The Countess Czerwinska—The Countess Broel Plater—Mlle.
de Laval—The Duchesse de Grammont—An Absent-Minded
Gentleman—Dusauty, the Fencing Master—The Marquis of
Anglesey—Charming Venezuelans—Miss Fanny Parnell
After finishing my studies at Bonn, I returned to Paris and rejoined my
parents. I was very happy in Paris, of which I have always been very
fond; but what I missed there chiefly at that time was the companionship
of young fellows of my own age. This reminds me of what Jim Doyne once
said to me when he came to visit me there:—
“I should like Paris better than London, if I could only fill the place
with my English friends, and send some of these Frenchmen to London
instead.”
I often experienced this very same feeling in Paris. It was very rarely
that I met a Frenchman of my own age that I cared for, as I did for some
English and Americans. Once at the Opéra Comique I happened to sit in
the stalls next a young Frenchman, who was very pleasant, and whom I got
to know well afterwards. This was the Vicomte Frédéric de Kilmaine, who,
though of Irish extraction, could not speak a single word of English. A
few days after I had made the Vicomte’s acquaintance I went for a drive
with him in his pretty victoria to the Bois de Boulogne, where we had
some refreshments at one of the cafés there before returning to Paris.
He often afterwards came to take me for a drive, and we became very good
friends. The Vicomte de Kilmaine, however, was an exception so far as
young Frenchmen were concerned, for I never became very intimate with any
of them. M. de Lesquier d’Attainville, grandson of the Prince de Rivoli,
Duc de Masséna, was a very nice fellow, and I liked him exceedingly; but
he was older than myself, and I did not see him very often except at the
different houses which I visited of an afternoon or evening. I also liked
Prince Jean Radziwill, who was a Pole, but I saw even less of him than I
did of M. de Lesquier d’Attainville, and, besides, he was much older than
I was, and a few years make a world of difference when one is very young.
In after years, at Franzensbad, in Bohemia, I made the acquaintance of
the Countess Broel Plater and her son and daughter-in-law. The Countess,
by her first marriage, was the Princess Lubomirska, and Prince Jean
Radziwill was her son-in-law. The Countess was delighted to hear that I
had known Prince Jean so well in former years, and told me many things
about him. I often used to meet the Prince at Baroness Adelsdorfer’s
hôtel in Paris, and also at the Countess Czerwinska’s, _née_ Countess
Czajkowska, and I remember him telling me that he was best man at the
last-named lady’s marriage. It was a marriage of affection, and a son
was born a year or so later; but subsequently the pair had a quarrel
and refused to live together any more. The husband was afterwards quite
willing to make it up, but the Countess absolutely declined to do so,
though Prince Radziwill said he did everything he could to persuade
her to be reconciled. The Countess had the right to keep her little
son Stanislaus, who was a boy seven years old. At the time I knew her
in Paris, according to Russian law, in the event of a separation or a
divorce, the mother has always the custody of the sons, and the father
that of the daughters. This ought to be the rule in England, but, as we
are an eccentric nation, our laws quite naturally differ from those of
all others.
The Countess Czerwinska was a very good-looking, fair young woman, of
about four-and-twenty. She was extremely well read and very intellectual,
and appeared perfectly to idolize her son. She was very fond of the poet
Mickiewicz, whose poems she often recited to me in Polish, afterwards
giving me her own translation of them in French. It was said that
she was employed by the Russian Government to find out political
secrets, and the salon at her hôtel in the Rue Chaillot was always
filled with men from the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, like M. de
Lesquier d’Attainville, and also with representatives of the various
embassies.[25] She asked me once to procure her an invitation to a
private masked ball given by the millionaire Ménier, who had made his
fortune with the famous chocolate of that name, which I did, and escorted
her also to the Concours Hippique at the Palais de l’Industrie.
