Often there has arisen some man who, either by his natural gifts or by
his impudence or by the combination of both, has made himself a
recognized leader in the English fashionable world. One of the first of
these men was Richard Nash, usually known as "Beau Nash," who
flourished in the eighteenth century. Nash was a man of doubtful
origin; nor was he attractive in his looks, for he was a huge, clumsy
creature with features that were both irregular and harsh.
Nevertheless, for nearly fifty years Beau Nash was an arbiter of
fashion. Goldsmith, who wrote his life, declared that his supremacy was
due to his pleasing manners, "his assiduity, flattery, fine clothes,
and as much wit as the ladies had whom he addressed." He converted the
town of Bath from a rude little hamlet into an English Newport, of
which he was the social autocrat. He actually drew up a set of written
rules which some of the best-born and best-bred people follow slavishly.
Even better known to us is George Bryan Brummel, commonly called "Beau
Brummel," who by his friendship with George IV.--then Prince
Regent--was an oracle at court on everything that related to dress and
etiquette and the proper mode of living. His memory has been kept alive
most of all by Richard Mansfield's famous impersonation of him. The
play is based upon the actual facts; for after Brummel had lost the
royal favor he died an insane pauper in the French town of Caen. He,
too, had a distinguished biographer, since Bulwer-Lytton's novel Pelham
is really the narrative of Brummel's curious career.
Long after Brummel, Lord Banelagh led the gilded youth of London, and
it was at this time that the notorious Lola Montez made her first
appearance in the British capital.
These three men--Nash, Brummel, and Ranelagh--had the advantage of
being Englishmen, and, therefore, of not incurring the old-time English
suspicion of foreigners. A much higher type of social arbiter was a
Frenchman who for twenty years during the early part of Queen
Victoria's reign gave law to the great world of fashion, besides
exercising a definite influence upon English art and literature.
This was Count Albert Guillaume d'Orsay, the son of one of Napoleon's
generals, and descended by a morganatic marriage from the King of
Wurttemburg. The old general, his father, was a man of high courage,
impressive appearance, and keen intellect, all of which qualities he
transmitted to his son. The young Count d'Orsay, when he came of age,
found the Napoleonic era ended and France governed by Louis XVIII. The
king gave Count d'Orsay a commission in the army in a regiment
stationed at Valence in the southeastern part of France. He had already
visited England and learned the English language, and he had made some
distinguished friends there, among whom were Lord Byron and Thomas
Moore.
On his return to France he began his garrison life at Valence, where he
showed some of the finer qualities of his character. It is not merely
that he was handsome and accomplished and that he had the gift of
winning the affections of those about him. Unlike Nash and Brummel, he
was a gentleman in every sense, and his courtesy was of the highest
kind. At the balls given by his regiment, although he was more courted
than any other officer, he always sought out the plainest girls and
showed them the most flattering attentions. No "wallflowers" were left
neglected when D'Orsay was present.
It is strange how completely human beings are in the hands of fate.
Here was a young French officer quartered in a provincial town in the
valley of the Rhone. Who would have supposed that he was destined to
become not only a Londoner, but a favorite at the British court, a
model of fashion, a dictator of etiquette, widely known for his
accomplishments, the patron of literary men and of distinguished
artists? But all these things were to come to pass by a mere accident
of fortune.
During his firsts visit to London, which has already been mentioned,
Count d'Orsay was invited once or twice to receptions given by the Earl
and Countess of Blessington, where he was well received, though this
was only an incident of his English sojourn. Before the story proceeds
any further it is necessary to give an account of the Earl and of Lady
Blessington, since both of their careers had been, to say the least,
unusual.
Lord Blessington was an Irish peer for whom an ancient title had been
revived. He was remotely descended from the Stuarts of Scotland, and
therefore had royal blood to boast of. He had been well educated, and
in many ways was a man of pleasing manner. On the other hand, he had
early inherited a very large property which yielded him an income of
about thirty thousand pounds a year. He had estates in Ireland, and he
owned nearly the whole of a fashionable street in London, with the
buildings erected on it.
This fortune and the absence of any one who could control him had made
him wilful and extravagant and had wrought in him a curious love of
personal display. Even as a child he would clamor to be dressed in the
most gorgeous uniforms; and when he got possession of his property his
love of display became almost a monomania. He built a theater as an
adjunct to his country house in Ireland and imported players from
London and elsewhere to act in it. He loved to mingle with the mummers,
to try on their various costumes, and to parade up and down, now as an
oriental prince and now as a Roman emperor.
