| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 215 |
In recalling to mind the remarkable persons I have met at the
house of Lady Blessington, the most celebrated is the
Countess G——, with whom Lady
Blessington became intimate after the death of Byron, and maintained a continued correspondence with her. Madame
G—— was still very handsome at the time I met her at Seamore Place—I think
in 1832-3; but she by no means gave me the impression of a person with whom
Byron would be likely to fall in love; and her conversation (for I
was specially introduced to her) was quite as little of a character to strike or interest a
man so little tolerant of the commonplaces of society as Byron. To see
and converse with the Countess G—— was, in fact, to be satisfied that
all Byron’s share in the passion which
| 216 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
I remember calling on Lady Blessington
one day when she had just received a long letter from Madame
G——, a considerable portion of which she read to me, as being singularly
characteristic of Italian notions of the proprieties of social life.
The letter was written apropos to some strictures which had appeared in an English journal,
on the impropriety or immorality of the liaison between
Madame G—— and Byron, and on
the fact of the father and brother of the lady having resided in the same house with the
lovers. The peculiarity of Madame
| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 217 |
Among the other remarkable persons whom I met at Lady Blessington’s about this period were the Duc and Duchesse de Guiche (now Duc and Duchesse de Grammont) and the Baron d’Haussez; the two former the chief persons of the household of Charles X. and his family, and the latter one of his ministers at the period of the famous Ordonnance.
The Duchesse de Guiche was extremely
beautiful, and of that class of beauty the rarity of which in France makes it even
| 218 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
Baron D’Haussez, the Minister of Marine
* The late Duke de Grammont was, during the reign of the Bourbons, a captain of one of the companies of the Gardes du Corp, and Lieutenant-General. He did not appear to have inherited any of that gaieté de cœur and that happy spirit of social enjoyment which one naturally associates with the name of Grammont. His air and deportment were grave almost to severity; his manners and tone of mind were evidently tinctured by the sufferings and cruelties that his family had endured during the first Revolution. Horace Walpole has drawn the character of his mother, the Duchesse de Grammont, in no very favourable colours. Yet she displayed a spirit and courage amounting to heroism when she was dragged before the bloody tribunal of the Revolution. She was the sister of the famous Duc de Choiseul, and is believed to have exercised more influence over him, during his ministry, than any of his contemporaries. The Duc de Guiche (now Duc de Grammont) served with distinction in the English army in the Peninsula, as Captain in the 10th Hussars. He is a descendant of la belle Corisande. |
| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 219 |
Another of the more recent habitués of Gore House was Prince (now the Emperor) Louis Napoleon, who, after his elevation to power, treated Lady Blessington with marked distinction, and whose favour, together with her family connexion and long intimacy with several of the heads of the oldest and noblest families of France, would, had she lived, have given to her a position in the social circles of Paris even more brilliant than that which she had so long held in London.
But by far the most remarkable person I was accustomed to meet at Lady Blessington’s was the late Count D’Orsay, brother to the above-named Duchesse de Guiche (now Duchesse de Grammont) and uncle to the present Duc de Guiche.
This accomplished nobleman and gentleman, and truly distinguished man, was
for so long a period of his life “the observed of all
| 220 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
It is a singular fact that many of the most remarkable men of recent
times—those men who have exercised the most extensive influence over the social, political,
and literary condition and institutions of the country to which they have attached
themselves—have been strangers to that country—foreigners in the strictest sense of the
phrase—in birth, in education, in physical temperament, in manners, in general tone and
turn of mind—in all things,—even in personal appearance. And this has been especially the
case in France. The most remarkable minister France ever had (Mazarin) was an Italian;—her two most remarkable writers, male and female,
Rousseau and De
Stael, were Genevese;—her most remarkable actor (Talma) was (by birth at least) an Englishman;—her most remarkable soldier,
statesman, and mo-
| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 221 |
The remark is perhaps less true of England than of any other European
nation;—but this only makes it the more worthy of record that the most remarkable man of
that country, during an entire twenty years, so far as regards that important department of
a nation’s habits and institutions which affect the immediate well-being and personal
feelings of the great body of its cultivated classes—namely, the social condition and
manners of these classes—was a foreigner; and not only a foreigner, but a Frenchman-born,
educated, and bred up to manhood in that country between whose manners and modes of thought
and feeling, and those of England, there has ever been a greater amount of difference and
dissimilarity than between those of any other two civilized people under the sun. This fact
is no less
| 222 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
It used to be the fashion in England to describe George the Fourth as “the finest gentleman in Europe;”
and the rest of the world seemed half inclined to admit the claim!—George the
Fourth,—who is now pretty generally allowed (even in England) to have been
little better, at his best, than a graceful and good-tempered voluptuary; a shallow egotist
while young, a heartless debauchee when old, and at all times, young or old, an exacting
yet faithless friend, a bitter and implacable enemy, a
| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 223 |
Such thirty years ago was England’s beau-ideal of that highest and noblest phase of the human character, “a gentleman.” She has learned better since, and it is by a Frenchman that the lesson has been taught her; and if now asked to point to the finest gentleman Europe has known since the days of our own Sidneys, Herberts, Peterboroughs, &c., she would with one accord turn to no other than the Count D’Orsay,—though he had nothing better to show for the distinction than his perfect manner, his noble person, his varied accomplishments, and his universal popularity, no less with his own sex than with that which is best qualified to appreciate the character in question.