The Countess Broel Plater was an old lady, who in her younger days had
been, she told me, lady-in-waiting to the Empress of Russia, consort of
Nicholas I. She also informed me that she had been brought up in the
Palace at St. Petersburg, and that she was really a daughter of the
Tsar, as everyone at the Court knew. One day, when we were taking coffee
and listening to the band in the Kur Park at Franzensbad, she piqued my
curiosity not a little by telling me that there were so many secrets
at the Russian Court, that to reveal them would make one’s blood run
cold, and that, to her knowledge, three cold-blooded murders had been
perpetrated at the Palace at Petersburg during the time she was living
there. She mentioned all the details of these crimes, which had been
committed at the instigation of those in power at that time, and even
the names of the victims, observing that at the time of their occurrence
she was pledged to secrecy, failing which, she would have been poisoned
herself. “No one,” she concluded, “can possibly realize, unless they have
lived, as I have, at the Russian Court, what fearful things have happened
there, simply in order to satisfy the caprice of a sovereign. Whether it
was the destruction of a girl, man or woman, it mattered not, so long
as the removal of the person served to conceal something which the Tsar
desired should not be made public.”
While relating these events, the Countess became quite excited, and her
recital of them was so dramatic that one could almost imagine that she
had actually taken part in them. She gave me, in fact, quite a creepy
feeling, so that I was really relieved when she came to an end of her
accounts of these tragic episodes. She afterwards told me that she was
going to Nice with her son, whom I frequently met at Franzensbad with his
lovely young wife, and I used to sit in the Kur and talk to them. The
Countess Broel Plater had a charming villa, in which she had an aviary
containing all kinds of rare birds, and it was her delight to sit near
this aviary, admiring the gorgeous plumage of her beautiful birds and
listening to them sing, while she thought how fortunate she was to have
finished with the Russian Court and its dark tragedies. She told me that
she knew the family of Count Branicki at Nice, and also the Countess
Zamoyska, a very lovely woman, who had only very recently married, and
was at that time the greatest heiress in Poland. Liszt says of Polish
women: “_Ce qu’elles veulent, c’est l’attachement; ce qu’elles espèrent,
c’est le dévouement; ce qu’elles exigent, c’est l’honneur, le regret et
l’amour de la patrie, ce qui faisait dire à l’Empereur Nicholas I.: ‘Je
pourrais en finir des Polonais, si je venais à bout des Polonaises.’_”
The Countess invited me to stay with her at Nice in the winter, if I
were able to go there, but, for some reason, I was prevented from doing
so. She took a great fancy to my little girl, Xenia, who was with me at
the time and was then seven years old, saying that she reminded her of a
near relative of her own, who also bore the Russian name of Xenia, which
increased not a little the Countess’s interest in my daughter.
In Paris I always attended the “_jours_” of the Countess Dzialyńska,
sister of Prince Czartoryski. Her daughter, Countess Hélène Dzialyńska,
spoke English fluently, and told me she could learn any language in a
fortnight. She wrote a book in French against capital punishment, called
_Sur la peine de mort_, which had a large circulation. The Princess
Czartoryska was a royal princess, a Bourbon, and lived at the Maison
Lambert. Among their friends was a Swedish officer attached to the
Embassy, who was a frequent guest at their soirées. He was no longer
young, but always wore a corset and lavender kid gloves, and never took
his gloves off even to eat his supper. In his younger days he had been
dubbed, “_la fille du régiment_,” and this nickname still clung to
him. I met him there frequently, and he still considered himself quite
irresistible _auprès des dames_.
I used to go about a good deal in Paris at this time with Cecil Slade, a
boy of fourteen, the son of a friend of my father, General Sir William
Slade. He usually called for me of an afternoon, and we took long walks
on the Boulevards. A girl friend whom I made was Mlle. Julie Piétri,
who was about fourteen. I often called at her father’s house in the
Champs-Elysées, and one day I said to Madame Piétri, before her daughter,
that I wondered why French girls were not allowed the same liberty with
boys which English girls enjoyed. Madame Piétri answered that it might
be all right with English girls, but if French ones were allowed to be
alone with gentlemen, the consequences might be disastrous, as French
girls could not control their feelings. I thought this a strange thing
to say before her daughter, and I observed that Mlle. Julie looked
rather confused at her mother’s remark and blushed, but she did not say
anything in reply. About this time, I made the acquaintance of a young
girl called Isabelle, about whom I have already written in “Society
Recollections in Paris and Vienna.” Isabelle was allowed more freedom
than Mlle. Piétri, and was not always with her mother, and I found out
that Madame Piétri may have been right in her conjectures. Nevertheless,
I cannot help thinking that French girls are treated rather too severely
in this respect, and that if they were permitted a little more liberty,
they would not suffer so much as their mothers suppose.
