From the same vivacious work, a curious account of life about town by John Mills, we now extract an account of an imaginary gamble by D’Orsay, called herein the Marquis d’Horsay, and his friend Lord Chesterlane, otherwise the Earl of Chesterfield:—
“Among the group, sitting and standing about the table, were the Marquis d’Horsay and Lord Chesterlane. The former bore a disconsolate mood; while the latter evinced thorough satisfaction and confidence in his thoughts, or want of them, for good-humour shone in his face, and he now and then snapped his fingers in very good imitation of castanets, accompanied by a whistle both merry and loud. Large piles of red and white counters were before him, showing that Fortune had favoured his designs upon her benefits.
“‘You’re in luck to-night, Tom,’ observed the Marquis.
“‘Yes,’ replied his lordship, ‘I have the pull. But what are you doing?’
“‘Doing!’ repeated the Marquis, ‘I’m done; sown up; drawn as fine as spun glass; eased of all anxiety from having my pockets picked on my way home; and entertain, as you may see, a lively satisfaction in the pleasant carelessness of my situation.’
“‘By the nectar, honied look of the sweetest girl that ever pointed her glass to the omnibus box!’ swore his lordship, ‘your looks and tone carry poor conviction to the sincerity of the axiom. Help yourself,’ continued he, pushing a heap of counters towards his friend, ‘and stick it on thick.…’
“In a heap—yes, in one uncounted, promiscuous heap—the Marquis gathered the ivory checks on to the division in which the monosyllable ‘In’ was legible, and in a standing posture called ‘Five.’
“‘Five’s the main,’ cried one of the croupiers, looking with as much indifference at the dice as they were sent spinning across the table from the hand of the caster as if they had been a couple of marbles shot from the bent knuckle of a schoolboy.
“‘A nick, by Love’s sugar-candy kiss!’ said the Earl.
“In a trice the counters were examined by one of the attendants, and an addition made to their numbers in the sum gained.
“With a flushed cheek and flashing eye the Marquis scraped the whole again upon the ‘In.’”
Again the Marquis—that is to say D’Orsay—wins; he wins again, and again! Again—again—again; never withdrawing his original stake or his winnings, but letting them lie there, growing and growing. Then—the bank was broken!
“‘By my coach and ’osses!’ exclaimed Sir Vincent Twist, a tall, well-made, strongly-marked, premature wrinkled, toothless—or, in the phraseology of the ring, all the front rails gone—badly-dressed individual.… ‘By my coach and ’osses! Fishey’s bank must be replenished!’”
This frankly unveracious history from which we have quoted is doubtless as near to truthfulness as many a ponderous volume based upon documentary evidence of undoubted authenticity—but that is not saying much.
At Crockford’s Lord Lamington, who wrote so understandingly of the dandies, will have met D’Orsay, with whom he was upon excellent terms: “Men did not slouch through life”; he writes, “and it was remarkable how highly they were appreciated by the crowd, not only of the upper but of the lower classes. I have frequently ridden down to Richmond with Count d’Orsay. A striking figure he was in his blue coat with gilt buttons, thrown well back to show the wide expanse of snowy shirt-front and buff waistcoat; his tight leathers and polished boots; his well-curled whiskers and handsome countenance; a wide-brimmed, glossy hat, spotless white gloves.”
Doubtless it was to the famous old Star and Garter that they rode down, the scene of many a high jink and of much merriment by night. A famous house with a history dating back to the dim age of the year 1738. A very unpretentious place at first, it was rebuilt upon a fairly fine scale in 1780, but did not prosper. It was a certain Christopher Crean, ex-chef to his Royal Highness the Duke of York, and after him his widow, who brought good luck to the house. In D’Orsay’s days it was owned by a Mr Joseph Ellis. The old building vanished in flames in 1870.
It must have been a delightful place at which to dine and spend the evening in those far-away D’Orsay days, and very pleasant the ride or drive down there through the country now covered with suburbia. Dukes and dandies, pretty women of some repute and of no repute, bright young bucks and hoary-headed old stagers, hawks and pigeons, the crême de la Bohême, all the world and other people’s wives, would be there; immense the popping of corks from bottles of champagne and claret and burgundy—the monarch of wines. Uproarious the joviality! They were gay dogs in those gay days!