In London he hung about the green-rooms, and was a well-known figure
wherever actors or actresses were collected. Such was his love of the
stage that he sought to marry into the profession and set his heart on
a girl named Mary Campbell Browne, who was very beautiful to look at,
but who was not conspicuous either for her mind or for her morals. When
Lord Blessington proposed marriage to her she was obliged to tell him
that she already had one husband still alive, but she was perfectly
willing to live with him and dispense with the marriage ceremony. So
for several years she did live with him and bore him two children.
It speaks well for the earl that when the inconvenient husband died a
marriage at once took place and Mrs. Browne became a countess. Then,
after other children had been born, the lady died, leaving the earl a
widower at about the age of forty. The only legitimate son born of this
marriage followed his mother to the grave; and so for the third time
the earldom of Blessington seemed likely to become extinct. The death
of his wife, however, gave the earl a special opportunity to display
his extravagant tastes. He spent more than four thousand pounds on the
funeral ceremonies, importing from France a huge black velvet
catafalque which had shortly before been used at the public funeral of
Napoleon's marshal, Duroc, while the house blazed with enormous wax
tapers and glittered with cloth of gold.
Lord Blessington soon plunged again into the busy life of London.
Having now no heir, there was no restraint on his expenditures, and he
borrowed large sums of money in order to buy additional estates and
houses and to experience the exquisite joy of spending lavishly. At
this time he had his lands in Ireland, a town house in St. James's
Square, another in Seymour Place, and still another which was afterward
to become famous as Gore House, in Kensington.
Some years before he had met in Ireland a lady called Mrs. Maurice
Farmer; and it happened that she now came to London. The earlier story
of her still young life must here be told, because her name afterward
became famous, and because the tale illustrates wonderfully well the
raw, crude, lawless period of the Regency, when England was fighting
her long war with Napoleon, when the Prince Regent was imitating all
the vices of the old French kings, when prize-fighting, deep drinking,
dueling, and dicing were practised without restraint in all the large
cities and towns of the United Kingdom. It was, as Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle has said, "an age of folly and of heroism"; for, while it
produced some of the greatest black-guards known to history, it
produced also such men as Wellington and Nelson, the two Pitts,
Sheridan, Byron, Shelley, and Sir Walter Scott.
Mrs. Maurice Farmer was the daughter of a small Irish landowner named
Robert Power--himself the incarnation of all the vices of the time.
There was little law in Ireland, not even that which comes from public
opinion; and Robert Power rode hard to hounds, gambled recklessly, and
assembled in his house all sorts of reprobates, with whom he held
frightful orgies that lasted from sunset until dawn. His wife and his
young daughters viewed him with terror, and the life they led was a
perpetual nightmare because of the bestial carousings in which their
father engaged, wasting his money and mortgaging his estates until the
end of his wild career was in plain sight.
There happened to be stationed at Clonmel a regiment of infantry in
which there served a captain named Maurice St. Leger Farmer. He was a
man of some means, but eccentric to a degree. His temper was so utterly
uncontrolled that even his fellow officers could scarcely live with
him, and he was given to strange caprices. It happened that at a ball
in Clonmel he met the young daughter of Robert Power, then a mere child
of fourteen years. Captain Farmer was seized with an infatuation for
the girl, and he went almost at once to her father, asking for her hand
in marriage and proposing to settle a sum of money upon her if she
married him.
The hard-riding squireen jumped at the offer. His own estate was being
stripped bare. Here was a chance to provide for one of his daughters,
or, rather, to get rid of her, and he agreed that she should be married
out of hand. Going home, he roughly informed the girl that she was to
be the wife of Captain Farmer. He so bullied his wife that she was
compelled to join him in this command.
What was poor little Margaret Power to do? She was only a child. She
knew nothing of the world. She was accustomed to obey her father as she
would have obeyed some evil genius who had her in his power. There were
tears and lamentations. She was frightened half to death; yet for her
there was no help. Therefore, while not yet fifteen her marriage took
place, and she was the unhappy slave of a half-crazy tyrant. She had
then no beauty whatsoever. She was wholly undeveloped--thin and pale,
and with rough hair that fell over her frightened eyes; yet Farmer
wanted her, and he settled his money on her, just as he would have
spent the same amount to gratify any other sudden whim.