In Paris, at this time, I had many friends among girls, but few among
young fellows of my own age. I cannot say that I was in love with any of
the former; indeed, I felt quite indifferent towards them. I certainly
admired Isabelle very much at first, but only for a time, and was almost
glad when our flirtation came to an end. Such, however, is the perversity
of human nature, that no sooner had I lost her than I began to regret
her. After some weeks had passed I saw her again, when I believed that
she had deceived me with an American, and was not worthy of my regret.
She informed me that this American had made her certain proposals, which
she had refused; but I had a strong suspicion that this was not the case,
and that her admirer had afterwards left Paris. I never met her again.
She suddenly disappeared, and, though I was very curious to learn what
had become of her, I was never able to find out. She vanished like some
fantastic apparition, leaving no trace whatever behind, or like a pebble
cast into the water, which leaves only a momentary impression on the
surface to indicate the spot where it has disappeared.
Some time afterwards I made the acquaintance of a Mlle. de Laval, who was
poor, but of a very noble family. Her ancestors had been Ducs de Laval,
and she was related to some of the old noblesse of the time of Louis XVI.
They had almost all been guillotined, and but few members of her family
remained. She frequently told me stories about her ancestors, some of
whom had been reduced to poverty. Mlle. de Laval was an intimate friend
of a Mlle. Gabrielle de Tercin, a very pretty actress, who played at the
Porte Saint-Martin Theatre. I was a good deal in the company of these
girls, and used often to sup with them after the theatre. Mlle. de Tercin
had a friend who was very wealthy, and had furnished a fine _appartement_
for her, to which I sometimes went with Mlle. de Laval.
Another acquaintance of mine was a certain baroness, the widow of an
attaché in Paris. She was at one time considered a very lovely woman, and
certainly possessed very fine auburn hair and a very good complexion. She
had a pretty hôtel in the Rue Lord Byron, where she received a great many
visitors in the evening, chiefly of the sterner sex. She told me once
that the old Duc de Persigny had called upon her when she was alone and
handed her an envelope.
“_Qu’est-ce que c’est que cela?_” she asked.
To which he replied in trembling tones:—
“_Oh, Madame, ce n’est qu’une petite fleur, rien qu’une petite fleur ...
que je viens vous offrir._”
She opened the envelope and found that it contained fourteen thousand
francs in banknotes. She at once threw the notes in the ducal donor’s
face, saying:—
“_Sortez, Monsieur, à l’instant de chez moi; je ne veux ni de vous ni de
votre petite fleur non plus._”
The Duke entreated her to listen to him, but she only added:—
“_Entendez-vous, je veux que vous sortiez d’ici._”
Whereupon he withdrew, and she never set eyes on him again, so she told
me. I met her years afterwards in Vienna, when she was not so rich, and,
though nearly sixty, was dressed more like sixteen and painted up to her
eyes. She told me that Austrians were not so generous as Frenchmen, but
that she preferred Englishmen to all others. She was now inclined to
regret her treatment of the Duc de Persigny, though she laughed at the
recollection of it still. Prince Rudolf von Liechtenstein called upon her
in Vienna and sent her some beautiful flowers, when she remarked to me:—
“To think that I have to content myself in Vienna with flowers! But the
Austrians are all so terribly mean.”
