had woven round them a whole tissue of legends, chiefly founded upon
mere vulgar gossip. Virtuous and highly-respectable London delighted
in crowning them with a halo of ill-fame, and when Lord Yarmouth,
afterwards fourth Marquess, bought Bagatelle, it was declared to be the
scene of orgies compared with which the mysteries of the Bona Dea were
as innocent as nursery teas. Many of the stories were started by the
rather second-class, or even demirep, English Society which was gathered
together at Paris, jealous at being kept out from the intimacy of a very
exclusive man.
These stories when repeated, we may be sure, lost nothing in the telling,
and so Bagatelle came to be looked upon as a sort of Parc aux Cerfs,
while Bishop Luscombe’s congregation stalked with virtuously uplifted
noses along the Rue d’Aguesseau, thanking Heaven that they were not as
Lord Hertford. Such a reputation, even if it were a mere scandalous
libel, was hardly such as would commend itself to General Sir Francis
Seymour, the proud patrician who was to succeed to the title as fifth
Marquess. Indeed, it must have been gall and wormwood to a man trained as
he had been for many years in the solemn dignity of the staid Victorian
Court. There could be no sympathy, still less affection, between the
cousins. But there was more than all this to influence Lord Hertford when
he made his will, which left his successor practically nothing but the
broad acres of Warwickshire, with a great costly palace to keep up, at
a moment when land was falling in value every day and agriculture was
drifting no man could tell whither.
Whatever shape Richard Lord Hertford’s eccentricities may have taken,
he had one redeeming virtue. He was a model son, and his love for his
mother was the great passion of his life. To attack her, to be in any
way wanting in respect for her, was in his eyes the one crime for which
there was no forgiveness, and that was precisely the crime of which Sir
Francis Seymour was guilty. It was a pity, to say the least of it, that
the unkind things, sure to be repeated, of which he was so prodigal in
speaking of Lady Hertford, should ever have been uttered. However much
he might disapprove of Lord Hertford’s way of life, it would have been
wise to remember that a man is not responsible for his grandmother’s
indiscretions, and the shady parentage of Maria Fagnani might well have
been allowed the benefit of silence. At any rate, it was not the business
of Sir Francis to trumpet that or any other scandal about her.
Her story was curious. All the actors in the play have long been dead,
but it is so intimately connected with the history of the Wallace
Collection that, while there is no one left to whom its relation could
give pain, it still retains a special interest. Anything that can throw
light upon the passing of all those treasures into the possession of
the nation is worth recording; and it is, moreover, an act of justice
to clear the memory of a lady who has been somewhat roughly—and, as
I believe, without foundation—handled in the “Dictionary of National
Biography.”
Under the blessing of the law, Maria was the daughter of the Marchese
and Marchesa Fagnani, and the adopted child of George Selwyn. But the
Marchesa, who was said to have been a ballet-dancer, must have been
none too faithful to her husband; for, as a matter of fact, George
Selwyn was said to dispute with the Duke of Queensberry, the wicked
“Old Q,” the honour of being her father. As to that there seems to be
no certain evidence, but one would have thought that such a rivalry, or
partnership—whichever it might be—would have bred a jealousy between the
two men. Not a bit of it! They remained fast friends, were constantly
together, and, when apart, wrote to one another in the most affectionate
terms.
At George Selwyn’s death in 1791 he left thirty-three thousand pounds
to Maria and the rest of his fortune to “Old Q.” When the Duke, in his
turn, came to an end of his stormy life, dying in the odour of iniquity
in 1810, he bequeathed to Maria, who had married Lord Yarmouth in 1798, a
fortune of between three and four hundred thousand pounds, together with
the famous house opposite the Green Park in Piccadilly, in the window
of which, when he was too old to walk, he used to sit ogling the pretty
women as they passed below him. That window, with its leering old tenant,
was one of the sights of London.
The Marchese Fagnani (Fagniani is a misspelling in all the English books)
belonged to an old Milanese family. In the sixteenth century there was a
poet of the name who gained some literary fame; others of the family were
well-known lawyers, archæologists, mathematicians and churchmen in the
seventeenth century—all men of good repute; and as Maria was undoubtedly
born in holy wedlock, the _mésalliance_ was not so very great.
