D'Orsay / or, The complete dandy

by W. Teignmouth Shore

  Madden says: “A mere report would be in vain, of the bons mots he uttered, without a faithful representation of his quiet, imperturbable manner—his arch look, the command of varied emphasis in his utterance, the anticipatory indications of coming drollery in the expression of his countenance—the power of making his entourage enter into his thoughts, and his success in prefacing his jeux d’esprit by significant glances and gestures, suggestive of ridiculous ideas.”

  To turn to another essential of the equipment of a complete dandy, D’Orsay was an accomplished gourmet. This gift must have added greatly to his usefulness in Lady Blessington’s establishment, where doubtless he was master of the menus. Other folk also availed themselves of his skill in this direction.

  We quote from that staid depository of learning, The Quarterly Review, from an article published in 1835 and written by Abraham Hayward:—

  “It seems allowed on all hands that a first-rate dinner in England is out of all comparison better than a dinner of the same class in any other country; for we get the best cooks, as we get the best singers and dancers, by bidding highest for them, and we have cultivated certain national dishes to a point which makes them the envy of the world. In proof of this bold assertion, which is backed, moreover, by the unqualified admission of Ude, we request attention to the menu of the dinner given in May last to Lord Chesterfield, on his quitting the office of Master of the Buckhounds, at the Clarendon. The party consisted of thirty; the price was six guineas a head; and the dinner was ordered by Comte d’Orsay, who stands without a rival amongst connoisseurs in this department of art:—

  “‘PREMIER SERVICE.

  “‘Potages.—Printanier: à la reine: turtle (two tureens).

  “‘Poissons.—Turbot (lobster and Dutch sauces): saumon à la Tartare: rougets à la cardinal: friture de morue: white-bait.

  “‘Relévés.—Filet de bœuf à la Napolitaine: dindon à la chipolate: timballe de macaroni: haunch of venison.

  “‘Entrées.—Croquettes de volaille: petits pâtés aux huîtres: côtelettes d’agneau: purée de champignons: côtelettes d’agneau aux pointes d’asperges: fricandeau de veau à l’oseille: ris de veau piqué aux tomates: côtelettes de pigeons à la Dusselle: chartreuse de légumes aux faisans: filets de cannetons à la Bigarrade: boudins à la Richelieu: sauté de volaille aux truffes: pâté de mouton monté.

  “‘Coté.—Bœuf rôti: jambon: salade.

  “‘SECOND SERVICE.

  “‘Rots.—Chapons, and quails, turkey poults, green goose.

  “‘Entremets.—Asperges: haricots à la Française: mayonnaise d’homard: gelée Macédoine: aspic d’œufs de pluvier: Charlotte Russe: gelée au Marasquin: crême marbre: corbeille de pâtisserie: vol-au-vent de rhubarb: tourte d’abricots: corbeille de meringues: dressed crab: salade à la gélantine.—Champignons aux fines herbes.

  “‘Relévés.—Soufflée à la vanille: Nesselrode pudding: Adelaide sandwiches: fondus. Pièces montées, etc., etc.’

  “The reader will not fail to observe how well the English dishes—turtle, white-bait, and venison—relieve the French in this dinner; and what a breadth, depth, solidity, and dignity they add to it. Green goose, also, may rank as English, the goose being held in little honour, with the exception of its liver, by the French; but we think Comte d’Orsay did quite right in inserting it.… The moderation of the price must strike everyone.”

  The Clarendon Hotel was situated in Bond Street and Albemarle Street, and with Mivart’s in Brook Street shared the reputation of being the best hotel in town, holding the premier place for dining in luxury and elegance.