Amongst my mother’s friends in Paris society at this time was Madame
Leleu, whom she saw very frequently. Madame Leleu was a widow, and lived
in a large _appartement_ close to the Madeleine. When her husband was
alive, she was very fond of dining with him at different restaurants,
but since his death she had lived very quietly, and merely invited a
few friends like ourselves to tea with her at five o’clock. Before her
marriage she had been a Miss Beauclerk, and the Duke of St. Albans was
her grandfather. She had at one time been engaged to Lord Cantelupe, but
on her wedding day, while she was actually waiting in her bridal dress at
the altar, she was informed that Lord Cantelupe had died quite suddenly.
She told me about this sad event herself one day when she was visiting
her aunt, Mrs. Healey, in the Rue d’Albe, but I don’t remember what was
the cause of Lord Cantelupe’s death.
My mother also saw a good deal of the Duchesse de Grammont, who was a
daughter of The MacKinnon of MacKinnon. She was very clever, though
somewhat stiff in her manner, and while her husband was living gave some
very smart dinner-parties. The Duchess had a fine house at Folkestone, a
place of which she was very fond; but after her husband’s death she would
sometimes let this house for the season at forty guineas a week. Her
son, the present Duc de Grammont, married a daughter of Baron James de
Rothschild, one of the Paris family of that name. The Hon. Mrs. Graves,
a first cousin of the Duchess, who always stayed with her when in Paris,
was a very great friend of my mother, and often dined with us in the Rue
d’Albe.
The Duchesse de Caracciolo, an American by birth, who was remarkably
good-looking and very “_spirituelle_,” was a great deal in Paris at this
time, and frequently came to see my mother, who was very fond of her. My
mother always told me that the Duchess was just the kind of lady I should
have admired; but, as Fate would have it, I was not fortunate enough to
meet her in Paris.
Mrs. Goldsmid, a Roman Catholic and the daughter of a baronet, who lived
with her son in the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, was also a friend of
my parents, and she was very intimate with the Duchesse de Grammont,
whom, with her sons, the Duc de Guiche and the Comte de Grammont, I met
sometimes of an evening at her house. I met them more frequently after
Mrs. Goldsmid’s son married a very beautiful English girl, when the
Duchess frequently dined there. After dinner we used to play cards, of
which Goldsmid was very fond. He was at one time a great friend of my
father, and they used to attend races together near Paris. He and his
mother knew all the best people in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, as well as
in the American colony. The son, before his marriage, which ended most
disastrously for the wife, chiefly frequented the society of Americans,
while his mother, who was a most intelligent woman, was fonder of the
French. The conversation at their house, when guests happened to be
present, was always carried on in French, as both mother and son spoke
the language perfectly.
One day, when we were walking in the Champs-Elysées, my father pointed
a man out to me whom, he said, he would not care to know at any price.
He was a tall, well-built, fine-looking man, with a long fair beard. His
name was Baron de Malortie, and he was a first cousin of Bismarck. I
asked my father why he would not care to know him, to which he replied:—
“Because he is always fighting duels; he has fought about thirty in
Paris, and has always killed or wounded his adversary.”
Some months later, I happened to be again in the Champs-Elysées, when
I saw my father in the distance, walking arm-in-arm with a man whom I
thought resembled Malortie. In the evening I asked him with whom he was
walking in so friendly a fashion in the Champs-Elysées that afternoon.
“It was Malortie,” he answered. “He is such a nice fellow; I don’t know
anyone I like better!”
On one occasion my father was walking with two friends of his in Paris,
when he turned to one of them, a Mr. Segrave, and said:—
“I don’t think you know my friend....”
When the gentleman addressed promptly replied in a loud voice:—
“No, and I have no wish to know him either.”
My father told me that ever since then he had avoided introducing men to
each other, as one never knew whether they had not had some quarrel, as
was the case in this instance.
[Illustration: The Author’s Father.
[_To face p. 144._]
My father was subject to frequent fits of absent-mindedness, and I
recollect once in Paris telling him a long story, and asking his opinion
from time to time. He answered merely in monosyllables, and when I came
to the end, and inquired what conclusion he had arrived at about the
whole affair, he observed:—
“I was not listening to what you said, and have not the faintest idea
what you were telling me about.”
