inquisition into the private affairs of those who have the
misfortune to have any reference to it; a bad plan when clever
men are so scarce in France, and particularly those well-born
and well-connected: a Government like the present should be
glad to catch any such that could be had.
“MARGT. BLESSINGTON.”
To which may be added a letter from Henry Bulwer to Lady Blessington,
written in December 1841:—
“MY DEAR LADY BLESSINGTON,—I think D’Orsay wrong in these
things you refer to: to have asked for London especially, and
not to have informed me[17] how near the affair was to its
maturity when St Aulaire went to the D. of B⸺’s, because I
might then have prepared opinion for it here; whereas, I first
heard the affair mentioned in a room, where I had to contend
against every person present, when I stated what I think—that
the appointment would have been a very good one. But it does
not now signify talking about the matter, and saying that I
should have wished our friend to have given the matter rather
an air of doing a favour than of asking one. It is right to
say that he has acted most honourably, delicately, and in a
way which ought to have served him, though, perhaps, it is not
likely to do so. The French Ambassador did not, I think, wish
for the nomination. M. Guizot, I imagine, is, at this moment,
afraid of anything that might excite discussion and opposition,
and it is idle to disguise from you that D’Orsay, both in
England and here, has many enemies. The best service I can do
him is by continuing to speak of him as I have done amongst
influential persons, viz., as a man whom the Government would
do well to employ; and my opinion is, that if he continues to
wish for and to seek employment, he will obtain it in the end.
But I don’t think he will obtain the situation he wished for
in London, and I think it may be some little time before he
gets such a one as he ought to have, and that would suit him.
The Secretaryship in Spain would be an excellent thing, and I
would aid the Marshal in anything he might do or say respecting
it. I shall be rather surprised, however, if the present man
is recalled. Well do not let D’Orsay lose courage. Nobody
succeeds in these things just at the moment he desires: ⸺,
with his position here” (speaking of a French nobleman), “has
been ten years getting made an ambassador, and at last is so
by a fortunate chance. Remember also how long it was, though I
was in Parliament, and had some little interest, before I was
myself fairly launched in the _diplomatic career_. Alfred has
all the qualities for success in anything, but he must give the
same trouble and pains to the pursuit he now engages in that he
has given to other pursuits previously. At all events, though
I speak frankly and merely what I think to him, I am here and
always a sincere and affectionate friend, and most desirous to
prove myself so.”
To Madden, Henry Bulwer expressed the opinion:—“It was altogether a great
pity D’Orsay was not employed, for he was not only fit to be so, but to
make a most useful and efficient agent, had he been appointed.”
But Governments, as well as individuals, are fallible, and often blind
to their best interests. Yet it really is difficult to understand why
D’Orsay was refused his modest request; what more distinguished ornament
to an Embassy could be desired than a splendid libertine and a man
distinguished for the vastness of his debts? Unfortunately, mediocrity
succeeds often enough when transcendent genius fails.
XX
W. S. L.
Walter Savage Landor, who was born in 1775, lived on hale and hearty till
1864. As he himself wrote:—
“I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.”
He was, as we have seen, the very good friend of both D’Orsay and Lady
Blessington, whom he first met when he was living in Italy.
In a letter to Lady Blessington, in 1837, Landor presented her with his
autobiography in brief:—
“Walter Landor, of Ipsley Court, in the county of Warwick, married first,
Maria, only daughter and heiress of J. Wright, Esq., by whom he had an
only daughter, married to her cousin, Humphrey Arden, Esq., of Longcroft,
in Staffordshire; secondly, Elizabeth, eldest daughter and co-heiress of
Charles Savage, of Tachebrooke, who brought about eighty thousand pounds
into the family. The eldest son of this marriage, Walter Savage Landor,
was born 30th January 1775. He was educated at Rugby—his private tutor
was Dr Heath, of St Paul’s. When he had reached the head of the school,
he was too young for college, and was placed under the private tuition
of Mr Langley of Ashbourne. After a year, he was entered at Trinity
College, Oxford, where the learned Beonwell was his private tutor. At
the peace of Amiens, he went to France, but returned at the end of the
year.
