Gore House(From a Water-colour Drawing by T. H. Shepherd)[TO FACE PAGE 160
Gore House
(From a Water-colour Drawing by T. H. Shepherd)
[TO FACE PAGE 160
But Madden, who was more intimate with herthan 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 herréunionsin 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’sblaguewas 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 perpetualgallop 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 withmille choses aimablesto 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 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 havebeen 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.”
“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, “alwayscourted 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 Kensingtontête-à-têtewith 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 whichchivalryis the only right word.”
Landor conceived quite an affection forD’Orsay; perhaps at heart theybothwere 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 beingread, 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 toZe 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 friendswill 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 anold womanto 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 MannersSutton 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 amun 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 wehave 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 it 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 thenicest 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 ane plus ultraof admiration, and she ejaculated in an ecstasy: ‘Indeed, he is the nicest man that can possibly be!’”
“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 amun 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 wehave 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 it 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 thenicest 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 ane plus ultraof 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 ofRaising the Wind, and ofSweethearts and Wives, was a singularly appropriate friend for the impecunious, amorous D’Orsay.
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’sLucrezia 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, avery 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.
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 inEndymionare 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 theCuriosities of Literatureinto this framework, but in this old-world hall two such gorgeous butterflies as D’Orsay and the writer ofVivian Greyseem 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
Edward, First Baron Lytton
(From a Painting by A. E. Chalon, R.A.)
[TO FACE PAGE 176
Charles Greville was at Gore House on 17thFebruary, 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 ofCinq 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 theExaminer; Chorley, editor of theAthenæum; 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 moredull 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 meet 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 establishan 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, calledBooks 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 theConversations 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.”
TheConversationswere in all probability almost entirely the composition of Lady Blessington, more so indeed than they had any right to be, Byron’s sayings being the invention to some extent at any rate of the lively imagination of the so-called recorder. But it is not necessary here—or anywhere—to discuss Lady Blessington’s performances as a writer of fiction.
The Durham referred to by Greville was John George Lambton, first Earl of Durham, who in 1838 had been appointed Governor-Generalof the British provinces of North America, and whose somewhat arbitrary proceedings there had not met with universal approbation. But there cannot be any doubt that in the main he was right and wise. Charles Buller, his secretary, is reputed to have been the author of Durham’s famousReport on the Affairs of British North America.
When Lord Durham was making ready for his departure to Canada, he included among his immense baggage a large number of musical instruments. “What on earth are they for?” said a wonderer. To whom Sydney Smith: “Don’t you know he is going to make overtures to the Canadians?”
George Ticknor describes Durham in 1838 as “little, dark-complexioned, red-faced-looking.” Charles Greville had many severe things to say of him—and said them.
Durham seems to have been on fairly intimate terms with Lady Blessington. In 1835 he writes from Cowes:—
“I thank you much for your very agreeable letter, which I received this morning, and for your kind inquiries after my health, which is wonderfully improved, if not quite restored, by this fine air, anddolce far nientelife. I anticipate with horror the time when I shall be obliged to leave it, and mix once more in thetroublousrealities ofpublic life.”
Durham died in 1840, and of the event Alfred de Vigny wrote to Lady Blessington:—
“Paris.“Moi qui me souviens, milady, de vous avoirtrouvé un soir si profondément affecté de la mort d’une amie, je puis mesurer toute la peine que vous avez éprouvée à la perte de Lord Durham. J’aimais toujours à me figurer que je le retrouverai à Gore House à coté de vous, et je ne puis croire encore qu’en si peu de temps il ait été enlevé à ses amis. Je ne crains point avec vous de parler d’une chose déjà ancienne, comme on dirait à Paris, car je sais quel religieux souvenir vous gardez à ceux qui ne sont plus, et qui vous furent chers.“Je regrette dans Lord Durham tout l’avenir que je me promettois de sa vie politique, et le développement des idées saines et larges, que, chez vous il m’avait montrées. Si je ne me suis trompé sur lui, l’alliance de la France lui semblait précieuse à plus d’un titre, et il connaissait profondément les vues de la Russie. S’il tenoit à cette génération de vos hommes d’état qui prennent part aux plus grandes luttes, il était pourtant jeune d’esprit et de cœur, et un homme de passé et d’avenir à la fois sont bien rares.“Vous pensez à voyager en Italy, y songez vous encore, milady, je le voudrois puisque Paris est sur le chemin, et je suis assuré par toute la grâce avec laquelle vous m’avez ouvert Gore House, que vous ne seriez point affligée de me voir vous porter en France l’assurance du plus sincère et du plus durable dévouement.“Alfred de Vigny.”