Once, in Paris, he invited some people to dine at our house, but forgot
to tell my mother about it, so that when the guests arrived, there was
no dinner prepared for them, and everything had to be sent for from a
restaurant, which, of course, entailed great delay. On another occasion,
there were seven or eight people dining with us, amongst whom was General
Sir John Douglas, Lady Elizabeth Douglas, Captain and Mrs. Berkeley, the
Marquise Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Mrs. Joe Riggs. When the soup, which
my father was supposed to serve, was put on the table, he was so engaged
in conversation with Lady Elizabeth Douglas, that he unconsciously helped
himself to it, and began calmly to eat, talking all the while. My mother,
having drawn Captain Berkeley’s attention to what the host was doing, the
latter said, laughing:—
“I say, old fellow, I hope you are enjoying the soup, but all this time
you are keeping us waiting, and we should like to enjoy it as well.”
My father then realized what he had done, apologized and said:—
“Upon my word, I am so absent-minded that I did not know what I was
doing.”
In later years, while in India, I made the acquaintance of the Vicomte
Arthur d’Assailly, and, meeting him afterwards in Paris, was invited to
call upon him at his hôtel in the Rue Las Cases. I happened to mention
this to my father, when he told me that I should be careful about the
people whom I called on, as there were so many adventurers in Paris. Some
months later, I went with my father to a club, where someone slapped
him on the back, and, to my great surprise, it was none other than
d’Assailly. My father then told me that he had known him for years, and
that he was an excellent fellow, but that he must have been thinking of
something else when I asked whether I should call on him, and so did
not catch the name I had mentioned, and thought I had come across some
adventurer or other.
The Baroness Adelsdorfer gave my father one day, when he happened to
call upon her, a very important letter to post, which he promised to put
into the letter-box as he was going out. She told him that she wanted
an immediate answer to this letter, so that he was to post it at once.
He carried this letter about with him for a whole week, when, in my
presence, he suddenly discovered it in his pocket. On his returning to
the Baroness, she asked him about this letter, to which she was still
awaiting a reply.
“Oh! I posted it all right, depend upon it,” he replied, laughing. “There
has been some delay somewhere.”
The Baroness, however, knew him of old, and exclaimed:—
“I know you must have forgotten to post it; I should not be surprised if
you still have it in your pocket.”
I met the Baroness Adelsdorfer once at Longchamps, near the entrance
to the Grand Stand, just before the races began, when, stepping out of
her carriage—a very fine turn-out—she came up to me very excitedly, and
exclaimed:—
“It is really too bad of your father. I have been waiting here for him
for half an hour, as he promised to get me a ticket for the Jockey Club
Stand, and I don’t see the least sign of him.”
My father, as a matter of fact, had forgotten all about the poor
Baroness, and did not put in an appearance at Longchamps that day.
However, the lady fortunately managed to get the ticket she wanted from
some other member of the club.
At this time, my father used to be always with Captain Lennox Berkeley
(afterwards Earl of Berkeley), and I recollect his saying to me on
several occasions:—
“Whenever I have a difficult business letter to write, I always ask
Berkeley’s advice. I never met anyone who could write such a good
business letter as he can.”
Once, when Berkeley was away from Paris, he said to me:
“I wish Berkeley were here; I have such a bothering letter to write and
he could do it so well for me.”
I offered to try my hand at this letter, and composed one which he said
would answer the purpose. But I discovered afterwards that he had torn it
up, and, later, he admitted having done so, saying:—
“You cannot write like Berkeley; I don’t know anybody else who can.”
While on the subject of letter-writing, I may mention that my mother
frequently expressed regret that she had not kept the letters written to
her by her aunt, Lady Caroline Murray, observing that they were so well
written and so beautifully expressed that they were quite equal in every
respect to those of Madame de Sévigné.