“In 1808, on the first insurrection of Spain, in June he joined the
Viceroy of Gallicia, Blake. The _Madrid Gazette_ of August mentions
a gift from him of twenty thousand reals. On the extinction of the
Constitution, he returned to Don P. Cavallos the tokens of royal
approbation, in no very measured terms. In 1811, he married Julia,
daughter of J. Thuillier de Malaperte, descendant and representative of
J. Thuillier de Malaperte, Baron de Nieuveville, first gentleman of the
bedchamber to Charles the Eighth. He was residing at Tours, when, after
the battle of Waterloo, many other Englishmen, to the number of four
thousand, went away. He wrote to Carnot that he had no confidence in
the moderation or honour of the Emperor, but resolved to stay, because
he considered the danger to be greater in the midst of a broken army. A
week afterwards, when this wretch occupied Tours, his house was the only
one without a billet. In the autumn of that year, he retired to Italy.
For seven or eight years, he occupied the Palazzo Medici, in Florence,
and then bought the celebrated villa of Count Gherardesea, at Fiesole,
with its gardens, and two farms, immediately under the ancient villa of
Lorenzo de Medici. His visits to England have been few and short.”
This is but the bare bones of a very interesting life; but its very
bluntness seems to illustrate the character of its writer, a member
of the _genus irritabile_, whom many hated, many loved and most men
admired. For several years he made his home at Bath, living there from
1838 to 1858, when again he retired to Italy, where he died at Florence.
He is, perhaps, best known to the world at large under the slight
disguise of Lawrence Boythorn in _Bleak House_.
Charles Sumner describes him thus in 1838:—“Dressed in a heavy frock-coat
of snuff colour, trousers of the same colour, and boots … with an open
countenance, firm and decided, and a head grey and inclining to baldness
… conversation … not varied, but it was animated and energetic in the
extreme. We crossed each other several times; he called Napoleon the
weakest, littlest man in history.”
Forster’s account is more vivid:—
“He was not above the middle stature, but had a short stalwart presence,
walked without a stoop, and in his general aspect, particularly the set
and carriage of his head, was decidedly of what is called a distinguished
bearing. His hair was already silvered grey, and had retired far upward
from his forehead, which wide and full but retreating, could never in
the earlier time have been seen to such advantage. What at first was
noticeable, however, in the broad white massive head, were the full yet
strangely-lifted eyebrows. In the large, grey eyes there was a depth
of compound expression that ever startled by its contrast to the eager
restlessness looking out from the surface of them; and in the same
variety and quickness of transition the mouth was extremely striking. The
lips, that seemed compressed with unalterable will would in a moment
relax to a softness more than feminine; and a sweeter smile it was
impossible to conceive.”
Carlyle says that “he was really stirring company; a proud, irascible,
trenchant, yet generous, veracious and very dignified old man; quite a
ducal or royal man in the temper of him.”
He was very frequently at Gore House, and they must have made a curious
trio, the fascinating Lady Blessington, the ducal Landor and dandy
D’Orsay.
He addressed these lines to her:—
“What language, let me think, is meet
For you, well called the Marguerite.
The Tuscan has too weak a tone,
Too rough and rigid is our own;
The Latin—no—it will not do,
The Attic is alone for you.”
Of some of his many visits here are a few notes:—
Writing Friday, 7th May 1841:—
“I did not leave my cab at Gore House gate until a quarter past six. My
kind hostess and D’Orsay were walking in the garden and never was more
cordial reception. After dinner we went to the English opera, _The Siege
of Rochelle_ and _A Day at Turin_. Nothing could be worse than the first
except the second. The Hanoverian minister, very attentive to Miss Power,
a Carlist viscount, and Lord Pembroke were the only persons who stayed
any time in the box,” and on 8th May he writes again from Gore House: “We
went this evening to the German Opera. Never was music so excellent. The
pieces were _A Night in Grenada_ and _Fidelio_. Madame Schodel sings
divinely, and her acting is only inferior to Pasta’s.… Both D’Orsay and
Lord Pembroke were enchanted with Madame Schodel, and Lady B. and Miss
Power, both good judges, and the latter a fine composer, were breathless.
To-night we go to the Italian Opera.”
Landor writing from Gore House in June 1842:
“We have not been to the Opera this evening, as Lord Pembroke and the
Duc de Guiche came to dinner. He is on a visit to Lord Tankerville, but
has the good taste to prefer the society he finds here, particularly
D’Orsay’s. D’Orsay was never in higher spirits or finer plumage.”