It was the singular good fortune of Count
D’Orsay—or rather let us call it his singular merit, for it has arisen
solely from the rare qualities and endowments of his mind
| 224 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
“The glass of fashion, and the mould of form.” |
I have heard one of the most distinguished of English littérateurs declare that the most profound and enlightened remarks he ever met with on the battle of Waterloo were contained in a familiar letter from the Count D’Orsay to one of his friends; and of this there can be no dispute—that incomparably the finest effigies which have yet been produced of the two heroes of that mighty contest are from the hand of Count d’Orsay. His equestrian statues of Napoleon and Wellington, small as they are, are admitted by all true judges to be among the finest works of art of modern times.
| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 225 |
In the sister art, of painting, Count D’Orsay’s successes were no less remarkable. His portrait of the most intellectual Englishman of his time, Lord Lyndhurst, is the most intellectual work of its class that has appeared since the death of the late President of the Royal Academy; and there is scarcely a living celebrity in the worlds of politics, of literature, of art, or of fashion, respectively, of whom Count D’Orsay has not sketched the most characteristic likeness extant. Most of these latter were confined to the portfolio of the late Lady Blessington, and are therefore only known to the favoured habitués of Gore House. But as those habitués included all that was distinguished in taste and dilettanti-ism, their fiat on such matters is final; and it is such as I have described.*
But this “Admirable Crichton” of the nineteenth century was, like his prototype just named, no less remarkable for personal gifts and accomplishments than he was for those which are usually attributed to intellectual qualities; though many of them
* Fac-similes of many of these portraits have been published by Mitchell, Bond-street. |
| 226 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
To crown his personal gifts and accomplishments, Count D’Orsay was incomparably the handsomest man of
his time; and, what is still more remarkable, he retained this distinction for
five-and-twenty years—uniting to a figure scarcely inferior in the perfection of its form
to that of the Apollo, a head and face that blended the grace and
dignity of the Antinous with the beaming
| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 227 |
The position which Count D’Orsay held in the haute monde of London society, for more than twenty years, is such as was rarely held, at any other time, by any other person in this country; and this in spite of such peculiar and numerous disadvantages as no other man ever attempted to overcome, much less succeeded. In the first place he was, as we have seen, a Frenchman born and bred; and he never changed or repudiated the habits and manners of his native country, or in any way warped or adapted them to those of the people among whom he had nevertheless become naturalized. He spoke English with a strong French accent and idiom, and, I verily believe, would not have got rid of these if he could; his tone of thinking and feeling, and all the general habits of his mind, were French; the style of his dress, of his equipages, of his personal appearance and bearing, were all essentially and eminently French.
In the next place, with tastes and personal
| 228 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 229 |
Another of the great disadvantages against which Count D’Orsay had to contend, during his whole life,
was the peculiarity of his social position. And these social disadvantages and anomalies
acted with tenfold force in a country where the pretences to moral purity are in an inverse
ratio to the practice. It will scarcely be disputed that London is, at this present
writing, not merely the most immoral, but the most openly and indecently immoral capital in
Europe. Things not only
| 230 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 231 |
If the explanation of this apparent anomaly in the case of Count D’Orsay be asked, all that can be replied is,
that his supposed conduct under the difficult circumstances in which he found himself was
not exactly selon les règles of English society.
Moreover, if he really did commit a breach of these rules (which, by the bye, half the
world, and they by no means the worst-informed half, did not believe), the scandal of a
tacit avowal of the breach was studiously and successfully avoided; which is a great
| 232 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
I will conclude these Recollections of Count D’Orsay by some characteristic remarks, from a letter given me by Lady Blessington, relative to the Count’s portrait of Lord Byron, which forms the frontispiece to her “Conversations” with the noble poet, and had previously appeared in the New Monthly Magazine, where the “Conversations” were first published. As this is, I believe, the only passage of Count D’Orsay’s writing that has ever been made public, I shall give it in the original French.
“Le portrait de Lord Byron,
dans le dernier numéro du ‘New Monthly
Magazine,’ a attiré sur lui des attaques sans nombre—et pourquoi?
Parcequ’il ne coïncide pas exactement avec les idées exagérées de MM. les
Romantiques, qui finiront, je pense, par faire de Thomas
Moore un géant, pourvu qu’ils restent quelque temps sans le voir.
Il est difficile, je pense, de satisfaire le public, surtout lorsqu’il est décidé
à ne croire un portrait ressemblant qu’autant qu’il rivalise d’ex-
| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 233 |
| 234 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
Lady Blessington died suddenly at Paris on June 4, 1849, while in the (supposed) enjoyment of her usual health and spirits. She had dined, the day before, with her friend the Duchesse de Grammont, and a few days previously with Prince Louis Napoleon at the Elysée Bourbon.
Feeling unwell on the morning of the day
| LADY BLESSINGTON. | 235 |
The following list comprises, I believe, the whole of Lady Blessington’s published writings, with the exception of Magazine Papers, and her contributions to her own annuals, the “Keepsake” and the “Book of Beauty:”
“The Magic
Lantern,” “A Tour in
the Netherlands,” “Desultory Thoughts,” “The
Idler in Italy,” “The Idler
in France,” “Conversations with Lord Byron,” “The Confessions of an Elderly Lady,” “The Confessions of an Elderly
Gentleman,” “The
| 236 | LADY BLESSINGTON. |
| ≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |
