D'Orsay

“ My Dear Count d’Orsay (if you will permit me to address you so familiarly) —you should be content with writing in your own language, like Grammont, and succeeding in London as nobody has succeeded since the days of Charles the Second, and the records of Antonio Hamilton, without deviating into our barbarous language—which you understand and write, however, much better than it deserves. ‘My approbation,’ as you are pleased to term it, was very sincere, but perhaps not very impartial; for, though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen—at least, such as they now are. ”

“ In the grey of the morning, however, D’Orsay, taking every precaution against capture on the way, set out for Paris with a valet, a valise, and an umbrella. The words of a great man at any moment of crisis in his affairs are worth recording; one of D’Orsay’s last remarks in London was: “Well, at least, if I have nothing else, I will have the best umbrella!” ”

“ All things considered we may write down Count d’Orsay as a quite first-rate amateur, as skilful in the arts as any dandy has ever been. What more fitting than that his skill and accomplishment were best shown in his bust of Lady Blessington? ”

“ There was not a fashionable haunt of virtue or of vice in which D’Orsay was not quite at home. There was not any fashionable folly or accomplishment in which he was unskilled; a complete man-about-town, gambler, rake and dandy. We need not pursue him in all his pastimes; dead and gone revelries cannot be resurrected with any satisfaction; they smell musty. Let them lie. ”

“ Even the ardent D’Orsay, while he was thus preparing himself for his life-work and laying the foundation upon which he was to raise so superb a fame, could not in the hours of his highest inspiration have dreamed that Fate was deciding his future in the person of a lovely Irish peeress, the cynosure of London society. ”

“ Well, D’Orsay says they are the finest verses that ever were written, and imparts to me a translation which Miss Power has made of them; and D’Orsay believes in his mad rubbish of a statue, which he didn’t make; believes in it in the mad way that madmen do,—that it is divine, and that he made it; only as you look in his eyes, you see that he doesn’t quite believe, and when pressed hesitates, and turns away with a howl of rage. ”

“ There are mouldy-minded people who put out the finger of scorn at D’Orsay. Is it not the truth that they are jealous of him, and that at the bottom of their hearts there is a muttered prayer: “I would thank God if He had made me such a man”? ”

“ No one but a fool would lift the cup of pleasure to his lips and then set it down before he had drained it dry. D’Orsay looked upon the externals of a luxurious life, and found them very pleasant. The Spartans pointed out the drunken helot to their children, as a warning against tippling. So we may hold out to our young men the life of D’Orsay as an example of what they should all endeavour to be, and as a warning against the sheer foolishness of taking life seriously. ”

“ As a matter of course the circumstances in which he was so ostentatiously living and his general reputation kept D’Orsay outside the houses of those who did not open their doors to everybody, though most male folk were pleased enough to visit him and Lady Blessington at Seamore Place, where of womankind, however, none except relatives and exotics were to be met with. But even a dandy must find occasionally a crumpled rose-leaf in his bed. ”

“ In the London of D’Orsay’s prime the salon was still a power for pleasure, and he and Lady Blessington reigned over that which was perhaps the most brilliant that our country has ever seen. There were others. That at Holland House, for example, where Lady Holland reigned supreme and somewhat severe. To that select circle, from which he was now, alas, excluded, D’Orsay had been admitted when as a mere youth he first visited London. Dining there one day, he was honoured by a seat next his hostess, who apparently looked upon the young Frenchman as sure to be awe-stricken by her presence. ”

“ The conqueror as he tosses uneasily in his sleep is assailed by dreams that terrify. D’Orsay in his hours of greatest triumph must sometimes have asked what would be the end of his career; when would come his Waterloo and St Helena? His thoughts must have sometimes turned toward the young girl he had married so light-heartedly, whose fortune he had squandered, and whose life he had shadowed. Success has its hours of remorse. Life is a riddle; but D’Orsay was not often so foolish as to bother his brains or break his heart over the solution of it ”

“ 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 with mille choses aimables to 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. ”

“ A dandy with a damaged nose or deprived of one eye would be a figure of fun.
From remote ancestors D’Orsay inherited the spirit of chivalry, setting woman upon a lofty pedestal and then asking her to step down and make love to him. He was always ready to rescue a woman—not merely a beauty—in distress, of which a fine example is an event which befell while he was living out of barracks in apartments, which were kept by a widow, who had one son and two daughters. ”

“ D’Orsay is most generally known as an artist by reason of his large portrait of the Duke of Wellington now in the National Portrait Gallery, upon the completion of which the Duke is said to have shaken hands with the painter, saying: “At last I have been painted like a gentleman! I’ll never sit to anyone else.” And he certainly did write to Lady Blessington:—“You are quite right. Count d’Orsay’s work is of a higher description of art than is described by the word [233] portrait! ”

“ The death of D'Orsay, which took place the other day at Paris, is a matter not of political, but of some social interest. Nature had given him powers which might have raised him to very honourable distinction, and have procured him every sort of success, if they had been well and wisely employed, instead of the very reverse. ”

“ No "wallflowers" were left neglected when D'Orsay was present.
It is strange how completely human beings are in the hands of fate. Here was a young French officer quartered in a provincial town in the valley of the Rhone. Who would have supposed that he was destined to become not only a Londoner, but a favorite at the British court, a model of fashion, a dictator of etiquette, widely known for his accomplishments, the patron of literary men and of distinguished artists? ”

