D'Orsay / or, The complete dandy

by W. Teignmouth Shore

  Henry Greville writing in 1832 says: “Taglioni is dancing at Covent Garden; it is impossible to conceive the perfection to which she has brought the art. She is an animated statue; her motions are the perfection of grace and decency, and her strength quite marvellous.” And again in Paris, four years later, when she was still highly proper: “Her grace and décence are something that no one can imagine who has not seen her.” The actor complains that nothing remains of his art by which posterity can judge him; but the dancer can, at any rate, leave behind a reputation for propriety—while on the stage.

  A welcome visitor was Charles Kemble, who dined with the Blessingtons, and after dinner read to the party his daughter’s, Fanny Kemble’s play, Francis the First. “I remembered,” says Lady Blessington, “those pleasant evenings when he used to read to us in London, hour after hour, until the timepiece warned us to give over. I remembered, too, John Kemble—‘the great John Kemble,’ as Lord Guildford used to call him—twice or thrice reading to us with Sir T(homas) Lawrence; and the tones of Charles Kemble’s voice, and the expression of his face, forcibly reminded me of our departed friend.”

  In 1829 an event befell, which probably altered the course of D’Orsay’s career, and which may be counted as a nice stroke of irony on the part of Fate, that past-mistress of the ironical.

  The question of the repeal of the civil disabilities inflicted upon the Irish Catholics had grown to be a burning question, and Lord Rosslyn wrote anxiously to Paris, urging Blessington to go over to London to support in the House of Lords the Duke of Wellington’s Catholic Emancipation Act. On July 15th, Blessington set out for England; “his going,” wrote his wife, “at this moment, when he is far from well, is no little sacrifice of personal comfort; but never did he consider himself when a duty was to be performed. I wish the question was carried, and he safely back again.” While in town he presided at the Covent Garden Theatrical Fund annual dinner. After an absence of only a few days he returned to Paris, apparently in improved health, and—indulgent husband that he was—laden with gifts for his lovely wife.

  But disaster was at hand. While riding out in the heat he was seized with apoplexy in the Champs Elysées. He lingered, speechless, until half-past four on the following Monday morning when he breathed his last. Lady Blessington was stunned with grief by the sudden calamity.

  The remains were conveyed to Dublin, where they were interred in Saint Thomas’ Church, Marlborough Street.

  What epitaph are we to write? What character to paint of this man, so well-beloved, yet possessing so little strength, so little self-restraint, such a pittance of ability? Landor wrote of him to Lady Blessington—

  “Dear Lady Blessington,—If I defer it any longer, I know not how or when I shall be able to fulfil so melancholy a duty. The whole of this day I have spent in that torpid depression, which you may feel without a great calamity, and which others can never feel at all. Every one that knows me, knows the sentiments I bore towards that disinterested, and upright, and kind-hearted man, than whom none was ever dearer, or more delightful to his friends. If to be condoled with by many, if to be esteemed and beloved by all whom you have admitted to your society is any comfort, that comfort at least is yours. I know how inadequate it must be at such a moment, but I know too that the sentiment will survive when the bitterness of sorrow shall have passed away.”

  And again he writes to her:

  “Too well was I aware how great my pain must be in reading your letter. So many hopes are thrown away from us by this cruel and unexpected blow. I cannot part with the one of which the greatness and the justness of your grief almost deprives me, that you will recover your health and spirits. If they could return at once, or very soon, you would be unworthy of that love which the kindest and best of human beings lavished on you. Longer life was not necessary for him to estimate your affection for him, and those graces of soul which your beauty in its brightest day but faintly shadowed. He told me that you were requisite to his happiness, and that he could not live without you. Suppose that he had survived you, his departure in that case could not have been so easy as it was, unconscious of pain, of giving it, or of leaving it behind. I am comforted at the reflection that so gentle a heart received no affliction from the anguish and despair of those he loved.”