“Paris.
“Moi qui me souviens, milady, de vous avoirtrouvé un soir si profondément affecté de la mort d’une amie, je puis mesurer toute la peine que vous avez éprouvée à la perte de Lord Durham. J’aimais toujours à me figurer que je le retrouverai à Gore House à coté de vous, et je ne puis croire encore qu’en si peu de temps il ait été enlevé à ses amis. Je ne crains point avec vous de parler d’une chose déjà ancienne, comme on dirait à Paris, car je sais quel religieux souvenir vous gardez à ceux qui ne sont plus, et qui vous furent chers.
“Je regrette dans Lord Durham tout l’avenir que je me promettois de sa vie politique, et le développement des idées saines et larges, que, chez vous il m’avait montrées. Si je ne me suis trompé sur lui, l’alliance de la France lui semblait précieuse à plus d’un titre, et il connaissait profondément les vues de la Russie. S’il tenoit à cette génération de vos hommes d’état qui prennent part aux plus grandes luttes, il était pourtant jeune d’esprit et de cœur, et un homme de passé et d’avenir à la fois sont bien rares.
“Vous pensez à voyager en Italy, y songez vous encore, milady, je le voudrois puisque Paris est sur le chemin, et je suis assuré par toute la grâce avec laquelle vous m’avez ouvert Gore House, que vous ne seriez point affligée de me voir vous porter en France l’assurance du plus sincère et du plus durable dévouement.
“Alfred de Vigny.”
De Vigny was the popular French poet and novelist, author ofCinq MarsandChatterton, ofwhom Lady Blessington remarked that he was “of fine feelings as well as genius, but were they ever distinct?”
Charles Buller will perhaps be chiefly remembered as the pupil of Carlyle and the friend of Thackeray, who on his death in 1848 wrote to Mrs Brookfield:—
“My Dear Lady—I am very much pained and shocked at the news brought at dinner to-day that poor dear Charles Buller is gone. Good God! think about the poor mother surviving, and what an anguish that must be! If I were to die I cannot bear to think of my mother living beyond me, as I daresay she will. But isn’t it an awful, awful sudden summons? There go wit, fame, friendship, ambition, high repute! Ah!aimons nous bien. It seems to me that is the only thing we can carry away. When we go let us have some who love us wherever we are.… Good-night.”
“My Dear Lady—I am very much pained and shocked at the news brought at dinner to-day that poor dear Charles Buller is gone. Good God! think about the poor mother surviving, and what an anguish that must be! If I were to die I cannot bear to think of my mother living beyond me, as I daresay she will. But isn’t it an awful, awful sudden summons? There go wit, fame, friendship, ambition, high repute! Ah!aimons nous bien. It seems to me that is the only thing we can carry away. When we go let us have some who love us wherever we are.… Good-night.”
Thackeray, himself “no small beer” as a dandy in his young days, was a visitor to Gore House, and we fancy liked its mistress better than its master, with whom, however, he was on quite friendly terms. Lady Ritchie remembers a morning call paid by D’Orsay to her father:—
“The most splendid person I ever remember seeing had a little pencil sketch in his hand, which he left behind him on the table. It was a very feeble sketch; it seemed scarcely possible to admiring little girls that so grand a being should not be a bolder draughtsman. He appeared to usone Sunday morning in the sunshine. When I came hurrying down to breakfast I found him sitting beside my father at the table with an untasted cup of tea before him; he seemed to fill the bow-window with radiance as if he were Apollo; he leant against his chair with one elbow resting on its back, with shining studs and curls and boots. We could see his horse looking in at us over the blind.… I think my father had a certain weakness for dandies, those knights of the broadcloth and shining fronts. Magnificent apparitions used to dawn upon us in the hall sometimes, glorious beings on their way to the study, but this one outshone them all.”