In spite of this there must have been some doubt as to the desirability
of alliance with the Fagnanis, for the marriage with Lord Yarmouth was
a hole-and-corner affair, hustled through at Southampton on the 18th
of May, 1798. Southampton was then quite a small country town, very
different from what it is now, just the sort of place where a marriage
could be celebrated without fuss and in some secrecy. Indeed, when I
remember it fifty years later it was still in its infancy and very
primitive, with at least one delightful old house standing in its own
grounds in the High Street above Bar. Altogether it was not the sort of
wedding that certainly would have been arranged for the heir of the proud
and royal Seymours had the magnates of the family not disapproved of the
match. The French writers in newspapers, who made great capital out of
the whole romance at the time of Lord Hertford’s death in 1870, went out
of their way to associate the Prince Regent with the Fagnani mystery.
They hinted that the prince also claimed the paternity of Maria, and that
he even attended the marriage. But that is an utter absurdity, for which
there was no foundation. Immediately after the marriage Lord and Lady
Yarmouth made their home in Piccadilly, next door to “Old Q,” who did not
die till twelve years later.
It is pretty clear that the marriage with Maria did not lower Lord
Yarmouth’s social position, otherwise Lord Castlereagh would hardly
have chosen him as his second in his famous duel with Mr. Canning, for
whom Mr. Charles Ellis, afterwards Lord Seaford, acted. Both men missed
their first shots; in the second shot Mr. Canning was grazed in the
leg. A duel between the Minister of War and the Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs was a matter of too great importance to be entrusted
to a gentleman who was under a cloud. After Lord Yarmouth succeeded to
the Marquisate in 1822, he received the Garter himself, and was sent by
George the Fourth as special ambassador to carry the same order to the
Emperor Nicholas in 1827.
At the time of her marriage the bride was no longer in her first youth;
she was at least twenty-seven years old. For the correspondence between
George Selwyn and the Duke of Queensberry shows that in 1772 she was
already teething, and under the care of the former at Paris as his
adopted child; and he was fretting himself into bad health lest the
mother should take the little creature—Mie Mie, as she was called—away
from him. The Duke, then Lord March, while abounding in good advice
to his friend, promised his good offices, saying at the time that the
Marchesa was sure to act in opposition to his (the Duke’s) wishes and
advice. The child was taken away by her mother for a time, but ultimately
and permanently given back to her adoring guardian or father. From that
time forth the noble Italian lady seems to have troubled herself about
her baby no more.
As I have already said, there is no certainty as to Maria’s parentage;
indeed, the published letters leave the whole story in a state of
confusion which is perfect. Robinson, in his Life of “Old Q” (page 143),
says:
“Jesse, who was privileged to go over Selwyn’s correspondence, though
refusing as a false affectation of delicacy to pass over in complete
silence the mysterious reports respecting the true parentage of Selwyn’s
infantine charge, asserts that although references occur in the most
private papers of Selwyn which unquestionably lead to the supposition
that either Lord March (Old Q) or Selwyn was, or, rather, that each
severally believed himself to be, the father of the child, yet no certain
proofs exist. Further, a letter addressed by Madame Fagnani to Selwyn,
July 31st, 1772 (of which Jesse gives a translation), does not express
any but the most polite feelings of friendship for the guardian of
her child. Lest I may be misrepresented in alluding to a matter that a
faithful record of established facts incident to my subject warrants,
Madame Fagnani’s letter is inserted in justice to all concerned:
“‘MY VERY DEAR AND RESPECTABLE FRIEND,
“‘I cannot find terms sufficiently expressive to thank you for
all your kindness, and more particularly for the pains you
take in regard to my daughter. I can assure you that nothing
is more sensibly felt by me than the proofs of friendship
which I have received from you on this occasion. The more I
know the world, the more I perceive the difficulty of finding
a person who resembles you, and I consider myself the happiest
of mortals solely from the happiness I have had in forming your
acquaintance and obtaining your friendship.
“‘I am enchanted in learning that my daughter is in good
health, though I fear she will suffer much in cutting her
teeth. I venture to beg of you to continue to give me tidings
of her, as without your kindness in writing to me from time to
time, I should have been ignorant for the last three months
of the fate of _ma petite_. My lord,[14] on his part, is a
little indolent, but I forgive him this little fault on account
of the many good qualities of his heart which he has to
counterbalance it.
