his printers. He gave his servant strict injunction to tell
the Count, should he call before his return, that he had just gone
round to Messrs Spottiswoode. He missed his visitor entirely, and his
explanation when next he met him was cut short by—“Ah! I know, you had
just gone round to _Ze Spotted Dog_—I understand.”
In 1835 Lady Blessington writes to Forster from Gore House:
“It has given me the greatest pleasure to hear that you are so
much better. Count d’Orsay assures me that the improvement is most
satisfactory. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of his birthday, and a
few friends will meet to celebrate it. How I wish you were to be among
the number.” Ten years later, when Forster again was on the sick-list,
she writes: “If you knew the anxiety we all feel about your health, and
the fervent prayers we offer up for its speedy restoration, you would be
convinced, that though you have friends of longer date, you have none
more affectionately and sincerely attached to you than those at Gore
House. I claim the privilege of an _old woman_ to be allowed to see you
as soon as a visitor in a sick-room can be admitted. Sterne says that ‘A
friend has the same right as a physician,’ and I hope you will remember
this. Count d’Orsay every day regrets that he cannot go and nurse you,
and we both often wish you were here, that we might try our power of
alleviating your illness, if not of curing you. God bless you, and
restore you speedily to health.”
Macready turns up, if we may use words so flippant of a man so serious,
at Gore House in 1837. “Reached Lady Blessington’s about a quarter before
eight,” he writes. “Found there Fonblanque, Bulwer, Trelawney, Procter,
Auldjo, Forster, Lord Canterbury, Fred Reynolds and Mr and Mrs Fairlie,
Kenney, a young Manners Sutton, Count d’Orsay and some unknown. I passed
an agreeable day, and had a long and interesting conversation in the
drawing-room (what an elegant and splendid room it is!) with D’Orsay on
pictures.”
Of the members of the party that Macready found himself amongst—Lord
Canterbury, when he was the Right Honourable Charles Manners Sutton and
Speaker of the House of Commons, had married in 1828 Lady Blessington’s
sister Ellen, of whom Moore speaks as “Mrs Speaker”: “Amused to see her,
in all her state, the same hearty, lively Irishwoman still.” She had
first been married to a Mr Purves. Mrs Fairlie was Mrs Purves’ eldest
daughter, Louisa, who while quite young had married Mr John Fairlie.
Trelawney was the “Younger Son,” whose “Adventures” are so entertaining
and exciting, the intimate of Shelley and Byron, and the model for the
old sea captain of Millais’ “North-West Passage.” Procter was “Barry
Cornwall”; John Auldjo had been introduced to Lady Blessington by Gell in
1834; Frederick Mansell Reynolds was a minor poet and writer of tales, a
letter from whom shows D’Orsay in a pleasant light. It is written from
Jersey in 1837—
“MY DEAR LADY BLESSINGTON,—After having so recently seen you,
and being so powerfully and so painfully under the influence
of a desire never again to place the sea between me and
yourself and circle, I feel almost provoked to find how much
this place suits me in every physical respect.… You and Count
d’Orsay speak kindly and cheerfully to me; but I am _un malade
imaginaire_, for I do not fear death; on the contrary, I rather
look to it as my only hope of secure and lasting tranquillity.
In the lull which has hitherto accompanied my return to this
delicious climate, I have had time and opportunity for ample
retrospection, and I find that we have both[11] laid in a
stock of regard for Count d’Orsay which is immeasurable:
anybody so good-natured and so kind-hearted I never before saw;
it seems to me that it should be considered an inestimable
privilege to live in his society. When you write to me, pray be
good enough to acquaint me whether you have been told verbatim
what a lady said on the subject; for praise so natural, hearty
and agreeable was never before uttered in a soliloquy, which
her speech really was, though I was present at the time.
“At the risk of repeating, I really must tell it to you. After
Count d’Orsay’s departure from our house, there was a pause,
when it was broken, by her exclaiming, ‘What a very nice man!’
I assented in my own mind, but I was pursuing also a chain of
thought of my own, and I made no audible reply. Our ruminations
then proceeded, when mine were once more interrupted by her
saying: ‘In fact, he is the _nicest man I ever saw_.’
“This is a pleasant avowal to me, I thought; but still I could
not refrain from admitting that she was right. Then again, for
a third time, the mental machinery of both went to work in
silence, until that of the lady reached a _ne plus ultra_ of
admiration, and she ejaculated in an ecstasy: ‘Indeed, he is
the nicest man that can possibly be!’”
The Kenney mentioned by Macready must have been James, who as the author
of _Raising the Wind_, and of _Sweethearts and Wives_, was a singularly
appropriate friend for the impecunious, amorous D’Orsay.
XVI
STARS
Lady Blessington reported that in June 1838, London was “insupportable.
