D'Orsay / or, The complete dandy

by W. Teignmouth Shore

  He notes, too, that D’Orsay spoke English in the prettiest manner; maybe with a touch of Marguerite’s brogue.

  Mathews has given us a description of the routine of life at the Palazzo Belvedere:—“In the morning we generally rise from our beds, couches, floors, or whatever we happen to have been reposing upon the night before, and those who have morning gowns or slippers put them on as soon as they are up. We then commence the ceremony of washing, which is longer or shorter in its duration, according to the taste of the persons who use it. You will be glad to know that from the moment Lady Blessington awakes she takes exactly one hour and a half to the time she makes her appearance, when we usually breakfast; this prescience is remarkably agreeable, as one can always calculate thus upon the probable time of our breakfasting; there is sometimes a difference of five or six minutes, but seldom more. This meal taking place latish in the day, I always have a premature breakfast in my own room the instant I am up, which prevents my feeling that hunger so natural to the human frame from fasting. After our collation, if it be fine we set off to see sights, walks, palaces, monasteries, views, galleries of pictures, antiquities, and all that sort of thing; if rainy, we set to our drawing, writing, reading, billiards, fencing, and everything in the world.… In the evening each person arranges himself (and herself) at his table and follows his own concerns till about ten o’clock, when we sometimes play whist, sometimes talk, and are always delightful! About half-past eleven we retire with our flat candlesticks in our hands.… At dinner Lady B. takes the head of the table, Lord B. on her left, Count d’Orsay on her right, and I at the bottom. We have generally for the first service a joint and five entrées; for the second, a rôti and five entrées, including sweet things. The name of our present cook is Raffelle, and a very good one when he likes.”

  A heated but brief quarrel between D’Orsay and Mathews gives us a glimpse of the former’s hot temper. The two had become constant comrades, fencing, shooting, swimming, riding, drawing together.

  Blessington had formed the habit of boring the party by insisting on their accompanying him on sailing trips aboard the Bolivar, his purchase from Byron, which expeditions had more than once culminated in their being becalmed for hours and overwhelmed with heat and ennui. One sultry morning when Blessington suggested a sail, they with one consent began to make excuses, good and bad: the ladies were afraid of the sun; D’Orsay said a blunt “No,” and Mathews was anxious to complete a sketch. To which last Lord Blessington remarked—

  “As you please. I only hope you will really carry out your intention; for even your friend Count d’Orsay says that you carry your sketch-book with you everywhere, but that you never bring back anything in it.”

  Possibly there was an element of truth in the criticism; at any rate it struck home.

  It was apparently a somewhat sulky party that went a-driving that afternoon; two charming women and two ill-humoured young men. Suddenly, without any further provocation, Mathews burst out—

  “I have to thank you, Count d’Orsay, for the high character you have given me to Lord Blessington, with regard to my diligence.”

  “Comment?” responded D’Orsay.

  “I should have been more gratified had you mentioned to me, instead of to his lordship, anything you might have—”

  “Vous êtes un mauvais blagueur, par Dieu, la plus grande bête et blagueur que j’ai jamais rencontré, et la première fois que vous me parlez comme ça, je vous casserai la tête et je vous jetterai par la fenêtre.”

  Indubitably ill-temper, of which we know not the cause, had made the Count forget his manners; Mathews rightly kept silent, reserving the continuation of the quarrel for a future and more proper occasion, and Lady Blessington aided him by the rebuke—

  “Count d’Orsay, I beg you to remember I am present, and that such language is not exactly what I should have expected before me.”

  But the fiery Frenchman was not to be suppressed and answered hotly.

  In the evening Mathews received a note from D’Orsay, repeating the offence in almost more offensive terms. Of course, a duel was the order of the day; Mathews wrote demanding satisfaction or an apology; of which former he was promptly promised all he might desire to have. Mathews found his friend Madden willing to act as his second, but Blessington very naturally, as host of both the parties, refused to act for the Count. But Madden was a diplomatist, and despatched to D’Orsay what his principal terms a “very coolly written” letter, which called forth the following:—

  “Mon Cher Mr Madden,—Je suis très loin d’être fâché que Mr Mathews vous ait choisi pour son témoin, ma seule crainte eut été qu’il en choisît un autre.