The life she led with him for a few months showed him to be more of a
devil than a man. He took a peculiar delight in terrifying her, in
subjecting her to every sort of outrage; nor did he refrain even from
beating her with his fists. The girl could stand a great deal, but this
was too much. She returned to her father's house, where she was
received with the bitterest reproaches, but where, at least, she was
safe from harm, since her possession of a dowry made her a person of
some small importance.
Not long afterward Captain Farmer fell into a dispute with his colonel,
Lord Caledon, and in the course of it he drew his sword on his
commanding officer. The court-martial which was convened to try him
would probably have had him shot were it not for the very general
belief that he was insane. So he was simply cashiered and obliged to
leave the service and betake himself elsewhere. Thus the girl whom, he
had married was quite free--free to leave her wretched home and even to
leave Ireland.
She did leave Ireland and establish herself in London, where she had
some acquaintances, among them the Earl of Blessington. As already
said, he had met her in Ireland while she was living with her husband;
and now from time to time he saw her in a friendly way. After the death
of his wife he became infatuated with Margaret Farmer. She was a good
deal alone, and his attentions gave her entertainment. Her past
experience led her to have no real belief in love. She had become,
however, in a small way interested in literature and art, with an eager
ambition to be known as a writer. As it happened, Captain Farmer, whose
name she bore, had died some months before Lord Blessington had decided
to make a new marriage. The earl proposed to Margaret Farmer, and the
two were married by special license.
The Countess of Blessington--to give the lady her new title--was now
twenty-eight years of age and had developed into a woman of great
beauty. She was noted for the peculiarly vivacious and radiant
expression which was always on her face. She had a kind of vivid
loveliness accompanied by grace, simplicity, and a form of exquisite
proportions. The ugly duckling had become a swan, for now there was no
trace of her former plainness to be seen.
Not yet in her life had love come to her. Her first husband had been
thrust upon her and had treated her outrageously. Her second husband
was much older than she; and, though she was not without a certain
kindly feeling for one who had been kind to her, she married him, first
of all, for his title and position.
Having been reared in poverty, she had no conception of the value of
money; and, though the earl was remarkably extravagant, the new
countess was even more so. One after another their London houses were
opened and decorated with the utmost lavishness. They gave innumerable
entertainments, not only to the nobility and to men of rank,
but--because this was Lady Blessington's peculiar fad--to artists and
actors and writers of all degrees. The American, N. P. Willis, in his
Pencilings by the Way, has given an interesting sketch of the countess
and her surroundings, while the younger Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield)
has depicted D'Orsay as Count Mirabel in Henrietta Temple. Willis says:
In a long library, lined alternately with splendidly bound books and
mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room opening upon
Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington alone. The picture, to my eye, as
the door opened, was a very lovely one--a woman of remarkable beauty,
half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent
lamp suspended from the center of the arched ceiling. Sofas, couches,
ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through
the room; enameled tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles
in every corner, and a delicate white hand in relief on the back of a
book, to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of diamond rings.
All this "crowded sumptuousness" was due to the taste of Lady
Blessington. Amid it she received royal dukes, statesmen such as
Palmerston, Canning, Castlereagh, Russell, and Brougham, actors such as
Kemble and Matthews, artists such as Lawrence and Wilkie, and men of
letters such as Moore, Bulwer-Lytton, and the two Disraelis. To
maintain this sort of life Lord Blessington raised large amounts of
money, totaling about half a million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his
different estates and giving his promissory notes to money-lenders. Of
course, he did not spend this vast sum immediately. He might have lived
in comparative luxury upon his income; but he was a restless, eager,
improvident nobleman, and his extravagances were prompted by the
urgings of his wife.
In all this display, which Lady Blessington both stimulated and shared,
there is to be found a psychological basis. She was now verging upon
the thirties--a time which is a very critical period in a woman's
emotional life, if she has not already given herself over to love and
been loved in return. During Lady Blessington's earlier years she had
suffered in many ways, and it is probable that no thought of love had
entered her mind. She was only too glad if she could escape from the
harshness of her father and the cruelty of her first husband. Then came
her development into a beautiful woman, content for the time to be
languorously stagnant and to enjoy the rest and peace which had come to
her.