The streets and the Park crowded to suffocation, and all the people gone
mad”; but in the same month Dizzy writes in a different key: “We had a
very agreeable party at D’Orsay’s yesterday. Zichy, who has cut out even
Esterhazy, having two jackets; one of diamonds more brilliant than E.’s,
and another which he wore at the drawing-room yesterday of turquoises.
This makes the greatest sensation of the two.… Then there was the Duke of
Ossuna, a young man, but a grandee of the highest grade.… He is a great
dandy and looks like Philip II., but though the only living descendant
of the Borgias, he has the reputation of being very amiable. When he was
last at Paris he attended a representation of Victor Hugo’s _Lucrezia
Borgia_. She says in one of the scenes: ‘Great crimes are in our blood.’
All his friends looked at him with an expression of fear; ‘But the blood
has degenerated,’ he said, ‘for I have committed only weaknesses.’
Then there was the real Prince Poniatowsky, also young and with a most
brilliant star. Then came Kissiloffs and Strogonoffs, ‘and other offs and
ons,’ and de Belancour, a very agreeable person. Lyndhurst, Gardner,
Bulwer and myself completed the party.”
D’Ossuna died while quite a young man and was succeeded by his brother,
also a friend of D’Orsay.
This must have been a curiously polyglot gathering, and the noble company
of dandies was brilliantly represented by D’Orsay, Bulwer and Dizzy, not
to mention Zichy of the turquoise jacket.
XVII
COMPANY
There is both amusement and interest in the record of the year 1839,
during which all pretence at a separate establishment was cast aside,
and the D’Orsay-Blessington alliance was publicly acknowledged by the
gentleman taking up his residence in the lady’s house.
D’Orsay went down this year to Bradenham, on a visit to the Disraelis.
It is not uninteresting to know that Bradenham and Hurstley in _Endymion_
are one and the same place, and thus described:—
“At the foot of the Berkshire downs, and itself on a gentle elevation,
there is an old hall with gable ends and lattice windows, standing in
grounds which once were stately, and where there are yet glade-like
terraces of yew-trees, which give an air of dignity to a neglected scene.
In the front of the hall huge gates of iron, highly wrought, and bearing
an ancient date as well as the shield of a noble house, opened on a
village green, round which were clustered the cottages of the parish,
with only one exception, and that was the vicarage house, a modern
building, not without taste, and surrounded by a small but brilliant
garden. The church was contiguous to the hall, and had been raised by
the lord on a portion of his domain. Behind the hall and its enclosure
the country was common land but picturesque. It had once been a beech
forest, and though the timber had been greatly cleared, the green land
was occasionally dotted, sometimes with groups and sometimes with single
trees, while the juniper which here abounded, and rose to a great height,
gave a rich wildness to the scene, and sustained its forest character.”
It is easy to fit the author of the _Curiosities of Literature_ into this
framework, but in this old-world hall two such gorgeous butterflies as
D’Orsay and the writer of _Vivian Grey_ seem rather astray. It would be
almost as startling to find a dog-rose climbing up a lamp-post in Pall
Mall, or honeysuckle adorning the front of the Thatched House.
Disraeli writes to Lady Blessington:—
“We send you back our dearest D’Orsay, with some of the booty of
yesterday’s sport as our homage to you. His visit has been very short,
but very charming, and everybody here loves him as much as you and I do.
I hope that I shall soon see you, and see you well; and in the meantime,
I am, as I shall ever be, your affectionate—”
Concerning an earlier occasion, Disraeli writes from Bradenham on 5th
August 1834, to Lady Blessington:—
“I suppose it is vain to hope to see my dear D’Orsay here; I wish indeed
he would come. Here is a wish by no means contemptible. He can bring his
horses if he likes, but I can mount him. Adieu, dear Lady Blessington,
some day I will try to write you a more amusing letter; at present I am
in truth ill and sad.”
