D'Orsay / or, The complete dandy

by W. Teignmouth Shore

  “You must have remarked, when you were here, that at all the first-class restaurants you had nearly the same dinner; they may, however, be divided into three categories. Undoubtedly, the best for a great dinner and good wine are the Frères Provençaux (Palais Royal); Philippe (Rue Mont Orgueil), and the Café de Paris; the latter is not always to be counted upon, but is excellent when they give you a soigné dinner. In the second class are Véry (Palais Royal), Vefour (Café Anglais), and Champeaux (Place de la Bourse), where you can have a most conscientious dinner, good without pretension; the situation is central, in a beautiful garden, and you must ask for a bifstek à la Châteaubriand. At the head of the third class we must place Bonvallet, on the Boulevard du Temple, near all the little theatres; Defieux, chiefly remarkable for corporation and assembly dinners.… The two best places for suppers are the Maison d’Or and the Café Anglais; and for breakfasts, Tortoni’s, and the Café d’Orsay on the Quai d’Orsay. In the vicinity of Paris, the best restaurant is the Pavilion Henri Quatre, at St Germains, kept by the old cook of the Duchesse de Berri. At none of these places could you find dinners now such as were produced by Ude; by Soyer, formerly with Lord Chesterfield; by Rotival, with Lord Wilton; or by Perron, with Lord Londonderry.… You are now au fait of the pretended French gastronomy. It has emigrated to England, and has no wish to return. We do not absolutely die of hunger here, and that is all that can be said.”

  A few other friends were faithful. There was Eugene Sue, a much read man in his day, but his name drags on a precarious existence now as the author of The Mysteries of Paris and The Wandering Jew. Probably his chief claim to immortality will be found to be his friendship with D’Orsay, who indeed inspired him with the central figure of “Le Viscomte de Letocère, ou L’Art de Plaire.” He was quite a dandy in his way, though of course not comparable in degree with D’Orsay, and, strange combination, was a bit of a Communist. He gave vent to the true saying that “No one had any right to superfluity”—not even excepting D’Orsay?—“while any one was in want of necessaries.” Yet this is a description of his manner of “doing himself:”—

  “It is impossible to convey an idea of this luxury, of the sumptuousness of those caprices, of those whims of all kinds: here a dining-room, where the sideboards display plate, porcelain, and crystal, with pictures and flowers, to add to the pleasures of the table all the pleasures of the eyes; there an inner gallery, where pictures, statuettes, drawings, and engravings, reproduce subjects the most calculated to excite the imagination. Here is a library full of antiques, whose bookcases contain works bound with unheard-of luxury, where objects of art are multiplied with an absence of calculated affectation, which appears as if wishing to say they came there naturally. Daylight, shaded by the painted glass windows, and curtains of the richest stuff, gives to this place an air of mystery, invites to silence and to study, and produces those eccentric inspirations which M. Sue gives to the public. A desk, richly carved, receives sundry manuscripts of the romance-writer, the numerous homages sent to Monsieur, as the valet expresses himself, from all the corners of the globe.… Everywhere may be seen gold, silver, silk, velvet, and soft carpets.… A vast drawing-room, furnished and decorated with all imaginable care, exactly reproduces that of one of the heroines of romance of Monsieur Eugene Sue, and there have been carved on the woodwork of a Gothic mantelpiece medallions representing the Magdalen falling at the feet of our Saviour, who tells her that her sins will be forgiven her, because her love has been strong.… A small gallery, lined with odoriferous plants, leads to a circular walk, which surrounds a garden cultivated in the most expensive manner, and there is a fine piece of water, with numerous swans in it. The walk is a chef-d’œuvre of comfort, for it is alike protected from the wind and the rain, being covered with a dome. It is enclosed with balustrades, covered with creeping plants of the choicest nature. It is a sort of terrestrial paradise … and beyond it is a park, admirably laid out with kiosques, rustic cottages, elegant bridges, and a preserve for pheasants, which secures myriads of birds for the shooting excursions of the illustrious Communist, whose keepers exercise a severe look-out to prevent any person from touching the game.” A paradise almost worthy of being the home of D’Orsay!