On July 20th he writes:—
“A few days after my arrival in town, the Duc de Grammont dined at Gore
House. He is on a visit to Lord Tankerville.… D’Orsay has just finished
an exquisite painting of the Duchesse.”
Then on September 7th:—
“I arrived at Gore House early on Monday. In the morning, beside Lord
Allen and some other people, there called Lord Auckland.… At dinner the
Duc de Guiche, Sir Francis Burdett and Sir Willoughby Cotton.… Those were
bright hours; even my presence could not interrupt their brilliancy.…
The Duc de Guiche left us this morning to shoot with his cousin, Lord
Ossulton.[18] We miss the liveliness of his conversation—he talked
Memoirs.”
When he was not at Gore House he kept up a very lively correspondence
with his two friends, some of which it will be useful to quote, for in
familiar letters we become almost on speaking terms with their writers,
and who of us would not be glad to chat with Lady Blessington, Landor and
D’Orsay?
This from her to him, when sending him her portrait:—
“I send you the engraving, and have only to wish that it may
sometimes remind you of the original. You are associated in my
memory with some of my happiest days; you were the friend, and
the highly-valued friend, of my dear and lamented husband, and
as such, even without any of the numberless claims you have to
my regard, you could not be otherwise than highly esteemed. It
appears to me that I have not quite lost him, who made life
dear to me, when I am near those he loved[19] and that knew
how to value him. Five fleeting years have gone by since our
delicious evenings on the lovely Arno, evenings never to be
forgotten, and the recollections of which ought to cement the
friendships then formed. This effect I can, in truth, say has
been produced on me, and I look forward, with confidence, to
keeping alive, by a frequent correspondence, the friendship you
owe me, no less for that I feel for you, but as the widow of
one you loved, and that truly loved you. We, or more properly
speaking I, live in a world where friendship is little known,
and were it not for one or two individuals like yourself, I
might be tempted to exclaim with Socrates: ‘My friends, there
are no friends.’ Let us prove that the philosopher was wrong,
and if Fate has denied us the comfort of meeting, let us by
letters keep up our friendly intercourse. You will tell me
what you think and feel in your Tuscan retirement, and I will
tell you what I do, in this modern Babylon, where thinking and
feeling are almost unknown. Have I not reason to complain that
in your sojourn in London you do not give me a single day? And
yet methinks you promised to stay a week, and that of that week
I should have my share. I rely on your promise of coming to see
me again before you leave London, and I console myself for the
disappointment of seeing so little of you, by recollecting the
welcome and the happiness that await you at home. Long may you
enjoy it, is the sincere wish of your attached friend,
“M. BLESSINGTON.”
He to her, in the shape of “bits” out of a long letter written from
Florence in March 1835:—
“Poor Charles Lamb, what a tender, good, joyous heart had he! What
playfulness! what purity of style and thought! His sister is yet living,
much older than himself. One of her tales is, with the sole exception of
the _Bride of Lammermoor_, the most beautiful tale in prose composition
in any language, ancient or modern. A young girl has lost her mother,
the father marries again, and marries a friend of his former wife. The
child is ill reconciled to it, but being dressed in new clothes for the
marriage, she runs up to her mother’s chamber, filled with the idea
how happy that dear mother would be at seeing her in all her glory—not
reflecting, poor soul, that it was only by her mother’s death that she
appeared in it. How natural, how novel is all this! Did you ever imagine
that a fresh source of the pathetic would burst forth before us in this
trodden and hardened world? I never did, and when I found myself upon it,
I pressed my temples with both hands, and tears ran down to my elbows.
“The Opium-eater calls Coleridge ‘the largest and most spacious
intellect, the subtlest and most comprehensive that has yet existed among
men.’ Impiety to Shakespeare! treason to Milton! I give up the rest, even
Bacon. Certainly, since their day, we have seen nothing at all comparable
to him. Byron and Scott were but as gun-flints to a granite mountain;
Wordsworth has one angle of resemblance; Southey has written more, and
all well, much admirably.…
“Let me add a few verses as usual:—
‘Pleasures—away, they please no more:
Friends—are they what they were before?
Loves—they are very idle things,
The best about them are their wings.
The dance—’tis what the bear can do;
Music—I hate your music too.
Whene’er these witnesses that time
Hath snatch’d the chaplet from our prime
And called by nature (as we go
With eyes more wary, step more slow),
And will be heard, and noted down,
However we may fret or frown;
Shall we desire to leave the scene
Where all our former joys have been?