I took lessons in fencing at this time from Dusauty, who had been in
the “Cent Gardes” during the Empire, though Sir Edward Cunninghame, a
well-known duellist in Paris, had advised my learning from Pons, who had
been his instructor. I liked the way Dusauty taught me very much. He was
one of the finest fencers whom I had ever seen, and taught some of the
most redoubtable duellists, who often came to fence with him just before
a duel. I fenced with some of them when Dusauty happened to be engaged
in giving another lesson, which was a great pleasure to me. Dusauty was
quite young, only seven-and-twenty, a very fine-looking, dark man, six
feet, two inches in height. Unhappily, he died not long afterwards. His
death, it was said, was attributable to the constant shouting and the
amount of dust which he was obliged to inhale while engaged in giving
his fencing lessons, which caused him to contract the lung disease which
proved fatal. I learned to fence with both hands, and preferred fencing
with my left hand to my right. In after years, I lost the use of my right
arm, and Colonel Crawley, an Old Etonian, who was then in my regiment,
though he afterwards exchanged into the Coldstream Guards, and with whom
I often used to fence, remarked that it seemed as though I had foreseen
that I should one day lose the use of that arm.
When Captain Berkeley went to live at Fontainebleau with his wife and
family, my father was mostly with Lord Henry Paget, who afterwards
became Marquis of Anglesey. Lord Henry’s only son, who, when his father
succeeded to the marquisate, became Earl of Uxbridge, was a charming
little boy, with very pleasing manners, who was generally dressed as a
British sailor. He lived at this time almost entirely with the Boyds,
and his aunt, Mrs. Yorke, had charge of him until he went to Eton. My
father and I used frequently to meet him in the Champs-Elysées with his
governess, when he would always run up to us to have a chat. His father,
the Marquis of Anglesey, was very fond of horses, as was my father, and
their tastes were pretty much the same. They were both greatly attached
to Paris, though neither of them could really speak French, their
knowledge of which was confined to a few words. Lord Anglesey, indeed,
never even tried to speak the language, and avoided French people who
could not talk English. My father, on the other hand, rather liked to
meet them, and contrived somehow to make himself understood. The racing
in the neighbourhood of Paris was a great attraction to both Lord
Anglesey and my father, but I do not think the former ever made a bet. I
cannot say the same for the latter, who sometimes betted rather heavily.
Lord Anglesey was particularly fond of dining at restaurants, where he
and my father in later years often dined together, sometimes inviting
other friends. After dinner, as they both detested theatres, they played
billiards, of which they were very fond, as they both played a very good
game. Neither of them cared for balls and parties, and they both, as a
rule, hated all kinds of ceremony. After dinner they liked to smoke a
pipe, though they were at times fond of a good Havana cigar. This was
somewhat difficult to procure in Paris, but M. de Francisco-Martin, of
the Guatemala Legation, would often make my father a present of a box
of cigars, which he received direct from Havana free of any duty, as he
belonged to the Corps Diplomatique. The society which they preferred
was that which attached little importance to matters of etiquette and
ceremonial, except on certain occasions, as, for instance, when Lord
Lyons, the British Ambassador, dined with Lord Anglesey. Then everything
was carried to the other extreme, the Marquis priding himself on making
a very great display in the way of silver plate and beautiful flowers,
while the very best dinner which Madame Chevet, of the Palais-Royal,
could supply, together with the choicest wines and liqueurs, was
provided. An American lady, whom the Marquis admired very much, was
usually invited to preside and entertain the Ambassador.
There was an Englishman in Paris whose name was Field, and at one time
Lord Anglesey was on rather friendly terms with him; but one day the
Marquis told my father that he gave himself airs, so that he intended
to drop his acquaintance. Field was a very short, dark, clean-shaven
man, more like an American than an Englishman. He used to receive every
afternoon, when he was with the Marquis, my father and myself, various
lavender-coloured notes, highly perfumed, on receiving which he would
exclaim:
“Another letter from —— ——!” mentioning the name of a celebrated actress.
I asked him once, when he had given me the note to read, if she often
wrote to him in that style, to which he replied that sometimes he
received such notes from her every hour in the day. After Lord Anglesey
had quarrelled with him I never met him again in Paris. I think he must
have gone away, or perhaps he used to avoid the spot in the Champs
Elysées where the Marquis and my father generally sat from five to six in
the afternoon, to watch the carriages go by.