  Sue rightly appreciated D’Orsay, and wrote thus of him to Lady Blessington: “Je quitte Alfred avec une vraie tristesse; plus je le connais, plus j’apprecie ce bon, ce vaillant cœur, si chaud, si génereux pour ceux qu’il aime.”

  Arsène Houssaye had seen D’Orsay at a dinner at Lamartine’s, but had not spoken with him. Houssaye wrote him down as a very fascinating man, “with a smiling air which comes from and speaks to the heart.” Rachel came into Houssaye’s office to meet him.

  “It’s natural I should find you here,” he said, “for it was to see you I came to see Arsène Houssaye. You play Phèdre to-night; I should count it great luck to be there, but there’s not a single seat to be got either in the stalls or the balcony.”

  “True,” said Manager Houssaye, “but there’s my own box, which I offer you with all my heart.”

  “Good! I accept it as an act of friendship, for it’s the best in the house. I’ll offer it to the Duchesse de Grammont, who will come with Guiche.”

  The evening was a great success for all concerned, and Rachel gracefully said—“Comment ne jouerais-je pas bien quand je vois dans l’avant-scène deux Hippolytes?”

  D’Orsay and Houssaye became quite good friends, and the latter frequently visited the Count in his studio, which he describes as “being at once the salon, studio, work-room, smoking-room, fitted with divans, couches and hammocks.” D’Orsay made a small medallion portrait of his visitor, and chatted much about Byron, from whom he showed a curious letter in which the poet says: “If I started life again, I would live unknown in Paris; I would not write a word, not even to women; but one cannot start life afresh, which is lucky!”

  A very different view, however, is that which now follows:—

  Count Horace de Viel Castel notes: “The journals say that Count d’Orsay has received the commission for a marble statue of Prince Jérôme to be placed at Versailles. So much the worse for Versailles.

  “The Count is an old ‘lion,’ whom nobody now knows or receives. He has lived with his mother-in-law, Lady Blessington, the blue-stocking of the keepsakes, and with everyone but his wife, Lady Henrietta d’Orsay, who was the mistress of the Duke d’Orleans, of Antoine de Noailles, and a host of lesser stars.

  “Count d’Orsay for twenty years lived on the aristocracy and the tradespeople of London. Steeped in debt, he has now turned artist, backed by a following of nonentities.… Every year he disfigures some contemporaneous celebrity either in marble or plaster; last time it was Lamartine.

  “D’Orsay has still great pretensions to elegance, and dresses like no one else, with a display of embroidered linen, satin, gold chains, and hair all disordered.”

  Accusations of a more serious character also he brings against him, even that he tried to persuade Jérôme Bonaparte that he was his son, so that he might receive some place or promotion.

  Then on December 2nd, 1851, came the thunderclap of the coup d’état, when the Prince who had become a President created himself an Emperor, and at the same time appears to have put an end to his friendship toward D’Orsay. Shortly after the event, D’Orsay was dining with a large company, and naturally the coup d’état came up for discussion and comment. D’Orsay was quite outspoken in his condemnation, and said: “It is the greatest political swindle that ever has been practised in the world!” Which remark very naturally created considerable dismay in the circle; it is not wise to express too freely adverse opinions of emperors—while they are alive.

  In Abraham Hayward’s Correspondence, considerable light is thrown upon D’Orsay’s opinions of Napoleon and the political situation in Paris. On 17th January 1850, he writes from 38 Rue de la Ville l’Evêque:—

  “Mon Cher Hayward,—J’aurois dû vous répondre plus tôt, pour vous remercier de l’a
rticle que vous m’avez envoyé. J’attendois d’avoir vu Louis Napoléon. Nous voici de retour à Paris, établi pour l’Hiver qui est des plus rudes. Les affaires ici vont mal; l’amour propre en souffrance fait tous les grands révolutionnaires en France, il n’y a pas dix hommes de bonne foi dans ce beau pays; les gens opposent dans la Chambre les lois qu’ils avait eux-mêmes proposées anciennement. Thiers et Berryer, bavards de profession, sont si versés d’être mis de côté, qu’ils combinent une conjuration de Catalina. Les élections de Paris montreront définitivement de quel côté est le vent; en attendant, dans le midi, le gouvernement est obligé de donner son appui à des candidats légitimistes, plutôt que de voir des extrêmes rouges remporter la victoire, c’est bien tomber de Charybdis dans Scylla. Napoléon a le plus grand désir to run straight, mais les crossins et jostlings cherchent à l’empêcher, vous devez vous en apercevoir.… Rappelez-moi au bon souvenir de mes amis d’Angleterre, j’y suis souvent en pensée, et malgré que cela soit toujours avec un grand sentiment de tristesse je préfère cela aux gaietés de Paris. Votre très dévoué,

  “D’Orsay.”