“‘I hope that your health is good. Pray present my compliments
to Lord March, and tell him that I expect to hear from him.
Preserve your friendship for me, and do not forget the most
grateful and affectionate of all your friends, who makes it her
duty and pleasure to be,
“‘Your very sincere servant and friend,
“‘COSTANZA FAGNANI.’”
Surely that is a letter which must have been written without any idea
that it would ever be published, and it certainly gives no sunlight to
clear away the clouds of the story. To add to the mystery of Maria’s
parentage, Roscoe, in his book on Selwyn, publishes two letters, one from
Dr. Warner, the witty Chaplain to the British Embassy in Paris in 1780,
when she was nine years old, in which, writing to Selwyn, he makes no
disguise of his belief in the paternity of the Duke. The letter is also
interesting as giving some slight idea of the impression which the child
created:
“That freshness of complexion I should have great pleasure
in beholding. It must add to her charms, and cannot diminish
the character, sense and shrewdness which distinguish her
physiognomy, and which she possesses in a great degree, with a
happy engrafting of a high-bred foreign air upon an English
stock. But how very pleasant to me was your honest and naïve
confession of the joy your heart felt at hearing her admired.
It is, indeed, most extraordinary that a certain person who has
great taste (would he had as much nature)[15] should not see
her with very different eyes from what he does. I can never
forget that naïve expression of Madame de Sévigné: ‘Je ne sais
comment l’on fait de ne pas aimer sa fille.’”
The other letter to which I allude is one from George Selwyn to Lord
Carlisle, written at a time when complaining that he was “le jouet des
autres,” and was being annoyed beyond all bearing by the way in which
Madame Fagnani behaved to him about Maria, threatening to take her away
from him altogether. In that letter he writes: “Hélas! rende mi figlia
mis!” That may have meant no more than that the child was very dear to
him, and need not necessarily imply that he believed himself to be her
father. That he did so believe, however, is pretty certain. He educated
her, placed her at school with Mrs. Terry at Campden House in Kensington,
then a beautiful old house almost in the country, and having finally
succeeded in getting rid of the mother’s importunities, kept her with
him until his death in 1791, introducing her into the best society.
Gainsborough painted her portrait, as did Sir Joshua Reynolds, but the
pictures no longer exist, or, at any rate, are lost.
Of the legal father, the Marquis Fagnani, we hear very little. The only
notice I have found of him is in a letter from Selwyn to Lord Carlisle
dated June 19th, 1781:
“Belgiojoso told me last night that he had had letters from
Milan, by which he was informed that the M. [Marquis] Fagnani
was gone quite mad. He has been stone blind for a considerable
time, and I take it for granted that both these misfortunes are
come from the same cause—that is, mercury. His experiments to
ease the one probably occasioned the other. I never hear one
syllable from any of the family. I hope in God that I never
shall, nor poor Mie Mie either. It grows every day less likely,
and yet when I am out of spirits, that dragon, among others,
comes across me and distresses me, and the thought of what must
happen to that child if I am not alive to protect her.”
George Selwyn was no further molested in the possession of the child.
He lived for ten years after that letter was written, and by that time
Maria had grown to woman’s estate. She was twenty years of age, and had,
under George Selwyn’s will, a snug little fortune of her own, besides
expectations, amply to be realized, of further benefits from the Duke of
Queensberry. He doubtless took paternal care of the young lady who was to
inherit all that he could alienate from the Douglas family. She became
one of the greatest heiresses, if not the greatest, of her day.
In her youth Maria Fagnani must have been a very fascinating girl.
To George Selwyn, as we have seen, she was as the apple of his eye.
He simply adored her. If she had a cold in the head, or an infantile
ailment, however trivial, it was torture to him, provoking sympathy from
his correspondents, who themselves seemed to be quite under the spell of
the delightful child; and as he apparently never destroyed a note, there
are plenty of these condolences in the budget of letters published by
Jesse. To have won the heart of Thackeray’s Marquess of Steyne, if that
fastidious personage ever possessed such an organ, was another feather
in her cap, and in her old age we know how tenderly her son and Richard
Wallace both loved her.
