THE GORGEOUS COUNTESS
If, a century ago, Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, in County Tipperary, had
been told that his second daughter, Marguerite, would one day blossom
into a Countess, and live in history as one of the "most gorgeous"
figures in the fashionable world of London under three kings, he would
certainly have considered his prophetic informant an escaped lunatic,
and would probably have told him so, with the brutal frankness which was
one of his most amiable characteristics.
The Irish squire was a proud man--proud of his pretty and shiftless
wife, with her eternal talk of her Desmond ancestors; proud of two of
his three daughters, whose budding beauty was to win for them titled
husbands--one an English Viscount, the other a Comte de St Marsante; and
proudest of all of his own handsome figure and his local dignities. But
he was frankly ashamed to own himself father of his second daughter,
Marguerite, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, and with no
gifts or promise to qualify her plainness.
But the squireen was probably too full of his own self-importance to
waste much thought or regret on an insignificant, unattractive girl,
though she was his own child. He loved to strut about among his humble
neighbours in all the unprovincial glory of ruffles and lace, buck-skins
and top-boots, and snowy, wide-spreading cravat. He was the king of
Tipperary dandies, known far beyond his own county as "Buck Power" and
"Shiver-the-Frills"; and what pleased his vanity still more, he was a
Justice of the Peace, with authority to scour the country at the head of
a company of dragoons, tracking down rebels and spreading terror
wherever he went. That he was laughed at for his coxcombry and hated for
his petty tyranny only seemed to add to the zest of his enjoyment of
life; and he saw, at least, a knighthood as the prospective recognition
of his importance, and his services to the King and the peace.
Such was the father and such the home of Marguerite Power, who was one
day to dazzle the world as the "most gorgeous Lady Blessington."
As with many another "ugly ducking" Marguerite Power's beauty was only
dormant in these days of childhood; and before she had graduated into
long frocks, the bud was opening which was to grow to so beautiful a
flower. If her father was blind to the change, it was patent enough to
other eyes; and she had scarcely passed her fourteenth birthday when she
had at least two lovers eager to pay homage to her girlish
charm--Captains Murray and Farmer, brother-officers of a regiment
stationed at Clonmel. To the wooing of Captain Murray, young, handsome,
and desperately in earnest, she lent a willing ear; but when thus
encouraged, he asked her to be his wife, she blushingly declined the
offer, on the ground that she was yet much too young to think of a
wedding-ring. To the rival Captain, old enough to be her father, a man,
moreover, whose evil living and Satanic temper were notorious, she
showed the utmost aversion. "I hate him," she protested in tears to her
father, who supported his suit; "and I would rather die a hundred times
than marry him."
But "Beau Power" was the last man to be moved from his purpose by a
child's tears or pleadings. Captain Farmer was a man of wealth and good
family, and also one of his own boon companions. And thus, tearful,
indignant, protesting to the last, the girl was led to the altar, by the
biggest scoundrel in Tipperary--a "maiden tribute" to a lover's lust and
a father's ambition.
[Illustration: MARGUERITE, COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON]
The child's fears were more than realised in the wedded life that
followed. Before the honeymoon had waned, the Captain began to treat his
young wife with all the brutality of which he was such a past-master.
Blows and oaths were her daily lot; and when his cruelty wrung tears
from her, her husband would lock her in her room, and leave her for
days, without fire or food, until she condescended to beg for mercy.
After three months of this inferno the Captain was ordered to a distant
station; and, as his wife refused point-blank to accompany him, was by
no means reluctant to "be rid of the brat" by sending her back to her
home. Here, however, the child-wife found herself less welcome than, and
almost as unhappy as in her wedded life; and, driven to despair, she
left the home in which she had been cradled, and fared forth alone into
the world, which could not be more unkind than those whose duty it was
to shield and care for her.
How, or where, Beau Power's daughter lived during the next twelve years
must always remain largely a mystery. At one time she appears in Dublin;
at another, in Cahir; but mostly she seems to have spent her time in
England. Over this part of her adventurous life a curtain is drawn;
though some have endeavoured to raise it, and have professed to discover
scandalous doings for which there seems to be no vestige of authority.