No! ’twere ungrateful and unwise:
But when die down our charities
For human weal and human woes,
’Tis then the hour our days should close.’”
And this:—
“D’Orsay’s mind is always active. I wish it would put his pen in motion.
At this season of the year (January) I fancied he was at Melton. Does
not he lament that this bitter frost allows him no chance of breaking his
neck over gates and double hedges? Pray offer him my kind remembrances.”
And here a chatty little note from D’Orsay:—
“It is a fact, that my brave nephew has been acting the part of Adonis,
with a _sacré cochon_, who nearly opened his leg;[20] his presence of
mind was great, he was on his lame leg in time to receive the second
attack of the infuriated beast, and killed him on the spot, plunging a
_couteau de chasse_ through his heart—luckily the wild boar had one.
The romantic scene would have been complete, if there had been another
Gabrielle de Vergy looking at this modern Raoul de Courcy. We think and
speak of you often, and are in hopes that you will pay us a visit soon.
Poor Forster is ill and miserable at the loss of his brother. I am sure
that Forster is one of the best, honestest and kindest men that ever
lived. I had yesterday a letter from Eugene Sue, who is in raptures with
Macready as an actor and as a man. We saw lately that good, warm-hearted
Dickens—he spoke of you very affectionately.… —Most affectionately,
“D’ORSAY.”
XXI
THE ARTIST
It behoves us now to pay some attention to D’Orsay’s claims as an artist;
if he had posed simply as an amateur, silence would be possible, but he
worked for money, entered the lists with other artists, and therefore
laid himself open to judgment. In his own day he was highly thought of
by many—here we have what was written of him in _La Presse_ on November
10th, 1850, when D’Orsay’s bust of Lamartine was exhibited:—
“M. le comte d’Orsay est un amateur de l’art plutôt qu’un artiste. Mais
qu’est-ce qu’un amateur? C’est un volontaire parmi les artistes; ce sont
souvent les volontaires qui font les coup d’éclat dans l’atelier comme
sur les champs de bataille. Qu’est ce qu’un amateur? C’est un artiste
dont le génie seul fait la vocation. Il est vrai qu’il ne reçoit pas dans
son enfance et pendant les premières années de sa vie cette éducation du
métier d’où sort Michel Ange, d’où sort Raphaél … mais s’il doit moins au
maître, il doit plus à la nature. Il est son œuvre.… M. d’Orsay exerça
dans les salons de Paris et de Londres la dictature Athénienne du goût
et de l’élégance. C’est un de ces hommes qu’on aurait cru préoccupé de
succès futiles,—parce que la nature semble les avoir créés uniquement
pour son plaisir—mais qui trompent la nature, et qui, après avoir
recueilli les légères admirations des jeunes gens et des femmes de leur
âge, échappent à cette atmosphère de légèreté avant le temps où ils
laissent ses idoles dans le vide, et se transforment par l’étude et par
le travail en hommes nouveaux, en hommes de mérite acquis et sérieux. M.
d’Orsay a habité longtemps l’Angleterre ou il donnait l’exemple et le
ton à cette société aristocratique, un peu raide et déforme, qui admire
surtout ce qui lui manque, la grâce et l’abandon des manières.…
“Dès cet époque, il commenca à jouer avec l’argile, le marbre, le ciseau,
liè par un attachement devenu une parenté d’esprit, avec une des plus
belles et des plus splendides femmes de son époque, il fit son buste
pendant qu’elle vivait; il le fit idéal et plus touchant après sa mort.
Il moula en formes après, rudes, sauvages, de grandeur fruste, les traits
paysanesque d’O’Connell. Ces bustes furent à l’instant vulgarisés en
millièrs d’exemplaires en Angleterre et à Paris. C’étaient des créations
neuves.…
“Ces premiers succès furent des plus complets. Il cherchait un visage.
Il en trouva un. Lord Byron, dont il fut l’ami et avec lequel il voyagea
pendant deux ans[21] en Italie, n’était plus qu’un souvenir aimé dans
son cœur.… Il fit le buste de Lamartine,…” and then there is something
approaching very closely to a rhapsody on this work of art, and then a
set of verses by Lamartine himself!