[Illustration: EDWARD, FIRST BARON LYTTON
(_From a Painting by A. E. Chalon, R.A._)
[TO FACE PAGE 176]
Charles Greville was at Gore House on 17th February, and seems to have
enjoyed himself pretty well:—
“February 17th.—I dined at Lady Blessington’s yesterday, to meet Durham
and Brougham; but, after all, the latter did not come, and the excuse
he made was, that it was better not; and as he was taking, or going to
take (we shall see) a moderate course about Canada, it would impair his
efficacy if the press were to trumpet forth, and comment on, his meeting
with Durham. There was that sort of strange omnium gatherum party which
is to be met with nowhere else, and which for that reason alone is
curious. We had Prince Louis Napoleon and his A.D.C.[12] He is a short,
thickish, vulgar-looking man, without the slightest resemblance to his
imperial uncle, or any intelligence in his countenance. Then we had
the ex-Governor of Canada, Captain Marriott, the Count Alfred de Vigny
(author of _Cinq Mars_, etc.), Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, and a proper
sprinkling of ordinary persons to mix up with these celebrities. In the
evening, Forster, sub-editor of the _Examiner_; Chorley, editor of the
_Athenæum_; Macready and Charles Buller. Lady Blessington’s existence is
a curiosity, and her house and society have at least the merit of being
singular, though the latter is not so agreeable as from its composition
it ought to be. There is no end to the men of consequence and distinction
in the world who go there occasionally—Brougham, Lyndhurst, Abinger,
Canterbury, Durham, and many others; all the minor poets, _literati_,
and journalists, without exception, together with some of the highest
pretensions. Moore is a sort of friend of hers; she had been very
intimate with Byron, and is with Walter Savage Landor. Her house is
furnished with a luxury and splendour not to be surpassed; her dinners
are frequent and good; and D’Orsay does the honours with a frankness
and cordiality which are very successful; but all this does not make
society, in the real meaning of the term. There is a vast deal of coming
and going, and eating and drinking, and a corresponding amount of noise,
but little or no conversation, discussion, easy quiet interchange of
ideas and opinions, no regular social foundation of men of intellectual
or literary calibre ensuring a perennial flow of conversation, and
which, if it existed, would derive strength and assistance from the
light superstructure of occasional visitors, with the much or the little
they might individually contribute. The reason of this is that the woman
herself, who must give the tone to her own society, and influence its
character, is ignorant, vulgar, and commonplace.[13] Nothing can be more
dull and uninteresting than her conversation, which is never enriched by
a particle of knowledge, or enlivened by a ray of genius or imagination.
The fact of her existence as an authoress is an enigma, poor as her
pretensions are; for while it is very difficult to write good books, it
is not easy to compose even bad ones, and volumes have come forth under
her name for which hundreds of pounds have been paid, because (Heaven
only can tell how) thousands are found who will read them. Her ‘Works’
have been published in America, in one huge folio, where it seems they
meet with peculiar success; and this trash goes down, because it is
written by a Countess, in a country where rank is eschewed, and equality
is the universal passion. They have (or some of them) been likewise
translated into German; and if all this is not proof of literary merit,
or at least of success, what is? It would be not uninteresting to trace
this current of success to its source, and to lay bare all the springs of
the machinery which sustains her artificial character as an authoress.
The details of course form the mystery of her craft, but the general
causes are apparent enough. First and foremost, her magnificent house and
luxurious dinners; then the alliance offensive and defensive which she
has contrived (principally through the means of said house and dinners)
to establish with a host of authors, booksellers, and publishers, and
above all with journalists. The first lend her their assistance in
composition, correction, or addition; with the second she manages to
establish an interest and an interchange of services; and the last
everlastingly puff her performances. Her name is eternally before the
public; she produces those gorgeous inanities, called _Books of Beauty_,
and other trashy things of the same description, to get up which all
the fashion and beauty, the taste and talent, of London are laid under
contribution. The most distinguished artists and the best engravers
supply the portraits of the prettiest women in London; and these are
illustrated with poetical effusions of the smallest possible merit, but
exciting interest and curiosity from the notoriety of their authors;
and so, by all this puffing, and stuffing, and untiring industry, and
practising on the vanity of some, and the good-nature of others, the end
is attained; and though I never met with any individual who had read any
of her books, except the _Conversations with Byron_, which are too good
to be hers, they are unquestionably a source of considerable profit, and
she takes her place confidently and complacently as one of the literary
celebrities of her day.”
The _Conversations_ were in all probability almost entirely the
composition of Lady Blessington, more so indeed than they had any right
to be, Byron’s sayings being the invention to some extent at any rate of
the lively imagination of the so-called recorder. But it is not necessary
here—or anywhere—to discuss Lady Blessington’s performances as a writer
of fiction.
The Durham referred to by Greville was John George Lambton, first Earl of
Durham, who in 1838 had been appointed Governor-General of the British
provinces of North America, and whose somewhat arbitrary proceedings
there had not met with universal approbation. But there cannot be any
doubt that in the main he was right and wise. Charles Buller, his
secretary, is reputed to have been the author of Durham’s famous _Report
on the Affairs of British North America_.
When Lord Durham was making ready for his departure to Canada, he
included among his immense baggage a large number of musical instruments.
“What on earth are they for?” said a wonderer. To whom Sydney Smith:
“Don’t you know he is going to make overtures to the Canadians?”
George Ticknor describes Durham in 1838 as “little, dark-complexioned,
red-faced-looking.” Charles Greville had many severe things to say of
him—and said them.
Durham seems to have been on fairly intimate terms with Lady Blessington.
In 1835 he writes from Cowes:—