In 1803 Lord and Lady Yarmouth were detained in France—he interned at
Verdun—when war was again declared after the rupture of the Peace of
Amiens, and their second son, Lord Henry Seymour, was born in Paris in
1805. Scandal declared that he was the son of Junot, Duc d’Abrantès, with
whom Lady Yarmouth was very intimate. There is a note in Roscoe, page 8,
which says: “She led a life of pleasure (1802-1807), travelling on the
Continent with the Marshal Andoche.” That was Junot’s Christian name—but
that he never was a marshal was his great grievance against Napoleon.
This Lord Henry is not to be confounded, as is commonly done, with the
Lord Henry Seymour, son of the first Marquess, who lived at Norris
Castle, near Cowes, and spent a fortune in building the famous sea-wall.
The Lord Henry with whom we have to deal was a very eccentric personage.
Unlike his brother, Richard Lord Hertford, who was a handsome man, and in
his youth a dandy of the 10th Hussars, Lord Henry was singularly ugly,
even grotesque. There was in the Rue Lafitte a sketch or caricature of
him, which I have seen, in which he was represented as a sort of Quilp,
stunted, misshapen, and of prodigious strength. He was a hero of the
various Salles d’Armes, a famous fencer and athlete, and the founder, or,
at any rate, one of the founders, of the French Jockey Club. A kindly man
withal, for by his will, in which his horses appeared as legatees—never
to be crossed again—he left the bulk of his fortune to the hospitals of
Paris. He died in 1859, three years after the loss of his mother. It
used to be said that he never even set foot in England, but that was
probably only one of the many fables set afloat about the two brothers.
So curious a quartet as the mother, the two sons, and the enigma that
was M. Richard, afterwards Sir Richard Wallace, furnished fine food for
eavesdroppers and gossip-mongers.
For twenty-eight years after the death of his father in 1842, Richard
Lord Hertford lived practically altogether in Paris, passing his time
between the Rue Lafitte and Bagatelle, the little toy house on the
outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne, which in 1780 was built by Bellanger
in a few weeks at the order of the Comte d’Artois (Charles the Tenth),
for a bet, in order to entertain Queen Marie Antoinette on a fixed day.
The repetition in one of the rooms of the decoration of peacocks with
spread tails in the boudoir of the Queen at Versailles was probably a
delicate compliment—a little surprise—addressed to her on her visit. When
I first saw it some fifteen years ago, although the house was empty and
the famous statues had been removed and sold, it was still instinct with
a certain eighteenth-century charm. The daintily laid-out grounds were
still beautifully kept, and I should hardly have been surprised had I
suddenly come upon one of Fragonard’s idylls, with shepherdesses powdered
and hooped, and gentle shepherds to match, appropriately dressed in
spotless pink and blue silk.
In that house, as in those idylls, there are tears when we remember how
soon so many of those pretty, frivolous, powdered heads were to fall
into the basket of Monsieur de Paris. Although the famous “Nelly O’Brien”
of Sir Joshua, and perhaps Romney’s “Perdita,” were bought by the second
Marquess, the foundation of the collection of art treasures which, since
the militant ladies three or four years ago took to fighting pictures in
the National Gallery, have been stored away in the cellars of Hertford
House, was laid by Francis, third Lord Hertford, who bought the glorious
“Perseus and Andromeda” by Titian, which the keen eyes of Sir Claude
Phillips rescued from a bath-room, where it had been stored away and
forgotten, a number of the Dutch pictures and two of the Vandycks. But by
far the greater part of it was acquired by his son Richard, the fourth
Marquess.
Very important additions, especially in the armoury, were made by Sir
Richard Wallace, who was himself a born collector, and had acquired
no little experience, both on his own account, and as Lord Hertford’s
representative at the great auction sales of Paris. His taste in Oriental
art was distinctly bad. He bought a few very inferior specimens of
Chinese cloisonné enamel, and two porcelain bowls of the Chia Ching
reign, 1796-1821, a period when the art of China reached almost its
lowest level, with very inferior mounts by some English bungler. Of these
he was inordinately proud. There are two or three very fine céladon
vases, with exquisitely chiselled French mounts, in one of the glass
cases, but there is no evidence as to who bought them.
The reason of the fourth Lord Hertford’s self-condemned exile in Paris,
when he owned five palatial houses in London, besides Ragley, Sudbourne
and other places, is not easy to ascertain. There was a story, firmly
believed in my youth, and confirmed by Sir Richard Wallace to Sir John
Scott, that his father tried to force him into a cruel marriage with
the daughter of one of his mistresses, with whom he conspired to make
it appear that Lord Yarmouth, as he then was, had compromised the girl.