  “Je suis aussi très loin d’être offensé d’un de vos avis. Lorsque j’estime quelqu’un, son opinion est toujours bien reçue.

  “L’affaire, comme vous savez, est très simple dans le principe. On me fit la question si Mathews avait dessiné à Caprée; je dis que non, mais qu’il emportoit toujours ses crayons et son album pour ne rien faire—que cela étoit dommage avec ses grandes dispositions. Lord Blessington n’as pas eu le courage de lui représenter sans y mêler mon nom, et Mathews a pris la chose avec moi sur un ton si haut que j’ai été obligé de la rabaisser, après lui avoir exprimé que ce n’étoit que par intérêt pour lui que j’avois fait cette représentation. Il à continué sur le même ton; je lui dis alors que la première fois qu’il prendroit un ton semblable avec moi je le jetterois hors de la voiture et lui casserois la tête. J e vous répète mot pour mot cette altercation. La seule différence que j’ai fait entre lui et un autre, c’est que je n’ai fait que dire ce que j’aurois fait certainement vis-à-vis d’un autre qui prendroit ce ton avec moi. Si j’ai accompagné mon projet d’avenir de mots offensants et inconvenants, j’en suis aussi fâché pour lui que pour moi, car c’est me manquer à moi-même que d’user des mots trop violents.

  “Pour votre observation sur la différence des rangs, elle est inutile, car jamais je n’attache d’importance au rang qui se trouve souvent compromis par tant de bêtes. Je juge les personnes pour ce qu’elles sont, sans m’informer qui étoient leurs ancêtres, et si mon supérieur eut employé la même manière de me rapprocher qu’a pris Mathews, j’aurois sûrement fait ce que je n’ai fait que dire à Mathews, que j’aime beaucoup trop pour le rabaisser à ses propres yeux. Il seroit ridicule à moi de ne pas avouer que j’ai tort de lui avoir dit des paroles trop fortes, mais en même temps je ne veux pas nier mes paroles, c’est-à-dire, mon projet de voiture, etc. Si Mathews veut satisfaction, je lui donnerai tant qu’il lui plaira, tout en lui sachant bon gré de vous avoir choisi pour son témoin.

  “Cette affaire est aussi désagréable pour vous que pour nous tous, mais au moins elle n’altérera pas l’amitié de votre tout dévoué,

  “Cte. d’Orsay.”

  Upon receipt of which letter Madden advised Mathews to shake hands, which on meeting the Count the following morning he proceeded to do, the overture of peace being cordially received.

  “J’espère, mon cher Mathews,” said D’Orsay, “que vous êtes satisfait. Je suis bien fâché pour ce que je vous ai dit, mais j’étais en colère et—”

  To which Mathews, interrupting—

  “Mon cher Comte, n’en parlons plus, je vous en prie, je l’ai tout-à-fait oublié!”

  But apparently Lady Blessington had something to say upon the affair, for later on Mathews found the Count with her, in tears, and a further apology followed.

  Then the storm-clouds cleared away and all again was sunshine.

  Madden who played the peacemaker, was Richard Robert of that name, born in 1798, and at that time studying medicine at Naples. In after years he was author of The United Irishmen, and of that curious book, The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington. Mathews writes of him as “the witty, lively Dr Madden, at that time as full of spirits as of mental acquirements.”

  * * *

  VII

  MARRIAGE

  Here
stands D’Orsay, jeune premier, the hero of this comedy à trois, with the limelight full upon him; supported by Marguerite, Lady Blessington, as leading lady, of whom Landor said to Crabb Robinson:—“She was to Lord Blessington the most devoted wife he ever knew,” which either speaks badly for the wives known to Walter Savage or more probably shows that he was as blind in the matter of the lady’s virtue as he was with regard to her age, which in 1832 he declared to be about thirty. Probably in both cases he was judging simply by appearances, which in women are so apt to deceive men, particularly elderly poets.