Though, speaking of a somewhat later date, Serjeant Ballantine’s account of the place may be quoted:—
“Many also were the pleasant parties at the Star and Garter at Richmond, not then the great ugly staring barrack of a place that occupies the site where Mr Ellis, the picture of a host, used to receive the guests. The old house was burnt down. In itself it had not much pretension, but the garden behind was a perfect picture of loveliness; the small garden-rooms, with honeysuckles, jasmine and roses twining themselves up the sides, with a lovely sweep of lawn, on which were scattered trees that had flourished there for many a long day, affording shade as well as beauty; one magnificent spreading beech, itself a sight, and an avenue of limes forming the prettiest of walks at the bottom of the garden.”
The view was of better quality than the viands.
There was not a fashionable haunt of virtue or of vice in which D’Orsay was not quite at home. There was not any fashionable folly or accomplishment in which he was unskilled; a complete man-about-town, gambler, rake and dandy. We need not pursue him in all his pastimes; dead and gone revelries cannot be resurrected with any satisfaction; they smell musty. Let them lie.
* * *
XV
GORE HOUSE
Early in 1836 Lady Blessington moved from Mayfair out to Kensington, or—as it then practically was—from the centre of the town to a suburb, from Seamore Place to Gore House, which in Grantley Berkeley’s blunt phrase became “the headquarters of the demi-monde, with the Countess of Blessington as their queen.” She wrote to Landor, describing her change of home, that she had “taken up her residence in the country, being a mile from London.”
The house stood close down to the roadway, occupying part of the site upon which now stands the Albert Hall—why not named after Alfred, Count d’Orsay? It was secluded from the traffic by a high wall and a sparse row of trees, two large double gates surmounted by old-fashioned lanterns giving access to the short drive. The building was low and quite common-place, painted white, its only external claim to charm being the beautiful gardens at the back. William Wilberforce, a previous tenant, writes:—
“We are just one mile from the turnpike at Hyde Park Corner, having about three acres of pleasure-ground around our house, or rather behind it, and several old trees, walnut and mulberry, of thick foliage. I can sit and read under their shade with as much admiration of the beauties of Nature as if I were down in Yorkshire, or anywhere else 200 miles from the great city.”
Under those shady trees far other folk now sat, and we doubt not their meditations were of the town rather than of the beauties of Nature. Of such an assemblage D’Orsay painted a picture, which to a certain extent gives the keynote to the history of Gore House for the next fourteen years. It is a view of the garden side of the house and among those portrayed in the groups that occupy the foreground are in addition to D’Orsay and Lady Blessington, the Duke of Wellington and his son, Lord Douro, of which latter Greville says: “Une lune bien pâle auprès de son père, but far from a dull man, and not deficient in information”; Sir Edwin Landseer, sketching a cow, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Brougham, and Lady Blessington’s fair nieces, the two Misses Power.
Of course D’Orsay also moved out to Kensington, at first living next door to Gore House at No. 4 Kensington Gore.
Bulwer writing to Lord Durham on many matters, notes the move from Seamore Place:—
“Lady Blessington has moved into
Wilberforce’s old house at Knightsbridge.… She has got Gore House for ten years. It cost her a thousand pounds in repairs, about another thousand in new furniture, entails two gardeners, two cows, and another housemaid; but she declares with the gravest of all possible faces she only does it for—economy! D’Orsay is installed in a cottage orné next door, and has set up an aviary of the best-dressed birds in all Ornithology. He could not turn naturalist in anything else but Dandies. The very pigeons have trousers down to their claws and have the habit of looking over their left shoulder,” of course to see that no evil-minded man-of-law was approaching with a writ.
