D'Orsay / or, The complete dandy

by W. Teignmouth Shore

  “Our great poet” would have torn the hair of his noble head if he had read this quaint production. La Guiccioli did approve the engraving to the contentment of the artist.

  Shee tells us that the Countess on her visits to Gore House was overwhelmed by her more showy hostess, and by her sister, the Countess Saint Marceau, the latter forming a fine foil to the more exuberant Lady Blessington, being slight, short, small-featured, but extremely pretty and piquant, and, as Madden tells us, “always courted and complimented in society, and coquetted with by gentlemen of a certain age, by humourists in single blessedness, especially like Gell, and by old married bachelors like Landor.”

  Landor visited Lady Blessington in 1837; he writes to Forster: “I shall be at Gore House on Monday, pray come in the evening. I told Lady Blessington I should not let any of her court stand at all in my way. When I am tired of them, I leave them.”

  It is very strong proof of the fascination exercised by D’Orsay that such men as Landor, Carlyle and Forster, each one of whom we would think impervious to his charms, should have succumbed to them.

  Landor’s enslavement by Lady Blessington or her sister is understandable, but what attracted him in D’Orsay? Chorley gives us a glimpse of Landor dining at Gore House when its master was absent: “Yesterday evening, I had a very rare treat—a dinner at Kensington tête-à-tête with Lady Blessington and Mr Landor; she talked her best, brilliant and kindly, and without that touch of self-consciousness which she sometimes displays when worked up to it by flatterers and gay companions. Landor, as usual, the very finest man’s head I have ever seen, and with all his Johnsonian disposition to tyrannise and lay down the law in his talk, restrained and refined by an old-world courtesy and deference to his bright hostess, for which chivalry is the only right word.”

  Landor conceived quite an affection for D’Orsay; perhaps at heart they both were dandies? Here is a pleasant bit of chaff from Landor, written to Lady Blessington: “By living at Clifton, I am grown as rich as Rothschild; and if Count d’Orsay could see me in my new coat, he would not write me so pressingly to come up to London. It would breed ill-blood between us—half plague, half cholera. He would say—‘I wish the fellow had his red forehead again—the deuce might powder it for me.’ However, as I go out very little, I shall not divide the world with him.”

  Once when Landor was dining at Gore House, his attire had become slightly disordered, to which fact D’Orsay smilingly drew attention as they rose to join the ladies. “My dear Count d’Orsay,” exclaimed Landor, “I thank you! My dear Count d’Orsay I thank you from my soul for pointing out to me the abominable condition to which I am reduced! If I had entered the drawing-room, and presented myself before Lady Blessington in so absurd a light, I would have instantly gone home, put a pistol to my head, and blown my brains out!”

  In January 1840, Henry Reeve was at dinner at Gore House, and gives a capital account of the fun there:—

  “Our dinner last night was very good fun, but we made rather too many puns. Landor rode several fine paradoxes with savage impetuosity: particularly his theory that the Chinese are the only civilised people in the world. I am sure the Ching dynasty has not a firmer adherent than Landor within its own imperial capital. Landor, you know, is quite as vain of not being read, as Bulwer is of being the most popular writer of the day. Nothing can equal the contempt with which he treats anybody who has more than six readers and three admirers unless it be that saying of Hegel’s, when he declared that nobody understood his writings but himself, and that not always. Lady B(lessington) said the finest thing of Carlyle’s productions that ever was uttered; she called them ‘spangled fustian.’”

  Forster and D’Orsay got on very well together, which was perhaps due to the almost if not quite exaggerated respect paid by the former to the latter. He was heard above the roar of talk at one of his dinners, absolutely shouting to his man Henry: “Good heavens, sir, butter for the Count’s flounders!” D’Orsay contrived to misunderstand him very nicely on an occasion. Forster when expecting a visit from the Count was urgently summoned to his printers. He gave his servant strict injunction to tell the Count, should he call before his return, that he had just gone round to Messrs Spottiswoode. He missed his visitor entirely, and his explanation when next he met him was cut short by—“Ah! I know, you had just gone round to Ze Spotted Dog—I understand.”

