The Conversations were 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-General of 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 famous Report 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, and dolce far niente life. I anticipate with horror the time when I shall be obliged to leave it, and mix once more in the troublous realities of public life.”
Durham died in 1840, and of the event Alfred de Vigny wrote to Lady Blessington:—
“Paris.
“Moi qui me souviens, milady, de vous avoir trouvé 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 of Cinq Mars and Chatterton, of whom 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.”
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 us one 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 the Athenæum as 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 of The Times gave 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 of the 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 table thirteen. 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, you wrote 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 no
body 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 in Punch later 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 your éloge.’ 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 was D’Orsay’s subduing of Carlyle. Would it not have been thought that the dandy would have been a type peculiarly irritating to the author of Sartor 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 what good 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 thousand expensive-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 busy here to-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
* * *
XVIII
MORE FRIENDS
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 word ennui.” To the production of Lytton’s Money D’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 play Richelieu; 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—in fact 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 th
e case with imitators the copy did not nearly equal the great original. The author of Jack Shepherd and 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 vivid dresser, 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:—
“Covent Garden,
“Sunday, Noon, December 1844.
“My Dear Lady Blessington,—Business for other people (and by no means of a pleasant kind) has held me prisoner during two whole days, and will so detain me to-day, in the very agony of my departure for Italy again, that I shall not even be able to reach Gore House once more, on which I had set my heart. I cannot bear the thought of going away without some sort of reference to the happy day you gave me on Monday, and the pleasure and delight I had in your earnest greeting. I shall never forget it, believe me. It would be worth going to China—it would be worth going to America, to come home again for the pleasure of such a meeting with you and Count d’Orsay—to whom my love, and something as near it to Miss Power and her sister as it is lawful to send.…”
D'Orsay / or, The complete dandy Page 14