Afterward, doubtless realising that any further pretence at propriety was mere waste of energy and money, he lived in Gore House itself, in the grounds of which he erected his studio. Charles Greville, who so often dipped his pen in gall, speaking of D’Orsay’s art work, declares that he “constantly got helped, and his works retouched by eminent artists, whose society he cultivated, and many of whom were his intimate friends.” Yet we find Benjamin Robert Haydon recording on 10th July 1839, while he was painting his portrait of Wellington:—
“D’Orsay called, and pointed out several things to correct in the horse.… I did them, and he took my brush in his dandy gloves, which made my heart ache, and lowered his hindquarters by bringing over a bit of the sky. Such a dress! white great-coat, blue satin cravat, hair oiled and curling, hat of the primest curve and purest water, gloves scented with eau de Cologne, or eau de jasmin, primrose in tint, skin in tightness. In this prime of dandyism he took up a nasty, oily, dirty hog-tool, and immortalised Copenhagen by touching the sky. I thought, after he was gone, this won’t do—a Frenchman touch Copenhagen! So out I rubbed all he had touched, and modified his hints myself.”
So strange that Haydon should not have recognised that the touch of the dandy’s handiwork would immortalise the picture! There are many historical painters, but only a few great dandies. So little do great men appreciate greater men! D’Orsay was from now onward to the day of his fall at the top of his fame.
At Gore House the salon presided over by D’Orsay and Lady Blessington was even more brilliant than that at Seamore Place, though time was beginning to play his unkindly tricks at the lady’s expense, and debt was dogging the footsteps of the gentleman.
Of the former William Archer Shee gives a description too glowing to be true:—
“Gore House last night was unusually brilliant. Lady Blessington has the art of collecting around her all that is best worth knowing in the male society of London. There were Cabinet Ministers, diplomats, poets, painters, and politicians, all assembled together.… She has the peculiar and most unusual talent of keeping the conversation in a numerous circle general, and of preventing her guests from dividing into little selfish pelotons. With a tact unsurpassed, she contrives to draw out even the most modest tyro from his shell of reserve, and, by appearing to take an interest in his opinion, gives him the courage to express it. All her visitors seem, by some hidden influence, to find their level, yet they leave her house satisfied with themselves.”
Gore House
(From a Water-colour Drawing by T. H. Shepherd)
[TO FACE PAGE 160
But Madden, who was more intimate with her than perhaps anyone else save D’Orsay, gives us a peep behind the mask of gaiety. He declares that there was no real happiness in those Gore House days; the skeletons in their cupboards were rattling their bones. Lady Blessington’s merriment had no longer the sparkle of genuine vivacity, was no longer unforced. Cares and troubles grew upon her; her “conversation generally was no longer of that gay, enlivening, cheerful character, abounding in drollery and humour, which made the great charm of her réunions in the Villa Belvedere, and in a minor degree in Seamore Place.”
This is supported by Bulwer in a letter to Albany Fonblanque in September 1837: “I had a melancholyish letter from Lady Blessington the other day. It always seems to me as if D’Orsay’s blague was too much for her. People who live with those too high-spirited for them always appear to me to get the life sucked out of them. The sun drinks up the dews.” So does the passage of years. Lady Blessington was now fading. The background of her life had grown grey; the passage of years was impairing her beauty; money matters troubled her sorely, and it cannot have added to the joy of life to know that her love and her charms no longer satisfied all the requirements of her lover. Banishment from the society of almost every respectable woman must also have grated upon her who was born to reign over society.
As for D’Orsay, his existence was one perpetual gallop after pleasure and to escape the clutches of duns and their myrmidons. As far back as his arrival in England he had been arrested on account of a debt of a mere £300 to his Paris bootmaker, M’Henry, who, however, did not enforce imprisonment, but allowed the bill to run on for several years. The mere fact of D’Orsay being his patron brought him the custom of all the exquisites of Paris.
It was a magnificent misery for “the gorgeous” Lady Blessington; but D’Orsay possessed a heart and spirit above trifles; the conqueror of to-day does not discount his present pleasure by any foreboding of defeat to-morrow. D’Orsay had conquered London society, almost all the male members of it and not a few of its female; with his wit and his good looks he could gain for love what only money could obtain for less favoured rivals.