We know that, by the time she was twenty, Sir Thomas Lawrence was so
struck by her beauty that he immortalised it on canvas; but it is only
in 1816 that the curtain is actually raised, and we find her living with
her brother in London, where, to quote her sister,
"she received at her house only those whose age and
character rendered them safe friends, and a very few
others, on whose perfect respect and consideration she
could wholly rely. Among the latter was the Earl of
Blessington, then a widower."
Whatever may have been her life during this obscure period, when her
charms were maturing into such exquisite beauty, it is thus certain that
at its close she was moving in a good circle, and was as irreproachable
as she was lovely. Of her rascally husband she had happily seen nothing
during all those years of more or less lonely adventure; and the end of
this tragic union was now near. One day in October 1817, the Captain
ended his misspent days in tragedy. He had drifted through dissipation
and crime to the King's Bench prison; and in a fit of frenzy--or, as
some say, in a drunken quarrel--had flung himself to his death through a
window of his gaol.
Thus, at last, the nightmare that had clouded the young life of the
squireen's daughter was over, and she was free to plan her future as she
would. What this future was to be was soon placed beyond doubt. The
widowed Earl of Blessington had long been among the most ardent admirers
of the lovely Irishwoman; and before Farmer had been many months in his
prison-grave, he had won her consent to be his Countess. The "ugly
duckling" had reached a coronet through such trials and vicissitudes as
happily seldom fall to the lot of woman; and her future was to be as
radiant as her past had been ignoble and obscure.
Seldom has a woman cradled in comparative poverty made such a splendid
alliance. Lord Blessington was a veritable Croesus among Irish
landlords, with a rent-roll of £30,000 a year; allied, it is true, to an
extravagance more than commensurate with his revenue. He had a passion
for all things theatrical, and an almost barbaric taste in the gorgeous
furnishings with which he loved to surround himself; and this taste his
wife seems to have shared.
When the Earl took his bride to his ancestral home, Mountjoy Forest, she
revelled in her boudoir, with its hangings of "crimson Genoa
silk-velvet, trimmed with gold bullion fringe; and all the furniture of
equal richness." But she had had enough of Irish life in the days of her
childhood, and soon sighed to return to London and to a wider sphere for
her beauty and her social ambition; and before she had been a bride six
months we find her installed in St James's Square, drawing to her
_salon_ all the greatest and most famous in the land, and moving among
her courtiers with the dignity and graciousness of a Queen.
Royal Dukes kissed her hand; statesman basked in her smile; Moore sang
his sweetest songs for her delight; and all the arts and sciences
worshipped at her shrine, and raved about her beauty of face and graces
of mind.
Sated at last with all this splendour and adulation, my Lady Blessington
yearned for more worlds to conquer; and so, one August day in 1822, she
and her lord set out on a triumphal progress through Europe, with a
retinue of attendants, and with luxurious equipages such as a king might
have been proud to boast. In France they added to their train Count
d'Orsay, who threw up his army-commission under the lure of the
Countess's beautiful eyes; and seldom has fair lady had so devoted and
charming a cavalier as this "Admirable Crichton" of Georgian days.
"Count d'Orsay," says Charles James Mathews, the famous
comedian, who knew him well, "was the beau-ideal of manly
dignity and grace. He was the model of all that could be
conceived of noble demeanour and youthful candour;
handsome beyond all question; accomplished to the last
degree; highly educated, and of great literary
acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of
mind that spread happiness on all around him. His
conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as
instructive. He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer,
swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best
horseman, the best draughtsman, of his age."
Such was the Count, then a youth of nineteen, who thus entered Lady
Blessington's life, in which he was to play such an intimate part until
its tragic close.
From France the regal progress continued to Italy, everywhere greeted
with wonder at its magnificence and admiration of my lady's beauty. Two
spring months in 1823 were passed at Genoa, where Lord Byron loved to
sit at the Countess's feet and pay homage to her with eye and tongue.
From Genoa the procession fared majestically to Rome, of which her
ladyship, in spite of the sensation she produced and the adulation she
received, soon wearied; she sighed for Naples, where she was regally
lodged in the Palazzo Belvidere, a Palace, as she declared, "fit for any
queen." And how the squire's daughter revelled in her new
pleasure-house, with its courtyard and plashing fountain, its arcade
and its colonnade, "supporting a terrace covered with flowers"; its
marvellous gardens, filled with the rarest trees, shrubs and plants; and
long gallery, "filled with pictures, statues, and bassi-relievi."
"On the top of the gallery," she says, "is a terrace, at
the extreme end of which is a pavilion, with open arcades
and paved with marble. This pavilion commands a most
charming prospect of the bay, the foreground filled up by
gardens and vineyards. The odour of the flowers in the
grounds around the pavilion, and the Spanish jasmine and
tuberoses that cover the walls, render it one of the most
delicious retreats in the world. The walls of all the
rooms are literally covered with pictures; the
architraves of the doors of the principal rooms are
oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles; the tables and
consoles are composed of the same costly materials; and
the furniture bears the traces of its pristine
splendour."
Such was the Arabian palace of all delights of which her gorgeous
ladyship now found herself mistress; and yet nothing would please her
indulgent lord but the spending of a few thousands in adding to its
splendours by new and costly furnishings. Here she spent two-and-a-half
years of ideal happiness, sailing by moonlight on the lovely bay, with
d'Orsay for companion; visiting all the sights, from Pompeii to the
galleries and museums, with a retinue of experts, such as Herschell and
Gell in her train, and entertaining with a queenly magnificence Italian
nobles and all the great ones of Europe who passed through Naples.
From Naples Lady Blessington took her train to Florence, where she cast
her spell over Walter Savage Landor, who spent every possible hour in
her fascinating company; and where she was joined by her husband's
daughter, the Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, who, within a
few weeks of reaching Italy, became the wife of my lady's handsome
protege, d'Orsay. And it was not until 1828, six years after leaving
London, that the stately procession turned its face homewards, halting
for a few months of farewell magnificence in Paris, where Lady
Blessington was installed in Marshal Ney's mansion, in an environment
even more gorgeous than the Palazzo Belvidere of Naples could boast,
thanks to the prodigality of her infatuated lord.
The description which her Ladyship gives of her Paris palace reads,
indeed, like a passage from the "Arabian Nights."
"The bed," she says, "which is silvered instead of gilt,
rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so
exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in
alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of a
living bird. The recess in which it is placed, is lined
with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace;
and from the columns that support the frieze of the
recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are
hung. A silvered sofa has been made to fit the side of
the room opposite the fireplace--pale blue carpets,
silver lamps, ornaments silvered to correspond."
Her bath was of white marble; her _salle de bain_ was draped with white
muslin trimmed with lace, and its ceiling was beautiful with a painted
Flora scattering flowers and holding an elaborate lamp in the form of a
lotus. And all the rest of the equipment of this dream-palace was in
keeping with these splendours, from the carpets and curtains of crimson
to the gilt consoles, marble-topped _chiffonières_, and _fauteuils_
"richly carved and gilt and covered with satin to correspond with the
curtains."
This, although Lady Blessington little dreamt it, was to be the last
lavish evidence of her lord's devotion to his beautiful wife; for,
before they had been many months back in England the Earl died suddenly
in the prime of his days. Large as his fortune had been, the last few
years of extravagance had made such inroads in it that all that was left
of his £30,000 a year was an annual income of £600, which went to his
illegitimate son. Fortunately the Countess's jointure of £2,000 a year
was secure; and on this income Lady Blessington was able to face the
future with a heart as light as it could be after such a bereavement;
for, eccentric as her husband had been, and in some ways almost
contemptible, she had loved him dearly for the great and touching love
with which he had always surrounded her.
It was during her early years of widowhood that her ladyship turned for
solace, and also for additional revenue to support the extravagance
which had now become second nature, to her pen, in which she quickly
found a small mine of welcome gold. Her "Books of Beauty" and "Gems of
Beauty" were an instantaneous success--they made a strong appeal to the
flowery sentiment of the time, and sold in tens of thousands of copies.
Her "Conversations with Byron," a record of those halcyon days at Genoa,
fed the curiosity which then invested the most romantic of poets with a
glamour which survives to our day; and her novels and gossipy books of
travel were hailed in succession by an eager public of readers.