  For what part shall we consider Lord Blessington as cast? Villain or fool? We incline to the latter: it takes a fairly astute man to play the villain with success; moreover, no man smiles and smiles and is a villain without motive for his villainy—at least not in real life. To complete our company we have two light comedians, Marianne Power, pretty and ever ready with a smile, and Mathews, always ready to provide amusing entertainment. For stage crowd, diplomatists, antiquarians, artists, noblemen, servants and so forth:—

  Sir William Gell, whom we have met, with pleasure; an Hon. R. Grosvenor, whom Lady Blessington declared “the liveliest Englishman I have ever seen,” and considered that his gaiety sat very gracefully upon him; queens of beauty, too, such as the Duchess di Forli, “with hair dark as the raven’s wing, and lustrous eyes of nearly as deep a hue, and her lips as crimson as the flower of the pomegranate”; the Princess Centolla, who “might furnish a faultless model for a Hebe, she is so fair, so youthful, and so exquisitely beautiful”; an Hanoverian soldier of fortune, who came down to fight in Sicily and captured the heart and wealth of the Princess Bultera and her title too; the lively, diminutive, aged Thomas James Mathias, writer of that pungent satire upon authors, Pursuits of Literature, whose denial of his being the only begetter of it did not meet with credence. He was a man with peculiarities, one of which was the frequent use of the exclamation, “God bless my soul!” Another was his singularly accurate memory for dates connected with the eating of any special dish. It was fortunate for him that motor-cars were not of his day, for he was extremely nervous when crossing the street. He appears also to have been curiously simple. One day while dining in a café a shower of rain came down heavily, and Sir William Gell remarked to Mathias that it was raining cats and dogs. On the instant, as luck would have it, a dog ran in at one door and a cat at the other. “God bless my soul,” said Mathias, solemnly, “so it does! so it does! Who would have believed it!”

  There was Sir William Drummond, scholar and diplomatist, minister-plenipotentiary to Naples, whose brilliant conversation was a mixture of pedantry illuminated by flashes of imagination; the Archbishop of Tarentum, a typical father of the Roman Church, “his face, peculiarly handsome, is sicklied o’er with the pale hue of thought; his eyes are of the darkest brown, but soft, and full of sensibility, like those of a woman. His hair is white as snow, and contrasts well with the black silk calotte that crowns the top of his head. His figure is attenuated and bowed by age, and his limbs are small and delicate…;” the astronomer Piazzi, discoverer of the planet Ceres; General the Duc di’ Rocco Romano, “the very personification of a preux chevalier; brave in arms, and gentle and courteous in society”; Lord Dudley, eccentric as is easily pardoned in a peer with an income of £40,000, with his unfortunate habit of expressing aloud his opinion, good or bad, of those with whom he conversed; James Milligan, the antiquary, to whom it was mere waste of time to submit a forgery as a genuine antique; Casimir de la Vigne, who recited his unpublished ‘Columbus’ at the Palazzo.

  Fine company, of which but a few have been named; a liberal education in themselves to a young man on his way through a world where the proper study of mankind is man—and woman.

  In junketings and journeyings the days sped by very merrily. Blessington himself was not fond of walking and was an enemy to sight-seeing of all kinds, so did not often join in the expeditions. Moreover, he was not an early riser, usually breakfasting in bed, and we cannot imagine that his company was very greatly missed; four is company, five is a crowd. The expeditionary party, therefore, consisted of Lady Blessington and D’Orsay, Marianne Power and Mathews; to which various guests were added as occasion and convenience dictated.

  The romantic beauty of the gardens of the Palazzo appealed to at any rate some of the members of the household. In the evening they would resort to the charming Pavilion at the end of the terrace, and there listen to the playing and singing of the servants, some of whom proved to be delectable masters of music. There was, too, an open-air theatre in the grounds; the stage of springy turf, the proscenium formed of trees and shrubs, the seats of marble, backed by hedges of trimmed box and ilex. This shady playhouse the company frequented in the heat of the day; fruits and iced drinks were served. A pleasant earthly paradise, wherein the tempting of Adam by Eve was highly civilised—in its externals.

  There were dinners on board the Bolivar, in the cabin wherein, it is said, Byron wrote much of “Don Juan”; D’Orsay must have felt quite in his element there.

  In March 1825, the Palazzo Belvedere was deserted for the Villa Gallo at Capo di Monte, a less palatial but more comfortable abode, also possessing grounds of great beauty.

  It was not until February 1826 that our party left Naples, where they had so greatly enjoyed themselves, returning to Rome, where they remained for a few weeks, going thence in April to Florence and in December being once again in Genoa. In Florence it may be noted that the Blessingtons and D’Orsay met Landor, with whom they quickly came to be upon terms of friendship.