Of the fair, frail ones who were to be met with at Gore House one of the most distinguished, if not for good looks, at any rate for the good fortune of having had a famous lover, was the Countess Guiccioli. Shee met her there in the spring of 1837, and was sorely disappointed. He considered her a “fubsy woman,” without youth, beauty or grace; short, thick-set, lacking in style: “She sang several Italian airs to her own accompaniment, in a very pretentious manner, and her voice is loud and somewhat harsh.” It is told of her that once at a great house, when all were alert to hear the song to which she was playing the introduction, she suddenly clasped her—waist, exclaiming—
“Good Lord! I’ve over-eaten myself!”
Lady Blessington gives a kindlier portrait: “Her face is decidedly handsome, the features regular and well proportioned, her complexion delicately fair, her teeth very fine, and her hair of that rich golden tint, which is peculiar to the female pictures by Titian and Giorgione. Her countenance is very pleasing; its general character is pensive, but it can be lit up with animation and gaiety, when its expression is very agreeable. Her bust and arms are exquisitely beautiful.…”
Leigh Hunt tells us that she possessed the handsomest nose he had ever seen.
Opinions differ about beauties as about other matters, so it will not hurt to hear what Henry Reeve has to say:—
“October 15th (1839).—I have been a good deal at Gore House lately, attracted and amused by Mme. de Guiccioli, who is staying with my lady. Having recently made the acquaintance of Lady Byron, it is very curious to me to compare the manners and character of her celebrated rival. The Guiccioli is still exceedingly beautiful. She has sunbeams of hair, a fine person, and a milky complexion. Her spirits are wonderful, and her conversation brilliant even in the most witty house in London. Besides which, she alone of all Italian women knows some things. Besides a fine taste, which belongs to them by nature, she has a good share of literary attainments, which, as her beauty fails, will smooth a track from coquetry to pedantry, from the courted beauty to the courted blue.”
She and D’Orsay were very good friends; there are constant messages to her from him in Lady Blessington’s letters:—“Count d’Orsay charges me with the kindest regards for you; we often think and talk of the pleasant hours passed in your society at Anglesey, when your charming voice and agreeable conversation, gave wings to them.” And: “Comte d’Orsay charges me with mille choses aimables to you; you have, malgré all discussions, secured a very warm and sincere friend in him.” And, writing from Gore House on 15th August 1839: “Your friend Alfred charges me with his kindest regards to you. He is now an inmate at Gore House, having sold
his own residence; and this is not only a great protection but a great addition to my comfort.” A quite pleasantly frank confession to the mistress of a great poet from the mistress of a great dandy. But there have been greater poets than Byron, not any greater dandy than D’Orsay, so the Blessington was the prouder woman of the two.
The Countess Guiccioli
(By D’Orsay)
[TO FACE PAGE 164
The following, written in January 1845, must be quoted in full, and read with the remembrance to the fore that Lady Blessington posed in conversation and in print as having been on terms of intimate friendship with Byron. “… You have, I daresay, heard that your friend Count d’Orsay has within the last two years taken to painting, and such has been the rapidity of his progress, that he has left many competitors, who have been for fifteen years painters, far behind.
“Dissatisfied with all the portraits that have been painted of Lord Byron, none of which render justice to the intellectual beauty of his noble head, Count d’Orsay, at my request, has made a portrait of our great poet, and it has been pronounced by Sir John Cam Hobhouse, and all who remember Lord Byron, to be the best likeness of him ever painted! The picture possesses all the noble intelligence and fine character of the poet’s face, and will, I am sure, delight you when you see it. We have had it engraved, and when the plate is finished, a print will be sent to you. It will be interesting, chère et aimable amie, to have a portrait of our great poet, from a painting by one who so truly esteems you: for you have not a truer friend than Count d’Orsay, unless it be me. How I wish you were here to see the picture! It is an age since we met, and I assure you we all feel this long separation as a great privation. I shall be greatly disappointed if you are not as delighted with the engraving as I am, for to me it seems the very image of Byron.”
D'Orsay / or, The complete dandy Page 12