Debt drove D’Orsay to seek in art a means of adding to his income; in the
case of Mr. Mitchell of Bond Street, who published a series of portrait
drawings, it is even possible that he used his art to cancel his debt for
Opera boxes, etc.! These portraits were 14 inches high and 10½ inches
wide and were sold at 5s. each. The set must have been almost a pictorial
“Who’s Who,” and among those honoured with inclusion may be named Byron,
Disraeli, Theodore Hook, Carlyle, Liszt, D’Orsay himself, the Duke of
Wellington, Greville, Louis Napoleon, Bulwer Lytton, Trelawney, Landor,
Dickens, Lady Blessington, Henry Bulwer, Captain Marryat and Sir Edwin
Landseer.
Richard James Lane, the engraver and lithographer, saw much of D’Orsay,
and judging by the following letter held him in esteem:—
“As a patron, his kind consideration for my interest, and prompt
fulfilment of every engagement, never failed me for the more than twenty
years of my association with him; and the friendship that arose out of
our intercourse (and which I attest with gratitude) proceeded at a steady
pace, without the smallest check, during the same period; and remained
unbroken, when on his final departure from England, he continued to
give me such evidence of the constancy of his regard, as will be found
conveyed in his letters.
“In the sketches of the celebrities of Lady Blessington’s _salons_,
which he brought to me (amounting to some hundred and fifty, or more),
there was generally an appropriate expression and character, that I
found difficult to retain in the process of elaboration; and although I
may have improved upon them in the qualities for which I was trained, I
often found that the final touches of his own hand alone made the work
satisfactory.
“Of the amount and character of the assistance of which the Count availed
himself, in the production of his pictures and models, I have a clear
notion.…
“When a gentleman would rush into the practice of that which, in its
mechanism, demands experience and instruction, he avails himself of
the help of a craftsman, whose services are sought for painting-in the
subordinate parts, and working out his rude beginnings. In the first
rank of art, at this day, are others who, like the Count d’Orsay, have
been unprepared, excepting by the possession of taste and genius, for
the practice of art, and whose merits are in no way obscured by the
assistance which they _also_ freely seek in the manipulation of their
works; and it is no less easy to detect, in the pictures of the Count,
the precise amount of mechanical aid which he has received from another
hand, than the graces of character and feeling that are superadded by
his own. I have seen a rough model, executed entirely by himself, of
such extraordinary power and simplicity of design, that I begged him to
have it _moulded_, and not to proceed to the details of the work, until
he could first place this model side by side with the cast in clay, to
be worked up. He took my advice, and his equestrian statue of the first
Napoleon may fairly justify my opinion.
“In art, he had a heartfelt sympathy, a searching eye, and a critical
taste, fostered by habitual intercourse with some of our first artists.”
This letter from D’Orsay to Lane shows the Count in an amiable light:—
“PARIS, _21st February 1850_.
“MY DEAR LANE,—I cannot really express to you the extent of my
sorrow about your dear and good family. You know that my heart
is quite open to sympathy with the sorrows of others. But judge
therefore, how it must be, when so great a calamity strikes a
family like yours, which family I always considered one of the
best I ever had the good fortune to know. What a trial for dear
Mrs Lane, after so many cares, losing a son like yours, just
at the moment that he was to derive the benefit of the good
education you gave him.… There is no consolation to offer. The
only one that I can imagine, is to think continually of the
person lost, and to make oneself more miserable by thinking. It
is, morally speaking, an homœopathic treatment, and the only
one which can give some relief.… Give my most affectionate
regards to your dear family, and believe me always—far or near.
Your sincere friend,
“D’ORSAY.”
In 1843 D’Orsay writes jestingly of himself: “I am poetising, modelling,
etc., etc. In fact, I begin to believe that I am a Michael Angelo
_manqué_.”
Concerning the Wellington statuette, D’Orsay writes to Madden: “You must
have seen by the newspapers that I have completed a great work, which
creates a revolution in the Duke of Wellington’s own mind, and that of
his family. It is a statuette on horseback of himself, in the costume
and at the age of the Peninsular war. They say that it will be a fortune
for me, as every regiment in the service will have one, as the Duke says
publicly, that it is the only work by which he desires to be known,
physically, by portraits. They say that he is very popular in Portugal
and Spain. I thought possibly that you could sell for me the copyright
at Lisbon, to some speculator to whom I could send the mould.”
Shortly before his death he completed a smaller equestrian statuette of
the Duke, an account of which was given in the _Morning Chronicle_ of
23rd December 1852:—