By the way, Chorley was never editor of theAthenæumas Greville states.
As for Brougham, what shall we say of that curious mixture of a man? Three parts genius and one part humbug?
It was at Gore House on 21st October 1839, that Alfred Montgomery read out the letter he had received which purported to come from Mr Shafto at Penrith, at Brougham Hall. It announced that Brougham had been killed by the overturning of a postchaise in which he was driving. The company present were completely deceived and the news was communicated to the papers, which with the exception ofThe Timesgave it currency.
Henry Reeve was dining at the club when he heard a rumour that Brougham was ill, and straightway went up to Gore House, to find if there were any news. The letter had been brought over by Alfred Montgomery to Gore House early in the morning; Shafto was the only uninjured survivor ofthe party of three in the chaise; Brougham had been stunned by a kick from one of the horses, thrown down and the carriage had turned over on to him, crushing him to death. D’Orsay spread the news round the town in the afternoon, when he took his walk abroad. Reeve had better be left to tell the rest of the story of that evening:—
“It was the most melancholy evening I ever spent there. In no house was Brougham so entirely tamed; in none, except his own, so much beloved. Only last Sunday week—not ten days ago—just six before his death—he dined there, and stayed very late, which he rarely did, leaving them dazzled with the brilliancy of his unflagging spirit. I was to have dined there too; they very earnestly pressed me; but I had promised to go to Richmond. They tried hard, too, to get Sir A. Paget; but we both stayed away, and they sat down to tablethirteen. I can only say that the deaths which have struck me most in my life have always been preceded by a dinner of thirteen, in spite of efforts to avoid it.”
Brougham, it is said, was very much interested in reading his obituary notices! Shafto promptly denounced the letter as a forgery. Who then wrote it? The Duke of Cambridge among many others suspected the corpse, and greeted Brougham at a Privy Council meeting with: “Damn you, you dog,youwrote that letter, you know you did!” and chased him round the room. D’Orsay apparently held the same opinion and was in turn himself accused of the hoax. Fonblanque writes to Lady Blessington:—
“The falsehood that Count d’Orsay had anything to do with the hoax was sufficiently refuted by all who knew him, by the two circumstances that it was stupid and cruel; and the unique characteristic of D’Orsay is, that the most brilliant wit is uniformly exercised in the most good-natured way. He can be wittier with kindness than the rest of the world with malice.”
Reeve asserts roundly that Brougham wrote later to Montgomery, admitting that he was the perpetrator of the “thoughtless jest,” and continues: “D’Orsay drew a capital sketch of Brougham in his plaid trousers, from memory, which we thought invaluable; and nobody could look at his wild, uncouth handwriting without tears in his eyes. In short, so bad a joke was never played off on so large a scale before; but one can’t look forward without a good deal of amusement to Brougham’s telling the story.”
We meet Lyndhurst and Brougham together at Gore House this year, just as they appeared together inPunchlater on in that famous cartoon “The Mrs Caudle of the House of Lords,” drawn by Leech and invented by Thackeray. The picture represents Lyndhurst as Lord Chancellor reposing in bed, his head upon the woolsack, beside him Mrs Caudle Brougham, very much awake, and saying: “What do you say?Thank heaven! You are going to enjoy the recess—and you’ll be rid of me for some months?Never mind. Depend upon it, when you come back, you shall have it again. No: I don’t raise the House, and set everybody in it by the ears;but I’m not going to give up every little privilege; though it’s seldom I open my lips, goodness knows!”