The young man deeply resented this outrage, and took refuge in Paris,
where his mother was living. Certainly he had established himself there
during his father’s lifetime, for it was as Lord Yarmouth that he bought
Bagatelle in 1830, and he did not succeed to the marquisate until twelve
years later.
Yriarte’s story that he left London on account of a quarrel with the
parish over the rates of his house in Piccadilly, is hardly to be
accepted. It is far more likely that he left England in order to free
himself from his father, for whom he had no love or respect, and made
Paris his home that he might be with his mother, whom he adored. She,
with Lord Henry Seymour and Monsieur Richard, lived at No. 1, Rue
Taitbout, Lord Hertford’s head-quarters being hard by at No. 2, Rue
Lafitte. There he lived the life of an invalid and sybarite, hardly to be
called happy in spite of his great possessions—a recluse, the darkness
of whose hypochondria was only cheered by his correspondence with Mr. S.
Mawson, who was his agent in London for the purchase, restoration and
care of pictures, or by some brilliant triumph at Christie’s or in the
Paris auction-rooms.
Few people saw him, and still fewer knew him. And yet he had all the
qualifications which would have enabled him to shine among his fellows.
Yriarte said of him: “Causeur célèbre, très spirituel, très lettré,
d’une politesse accomplie, d’un raffinement rare, ses goûts personnels
l’éloignaient cependant de la société, et il a vécu toute sa vie dans un
milieu inférieur. Il y apportait même avec ses intimes une manière d’être
dissimulée, peu conforme avec le cant anglais, et il affichait une sorte
de cynisme que les deux ou trois amis intimes qu’il a conservés jusqu’à
sa mort regardaient comme son masque d’emprunt.” His wit, if sometimes
a little cynical, or even a little risky, was undeniable, and what are
called “good stories” of him were the joy of clubs.
That he suffered acutely there can be no doubt, for Sir Richard Wallace
once told me that he went with him to Contrexéville—we know what that
means—which fifty years ago was a very different place from what it is
now, and where all the sordid details of life at that time must have been
torture to a man of his exquisite refinement. With public life he had no
concern. As a young man he was for a few years in the House of Commons,
and on succeeding to the title, he delivered a maiden speech in the House
of Lords, and that was all. His one and only participation in affairs was
in 1855, when he consented to act as one of the jury at the Exhibition of
Paris.
Upon this subject he wrote a characteristic letter to Mawson:
“Only think of my being at the Champs-Elysées every morning
at nine o’clock. Hard work for an old fellow who has very
different habits. I am obliged to get up every morning between
six and seven o’clock to be at the exhibition in proper time to
preside over a group composed of four classes. I remain there
almost all day doing my work, and as I am not accustomed to
this sudden activity, I am very tired, and, in consequence,
neglect my own affairs.”
It was, of course, his intimacy with Louis Napoléon which caused him
to accept such a violent break in his habits, but he owed the Emperor
some gratitude, for it was by his friendly help that he was enabled to
add to the grounds of Bagatelle, and again to employ Dasson to copy
the famous bureau in the Louvre. Apropos to Bagatelle, Mr. MacColl, in
his introduction to the catalogue of pictures at Hertford House, to
which I owe great obligation, has a good story. It is said “that two
acquaintances asked leave to fight a duel in the grounds. The Marquess
politely replied that he had not the slightest objection to their
shooting one another, but could not trust their skill so far as to risk
his statues.” Perhaps most people would have endorsed his view of the
comparative value of masterpieces by Pigalle, Lemoyne and Houdon, and
the lives or limbs of the would-be Bobadils. Hardly could they be worth
Houdon’s famous “Baigneuse.”
Lord Hertford’s letters to Mawson, which were sold to the trustees by Mr.
Mawson’s daughter, show how keenly he watched the great sales both in
London and Paris. The English sales he, of course, very rarely attended,
and when he did so, it was Mawson who did the bidding, guided by a code
of signals given by motions of Lord Hertford’s hat. Nor was he personally
more active if he was present at a French sale; he seems to have carried
his dislike of all publicity into every phase of life, and to have
conducted all his business by agents.