Lord Anglesey occupied a very fine _appartement_ in the Avenue Kléber,
which he rented when he was still Lord Henry Paget. I recollect my father
and I meeting him in the Champs-Elysées just after his half-brother’s
death, when the former congratulated him on having succeeded to the
title, and the new Marquis said:—
“I shall only have about £80,000 a year at present, I think, but perhaps
more later, as my brother was heavily insured.”
Some days afterwards, my father asked him whether he intended to put his
servants into powder, when he replied:—
“I am afraid I can’t afford that yet, as I should have to keep at least
twelve footmen, six in powder, and the other six to relieve them; but
later on I may be able to manage it; at least, I hope so.”
The windows of Lord Anglesey’s _appartement_ facing the street were
furnished with very conspicuous pink-coloured blinds, adorned on the
outside with very large coronets, which caused a good deal of comment.
I remember asking Lord Conyers, who was a friend of the Marquis, why
the latter was so fond of displaying these large coronets on almost
everything he used, and that Lord Conyers answered that Lord Anglesey
had inherited this taste, which was a purely French one, from the French
Kings, Louis XIV. and Louis XV., to whom his ancestors were related, but
that in other respects his habits and ways were entirely English.
Folliot Duff and his wife and daughters were then living in Paris. He
was a brother of Billy Duff, whose widow also resided there. Folliot
Duff was a good boxer, and in Paris he conceived a great passion for
fencing. I often called on the Duffs, when he invariably used to turn the
conversation to his favourite hobby. He was a very agreeable man, but I
never remember seeing him without his giving me a lecture on fencing, or
occasionally, by way of a change, on boxing. Mrs. Folliot Duff was a very
great friend of my mother, and, after her husband’s death, she used often
to come and dine with us.
M. de Francisco-Martin, son of the Minister for Guatemala, and
brother-in-law of the Marquis de San Carlos, formerly Spanish Ambassador
in Paris, was also a great friend of the Duffs. He lived in a very fine
hôtel in the Rue Fortin, which he sold to the Marquis of Anglesey for
£40,000. The latter, however, only lived there a month with his last
wife. Francisco-Martin often used to pay us a visit of an evening, when
his conversation ran mainly on horses and racing, for which he shared my
father’s partiality.
I used occasionally to visit the daughters of the Minister for Venezuela,
who lived in a very fine _appartement_ on the Avenue d’Iéna. One of them,
who was then about sixteen, was an exceedingly pretty girl, with blue
eyes, jet black hair, small but beautiful features, and very white teeth,
and the way in which she spoke Spanish was charming to listen to, so soft
did it sound. I often went to her _appartement_, when she would invite
me to take tea, and sometimes I found her alone, as her sister, who was
engaged to be married, was generally with her _fiancé_. The younger
sister, whose name was Mercèdes, made me speak Spanish to her at times;
at others we spoke French, and the time I spent with her seemed to pass
very quickly—too quickly, indeed, to please me.
I recollect calling one day on Madame de Passy and meeting there the
Marchioness de Peñafiel, whose husband afterwards succeeded the Count de
San Miguel as Portuguese Minister in Paris. The Marchioness was wearing
that day a very pretty hat covered with white flowers, for which, she
told Madame de Passy, she had just given 300 francs. As she was on the
point of leaving, it began to rain, and although the Marchioness’s
gorgeous equipage was waiting at the door for her, she was so fearful
lest her mew hat should be spoiled, that, with Madame de Passy’s help,
she covered it entirely over with a lace handkerchief, and then advanced
bravely to her carriage, escorted by a footman, holding an umbrella over
her head. The Marchioness de Peñafiel was a great friend of the Minister
for Venezuela and his lovely daughters, of whom I have just spoken.
