The Parisian correspondent of the _London Morning Post_ thus makes the
first mention of this unexpected event:—
“We have all been much shocked this afternoon by the sudden
death of Lady Blessington. Her ladyship dined yesterday with the
Duchess de Grammont, and returned home late in her usual health
and spirits. In the course of this morning she felt unwell, and
her homœopathic medical adviser, Dr. Simon, was sent for. After
a short consultation, the doctor announced that his patient was
dying of apoplexy, and his sad prediction was unhappily verified
but too rapidly, as her ladyship expired in his arms about an
hour and a half ago.”
We doubt whether a death could have taken place, in private life, in
Europe, that would have made a more vivid sensation than this, or have
been more sincerely regretted. Indeed, a possessor of more power, in its
most attractive shape, could hardly have been named, in life public or
private—for the extent of Lady Blessington’s friendships with
distinguished men of every nation, quality, character, rank and creed,
was without a parallel. Her friends were carefully chosen—but, once
admitted to her intimacy, they never were neglected and never lessened
in their attachment to her. She has a circle of mourners, at this
moment, in which there is more genius, more distinction, and more
sincere sorrowing, than has embalmed a name within the lapse of a
century. Noblemen, statesmen, soldiers, church-dignitaries, poets and
authors, artists, actors, musicians, bankers,—a galaxy of the best of
their different stations and pursuits—have received, with tears at the
door of the heart, the first intelligence of her death.
The deceased will have a biographer—no doubt an able and renowned one.
Bulwer, who enjoyed her friendship as intimately, perhaps, for the last
ten years of her life, as any other man, might describe her best, and is
not likely to leave, undone, a task so obviously his own. Without hoping
to anticipate, at all, the portraiture, by an abler hand, of this
remarkable woman, we may venture to send to our readers this first
announcement of her death, accompanied with such a sketch of her
qualities of mind and heart as our own memory, of the acquaintance we
had the privilege of enjoying, enables us easily to draw.
Lady Blessington, as her writings show, was not a woman of genius in the
creative sense of the term. She has originated nothing that would, of
itself, have made a mark upon the age she lived in. Her peculiarity lay
in the curiously felicitous combination of the best qualities of the two
sexes, in her single character as it came from nature. She had the cool
common sense and intrepid unsubserviency which together give a man the
best social superiority, and she had the tact, the delicacy and the
impassioned devotedness which are essentials in the finest compounds of
woman. She did not know what fear was,—either of persons or of
opinions,—and it was as like herself when she shook her gloved fist in
defiance at the mob in Whitehall, on their threatening to break her
carriage windows if she drove through, as it was to return to London
after her long residence on the continent, and establish herself as the
centre of a society from which her own sex were excluded. Under more
guarded and fortunate circumstances of early life, and had she attained
“the age of discretion” before taking any decided step, she would
probably have been one of those guiding stars of _individualism_, in
common life, alike peculiar, admirable and irreproachable.
Lady Blessington’s generous estimate of _what services were due in
friendship_—her habitual conduct in such relations amounting to a
romantic chivalry of devotedness—bound to her with a naturalness of
affection not very common in that class of life, those who formed the
circle of her intimacy. She did not wait to be solicited. Her tact and
knowledge of the world enabled her to understand, with a truth that
sometimes seemed like divination, the position of a friend at the
moment—his hopes and difficulties, his wants and capabilities. She had
a much larger influence than was generally supposed, with persons in
power, who were not of her known acquaintance, many an important spring
of political and social movement was unsuspectedly within her control.
She could aid ambition, promote literary distinction, remove
difficulties in society which she did not herself frequent, serve
artists, harmonize and prevent misunderstandings, and give valuable
counsel on almost any subject that could come up in the career of a man,
with a skill and a control of resources of which few had any idea. Many
a one of her brilliant and unsurpassed dinners had a kindly object which
its titled guests little dreamed of, but which was not forgotten for a
moment, amid the wit and eloquence that seemed so purposeless and
impulsive. On some errand of good will to others, her superb equipage,
the most faultless thing of its kind in the world, was almost invariably
bound, when gazed after in the streets of London. Princes and noblemen,
(who, as well as poets and artists, have aims which need the devotion of
friendship,) were the objects of her watchful aid and ministration; and
we doubt, indeed, whether any woman lived, who was so valuable a friend
to so many, setting aside the high careers that were influenced among
them, and the high station and rank that were befriended with no more
assiduity than lesser ambitions and distinctions.
The conversation, at the table in Gore House, was allowed to be the most
brilliant in Europe, but Lady Blessington herself seldom took the lead
in it. Her manners were such as to put every one at his ease, and her
absolute tact at suggestion and change of topics, made any one shine who
had it in him, when she chose to call it forth. She had the display of
her guests as completely under her hand as the pianist his keys; and,
forgetful of herself—giving the most earnest and appreciative attention
to others—she seemed to desire no share in the happiness of the hour
except that of making each, in his way, show to advantage. If there was
any impulse of her mind to which she gave way with a feeling of
carelessness, it was to the love of humor in her Irish nature, and her
mirthfulness at such moments, was most joyously unrestrained and
natural.
