“Depuis mon arrivée dans ce pays il étoit difficile de pouvoir donner un Fair Trial, à la méthode, étant toujours obligé à diner et boire un verre de vin, avec tous ceux qui ont soif. Ainsi je l’ai abandonné trop tôt pour me guérir, mais toujours à temps pour me pénétrer que jusqu’à ce jour le genre de humain a vegeté au lieu de vivre—Il faut donc que je recommence malgré que je souffre moins; repénêtrez vous de ma santé, consultez vos oracles, et voyez à me reprendre en main comme vous l’aviez fait. Je suivrai ponctuellement vos airs, et vous aurez au moins la gloire d’avoir guéri une des trompettes de la renommée de la méthode, et un ami sincère. Détaillez bien la manière de prendre, les remèdes, et prescrivez non pas en paraboles, mais dans votre style persuasif.… Adieu, brave Quin. Je vous serre la main non pas de toutes mes forces, mais de tout mon cœur.—Votre devoué et sincère ami,
“Alfred d’Orsay.”
Dr Quin was the first homœopathic practitioner in England, and in his early days was denounced as a quack. He was endowed with an inexhaustible fund of good humour, was a wit and a master of repartee. In a postscript to another letter D’Orsay writes:—
“You have, my friend, an unbearable mania, that of always defending the absent. Don’t you know that there is a French proverb which says, ‘Les absens ont toujours tort?’ This fashion never goes out, and, the devil, you who are the ‘pink of fashion,’ you must be in the mode.”
Jekyll declared to Lady Blessington that he “was asked gravely if quinine was invented by Doctor Quin!”
Here is a quaint little note to the Doctor:—
“Gore House, Saturday.
“My Dear Dr Quin,—M. Pipelet (D’Orsay) requests that you will send him the letter about Mr ⸺ you promised he should have. I suppose it is in vain to tell you we are going to the Opera to-night. Of course you have 999 impatient patients who must see you every five minutes throughout the course of the day and night, and as many more friends who expect you to dinner. However, en passant, I venture to hint that we go with Mdme. Calabrella, so if you manage to kill off the maladies, and put the friends under the table in turn, we shall be delighted to see you ready and waiting, as Homer says in the fifth book of the Iliad, line forty-nine. Farewell, may you be happy whilst I—Sobs choke my utterance. Adieu.”
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XXIII
EXCHEQUER BONDS
D’Orsay might have been a great artist and a great man of letters; of his genius as a financier there is no doubt. He solved the question of how to obtain unlimited credit; he paid such debts as he did cancel with money which legally was his, but which almost any other man would not have cared to touch.
Lord Blessington is said, when he persuaded D’Orsay to abandon his career in the French army, to have undertaken to provide for the Count’s future, and he fulfilled his promise at the expense of his daughter’s happiness and of the family estates.
In the return made of “The Annuities, Mortgages, Judgments and other Debts, Legacies, Sums of Money, and Incumbrances, charged upon or affecting the Estates of the said Charles John, Earl of Blessington, at the Time of his Decease,” we find that the mortgages and sums of money charged on D’Orsay’s account from 1837 to 1845, amounted to the quite respectable sum of £20,184. In Blessington’s will all his estates in Dublin, bringing in a rental of £13,322, 18s. 8d. were left to whichever of his daughters married D’Orsay.
By the marriage settlement £20,000 was to be paid to trustees, the Duc de Guiche, and Robert Power, within twelve months of the solemnisation, and a further £20,000 on Blessington’s decease; the money to be invested in the funds, and the interest thereupon to be paid to D’Orsay during his life.
As we have seen, the happy couple separated actually in 1831, legally in 1838.
In 1834 an order was made by the Court of Chancery in Ireland, upon which was thrown the task of clearing up the mess made of his property by Blessington, granting D’Orsay an income of £500, and to his wife £450.