  Five years later Lady Blessington writes to Landor:—

  “I have often wished that you would note down for me your reminiscences of your friendship, and the conversations it led to with my dear and ever-to-be-lamented husband; he who so valued and loved you, and who was so little understood by the common herd of mankind. We, who knew the nobleness, the generosity, and the refined delicacy of his nature, can render justice to his memory.…”

  Amid all this sugar, it is quite refreshing to come across a little acid, and Cyrus Redding speaks out quite plainly of Lady Blessington. He says: “She was a fine woman; she had understood too well how to captivate the other sex. She had won hearts, never having had a heart to return. No one could be more bland and polished, when she pleased. She understood from no short practice, when it was politic to be amiable, and yet no one could be less amiable, bland and polished when her temper was roused, and her language being then well suited to the circumstances of the provocation, both in style and epithet.… The gentry of this country, of all political creeds, are frequently censured for their pride and exclusiveness; but they may sometimes be proud and exclusive to no ill end. The higher ranks have their exceptions, as well as others, of which Lord Blessington himself was an instance. The dissipation of Lord Blessington’s fortune, and the reception of Lady Blessington’s favourite, the handsome youth, D’Orsay, into Lord Blessington’s house, ran together, it has been said, before the finish of his education. Old Countess d’Orsay was scarcely able to do much for her son, owing to the narrowness of her income; but no family could be more respectable than hers. Lord Blessington was a weak-minded creature, and his after-dinner conversations, when the wine was in, became wretchedly maudlin.”

  However, exit Lord Blessington and end Act One of our tragi-comedy.

  * * *

  X

  A SOLEMN UNDERTAKING

  Our hero henceforth will occupy the centre of the stage, as a right-minded hero should do, beside him the shadowy figure of his wife gradually fading away into the background until at last quite invisible, and that of the flamboyant personage of the widow of our hero’s dead patron. Truly ironical; while Blessington lived and was an “obstacle” in the way of the course of true love there had seemed to D’Orsay to be no other way of settling his fortunes than to marry one or other of Blessington’s daughters, he cared not which. Now that the obstacle had been removed and the widow was free to be openly wooed and won, the path he had chosen to pursue appeared of those ways that had been open to him to be the most stupid. The lady who had been shackled was free; the lover who had been free was now shackled. Fortune is a humorist and her jokes are always at our expense, which makes it difficult for us to laugh with her.

  Lady Blessington was clever in the choice of her physician, who prescribed company as a cure for depression of spirits. So we read in her ladyship’s Diary:—

  “My old friends Mr and Mrs Mathews, and their clever son have arrived in Paris, and dined here yesterday. Mr Mathews is as entertaining as ever, and his wife as amiable and spirituelle. They are excellent as well as clever people, and their society is very agreeable. Charles Mathews, the son, is full of talent, possesses all his father’s powers of imitation, and sings comic songs of his own composition that James Smith himself might be proud to have written.”

  Old and young Mathews delighted with their songs and recitations a party attended among others by the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche Madame Crawford and Count Walewski.

  Later on we find Rogers and Luttrell calling upon her, and the former chatting of Byron. Lady Blessington mentions a lampoon which the great had written on the little poet, and which Byron had read to her and D’Orsay one day at Genoa.

&nbs
p; “I thought you were one of Mr Rogers’s most intimate friends, and so all the world had reason to think, after reading your dedication of the Giaour to him.”

  “Yes,” said Byron, with a laugh, “and it is our friendship that gives me the privilege of taking a liberty with him.”

  “If it is thus you evince your friendship, I should be disposed to prefer your enmity.”

  “Oh!” said Byron, “you could never excite this last sentiment in my heart, for you neither say nor do spiteful things.”

  Of Luttrell, Lady Blessington held a high opinion: “His conversation, like a limpid stream, flows smoothly and brightly along, revealing the depths beneath its current, now sparkling over the objects it discloses or reflecting those by which it glides. He never talks for talking’s sake; but his mind is so well filled that, like a fountain which when stirred sends up from its bosom sparkling showers, his mind, when excited, sends forth thoughts no less bright than profound, revealing the treasures with which it is so richly stored. The conversation of Mr Luttrell makes me think, while that of many others only amuses me.”

  Luttrell, who was a natural son of Lord Carhampton, was born about 1765, dying in 1851.

  Charles Greville tells us of these two friends, they were “always bracketed together, intimate friends, seldom apart, and always hating, abusing, and ridiculing each other. Luttrell’s bons mots and repartees were excellent, but he was less caustic, more good-natured, but in some respects less striking in conversation than his companion, who had more knowledge, more imagination, and though in a different way, as much wit.”