  In 1835 Lady Blessington writes to Forster from Gore House:

  “It has given me the greatest pleasure to hear that you are so much better. Count d’Orsay assures me that the improvement is most satisfactory. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of his birthday, and a few friends will meet to celebrate it. How I wish you were to be among the number.” Ten years later, when Forster again was on the sick-list, she writes: “If you knew the anxiety we all feel about your health, and the fervent prayers we offer up for its speedy restoration, you would be convinced, that though you have friends of longer date, you have none more affectionately and sincerely attached to you than those at Gore House. I claim the privilege of an old woman to be allowed to see you as soon as a visitor in a sick-room can be admitted. Sterne says that ‘A friend has the same right as a physician,’ and I hope you will remember this. Count d’Orsay every day regrets that he cannot go and nurse you, and we both often wish you were here, that we might try our power of alleviating your illness, if not of curing you. God bless you, and restore you speedily to health.”

  Macready turns up, if we may use words so flippant of a man so serious, at Gore House in 1837. “Reached Lady Blessington’s about a quarter before eight,” he writes. “Found there Fonblanque, Bulwer, Trelawney, Procter, Auldjo, Forster, Lord Canterbury, Fred Reynolds and Mr and Mrs Fairlie, Kenney, a young Manners Sutton, Count d’Orsay and some unknown. I passed an agreeable day, and had a long and interesting conversation in the drawing-room (what an elegant and splendid room it is!) with D’Orsay on pictures.”

  Of the members of the party that Macready found himself amongst—Lord Canterbury, when he was the Right Honourable Charles Manners Sutton and Speaker of the House of Commons, had married in 1828 Lady Blessington’s sister Ellen, of whom Moore speaks as “Mrs Speaker”: “Amused to see her, in all her state, the same hearty, lively Irishwoman still.” She had first been married to a Mr Purves. Mrs Fairlie was Mrs Purves’ eldest daughter, Louisa, who while quite young had married Mr John Fairlie. Trelawney was the “Younger Son,” whose “Adventures” are so entertaining and exciting, the intimate of Shelley and Byron, and the model for the old sea captain of Millais’ “North-West Passage.” Procter was “Barry Cornwall”; John Auldjo had been introduced to Lady Blessington by Gell in 1834; Frederick Mansell Reynolds was a minor poet and writer of tales, a letter from whom shows D’Orsay in a pleasant light. It is written from Jersey in 1837—

  “My Dear Lady Blessington,—After having so recently seen you, and being so powerfully and so painfully under the influence of a desire never again to place the sea between me and yourself and circle, I feel almost provoked to find how much this place suits me in every physical respect.… You and Count d’Orsay speak kindly and cheerfully to me; but I am un malade imaginaire, for I do not fear death; on the contrary, I rather look to it as my only hope of secure and lasting tranquillity. In the lull which has hitherto accompanied my return to this delicious climate, I have had time and opportunity for ample retrospection, and I find that we have both[11] laid in a stock of regard for Count d’Orsay which is immeasurable: anybody so good-natured and so kind-hearted I never before saw; it seems to me that it should be considered an inestimable privilege to live in his society. When you write to me, pray be good enough to acquaint me whether you have been told verbatim what a lady said on the subject; for praise so natural, hearty and agreeable was never before uttered in a soliloquy, which her speech really was, though I was present at the time.

  “At the risk of repeating, I really must tell it to you. After Count d’Orsay’s departure from our house, there was a pause, when i
t was broken, by her exclaiming, ‘What a very nice man!’ I assented in my own mind, but I was pursuing also a chain of thought of my own, and I made no audible reply. Our ruminations then proceeded, when mine were once more interrupted by her saying: ‘In fact, he is the nicest man I ever saw.’

  “This is a pleasant avowal to me, I thought; but still I could not refrain from admitting that she was right. Then again, for a third time, the mental machinery of both went to work in silence, until that of the lady reached a ne plus ultra of admiration, and she ejaculated in an ecstasy: ‘Indeed, he is the nicest man that can possibly be!’”