Charles Sumner, the famous American senator and jurist, visited Gore House in March, and records:
“As I entered her brilliant drawing-room, she came forward to receive me with that bewitching manner and skilful flattery which still give her such influence. ‘Ah, Mr Sumner,’ she said, ‘how sorry I am that you are so late! Two of your friends have just left us—Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham; they have been pronouncing youréloge.’ She was, of course, the only lady present; and she was surrounded by D’Orsay, Bulwer, Disraeli, Duncombe, the Prince Napoleon, and two or three lords. The house is a palace of Armida, about two miles from town.… The rooms are furnished in the most brilliant French style, and flame with costly silks, mirrored doors, bright lights, and golden ornaments. But Lady Blessington is the chief ornament. The world says she is almost fifty-eight; by her own confession she must be over fifty, and yet she seems hardly forty: at times I might believe her twenty-five.”
Of D’Orsay, Sumner writes, he “surpasses all my expectations. He is the divinity of dandies; in another age he would have passed into the court of the gods, and youths would have sacrificed to the God of Fashion.… I have seen notes and letters from him, both in French and English, which are some of the cleverest I have ever read; and in conversation, whether French or English, he is excessively brilliant.”
But most amazing of all his conquests wasD’Orsay’s subduing of Carlyle. Would it not have been thought that the dandy would have been a type peculiarly irritating to the author ofSartor Resartus?
On 16th April 1839, Carlyle writes from Cheyne Row to his brother John:—
“… I must tell you of the strangest compliment of all, which occurred since I wrote last—the advent of Count D’Orsay. About a fortnight ago, this Phœbus Apollo of dandyism, escorted by poor little Chorley, came whirling hither in a chariot that struck all Chelsea into mute amazement with splendour. Chorley’s under jaw went like the hopper or under riddle of a pair of fanners, such was his terror on bringing such a splendour into actual contact with such a grimness. Nevertheless, we did amazingly well, the Count and I. He is a tall fellow of six feet three, built like a tower, with floods of dark auburn hair, with a beauty, with an adornment unsurpassable on this planet; withal a rather substantial fellow at bottom, by no means without insight, without fun, and a sort of rough sarcasm rather striking out of such a porcelain figure. He said, looking at Shelley’s bust, in his French accent: ‘Ah, it is one of those faces who weesh to swallow their chin.’ He admired the fine epic, etc., etc.; hoped I would call soon, and see Lady Blessington withal. Finally he went his way, and Chorley with re-assumed jaw. Jane laughed for two days at the contrast of my plaid dressing-gown, bilious, iron countenance, and this Paphian apparition. I did not call till the other day, and left my card merely. I do not see well whatgood I can get by meeting him much, or Lady B. and demirepdom, though I should not object to see it once, and then oftener if agreeable.”
But Carlyle was not always so complacent. In August 1848, the Carlyles received from Forster “An invaluable treat; an opera box, namely, to hear Jenny Lind sing farewell. Illustrious indeed. We dined with Fuz[14]at five, the hospitablest of men; at eight, found the Temple of the Muses all a-shine for Lind & Co.—the piece,La Sonnambula, a chosen bit of nonsense from beginning to end—and, I suppose, an audience of some three thousandexpensive-looking fools, male and female, come to see this Swedish nightingale ‘hop the twig,’ as I phrased it.… ‘Depend upon it,’ said I to Fuz, ‘the Devil is busyhereto-night, wherever he may be idle!’ Old Wellington had come staggering in to attend the thing. Thackeray was there; D’Orsay, Lady Blessington—to all of whom (Wellington excepted!) I had to be presented and give some kind of foolery—much against the grain.”
A curious company this that D’Orsay moved in: Brougham, Lyndhurst, Sumner, Carlyle, Landor, Macready, Haydon, Bulwer, the Disraelis, father and son; men of brains and men without, of morals and of no morals; comedians and heavy tragedians; he himself the prince of comedians, though, as is often the case, beneath the light, lilting melodies there surged a solemn, minatory bass. An absolutely happy man this D’Orsay ought to have been, but—?