  An entry in Henry Greville’s “Diary” is amusing, bearing in mind the above about Rogers and Byron:—

  “Thursday, October 27 (1836).—Dined with Lady Williams, Lord Lyndhurst, and Rogers. The latter said Lord Byron was very affected, and his conversation rarely agreeable and a constant effort at wit. I said I supposed he knew a great deal and had read. He answered: ‘If you believe Moore he has read everything. I don’t believe he ever read at all!’ Rogers hated Byron, and was absurd enough to be jealous of him.”

  Poets do not dwell together in unity.

  Rogers even in his young days was known, by reason of his corpse-like appearance, as the Dead Dandy; and later on a wag said to him: “Rogers, you’re rich enough, why don’t you keep your hearse?”

  This is a dinner-party that must have been interesting, Lord John Russell, Rogers, Luttrell, Thiers, Mignet, and Poulett Thomson; Lady Blessington says:—

  “Monsieur Thiers is a very remarkable person—quick, animated, and observant; nothing escapes him, and his remarks are indicative of a mind of great power. I enjoy listening to his conversation, which is at once full of originality, yet free from the slightest shade of eccentricity.

  “Monsieur Mignet, who is the inseparable friend of Monsieur Thiers, reminds me every time I see him of Byron, for there is a striking likeness in the countenance.”

  The following reads strangely, so much have our habits and manners changed since 1829:—

  “We dined at the Rocher de Cancale yesterday; and Counts S⸺ and Valeski (Walewski) composed our party. The Rocher de Cancale is the Greenwich of Paris; the oysters and various other kinds of fish served up con gusto, attracting people to it, as the white-bait draw visitors to Greenwich. Our dinner was excellent, and our party very agreeable.

  “A dîner de restaurant is pleasant from its novelty. The guests seem less ceremonious and more gay; the absence of the elegance that marks the dinner-table appointments in a maison bien montée, gives a homeliness and heartiness to the repast; and even the attendance of two or three ill-dressed garçons hurrying about, instead of half-a-dozen sedate servants in rich liveries, marshalled by a solemn-looking maître d’hôtel and groom of the chambers, gives a zest to the dinner often wanted in more luxurious feasts.”

  Then what shall we say to this for a sleighing-party, save that we would that we also had been there?

  “The prettiest sight imaginable was a party of our friends in sledges.… Count A. d’Orsay’s sledge presented the form of a dragon, and the accoutrements and horse were beautiful; the harness was of red morocco, embroidered in gold.… The dragon of Comte A. d’Orsay looked strangely fantastic at night. In the mouth, as well as the eyes, was a brilliant red light; and to a tiger-skin covering, that nearly concealed the cream-coloured horse, revealing only the white mane and tail, was attached a double line of silver-gilt bells, the jingle of which was very musical and cheerful.”

  D’Orsay (1830)

  [TO FACE PAGE 96

  Lady Blessington, the D’Orsays, and Marianne Power remained on for some considerable time in Paris after the death of Lord Blessington, the Revolution of 1830 providing them with some excitement. D’Orsay was always out and about, and though his brother-in-law de Guiche was a well-known legitimist and he himself a Bonapartist, the crowd was quite ready to greet the dandy with good-humoured shouts of “Vive le Comte d’Orsay.” Your crowd of sans-culottes dearly loves a dandy.

  Here is a quite pretty picture by Lady Blessington:—

  “6th August.—I walked with Comte d’O(rsay) this evening into the Champs Elysées, and great was the change effected there within the last few days. It looks ruined and desolate, the ground cut up by the pieces of cannon and troops as well as the mobs that have made it a thoroughfare, and many of the trees greatly injured, if not destroyed.

  “A crowd was assembled around a man who was reading aloud for their edification a proclamation nailed to one of the trees. We paused for a moment to hear it, when some of the persons, recognising my companion, shouted aloud, ‘Vive le Comte d’Orsay! Vive le Comte d’Orsay!’ and the cry being taken up by the mass, the reader was deserted, the fickle multitude directing all their attention and enthusiasm to the new-comer.”

  D’Orsay’s love of the fine arts induced him to make an effort to save the portrait of the Dauphin by Lawrence which hung in the Louvre. To achieve this he sent two of his servants, Brement, formerly a drill-sergeant in the Guards, and Charles, an ex-Hussar; they found the picture, torn to ribbons and the fragments strewn upon the floor.