  Then on the 5th, possibly the 6th, of December 1851, D’Orsay sends over to Hayward for publication in the English Press, the letter published in Paris on the 4th by Jérôme, which was scarcely calculated to please nephew Louis. Two lines in D’Orsay’s covering note are striking:—“I always think of dear old England, that one must like every day more from what we see everywhere else.”

  On 2nd January, of the year following, D’Orsay writes a long and interesting letter to Hayward, in which he says emphatically that he was and is strongly opposed to the coup d’état, and that on account of it Louis Napoleon had sunk in his estimation, as he had believed him to be a man as good as his word. He held that Napoleon would have “arrived” without employing illegitimate means, and that Republicanism was an almost negligible quantity. After discussing the standing of various leaders and parties, he continues:—

  “Vous voyez que je suis juste et impartial, quoique je suis reconnu, depuis 40 années, d’être le plus grand et le plus sincère Napoléonien qui existe.” And: “Vous ne pouvez concevoir à quel point les gens ici sont courtisans et plats valets; vanité et succès sont les deux mots d’ordres.… Tout marche à l’Empire.” In conclusion: “Ah! if I were rich, I would soon be in London. Here I am an exile.”

  A few days later he writes again to much the same purport, and says: “J’ai l’air d’être dans une opposition, parce que je n’approuve pas la route que Louis a pris pour arriver où il en est maintenant.” Who can doubt that Louis Napoleon blundered in not asking for and accepting D’Orsay’s advice? But then it was natural that he should not have done so; the little seldom care to accept the aid of the great.

  * * *

  XXIX

  DEATH

  In the early part of 1852 a trouble of the spine became apparent, causing poor D’Orsay much pain and sickness, which he bore with admirable and uncomplaining patience. In July the doctors ordered him to Dieppe, whither he went accompanied by the faithful Misses Power; but it was too late; death was evidently at hand. At the end of the month he returned to Paris, to die.

  On 2nd August, the Archbishop of Paris visited him, and on parting, embraced him, saying: “J’ai pour vous plus que de l’amitié, j’ai de l’affection.” The next day he received the last consolations of the Church at the hands of the curé of Chambourcy.

  Madden had visited him during his last weeks, and has left a strange account of an interview with him, which must be quoted verbatim:—

  “The wreck only of the beau D’Orsay was there.

  “He was able to sit up and walk, though with difficulty and evidently with pain, about his room, which was at once his studio, reception room, and sleeping apartment. He burst out crying when I entered the room, and continued for a length of time so much affected that he could hardly speak to me. Gradually he became composed, and talked about Lady Blessington’s death, but all the time with tears pouring down his pale wan face, for even then his features were death-stricken.

  “He said with marked emphasis: ‘In losing her I lost everything in this world—she was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother! a true loving mother to me!’ While he uttered these words he sobbed and cried like a child. And referring to them, he again said: ‘You understand me, Madden.’”

  Madden believed D’Orsay to have been speaking in all sincerity. What are we to believe? There is something almost terrible in this scene of the dying dandy, broken down in body and spirits, making a gallant effort to clear the name he had for years besmirched. But the statements of the dying must not be allowed to weigh against the deeds of the living. And would the dead lady have been pleased?

  Madden continues:—

  “I said, among the many objects which caught my attention in the room, I was very glad to see a crucifix placed over the head of his bed; men living in the world as he had done, were so much in the habit of forgetting all early religious feelings. D’Orsay seemed hurt at the observation. I then plainly said to him:—

  “‘The fact is, I imagined, or rather I supposed, you had followed Lady Blessington’s example, if not in giving up your own religion, in seeming to conform to another more in vogue in England.’