Carlyle in 1839(By D’Orsay)[TO FACE PAGE 188
Carlyle in 1839
(By D’Orsay)
[TO FACE PAGE 188
Not only in the sports of the town but also in those of the country, and with equal success, did D’Orsay indulge, paying many a pleasant country visit. Thus in January 1840 he was down in Staffordshire hunting and shooting with Lord Anglesey, Lord Hatherston and other good sportsmen, and at the end of the same year he spent some weeks in the country with Lord Chesterfield. At Chesterfield House in town, too, D’Orsay passed many a pleasant hour with the generous, kindly Earl.
D’Orsay had a fondness for the theatre, both the regions before and behind the curtain, and for those connected with it in any way. J. R. Planché, herald, dramatist and student of costume, was at Gore House on 6th May 1840, there being a brilliant company and much bright talk. Bright companions and gay converse: no wonder that D’Orsay said that “he had never known the meaning of the wordennui.” To the production of Lytton’sMoneyD’Orsay lent a hand in 1840, helping Macready in various ways to secure an accurate representation of club-life and so forth, introducing the actor to his hatter and so forth, and showing the innocent man how play-accounts and so forth were kept. Actors in those days must have been as innocent of the ways of the world as statesmen and politicians are in these times.
Of another play of Bulwer’s, Charles Greville records:—
“March 8th, 1839.—I went last night to the first representation of Bulwer’s playRichelieu; a fine play, admirably got up, and very well acted by Macready, except the last scene, the conception of which was altogether bad. He turned Richelieu into an exaggerated Sixtus V., who completely lost sight of his dignity, and swaggered about the stage, taunting his foes, and hugging his friends with an exultation quite unbecoming and out of character. With this exception it was a fine performance; the success was unbounded, and the audience transported. After Macready had been called on, they found out Bulwer, who was in a small private box next the one I was in with Lady Blessington and D’Orsay, and were vociferous for his appearance to receive their applause. After a long delay, he bowed two or three times, and instantly retreated. Directly after he came into our box, looking very serious and rather agitated; while Lady Blessington burst into floods of tears at his success, which was certainly very brilliant.”
Macready himself notes of this occasion: “Acted Cardinal Richelieu very nervously: lost my self-possession, and was obliged to use too much effort; it did not satisfy me at all. How can a person get up such a play and do justice at the same time to such a character!”
It was in truth a dazzling circle of dandies with whom Lady Blessington and D’Orsay were surrounded: Disraeli, Bulwer, Ainsworth, Dickens—infact Gore House was the haunt of the novelists, for to the above may be added Thackeray and Marryat. Ainsworth aped D’Orsay in matters of costume and attitudinising, but as is so often the case with imitators the copy did not nearly equal the great original. The author ofJack Shepherdand many other capital stories was “a fine, tall, handsome, well-whiskered fellow, with a profusion of chestnut curls, and bore himself with no inconsiderable manifestation of self-consciousness.” Ainsworth started business life as a publisher, but made fame and money as a writer. In order to correct the above somewhat acrid description of him, here is a pleasanter one of later years:—
“The time is early summer, the hour about eight o’clock in the evening; dinner has been removed from the prettily-decorated table, and the early fruits tempt the guests, to the number of twelve or so, who are grouped around it. At the head there sits a gentleman no longer in his first youth, but still strikingly handsome; there is something artistic about his dress, and there may be a little affectation in his manners, but even this may in some people be a not unpleasing element. He was our host, William Harrison Ainsworth, and, whatever may have been the claims of others, and, in whatever circles they might move, no one was more genial, no one more popular.”
Charles Dickens first visited Gore House in 1840, and soon gained and always retained the friendship of D’Orsay. Dickens was a very vividdresser, his gay spirit loved riotous colours. He has been described as “rather florid in his dress, and gave me an impression of gold chain and pin and an enormous tie.” Dickens thoroughly enjoyed the conviviality of Gore House, as is shown by the following letter:—