  As another example of his epistolary style we will quote this following from D’Orsay to Landor, dated Paris, 22nd Août, 1830:—

  “Je viens de recevoir votre lettre du 10. Il falloit un aussi grand événement pour avoir de vos nouvelles. Le fait est que c’est dans ces grandes circonstances que les gens bien pensant se retrouvent. Vous donner des détails de tout l’héroïsme qui a été déployé dans ces journées mémorables, et difficiles il faudroit un Salluste pour rendre justice, et d’écrire cette plus belle page de l’histoire des temps modernes. On ne sait quoi admirer de plus, de la valeur dans l’action, ou de la modération après la victoire. Paris est tranquille comme la veille d’un jour de fête, it seroit injuste de dire comme le lendemain, car la réaction de la veille donne souvent une apparence unsettled, tandis qu’ici tout est digne et noble, le grand peuple sent sa puissance. Chaque homme se sent relevé à ses propres yeux, et croiroit manquer à sa nation en commettant le moindre excès. Vous, véritable philosophe, serait heureux de voir ce qu’a pu faire l’éducation en 40 années; voir ce peuple après, ou à l’époque où La Fayette le commanda pour la première fois, est bien différent; en 1790—l’accouchement laborieux de la liberté eut des suites funestes, maintenant l’on peut dire que la mère et l’enfant se portent bien. Notre présent Roi est le premier citoyen de son pays, il sent bien que les Rois sont faits pour les peuples, et non les peuples pour les Rois. Si Charles Dix eut pensé de même s’il eut été moins Jésuite, nous aurions encore cette Race Capétienne. Ainsi comme il n’y a aucun moyen curatif connu pour guérir de cette maladie, il est encore très heureux qu’il ait donné l’excuse légale pour qu’on renvoye.… La Comtesse et Lady B. ont été d’un courage sublime, elles se portent bien.… Adieu, pour le moment. Votre très affectionné,

  “D’Orsay.”

  Before leaving Paris for London we must quote from
Madden a passage which proves conclusively that not every Irishman has a saving sense of humour. “Shortly before the death of Count d’Orsay’s mother,” he writes, “who entertained feelings of strong attachment for Lady Blessington, the former had spoken with great earnestness of her apprehensions for her son, on account of his tendency to extravagance, and of her desire that Lady Blessington would advise and counsel him, and do her utmost to counteract those propensities which had already been attended with embarrassments, and had occasioned her great fears for his welfare. The promise that was given on that occasion was often alluded to by Lady Blessington, and after her death, by Count d’Orsay.”

  Such a solemn undertaking must of course be carried out by an honourable woman, so when the Paris establishment was broken up by Lady Blessington, Count and Countess d’Orsay followed in her train, so that they might be near by to receive her counsel and advice.

  * * *

  XI

  SEAMORE PLACE

  The London in which D’Orsay was destined to spend the majority of his remaining years, and of which he became so distinguished an ornament is far away from modern London, farther away from us, in fact, in manners, customs and appearance than it was from the metropolis of the England of Queen Elizabeth. Astounding is the change that has come about since the year 1830; the advent of steam and electricity, the stupendous increase of wealth, the extension of education if not of culture, wrought a revolution during the nineteenth century. The first half of that century has rightly been described as “cruel, unlovely, but abounding in vital force.” London was then a city very dull to look upon, very dirty, very dismal; hackney coaches were the chief means of locomotion for those who could not afford to keep their own chariot, and were rumbling, lumbering, bumpy vehicles, whose drivers were dubbed jarvies. Fast young men were beginning to sport a cabriolet or cab; omnibuses were of the future. “Bobbies” had only come into being recently, taking the place of the watchmen and Bow Street runners, who hitherto had taken charge of the public morals. Debtors were treated worse than we now treat criminals; gaming-houses were in abundance, and to their proprietors profitable institutions. Drinking shops were open to any hour of the night, and drinking to excess was only gradually ceasing to be a gentlemanly, even a lordly, diversion; clubs in our modern sense of the word were comparatively few, coffee-houses, chop-houses, and taverns occupying their place to some extent. Restaurants and fashionable hotels were not, and ladies dined at home when their husbands disported themselves abroad. Prize-fighting was in its heyday; duelling was the fashion.