  In the later Gore House days D’Orsay must have been sorely vexed, though he showed it not openly, at a mishap at a dinner given by Lady Blessington and himself. It is best told in the words of one who was present:—

  “I well remember a dinner at Lady Blessington’s, when an event occurred that proved how ready the Cupidon déchainé, as Byron called him, was to extricate himself from any difficulty. The party consisted of ten, and out of them there were about six who enjoyed what is called a glass of wine, meaning a bottle. Before dinner the Count had alluded to some splendid Clicquot champagne and claret of celebrated vintage. While we were waiting to sit down, D’Orsay was more than once called out of the room, and a quick-sighted individual hinted to me that he feared some unpleasant visitors of the dun family were importunate for some ‘small account.’ Still, there was nothing on the light-hearted Frenchman’s face to show that he was at all put out. Dinner was announced, and all promised to go well, as the soup and the fish were unexceptionable, when my quick-sighted friend, who was a great gourmet, remarked that he saw no champagne. ‘Perhaps,’ I replied, sotto voce, ‘it is being kept in ice outside.’ The sherry was handed round, and repeated looks passed between the hostess and the Count, and between the same and the head servant. The entrées were handed round, and a thirsty soul, with rather bad tact, for he was too gentlemanlike to be deficient in taste, asked in an undertone for a glass of champagne. The servant looked confused; D’Orsay saw it, and exclaimed aloud: ‘No champagne to-day; my Lady and I have a treat for you—a royal treat. You know that the Queen has lately patronised what is called the Balmoral brose, and here is some.’ At this moment one of the servants entered with a large jug containing this Scotch delicacy, which, of course, following the example of our hostess, we all declared to be excellent. ‘Far better than wine,’ said the late Lord Pembroke, a sentiment, I need scarcely say, in which the rest did not agree. Balmoral brose did duty for champagne and claret, and the only wine upon that memorable occasion was sherry. Whether the butler was absent without leave, or the key of the cellar lost or mislaid, or, as was hinted by my neighbour at dinner, the wine merchant had been seized with a sudden fit of hard-heartedness, I know not. All I do know is, that a mixture of Highland whisky and honey was substituted for the foaming grape of eastern France.”

  “Foaming grape” is good! Not good, however, is the taste left by this anecdote; a party of well-to-do men dining with D’Orsay and Lady Blessington, and cracking jokes behind their backs at their impecuniosity.

  D’Orsay was once dining with his brother dandy Disraeli, and was grieved by the undoubted fact that the dishes were served up distinctly cool. But the climax was reached when tepid ices were brought forward.

  “Thank Heaven!” exclaimed D’Orsay, “at last we have got something hot!”

  As a matter of course the circumstances in which he was so ostentatiously living and his general reputation kept D’Orsay outside the houses of those who did not open their doors to everybody, though most male folk were pleased enough to visit him and Lady Blessington at Seamore Place, where of womankind, however, none except relatives and exotics were to be met with. But even a dandy must find occasionally a crumpled rose-leaf in his bed. But what counted this exclusion against the having been spoken of by young Ben Dizzy as “the most delightful of men and best of friends,” and by Victor Prévost, Viscount d’Arlincourt, as “le roi de la grâce et du goût”?

  It took much to disturb D’Orsay’s serenity and peace of mind; he was one of those blessed beings, whom all we poor miserable sinners must envy, who did not own to a conscience. Certainly the being head over ears in debt did not cause him a moment’s anxiety. He did not realise that money had any value; guineas to him were simply counters of which it was convenient to have a sufficient supply wherewith to pay gambling debts and to discharge the incidental ready-money expenditure of each day. As for other expenses, were not tradesmen honoured by his custom, were they not a race of slaves ordained to supply the necessities of noble men such as D’Orsay, was it not a scandal that they should dare to ask him to pay his bills? What pleasure is there in the bills we pay? D’Orsay never denied himself anything which he could obtain for love or by owing money. It has even been said of him—and what will not little men say of even the greatest?—that he was “unscrupulous and indelicate about money matters.” How poor-spirited the creature who could
ask such a man as D’Orsay to pay back the money he had lent him or to render their due to the tailors and such like whom he had honoured with his patronage! The spirit of a D’Orsay cannot be appreciated rightly save by one of kindred genius. Who that was worthy to be his friend would not feel honoured by a request from him for a loan, and injured by even a hint at repayment? Of what value is a rich friend if he will not be your banker?