In these years of prolific literary labour she was able to double her
jointure, and to maintain much of the splendour to which she had become
so accustomed. Even her literary children were cradled in luxury on a
_fauteuil_ of yellow satin, in a library crowded with sumptuous couches
and ottomans, enamel tables and statutary. To her house in Seamore Place
her beauty and fame drew the most eminent men in England, from Lawrence
and Lyndhurst to Lytton and young Disraeli, gorgeous as his hostess, in
gold-flowered waistcoat, gold rings and chains, white stick with black
tassel, and his shower of ringlets.
But the Seamore Place house proved too cabined and too modest for my
lady's exacting social ambition. She demanded a more spacious and
magnificent shrine for her beauty, which was still so remarkable that
she was considered the loveliest woman at the Court of George III. when
well advanced in the forties--and this she found at Gore House, in
Kensington, a stately mansion in which Wilberforce had made his home,
and which, surrounded by beautiful gardens and shut in with a girdle of
spreading trees, might have been in the heart of the country, instead of
within sight of the tide of fashion which flowed in Hyde Park.
Here for thirteen years, with the handsome, gay, accomplished d'Orsay,
who had separated from his wife, as major-domo, she dispensed a princely
hospitality. Her dinners and her entertainments were admittedly the
finest in London; and invitations to them were as eagerly sought as
commands to a Court-ball.
"At Gore House," said Brougham, "one is sure to meet some of the most
interesting people in England, and equally sure not to have a dull
moment." Brougham was himself a constant and a welcome guest, and the
men he met there ranged from Prince Louis Napoleon, then an exile
without a prospect of a crown, and the Duke of Wellington to Albert
Smith and Douglas Jerrold--so wide was the net of Lady Blessington's
hospitality. And all paid the same glowing tribute, not only to their
hostess's loveliness but to the warmth of heart, which was one of her
greatest charms. And of all the great ones who sat at her dinner-table
or thronged her drawing-rooms not one was wittier or more fascinating
than Count d'Orsay, who, in spite of envious and malicious tongues,
never occupied to the Countess any other relation than that of a
dearly-loved and devoted son.
Although Lady Blessington's income rarely fell below £4,000 a year, it
was quite inadequate to her expenditure; and it was clear to her that
this era of splendid hospitality could not last for ever. A day of
reckoning was sure to come; and it came sooner than she had anticipated.
D'Orsay, who seems to have been even more careless of money than his
mother-in-law, plunged deeper and deeper in debt--some of it, at least,
incurred in helping to keep up the Gore House _ménage_--until he found
himself at last face to face with liabilities far exceeding £100,000,
and besieged with duns and bailiffs. Once he was arrested at the suit of
a bootmaker, and was rescued from prison by Lady Blessington's
rapidly-emptying purse. The climax came when a sheriff's officer
smuggled himself into Gore House, and brought down on d'Orsay's head an
avalanche of angry creditors, each resolute to have his "pound of
flesh." The Countess was powerless to stem the invasion; her own
resources were at an end, the Count himself was penniless. The only
safety was in flight; and one day Gore House was found empty. The birds
had flown to Paris; and the mansion which had been the scene of so much
magnificence was left to the mercy of a horde of clamorous creditors.
A few weeks later, all "the costly and elegant effects of the Right
Honourable, the Countess of Blessington, retiring to the Continent" were
put up to auction; and twenty thousand curious people were pouring
through the rooms which her gorgeous ladyship had made so famous--among
them Thackeray, who was moved to tears at the spectacle of so much
goodness and greatness reduced to ruin. The sale, although many of the
effects brought absurdly low prices, realised £12,000--a smaller sum
probably than would be paid to-day for half-a-dozen of the Countess's
pictures.
This crushing blow to her fortunes and her pride no doubt broke Lady
Blessington's heart; for within a few months of the last fall of the
auctioneer's hammer, she died suddenly in Paris, to the unspeakable
grief of d'Orsay, who declared to the Countess's physician, Madden, "She
was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother--a true, loving mother to me."
Three years later this "paragon of all the perfections" followed the
Countess behind the veil, and rests in a mausoleum, of his own
designing, at Chamboury, with one of the most lovely women who have ever
graced beauty with rare gifts of mind and with a warm and tender heart.