In 1835, when we first saw Lady Blessington, she confessed to forty, and
was then exceedingly handsome. Her beauty, it is true, was more in pose
and demeanor than in the features of her face, but she produced the full
impression of great beauty. Her mouth was the very type of freshness and
frankness. The irregularity of her nose gave a vivacity to her
expression, and her thin and pliant nostrils added a look of spirit
which was unmistakable, but there was a steady penetration in the
character of her eye which threw a singular earnestness and sincerity
over all. Like Victoria, Tom Moore, the Duke of Wellington and Grisi,
she sat tall—her body being longer in proportion than her limbs—and,
probably from some little sensitiveness on this point, she was seldom
seen walking. Her grace of posture in her carriage struck the commonest
observer, and, seated at her table, or in the gold and satin arm-chair
in her drawing room, she was majestically elegant and dignified. Of the
singular beauty of her hands and arms, celebrated as they were in poetry
and sculpture, she seemed at least unconscious, and used them
carelessly, gracefully and expressively, in the gestures of
conversation. At the time we speak of, she was in perfect maturity
portion and figure, but beginning, even then, to conceal, by a peculiar
cap, the increasing fullness under her chin. Her natural tendency to
plethora was not counteracted by exercise, and when we saw her last, two
years ago, she was exceedingly altered from her former self, and had
evidently given up to an indolence of personal habits which has since
ended in apoplexy and death.
There is an ignorance with regard to the early history of this
distinguished woman, and a degree of misrepresentation in the popular
report of her life in later years, which a simple statement of the
outline of her career will properly correct. Her death takes away from
her friends the freedom of speaking carelessly of her faults, but it
binds them, also, to guard her memory as far as Truth can do it, from
injustice and perversion.
Lady Blessington’s maiden name was Margaret Power. She was born in
Ireland, the daughter of the printer and editor of the _Clonmel Herald_,
and up to the age of twelve or fourteen, (as we once heard her say) had
hardly worn a shoe or been in a house where there was a carpet. At this
age of her girlhood, however, she and her sister (who was afterwards
Lady Canterbury) were fancied by a family of wealthy old maids, to whom
they were distantly related, and taken to a home where they proved apt
scholars in the knowledge of luxury and manners. On their return to
Clonmel, two young girls of singular beauty, they became at once the
attraction of a dashing English regiment newly stationed there, and
Margaret was soon married to an officer by the name of Farmer. From this
hasty connection, into which she was crowded by busy and ambitious
friends, sprang all the subsequent canker of her life. Her husband
proved to be liable to temporary insanity, and, at best, was cruel and
capricious. Others were kinder and more attentive. She was but sixteen.
Flying from her husband who was pursuing her with a pistol in his hand
to take her life, she left her home, and, in the retreat where she took
refuge, was found by a wealthy and accomplished officer, who had long
been her admirer, and whose “protection” she now fatally accepted.
With this gentleman, Captain Jenkinson, she lived four years in complete
seclusion. His return to dissipated habits, at the end of that time,
destroyed his fortune and brought about a separation; and, her husband,
meantime, having died, she received an offer of marriage from Lord
Blessington, who was then a widower with one daughter. She refused the
offer, at first, from delicate motives, easily understood: but it was at
last pressed on her acceptance, and she married and went abroad.
Received into the best society of the continent at once, and with her
remarkable beauty and her husband’s enormous wealth, entering upon a
most brilliant career, she became easily an accomplished woman of the
world, and readily supplied for herself, any deficiencies in her early
education. It was during this first residence in Paris that Lord
Blessington became exceedingly attached to Count Alfred D’Orsay, the
handsomest and most talented young nobleman of France. Determined not to
be separated from one he declared he could not live without, he
affianced his daughter to him, persuaded his father to let him give up
his commission in the army, and fairly adopted him into his family to
share his fortune with him as a son. They soon left Paris for Italy, and
at Genoa fell in with Lord Byron, who was a friend of Lord
Blessington’s, and with whom they made a party, for residence in that
beautiful climate, the delightful socialities of which are well
described in her Ladyship’s “Conversations.”
A year or two afterwards, Lord Blessington’s daughter came to him from
school, and was married to Count D’Orsay at Naples. The union proved
inharmonious, and they separated, after living but a year together. Lord
Blessington died soon after, and, on Lady Blessington’s return to
England, the Count rejoined her, and they formed but one household till
her death.
It was this residence of Lord Blessington’s widow and her son-in-law
under the same roof—he, meantime, separated from his wife, Lady Harriet
D’Orsay—which, by the English code of appearances in morals,
compromised the position of Lady Blessington. She chose to disregard
public opinion, where it interfered with what she deliberately made up
her mind was best, and, disdaining to explain or submit, guarded against
slight or injury, by excluding from her house all who would condemn her,
viz:—her own sex. Yet all who knew her and her son-in-law, were
satisfied that it was a useful and, indeed, absolutely necessary
arrangement for _him_—her strict business habits, practical good sense,
and the protection of her roof, being an indispensable safeguard to his
personal liberty and fortunes—and that this need of serving him and the
strongest and most disinterested friendship were _her_ only motives,
every one was completely sure who knew them at all. By those intimate at
her house, including the best and greatest men of England, Lady
Blessington was held in unqualified respect, and no shadow even of
suspicion, thrown over her life of widowhood. She had many entreaties
from her own sex to depart from her resolve and interchange visits, and
we chanced to be at her house, one morning, when a note was handed to
her from one of the most distinguished noble ladies of England, making
such a proposal. We saw the reply. It expressed, with her felicitous
tact, a full appreciation of the confidence and kindness of the note she
had received, but declined its request, from an unwillingness to place
herself in any position where she might, by the remotest possibility,
suffer from doubt or injustice. She persevered in this to the end of her
life, a few relatives and one or two intimates of her continental
acquaintance being the only ladies seen at her house. When seized with
her last illness, she had been dining with Count D’Orsay’s sister, the
beautiful Duchess de Grammont.
Faulty as a portion of Lady Blessington’s life may have been, we doubt
whether a woman has lived, in her time, who did so many actions of
truest kindness, and whose life altogether was so benevolently and
largely instrumental for the happiness of others. With the circumstances
that bore upon her destiny, with her beauty, her fascination and her
boundless influence over all men who approached her, she might easily,
almost excusably, have left a less worthy memory to fame. Few in their
graves, now, deserve a more honoring remembrance.