When she married Lord Blessington her love life had not yet commenced;
and, in fact, there could be no love life in such a marriage--a
marriage with a man much older than herself, scatter-brained, showy,
and having no intellectual gifts. So for a time she sought satisfaction
in social triumphs, in capturing political and literary lions in order
to exhibit them in her salon, and in spending money right and left with
a lavish hand. But, after all, in a woman of her temperament none of
these things could satisfy her inner longings. Beautiful, full of
Celtic vivacity, imaginative and eager, such a nature as hers would in
the end be starved unless her heart should be deeply touched and unless
all her pent-up emotion could give itself up entirely in the great
surrender.
After a few years of London she grew restless and dissatisfied. Her
surroundings wearied her. There was a call within her for something
more than she had yet experienced. The earl, her husband, was by nature
no less restless; and so, without knowing the reason--which, indeed,
she herself did not understand--he readily assented to a journey on the
Continent.
As they traveled southward they reached at length the town of Valence,
where Count d'Orsay was still quartered with his regiment. A vague,
indefinable feeling of attraction swept over this woman, who was now a
woman of the world and yet quite inexperienced in affairs relating to
the heart. The mere sound of the French officer's voice, the mere sight
of his face, the mere knowledge of his presence, stirred her as nothing
had ever stirred her until that time. Yet neither he nor she appears to
have been conscious at once of the secret of their liking. It was
enough that they were soothed and satisfied with each other's company.
Oddly enough, the Earl of Blessington became as devoted to D'Orsay as
did his wife. The two urged the count to secure a leave of absence and
to accompany them to Italy. This he was easily persuaded to do; and the
three passed weeks and months of a languorous and alluring intercourse
among the lakes and the seductive influence of romantic Italy. Just
what passed between Count d'Orsay and Margaret Blessington at this time
cannot be known, for the secret of it has perished with them; but it is
certain that before very long they came to know that each was
indispensable to the other.
The situation was complicated by the Earl of Blessington, who, entirely
unsuspicious, proposed that the Count should marry Lady Harriet
Gardiner, his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife. He pressed
the match upon the embarrassed D'Orsay, and offered to settle the sum
of forty thousand pounds upon the bride. The girl was less than fifteen
years of age. She had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence;
and, in addition, D'Orsay was now deeply in love with her stepmother.
On the other hand, his position with the Blessingtons was daily growing
more difficult. People had begun to talk of the almost open relations
between Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. Lord Byron, in a letter
written to the countess, spoke to her openly and in a playful way of
"YOUR D'Orsay." The manners and morals of the time were decidedly
irregular; yet sooner or later the earl was sure to gain some hint of
what every one was saying. Therefore, much against his real desire, yet
in order to shelter his relations with Lady Blessington, D'Orsay agreed
to the marriage with Lady Harriet, who was only fifteen years of age.
This made the intimacy between D'Orsay and the Blessingtons appear to
be not unusual; but, as a matter of fact, the marriage was no marriage.
The unattractive girl who had become a bride merely to hide the
indiscretions of her stepmother was left entirely to herself; while the
whole family, returning to London, made their home together in Seymour
Place.
Could D'Orsay have foreseen the future he would never have done what
must always seem an act so utterly unworthy of him. For within two
years Lord Blessington fell ill and died. Had not D'Orsay been married
he would now have been free to marry Lady Blessington. As it was, he
was bound fast to her stepdaughter; and since at that time there was no
divorce court in England, and since he had no reason for seeking a
divorce, he was obliged to live on through many years in a most
ambiguous situation. He did, however, separate himself from his
childish bride; and, having done so, he openly took up his residence
with Lady Blessington at Gore House. By this time, however, the
companionship of the two had received a sort of general sanction, and
in that easy-going age most people took it as a matter of course.
The two were now quite free to live precisely as they would. Lady
Blessington became extravagantly happy, and Count d'Orsay was accepted
in London as an oracle of fashion. Every one was eager to visit Gore
House, and there they received all the notable men of the time. The
improvidence of Lady Blessington, however, was in no respect
diminished. She lived upon her jointure, recklessly spending capital as
well as interest, and gathering under her roof a rare museum of
artistic works, from jewels and curios up to magnificent pictures and
beautiful statuary.