“ While we were waiting to sit down, D’Orsay was more than once called out of the room, and a quick-sighted individual hinted to me that he feared some unpleasant visitors of the dun family were importunate for some ‘small account.’ Still, there was nothing on the light-hearted Frenchman’s face to show that he was at all put out. Dinner was announced, and all promised to go well, as the soup and the fish were unexceptionable, when my quick-sighted friend, who was a great gourmet, remarked that he saw no champagne. ”

“ His money transactions with his friends will not bear scrutiny. Yet when all is said, he counted among the multitude of his friends and admirers such men as Bulwer, Landor, Lamartine, Dickens, Byron, Disraeli and Lyndhurst. John Forster warmed to him, and said that his “pleasantry, wit and kindliness gave him a wonderful fascination.”
What did life mean to D’Orsay? Being a wise man he looked upon the world as a place of pleasant sojourning, of which it was the whole duty of man to make the very best. ”

“ To Madden, Henry Bulwer expressed the opinion:—“It was altogether a great pity D’Orsay was not employed, for he was not only fit to be so, but to make a most useful and efficient agent, had he been appointed.”
But Governments, as well as individuals, are fallible, and often blind to their best interests. Yet it really is difficult to understand why D’Orsay was refused his modest request; what more distinguished ornament to an Embassy could be desired than a splendid libertine and a man distinguished for the vastness of his debts? ”

“ Landseer suggested Madame Tussaud’s, an Exhibition which d’Orsay had never before seen; and to Baker Street they went. The Count, charmed with the novelty of the wax figures, was childishly delighted with all he saw, until a moment when he became conscious that his footsteps were being dogged by two suspicious-looking individuals.
“Do you see those men?” said d’Orsay. “They never take their eyes from me.” ”

“ The Count is an old ‘lion,’ whom nobody now knows or receives. He has lived with his [299] mother-in-law, Lady Blessington, the blue-stocking of the keepsakes, and with everyone but his wife, Lady Henrietta d’Orsay, who was the mistress of the Duke d’Orleans, of Antoine de Noailles, and a host of lesser stars.
“Count d’Orsay for twenty years lived on the aristocracy and the tradespeople of London. Steeped in debt, he has now turned artist, backed by a following of nonentities.... Every year he disfigures some contemporaneous celebrity either in marble or plaster; last time it was Lamartine. ”

“ The death of Lady Blessington was a blow to him from which he never really recovered. Writing to Madden from Chambourcy on 12th July, Miss Power says:—
“Count d’Orsay would himself have answered your letter, but had not the nerve or the heart to do so; although the subject occupies his mind night and day, he cannot speak of it but to those who have been his fellow-sufferers. It is like an image ever floating before his eyes, which he has got, as it were, used to look upon, but which he cannot yet bear to grasp and feel that it is real. ”

“ Sir Digby muttered something about a bag of broken bottles, but D’Orsay went on,—
“I’d marry her; ’pon honour I should.”
“Think of life with that old hag.”
“Think of life in the Fleet, my friend.”
Sir Digby winced, and for a time made no reply.
“D’Orsay,” he said at last, “I am a man, and, I trust, a gentleman. I’d prefer to marry Gerty even—even—”
“If she were a beggar. Bravo, Digby!” And D’Orsay laughed in the way men of the world do laugh. ”

“ Fonblanque writes to Lady Blessington:—
[185]
“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.” ”

“ Referring to yet another dinner, Lady Blessington writes to Forster from Gore House, on 12th April 1848:—
“Count d’Orsay repeated to me this morning the kind things you said of him when proposing his health. He, I assure you, was touched when he repeated them, and his feelings were infectious, for mine responded. To be highly appreciated by those we most highly value, is, indeed, a source of heartfelt gratification. ”

“ Whatever Count d’Orsay undertakes, seems invariably to be well done. As the arbiter elegantiarum he has reigned supreme in matters of taste and fashion, confirming the attempts of others by his approbation, or gratifying them by his example. To dress, or drive, to shine in the gay world like Count d’Orsay was once the ambition of the youth of England, who then discovered in this model no higher attributes. But if time, who ‘steals our years away,’ steals also our pleasures, he replaces them with others, or substitutes a better thing ”

“ Indeed, it was said that D’Orsay was fully aware of the value of his patronage, and that he expected his tailors to express substantial gratitude for it. When clothes arrived at Seamore Place, in the most mysterious manner banknotes had found their way into their pockets. Once when this accident had not happened, D’Orsay bade his valet return the garment with the message that “the lining of the pockets had been forgotten.”
The ordinary man, as regards his costume, takes care about the main points and permits the details to take care of themselves. Not so your true dandy. ”

“ I adore old England, and long to return there. Never did man so suffer as I have done for my loss. [36]
“I wonder at those religious people who hold religion so high that they quickly find consolation. They do not understand, the idiots, that there is a great, a greater faith in a true sorrow which does not heal.
“Adieu, mon brave ami, count always on my affection,
“D’Orsay.”
He found comfort in the companionship of [292] Lady Blessington’s two nieces, Margaret and Ellen. To a certain extent he avoided mixing in society, but we hear of him now and again. ”

“ Charles Greville, who so often dipped his pen in gall, speaking of D’Orsay’s art work, declares that he “constantly got helped, and his works retouched by eminent artists, whose society he cultivated, and many of whom were his intimate friends.” Yet we find Benjamin Robert Haydon recording on 10th July 1839, while he was painting his portrait of Wellington:—
“D’Orsay called, and pointed out several things to correct in the horse.... I did them, and he took my brush in his dandy gloves, which made my heart ache, and lowered his hindquarters by bringing over a bit of the sky. Such a dress! ”