  The Kenney mentioned by Macready must have been James, who as the author of Raising the Wind, and of Sweethearts and Wives, was a singularly appropriate friend for the impecunious, amorous D’Orsay.

  * * *

  XVI

  STARS

  Lady Blessington reported that in June 1838, London was “insupportable. The streets and the Park crowded to suffocation, and all the people gone mad”; but in the same month Dizzy writes in a different key: “We had a very agreeable party at D’Orsay’s yesterday. Zichy, who has cut out even Esterhazy, having two jackets; one of diamonds more brilliant than E.’s, and another which he wore at the drawing-room yesterday of turquoises. This makes the greatest sensation of the two.… Then there was the Duke of Ossuna, a young man, but a grandee of the highest grade.… He is a great dandy and looks like Philip II., but though the only living descendant of the Borgias, he has the reputation of being very amiable. When he was last at Paris he attended a representation of Victor Hugo’s Lucrezia Borgia. She says in one of the scenes: ‘Great crimes are in our blood.’ All his friends looked at him with an expression of fear; ‘But the blood has degenerated,’ he said, ‘for I have committed only weaknesses.’ Then there was the real Prince Poniatowsky, also young and with a most brilliant star. Then came Kissiloffs and Strogonoffs, ‘and other offs and ons,’ and de Belancour, a very agreeable person. Lyndhurst, Gardner, Bulwer and myself completed the party.”

  D’Ossuna died while quite a young man and was succeeded by his brother, also a friend of D’Orsay.

  This must have been a curiously polyglot gathering, and the noble company of dandies was brilliantly represented by D’Orsay, Bulwer and Dizzy, not to mention Zichy of the turquoise jacket.

  * * *

  XVII

  COMPANY

  There is both amusement and interest in the record of the year 1839, during which all pretence at a separate establishment was cast aside, and the D’Orsay-Blessington alliance was publicly acknowledged by the gentleman taking up his residence in the lady’s house.

  D’Orsay went down this year to Bradenham, on a visit to the Disraelis.

  It is not uninteresting to know that Bradenham and Hurstley in Endymion are one and the same place, and thus described:—

  “At the foot of the Berkshire downs, and itself on a gentle elevation, there is an old hall with gable ends and lattice windows, standing in grounds which once were stately, and where there are yet glade-like terraces of yew-trees, which give an air of dignity to a neglected scene. In the front of the hall huge gates of iron, highly wrought, and bearing an ancient date as well as the shield of a noble house, opened on a village green, round which were clustered the cottages of the parish, with only one exception, and that was the vicarage house, a modern building, not without taste, and surrounded by a small but brilliant garden. The church was contiguous to the hall, and had been raised by the lord on a portion of his domain. Behind the hall and its enclosure the country was common land but picturesque. It had once been a beech forest, and though the timber had been greatly cleared, the green land was occasionally dotted, sometimes with groups and sometimes with single trees, while the juniper which here abounded, and rose to a great height, gave a rich wildness to the scene, and sustained its forest character.” It is easy to fit the author of the Curiosities of Literature into this framework, but in this old-world hall two such gorgeous butterflies as D’Orsay and the writer of Vivian Grey seem rather astray. It would be almost as startling to find a dog-rose climbing up a lamp-post in Pall Mall, or honeysuckle adorning the front of the Thatched House.

  Disraeli writes to Lady Blessington:—

  “We send you back our dearest D’Orsay, with some of the booty of yesterday’s sport as our homage to you. His visit has been very short, but very charming, and everybody here loves him as much as you and I do. I hope that I shall soon see you, and see you well; and in the meantime, I am, as I shall ever be, your affectionate—”

  Concerning an earlier occasion, Disraeli writes from Bradenham on 5th August 1834, to Lady Blessington:—

  “I suppose it is vain to hope to see my dear D’Orsay here; I wish indeed he would come. Here is a wish by no means contemptible. He can bring his horses if he likes, but I can mount him. Adieu, dear Lady Blessington, some day I will try to write you a more amusing letter; at present I am in truth ill and sad.”

  Edward, First Baron Lytton

  (From a Painting by A. E. Chalon, R.A.)

  [TO FACE PAGE 176

  Charles Greville was at Gore House on 17th February, and seems to have enjoyed himself pretty well:—

  “February 17th.—I dined at Lady Blessington’s yesterday, to meet Durham and Brougham; but, after all, the latter did not come, and the excuse he made was, that it was better not; and as he was taking, or going to take (we shall see) a moderate course about Canada, it would impair his efficacy if the press were to trumpet forth, and comment on, his meeting with Durham. There was that sort of strange omnium gatherum party which is to be met with nowhere else, and which for that reason alone is curious. We had Prince Louis Napoleon and his A.D.C.[12] He is a short, thickish, vulgar-looking man, without the slightest resemblance to his imperial uncle, or any intelligence in his countenance. Then we had the ex-Governor of Canada, Captain Marriott, the Count Alfred de Vigny (author of Cinq Mars, etc.), Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, and a proper sprinkling of ordinary persons to mix up with these celebrities. In the evening, Forster, sub-editor of the Examiner; Chorley, editor of the Athenæum; Macready and Charles Buller. Lady Blessington’s existence is a curiosity, and her house and society have at least the merit of being singular, though the latter is not so agreeable as from its composition it ought to be. There is no end to the men of consequence and distinction in the world who go there occasionally—Brougham, Lyndhurst, Abinger, Canterbury, Durham, and many others; all the minor poets, literati, and journalists, without exception, together with some of the highest pretensions. Moore is a sort of friend of hers; she had been very intimate with Byron, and is with Walter Savage Landor. Her house is furnished with a luxury and splendour not to be surpassed; her dinners are frequent and good; and D’Orsay does the honours with a frankness and cordiality which are very successful; but all this does not make society, in the real meaning of the term. There is a vast deal of coming and going, and eating and drinking, and a corresponding amount of noise, but little or no conversation, discussion, easy quiet interchange of ideas and opinions, no regular social foundation of men of intellectual or literary calibre ensuring a perennial flow of conversation, and which, if it existed, would derive strength and assistance from the light superstructure of occasional visitors, with the much or the little they might individually contribute. The reason of this is that the woman herself, who must give the tone to her own society, and influence its character, is ignorant, vulgar, and commonplace.[13] Nothing can be more dull and uninteresting than her conversation, which is never enriched by a particle of knowledge, or enlivened by a ray of genius or imagination. The fact of her existence as an authoress is an enigma, poor as her pretensions are; for while it is very difficult to write good books, it is not easy to compose even bad ones, and volumes have come forth under her name for which hundreds of pounds have been paid, because (Heaven only can tell how) thousands are found who will read them. Her ‘Works’ have been published in America, in one huge folio, where it seems they mee
t with peculiar success; and this trash goes down, because it is written by a Countess, in a country where rank is eschewed, and equality is the universal passion. They have (or some of them) been likewise translated into German; and if all this is not proof of literary merit, or at least of success, what is? It would be not uninteresting to trace this current of success to its source, and to lay bare all the springs of the machinery which sustains her artificial character as an authoress. The details of course form the mystery of her craft, but the general causes are apparent enough. First and foremost, her magnificent house and luxurious dinners; then the alliance offensive and defensive which she has contrived (principally through the means of said house and dinners) to establish with a host of authors, booksellers, and publishers, and above all with journalists. The first lend her their assistance in composition, correction, or addition; with the second she manages to establish an interest and an interchange of services; and the last everlastingly puff her performances. Her name is eternally before the public; she produces those gorgeous inanities, called Books of Beauty, and other trashy things of the same description, to get up which all the fashion and beauty, the taste and talent, of London are laid under contribution. The most distinguished artists and the best engravers supply the portraits of the prettiest women in London; and these are illustrated with poetical effusions of the smallest possible merit, but exciting interest and curiosity from the notoriety of their authors; and so, by all this puffing, and stuffing, and untiring industry, and practising on the vanity of some, and the good-nature of others, the end is attained; and though I never met with any individual who had read any of her books, except the Conversations with Byron, which are too good to be hers, they are unquestionably a source of considerable profit, and she takes her place confidently and complacently as one of the literary celebrities of her day.”