One day, when I happened to be visiting the Shards, who lived in the
same house as Madame de Passy, I was telling the second daughter, Sophie
Shard, a good-looking young girl, what trouble I had to get a good valet,
when she said:—
“Why don’t you take a pretty girl and dress her in a page’s costume? I
am sure she would suit you much better than a boy. I should do this if
I were you, and I know you will be grateful to me for the advice I have
given you, if you only follow it.”
I thought her idea, which reminded me of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister,
excellent, but, as I was not my own master, I could not quite see my way
to carry it out.
About this time, I made the acquaintance of Madame Saba, who lived in
the same _appartement_ as Mlle. Daram, of the Grand Opéra. The latter
was a very pretty girl, with an exquisite figure, who possessed a fine
contralto voice. She made it a rule to get up at seven o’clock every
morning to practice her singing, and never broke it. She always played
page’s parts, for which she was paid 18,000 francs a year, and, though
she had a friend, a French marquis, who had about £16,000 a year, and
wanted her to give up the stage, she refused to do so, saying that she
wished to be quite independent. The _appartement_ in which these two
ladies lived was furnished with every comfort and convenience one could
possibly wish for, including a good library; and one day when they
happened to be out when I called, I was given Labiche’s plays to read to
amuse me until their return.
There was an Irish lady residing in Paris, who used to give a dance
once a fortnight during the winter. I recollect that amongst her guests
on one occasion was a French countess, who wore a gown which was very
_décolletée_ indeed, so much so that several English ladies commented
upon it. The lady of the house mentioned this to a young French count,
who observed:—
“_On aime à voir ces choses, mais on n’aime pas qu’on vous les fasse
voir._” Saying which, he borrowed a shawl from his hostess, and, stepping
up to the countess, put it over her shoulders, telling her that all the
ladies were so much afraid lest she should take cold. The countess, who
was watching a game of whist at the time, thanked him for the attention
without taking her eyes off the cards, and then pulled the shawl tighter
round her shoulders.
Miss Fanny Parnell, who was half Irish and half American, was then one of
the loveliest girls in Paris. She was also one of the best dressed and
most attractive in every way. She was a severe critic of her own sex,
and her opinion of English girls was not a high one. On one occasion she
wrote to me:—
“_I think, as you do, that English girls are, many of them, very fast.
They seem to be so anxious to get rid of their reputation for being dull
and stiff that they set no bounds to their liveliness._”
On another occasion, when I told her that I was going to Folkestone, she
observed:
“The girls in Kent, what I saw of them, were each one uglier than the
other. So your fate is, I fear, not to be envied, knowing as I do your
strong _penchant_ for pretty faces.”
Miss Fanny Parnell died very young, quite in the flower of her youth, in
the United States; but the report I read in a newspaper to the effect
that Mrs. Parnell died there afterwards in poverty was, I am pleased to
say, incorrect, for her daughter, Mrs. Paget, informed me some years ago
that when Mrs. Parnell died she was with her in Ireland, and that she was
surrounded by every possible luxury.
Miss Minnie Warren, an American from Boston, who afterwards married a
Vanderbilt, was one of the loveliest young girls I ever met. She was
then living with her parents in an hôtel on the Boulevard Haussmann,
and I used frequently to meet her at parties and balls given by wealthy
Americans. One afternoon I went to tea at her house, as I always did
by invitation two or three times a week, and found her father sitting
down reading _The Times_. He never so much as looked at me, but went on
reading, while I sat silent and feeling far from comfortable, until Mrs.
Warren came in and said:—
“I suppose you have come to see my daughters; they will be home soon.”
I felt very much relieved when, a few minutes after, I was shown into the
charming daughters’ salon, where I felt, as I always did, “_au septième
ciel_.”
Another remarkably pretty girl whom I knew was Mlle. Waterlot, whose
acquaintance I made through the Marquise Brian de Bois Guilbert. I
introduced her to Miss Parnell, as she wanted to go to some American
balls. She found, however, her inability to speak English a great
drawback at these functions, as American young men did not care to talk
French, which entailed too much mental exertion to please them. Mlle.
Waterlot married some time afterwards the Comte de Lesseps, a son of the
famous engineer of the Suez Canal.