How great that mess was, for which D’Orsay and his wife were partly to blame, will be seen from the following facts. The Countess had run up debts to the tune of £10,000, which sum, however, is scarcely worth mentioning beside that incurred by her husband. By the deed of separation between them, D’Orsay relinquished all his claims on the Blessington estates, in consideration—
i. Of £2467 of annuities granted by him being redeemed, which cost £23,500.
ii. In consideration of the sum of £55,000 being paid to him, £13,000 of which was to be raised as soon as possible, and £42,000 within ten years.
A grand total of money which all went in one way or another to pay off D’Orsay’s debts.
As to the estate: the trustees were empowered by Act of Parliament to make sales to the amount of £350,000 to pay off all encumbrances and claims. Thus ended the glory of the Blessington fortune; thus often has it been in Ireland.
D’Orsay found fortune and lost it; he could not even retain the wife with which it was encumbered.
Over £100,000 of debts we know he paid, and still he owed very much. For at least two years previous to his final departure from England he went in constant dread of arrest at the instigation of sordid persons, who had not sufficient understanding of the fact that it was an honour to them to help in the support of a great man. There are too many petty-minded people in the world! Just heavens! That a man of D’Orsay’s calibre should be confined to his house and grounds all the days of the week save Sunday, excepting that he could creep forth under cover of darkness! That the Prince of the Dandies should go in danger of the vile clutch of a sinister myrmidon of the law and of the degradation of a sponging-house.
In 1845 D’Orsay apparently realised that his pecuniary condition was irreparable, and sought in vain for means of escape. He prepared a schedule of his liabilities, the total sum of his indebtedness amounting to £107,000, not including a number of debts to private friends, which made an additional sum of £13,000. It was even contemplated that he should go through the Court of Bankruptcy, but a difficulty was found in the fact that it could not be proved that he was a commercial man or an agriculturalist. He only sowed wild oats.
The situation so pressed upon him, that he allowed himself for a time to become the prey of impostors, who declared that they had achieved what the alchemists of old had so long looked for in vain, the conversion of the baser metals into gold!
From an unveracious chronicle we quote a passage which is veracious:—
“Now, among the shyest birds that ever ducked from a missile of the law was, without an exception the Marquis d’Horsay (D’Orsay). His maxim had long been ‘catch me who can;’ at the same time, acting up to the patent-safety rule of ‘prevention being so much better than cure,’ he afforded no facilities whatever of being hobbled in the chase. At bay he kept the yelping pack, and within the good, stout, rich walls of his covert he maintained both a pleasant and a secure retreat from the dangers besetting him. He now no longer ventured to frame himself, as it were, in his cab, and exhibit his colours and attractions to the curious crowds, except on that privileged day—when even the debtor is at liberty to rest—the seventh of the week.[26] Then, indeed, he issued forth, decked as of old, and, like a bird free from the confines of his cage, made the most of the brief hours of his freedom.
“Every art, every manœuvre within the subtle and almost inexhaustible resources of those apt functionaries of the law who are ever on the alert to deprive the subject of his liberty, let him be never so chary of the preservation of it, had been put in force to trap our hero; but hitherto in vain. Mr Sloughman,[27] truly, arrived within a short journey of accomplishing this much-desired end; still he was frustrated, and now among the ranks of bums there was a cloud which damped their hopes and mildewed their energies. The Marquis was not to be grabbed, and they knew it. With flagging spirits the attempts were renewed over and over again. Bribes and offers of rewards were extended liberally to his menials for their traitorous assistance in obtaining the design
, but they had been too well selected, and knew their own interests depended on no such frail or fleeting benefits. False messengers in all garbs and disguises, upon all kinds of errands and excuses, applied for admission and interviews. Even—yes, even the fair sex were at last made not bearers of Love’s despatches, but conveyancers of stern writs, notices of declarations, trials, and suchlike means to the end and breaking up of a man of fashion. Still the Marquis was proof against all these attacks, let them come in what shape they would.”
That may be fancy, but it is close akin to fact.
In The English Spy we read of the crowd in Hyde Park of a Sunday afternoon at the fashionable hour:—
“The low-bred, vulgar, Sunday throng,
Who dine at two, are ranged along
On both sides of the way;
With various views, these honest folk
Descant on fashions, quiz and joke,
Or march a shy cock[28] down;
For many a star in fashion’s sphere
Can only once a week appear
In public haunts of town,
Lest those two ever watchful friends,
The step-brothers, whom sheriff sends,
John Doe and Richard Roe,
A taking pair should deign to borrow,
To wit, until All Souls the morrow,
The body of a beau;
But Sunday sets the prisoner free,
He shows the Park, and laughs with glee,
At creditors and Bum.”
Henry Vizetelly used on occasion to make an early call upon Thackeray, and walk into town with him from Kensington. “On one of these journeys,” he says, “soon after Lady Blessington gave up Gore House to reside in Paris, I remember his taking me with him to look over the little crib, adjacent to the big mansion, where Count d’Orsay, Lady Blessington’s recognised lover, was understood to have resided, with the view of saving appearances. For years past the ringleted and white-kidded Count, although his tailor and other obliging tradespeople dressed him for nothing, or rather, in consideration of the advertisement that his equivocal patronage procured for them, had been a self-constituted prisoner through dread of arrest for debt. It was only on Sundays that he ventured outside the Gore House grounds, and for his protection on other days the greatest possible precaution was exercised when it was necessary for any of Lady Blessington’s many visitors to be admitted. D’Orsay’s friend, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, who was mixed up with him in numerous bill transactions, used to say that the Count’s debts amounted to £120,000, and that before he retired to the safe asylum of Gore House, he was literally mobbed by duns.”
HYDE PARK CORNER IN 1824
[TO FACE PAGE 250
Tom Duncombe describes Lady Blessington’s parties as gay, “where all the men about town assembled, and sunned themselves in her charms; and where, for certain reasons, she was secure from the intrusion of rivals. There Count d’Orsay, tied by the leg with 120,000l. of debt, was sure to welcome his ‘cher Tomie.’”
“Cher Tomie” saw and knew much of D’Orsay, and did his best to help him in his money troubles. The following letters tell a tale of woe:—
Saturday, 12th February 1842.
“My Dear Tommy,—I know that you have been to C. Lewis, and that he told you it was settled. It is not so; he expected that I would have signed the renewals at sixty per cent. which he sent me, and which I delivered. Therefore, if you have a moment to lose, have the kindness to see him this morning and persuade him of the impossibility of my renewing at that rate; say anything you like on the subject, but that is the moral of the tale. You must come and dine with us soon again.—Yours faithfully,
“D’Orsay.”
Thursday, 6th April 1842.
“My Dear Tommy,—I see by the papers that Lord Campbell and Mr T. S. Duncombe received a petition against the Imprisonment for Debt! It is the moment to immortalise yourself, and also the sweetest revenge against all our gang of Jews, if you succeed in carrying this petition through. I have taken proper means to keep this proposal alive in the Press. Will you come and dine with us?—Yours affectionately,
“D’Orsay.”
This last may refer to the schedule above-mentioned:—
“My Dear Tommy,—I send you this precious document; the only one I could obtain. It is a flaring-up page of the History of the Nineteenth Century! God is great, and will be greater the day He will annihilate our persecutors. En attendant, I am always,—Your affectionate friend,
“D’Orsay.”
The following refers again to the Imprisonment Abolition Bill:—
“Mon Cher Tommy,—I think that we ought to try to ascertain how far the humbugging system can go. As soon as I received your note this morning I wrote to Brougham, and explained all the unfructuous attempts of Mr Hawes.[29] I enclose the first answer. Now, he has just been here, after having had a long conversation with Lyndhurst, who is decided to spur the Solicitor-General, stating, as the Parliament will last until Thursday week, there will be time enough to pass the bill. See what you can do with Mr Hawes. I am sure that if he will strike the iron now, when it is hot, that we have still a chance. Lyndhurst, I assure you, is very anxious about it, and expressed it strongly to Brougham. Do not be discouraged.—Yours affectionately,
“D’Orsay.”
The enclosed note from Brougham ran:—
“Mon Cher A.,—Je suis coloré plutôt que désespéré. Il faut que je mette ordre à tout cela. Je vais chez Lyndhurst dans l’instant, H. B.”
Tom Duncombe was himself a capital hand at getting into debt; we read:—“Duncombe is playing good boy, having completely drawn in; he has given up his house and carriages, and taken his name out of the Clubs. He had become so involved that he could not carry on the war any longer. They say that he has committed himself to the amount of 120,000l.”
Readers of Vanity Fair will recall “Mr Moss’s mansion in Cursitor Street,” “that dismal place of hospitality,” to which Colonel Crawdon was an unwilling visitor. It was such an ordeal, that D’Orsay was determined not to undergo. Shame upon those who threatened him with it.
Madden tells us that D’Orsay’s sister “makes no concealment of her conviction that Count d’Orsay’s ignorance of the value of money—the profuse expenditure into which he was led by that ignorance, the temptation to play arising from it, the reckless extravagance into which he entered, not so much to minister to his own pleasure, as to gratify the feelings of an inordinate generosity of disposition, that prompted him to give whenever he was called on, and to forget the obligations he contracted for the sake of others, and the heavy penalties imposed on his friends by the frequent appeals for pecuniary assistance—were very grievous faults, and great defects in his character.”
Mice nibbling at the reputation of a lion! Faults and defects; it is so easy to see spots on the sun! The world is often cruel to its greatest men; and who can deny that D’Orsay was much ill-used? Who can realise the suffering inflicted on his generous heart by the lack of generosity in others? How absurd to insult his memory by calling “reckless extravagance” that which in ordinary men would be so, but which in him was the striving to fulfil his great destiny. If his spirit haunts the earth it must be torture, worse than any in the place to which he may have gone, to find that he should have been so greatly misunderstood. It is a lovable trait in a man that he should give to others of his superfluity; it is adorable in D’Orsay that he should have distributed with open hand and tender heart the spare cash of others. Petty questionings as to right and wrong, meum et tuum, to which commonplace men rightly pay attention, have no claim upon such a man as D’Orsay. To the good all things are good.
He had the tongue of the charmer. Mr Mitchell, to whom he owed much money, would in moments of despair, write and demand immediate payment. In all his glory D’Orsay would answer in person; would calm the tempest with fair words and would usually succeed in increasing his indebtedness.
* * *
XXIV
SUN
DRY FESTIVITIES
There cannot, indeed, be any question but that D’Orsay possessed the gift of fascination; his personality was one that compelled both admiration and attention. It is impossible to define or describe wherein exactly lies this power of personality. Of two women equally beautiful and apparently equally attractive, one will fascinate and the other will not, but it surpasses the ability of even those who are fascinated to say wherein is the difference between the two charmers.
D’Orsay had charm, and for our part we believe that with him, at any rate, part of this charm lay in the fact that he did not grow old; those whom the gods love die young despite the passage of years. He was young and he was gay; and joyousness is singularly and strongly attractive in a world where the majority of men and women are apt to be unjoyous. Gaiety of spirits, and unconquerable, unquenchable joie de vivre, are treasures above all price because they cannot be purchased.
Especially with those who make pleasure a pursuit, and it was with such that D’Orsay chiefly forgathered, the amusements of life too frequently become “stale, flat and unprofitable”; such folk make pleasure the business of life, pleasure does not come to them naturally, spontaneously; they suffer from that most wearing of mental troubles, boredom. Far otherwise was it with D’Orsay. We have been with him now in many places and with many companies, and never once has there been a hint that he was either satiated with enjoyment or depressed when things went astray. He often said himself: “I have never known the meaning of the word ennui.”
Beneath all the tinsel and unreality of some of Disraeli’s novels, there is always a stratum of keen observation and shrewd knowledge of men and women. It will help us, therefore, in our understanding of D’Orsay to see how he appeared to his friend and fellow-dandy.
D'Orsay / or, The complete dandy Page 19