  D’Orsay’s finances from now onward were in a state of hopeless chaos, from which the efforts of his friends signally failed to extricate him. Which failure, however, in the long run cannot have made any difference; to have hauled him out of his ocean of debt would only have landed him for a brief space upon dry land, whereon he would have gasped like a fish out of water; he was a born debtor. His marriage had replenished, or rather filled, his exchequer; then he proceeded with skill and rapidity to empty it. Why should not a colourless wife contribute to the support of a resplendent husband? Yet, marvellous, almost incredible, there were carping and jealous spirits who boggled over this and other transactions of Count d’Orsay.

  As for instance Patmore, commenting on D’Orsay’s social difficulties, writes:—

  “And yet it was in England, that Count d’Orsay while a mere boy, made the fatal mistake of marrying one beautiful woman, while he was, without daring to confess it even to himself, madly in love with another, still more beautiful, whom he could not marry—because, I say, under these circumstances, and discovering his fatal error when too late, he separated himself from his wife almost at the church door, he was, during the greatest part of his social career in England, cut off from the advantages of the more fastidious portion of female society, by the indignant fiat of its heads and leaders.”

  There are quite a wonderful number of blunders in the above meandering sentences.

  True as it was that he was cut by “the more fastidious portion of female society,” D’Orsay found consolation, sympathy and understanding—doubtless also advice and counsel—in the comradeship of Lady Blessington—and others. Grantley Berkeley tells us that D’Orsay “was as fickle as a French lover might be expected to be to a woman some years his senior.” In which sneer there is a smack of insular envy. On the other hand Dickens, the exponent of the middle-class conscience, wrote of him as one “whose gentle heart even a world of fashion left unspoiled!” How can history be written with any approach to truth when contemporary evidence differs so widely? Was D’Orsay a saint or a sinner? Who dare say?

  Society gossiped evilly about him, as it will do about anyone and everyone, telling tales that did not redound to his credit. The Duchesse de Dino retails this, under date February 20th, 1834:—

  “A new and very ugly story is afloat concerning Count Alfred d’Orsay, which is as follows: Sir Willoughby Cotton, writing from Brighton at the same time to Count d’Orsay and to Lady Fitzroy Somerset, cross-directed the letters so that M. d’Orsay on opening the letter which he received, instead of seeing the mistake and stopping at the first line, which ran ‘Dear Lady Fitzroy,’ read it through and found, among other Brighton gossip, some pleasantries about Lady Tullemore and one of her lovers, and a sharp saying about himself. What did he do but go to the club, read out the letter before every one, and finally put it under cover and send it to Lord Tullemore! The result very nearly was a crop of duels. Lady Tullemore is very ill, and the guilty lover has fled to Paris. Friends intervened, however, and the thing was hushed up for the sake of the ladies, but M. d’Orsay cut (and cuts) an odious figure.”

  Such a story disgraces those who tell it, not him of whom it is told. D’Orsay guilty of hurting a woman’s reputation, directly or indirectly? The idea is absurd! Of a man too who was a philanthropist and one of the founders of the Société de Bienfaisance in London!

  * * *

  XIII

  A LONDON SALON

  What have been the causes of the decline and fall in London of the salon as a social and sociable institution? It is a difficult question to answer. Our hostesses are as lovely, as charming, as cultured and as hospitable to-day as ever they were; our men as gallant and as fond of feminine society; where then lurked the seeds of decay?

  A successful salon depended upon the brilliancy of the conversation of those who frequented it; a salon without wit would be as a pond without water, or a sky at night empty of stars. Conversation is a lost art. Talk we have in superabundance, also argument. But the light give and take, the prompt wit, the ready repartee, which form the mainstay of a conversation, are now all so rare that it would be impossible to gather together anything like a company of true masters and mistresses of conversation. The finest conversation to-day is heard among those who do not frequent the drawing-rooms of the leaders of fashion. Moreover, in those bygone days men of fashion were expected to be also men of wit and of culture; now-a-days men are rated at cheque-value not at brain-value, more’s the pity. D’Orsay would be hopelessly at sea in London society to-day, not on account of his morals, but because he would not be able to contribute his share of unconsidered and platitudinous trifles at tea-fights, over-lengthy dinners and over-crowded dances.

  In the London of D’Orsay’s prime the salon was still a power for pleasure, and he and Lady Blessington reigned over that which was perhaps the most brilliant that our country has ever seen. There were others. That at Holland House, for example, where Lady Holland reigned supreme and somewhat severe. To that select circle, from which he was now, alas, excluded, D’Orsay had been admitted when as a mere youth he first visited London. Dining there one day, he was honoured by a seat next his hostess, who apparently looked upon the young Frenchman as sure to be awe-stricken by her presence. She did not know her man. Time and again she allowed her napkin to slip down to the floor, on each occasion asking D’Orsay to recover it for her. This exercise at last exhausted his patience, and when the “accident” occurred again he startled her haughtiness by saying, “Ne ferais-je pas mieux, madame, de m’asseoir sous la table, afin de pouvoir vous passer la serviette plus rapidement?”

  Lady Holland had been a wealthy Miss Vassall, and deserted her first husband, Sir Godfrey Webster, at the charming of Lord Holland. The latter has been described as “the last and the best of the Whigs of the old school,” and was a man of highly cultivated mind, of genial hospitality, of wit, and a master of the art of conversation. Among the frequenters of the Holland House circle were Tom Moore, Macaulay, Lord John Russell, to mention three men of very different character. D’Orsay, in what is perchance a stray relic of that famous Journal of his, gives this picture of Lord Holland:—“It is impossible to know Lord Holland without feeling for him a strong sentiment of affection; he has so much goodness of heart, that one forgets often the superior qualities of mind which distinguish him; and it is difficult to conceive that a man so simple, so natural and so good, should be one of the most distinguished senators of our days.” Lady Holland had not shown her best self to D’Orsay; she was a despot, but benevolent in the use of her power and full of the milk of human kindness.

  That D’Orsay was fully equipped to king it over a salon frequented by distinguished men is evident; no less was Lady Blessington endowed with all the requisites to reign as queen. The gift of all gifts to a woman, beauty, was hers in a high degree. Willis thus describes her:—

  “Her person is full, but preserves all the fineness of an admirable shape; her foot is not pressed in a satin slipper for which a Cinderella might long be sought in vain; and her complexion (an unusually fair skin, with very dark hair and eyebrows) is of even a girlish delicacy and freshness. Her dress, of blue satin … was cut low, and folded across her bosom, in a way to show to advantage the round and sculpture-like curve and whiteness of a pair of exquisite shoulders, while her hair, dressed close to her head, and parted simply on her forehead with a rich ferronier of turquoise, enveloped in clear outline a head with which it would be difficult to find a fault. Her features are regular, and her mouth, the most expressive of them, has a ripe fullness and freedom of play pecu
liar to the Irish physiognomy, and expressive of the most unsuspicious good-humour. Add to all this, a voice merry and sad by turns, but always musical, and manners of the most unpretending elegance, yet even more remarkable for their winning kindness, and you have the prominent traits of one of the most lovely and fascinating women I have ever seen.”

  In these years her conversation was full of frank spontaneity; a smile always hovered round her lips, and there was not mingled with her wit any spite of malice. She expressed herself with felicity, though not in any studied manner, and accompanied her words with expressive looks and gestures. Above all, she understood that conversation is a game of give and take, “one bon mot followed another, without pause or effort, for a minute or two, and then, while her wit and humour were producing their desired effect, she would take care, by an apt word or gesture, provocative of mirth and communicativeness, to draw out the persons who were best fitted to shine in company, and leave no intelligence, however humble, without affording it an opportunity and encouragement to make some display, even in a single trite remark, a telling observation in the course of conversation.”

  The evening at Seamore Place often began with a dinner party; some of these it will be pleasant for us to attend, in a proper spirit.

  Habitués not only dined there, but when so disposed dropped in of an evening at almost any hour. Tom Moore records in his memoirs that he did so on 17th December 1833:—“Went to Lady Blessington’s, having heard that she is at home most evenings. Found her gay rooms splendidly lighted up, and herself in a similar state of illumination, sitting ‘alone in her glory,’ reading. It was like the solitude of some princess confined in a fairy palace. After I had been a few minutes with her, however, D’Orsay made his appearance. Stayed about three-quarters of an hour conversing.…”