  “D’Orsay rose up with considerable energy, and stood erect and firm with obvious exertion for a few seconds, looking like himself again, and pointing to the head of the bed, he said:

  “‘Do you see those two swords?’ pointing to two small swords (which were hung over the crucifix crosswise); ‘do you see that sword to the right? With that sword I fought in defence of my religion.’”

  He then briefly narrated the story of the duel which we have already told.

  During his last illness, D’Orsay received from the Emperor the appointment of Director of Fine Arts. The honour came too late.

  At three o’clock in the morning of the fourth of August 1852, aged fifty-one, died Alfred, Count d’Orsay, the last and the greatest of the dandies.

  He was buried at Chambourcy; the same monument covers his ashes and those of Lady Blessington. In the absence of the Duke de Grammont, who was confined to bed by illness, D’Orsay’s nephews, Count Alfred de Grammont and the Duke de Lespare, were the chief mourners; the Duchesse de Grammont, his sister, was there, and among others Prince Napoleon, Count de Montaubon, M. Emile de Girardin, M. Charles Lafitte, M. Alexandre Dumas fils, Mr Hughes Ball, and several other Englishmen.

  Gronow says: “His death produced, both in London and Paris, a deep and universal regret.”

  But one who did not love him, Count Horace de Viel Castel, whom we have before quoted, did not join in the chorus of regrets:—

  “Count d’Orsay is dead, and all the papers are mourning his loss. He leaves behind him they say, many chefs-d’œuvres, and on his death-bed requested Clésinger to finish his bust of Prince Jérôme.

  “D’Orsay had no talent; his statuettes are detestable and his busts very bad; but a certain set cried him up for their own purposes, and called him a great man. One newspaper goes so far as to affirm that on hearing of his death the President said: ‘I have lost my best friend,’ a statement which I know to be perfectly false.

  “D’Orsay’s friends were the President’s enemies—the Jérôme Bonapartes, Emile de Girardin, Lamartine, etc. He never pardoned the Prince for not appointing him Ambassador to the Court of St James’, forgetting, or purposely ignoring, the fact that such a thing was impossible. No Government would have received him. His debts are fabulous.… The papers inform us that he has been buried at Chambourcy (on the property of his sister, the Duchesse de Grammont) in the same grave as his mother-in-law, Lady Blessington. The incident is sublime; to make it complete, perhaps they will engrave on his tombstone: ‘That his inconsolable and heart-broken widow, etc. etc.’

  “He died ten years too late, for he became at last merely a ridiculous old doll. The President does not lose his best friend; on the contrary, he is well rid of, a
compromising schemer.”

  Clésinger one day asked D’Orsay why he did not come to see him oftener.

  “Because people say that it is I who make your statues,” responded D’Orsay, with a smile.

  “Really!” replied the sculptor, “I will come and see you; no one would accuse me of being guilty of yours.”

  Dickens wrote in Household Words: “Count d’Orsay, whose name is publicly synonymous with elegant and graceful accomplishments; and who, by those who knew him well, is affectionately remembered and regretted, as a man whose great abilities might have raised him to any distinction, and whose gentle heart even a world of fashion left unspoiled.”

  Landor writes:—

  “The death of poor, dear D’Orsay fell heavily tho’ not unexpectedly upon me. Intelligence of his painful and hopeless malady reached me some weeks before the event. With many foibles and grave faults, he was generous and sincere. Neither spirits nor wit ever failed him, and he was ready at all times to lay down his life for a friend. I felt a consolation in the loss of Lady Blessington in the thought how unhappy she would have been had she survived him. The world will never more see united such graceful minds, so much genius and pleasantry, as I have met, year after year, under her roof.…”

  Macready:—

  “To my deep grief perceived the notice of the death of dear Count d’Orsay. No one who knew him and had affections could help loving him. When he liked he was most fascinating and captivating. It was impossible to be insensible to his graceful, frank, and most affectionate manner.… He was the most brilliant, graceful, endearing man I ever saw—humorous, witty, and clear-headed.”

  D’Orsay’s good friend, Emile de Girardin, wrote in La Presse of August 5th, 1852:—