D'Orsay had sufficient self-respect not to live upon the money that had
come to Lady Blessington from her husband. He was a skilful painter,
and he practised his art in a professional way. His portrait of the
Duke of Wellington was preferred by that famous soldier to any other
that had been made of him. The Iron Duke was, in fact, a frequent
visitor at Gore House, and he had a very high opinion of Count d'Orsay.
Lady Blessington herself engaged in writing novels of "high life," some
of which were very popular in their day. But of all that she wrote
there remains only one book which is of permanent value--her
Conversations with Lord Byron, a very valuable contribution to our
knowledge of the brilliant poet.
But a nemesis was destined to overtake the pair. Money flowed through
Lady Blessington's hands like water, and she could never be brought to
understand that what she had might not last for ever. Finally, it was
all gone, yet her extravagance continued. Debts were heaped up
mountain-high. She signed notes of hand without even reading them. She
incurred obligations of every sort without a moment's hesitation.
For a long time her creditors held aloof, not believing that her
resources were in reality exhausted; but in the end there came a crash
as sudden as it was ruinous. As if moved by a single impulse, those to
whom she owed money took out judgments against her and descended upon
Gore House in a swarm. This was in the spring of 1849, when Lady
Blessington was in her sixtieth year and D'Orsay fifty-one.
It is a curious coincidence that her earliest novel had portrayed the
wreck of a great establishment such as her own. Of the scene in Gore
House Mr. Madden, Lady Blessington's literary biographer, has written:
Numerous creditors, bill-discounters, money-lenders, jewelers,
lace-venders, tax-collectors, gas-company agents, all persons having
claims to urge pressed them at this period simultaneously. An execution
for a debt of four thousand pounds was at length put in by a house
largely engaged in the silk, lace, India-shawl, and fancy-jewelry
business.
This sum of four thousand pounds was only a nominal claim, but it
opened the flood-gates for all of Lady Blessington's creditors. Mr.
Madden writes still further:
On the 10th of May, 1849, I visited Gore House for the last time. The
auction was going on. There was a large assemblage of people of
fashion. Every room was thronged; the well-known library-salon, in
which the conversaziones took place, was crowded, but not with guests.
The arm-chair in which the lady of the mansion was wont to sit was
occupied by a stout, coarse gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, busily
engaged in examining a marble hand extended on a book, the fingers of
which were modeled from a cast of those of the absent mistress of the
establishment. People, as they passed through the room, poked the
furniture, pulled about the precious objects of art and ornaments of
various kinds that lay on the table; and some made jests and ribald
jokes on the scene they witnessed.
At this compulsory sale things went for less than half their value.
Pictures by Lawrence and Landseer, a library consisting of thousands of
volumes, vases of exquisite workmanship, chandeliers of ormolu, and
precious porcelains--all were knocked down relentlessly at farcical
prices. Lady Blessington reserved nothing for herself. She knew that
the hour had struck, and very soon she was on her way to Paris, whither
Count d'Orsay had already gone, having been threatened with arrest by a
boot-maker to whom he owed five hundred pounds.
D'Orsay very naturally went to Paris, for, like his father, he had
always been an ardent Bonapartist, and now Prince Louis Bonaparte had
been chosen president of the Second French Republic. During the
prince's long period of exile he had been the guest of Count d'Orsay,
who had helped him both with money and with influence. D'Orsay now
expected some return for his former generosity. It came, but it came
too late. In 1852, shortly after Prince Louis assumed the title of
emperor, the count was appointed director of fine arts; but when the
news was brought to him he was already dying. Lady Blessington died
soon after coming to Paris, before the end of the year 1849.
Comment upon this tangled story is scarcely needed. Yet one may quote
some sayings from a sort of diary which Lady Blessington called her
"Night Book." They seem to show that her supreme happiness lasted only
for a little while, and that deep down in her heart she had condemned
herself.
A woman's head is always influenced by her heart; but a man's heart is
always influenced by his head.
The separation of friends by death is less terrible than the divorce of
two hearts that have loved, but have ceased to sympathize, while memory
still recalls what they once were to each other.
People are seldom tired of the world until the world is tired of them.
A woman should not paint sentiment until she has ceased to inspire it.
It is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than
to be pardoned for it.
Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our
buried hopes.