  It was while on their first visit to Genoa, three years before this, that news had reached Blessington of the death at the age of ten of his son and heir, Lord Mountjoy. Of this unhappy event one of the results was that Blessington was able to make such disposition of his property as he considered right and proper, or at any rate to a certain and very considerable extent. Of this freedom he availed himself in a manner that proves either a lack of common understanding or actual inhumanity. Included in the arrangements he made was the marriage to D’Orsay of one of his daughters, this apparently in fulfilment of his promise to see to it that D’Orsay’s future was provided for. Not content that the young Frenchman should be his wife’s lover he decided to make him also his daughter’s husband. Such a story told as fiction would be incredible.

  Three months after his son’s death, Blessington signed a codicil to his will, which ran thus:—

  “Having had the misfortune to lose my beloved son, Luke Wellington, and having entered into engagements with Alfred, Comte d’Orsay that an alliance should take place between him and my daughter, which engagement has been sanctioned by Albert, Comte d’Orsay, general, etc., in the service of France. This is to declare and publish my desire to leave to the said Alfred d’Orsay my estates in the city and county of Dublin (subject, however, to the annuity of three thousand per annum, which sum is to include the settlement of one thousand per annum to my wife, Margaret, Countess of Blesinton (sic) …). I make also the said Alfred d’Orsay sole guardian of my son Charles John, and my sister, Harriet Gardiner, guardian of my daughters, until they, the daughters, arrive at the age of sixteen, at which age I consider they will be marriageable.… (Signed) Blesinton.”

  In August (1823) this amazing plan was more securely fixed by the making of a will. By this document D’Orsay was appointed one of three executors, each of whom received £1000; to Lady Blessington was allotted £2000 British, per annum, and all her own jewels. Then we must quote in full:—“I give to my daughter, Harriet Anne Jane Frances, commonly called Lady Harriet, born at my house in Seymour Place, London, on or about the 3rd day of August 1812, all my estates in the county and city of Dublin, subject to the following charge. Provided she intermarry with my friend, and intended son-in-law, Alfred d’Orsay, I bequeath her the sum of ten thousand pounds only. I give to my daughter, Emily Rosalie Hamilton, generally called Lady Mary Gardiner, born in Manchester Square, on the 24th of June 1811, whom
I now acknowledge and adopt as my daughter, the sum of twenty thousand pounds.

  “In case the said Alfred d’Orsay intermarries with the said Emily, otherwise Mary Gardiner, I bequeath to her my estates in the county and city of Dublin.…” It did not matter upon which daughter the gallant and chivalrous D’Orsay fixed his fancy; in either case he was to be well rewarded. D’Orsay knew that his future was assured.

  In fact, D’Orsay was handsomely dowered! How joyous must have been the meeting between him and his sister at Pisa in 1826. Lady Blessington has left a pleasant picture of it in her Journal:—

  “Pisa.—Arrived here yesterday, and found the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche (Ida d’Orsay) with their beautiful children, established in the Casa Chiarabati, on the south side of the Lung’ Arno. The Duchesse is one of the most striking-looking women I ever beheld; and though in very delicate health, her beauty is unimpaired. Tall and slight, her figure is finely proportioned, and her air remarkably noble and graceful. Her features are regular, her complexion dazzlingly fair, her countenance full of intelligence, softened by a feminine sweetness that gives it a peculiar attraction, and her limbs are so small and symmetrical, as to furnish an instance of Byron’s favourite hypothesis, that delicately formed hands and feet were infallible indications of noble birth. But had the Duchesse de Guiche no other charm than her hair, that would constitute an irresistible one. Never did I see such a profusion, nor of so beautiful a colour and texture. When to those exterior attractions are added manners graceful and dignified, conversation witty and full of intelligence, joined to extreme gentleness, it cannot be wondered at that the Duchesse de Guiche is considered one of the most lovely and fascinating women of her day. It is a pleasing picture to see this fair young creature, for she is still in the bloom of youth, surrounded by her three beautiful boys, and holding in her arms a female infant strongly resembling her. One forgets la grande dame occupying her tabouret at Court, ‘the observed of all observers,’ in the interest excited by a fond young mother in the domestic circle, thinking only of the dear objects around her.”