There is both amusement and interest in the record of the year 1839, during which all pretence at a separate establishment was cast aside, and the D’Orsay-Blessington alliance was publicly acknowledged by the gentleman taking up his residence in the lady’s house.

D’Orsay went down this year to Bradenham, on a visit to the Disraelis.

It is not uninteresting to know that Bradenham and Hurstley in Endymion are one and the same place, and thus described:—

“At the foot of the Berkshire downs, and itself on a gentle elevation, there is an old hall with gable ends and lattice windows, standing in grounds which once were stately, and where there are yet glade-like terraces of yew-trees, which give an air of dignity to a neglected scene. In the front of the hall huge gates of iron, highly wrought, and bearing an ancient date as well as the shield of a noble house, opened on a village green, round which were clustered the cottages of the parish, with only one exception, and that was the vicarage house, a modern building, not without taste, and surrounded by a small but brilliant garden. The church was contiguous to the hall, and had been raised by the lord on a portion of his domain. Behind the hall and its enclosure the country was common land but picturesque. It had once been a beech forest, and though the timber had been greatly cleared, the green land was occasionally dotted, sometimes with groups and sometimes with single trees, while the juniper which here abounded, and rose to a great height, gave a rich wildness to the scene, and sustained its forest character.” It is easy to fit the author of the Curiosities of Literature into this framework, but in this old-world hall two such gorgeous butterflies as D’Orsay and the writer of Vivian Grey seem rather astray. It would be almost as startling to find a dog-rose climbing up a lamp-post in Pall Mall, or honeysuckle adorning the front of the Thatched House.

Disraeli writes to Lady Blessington:—

“We send you back our dearest D’Orsay, with some of the booty of yesterday’s sport as our homage to you. His visit has been very short, but very charming, and everybody here loves him as much as you and I do. I hope that I shall soon see you, and see you well; and in the meantime, I am, as I shall ever be, your affectionate—”

Concerning an earlier occasion, Disraeli writes from Bradenham on 5th August 1834, to Lady Blessington:—

“I suppose it is vain to hope to see my dear D’Orsay here; I wish indeed he would come. Here is a wish by no means contemptible. He can bring his horses if he likes, but I can mount him. Adieu, dear Lady Blessington, some day I will try to write you a more amusing letter; at present I am in truth ill and sad.”

Charles Greville was at Gore House on 17th February, and seems to have enjoyed himself pretty well:—

“February 17th.—I dined at Lady Blessington’s yesterday, to meet Durham and Brougham; but, after all, the latter did not come, and the excuse he made was, that it was better not; and as he was taking, or going to take (we shall see) a moderate course about Canada, it would impair his efficacy if the press were to trumpet forth, and comment on, his meeting with Durham. There was that sort of strange omnium gatherum party which is to be met with nowhere else, and which for that reason alone is curious. We had Prince Louis Napoleon and his A.D.C.[12] He is a short, thickish, vulgar-looking man, without the slightest resemblance to his imperial uncle, or any intelligence in his countenance. Then we had the ex-Governor of Canada, Captain Marriott, the Count Alfred de Vigny (author of Cinq Mars, etc.), Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, and a proper sprinkling of ordinary persons to mix up with these celebrities. In the evening, Forster, sub-editor of the Examiner; Chorley, editor of the AthenÆum; Macready and Charles Buller. Lady Blessington’s existence is a curiosity, and her house and society have at least the merit of being singular, though the latter is not so agreeable as from its composition it ought to be. There is no end to the men of consequence and distinction in the world who go there occasionally—Brougham, Lyndhurst, Abinger, Canterbury, Durham, and many others; all the minor poets, literati, and journalists, without exception, together with some of the highest pretensions. Moore is a sort of friend of hers; she had been very intimate with Byron, and is with Walter Savage Landor. Her house is furnished with a luxury and splendour not to be surpassed; her dinners are frequent and good; and D’Orsay does the honours with a frankness and cordiality which are very successful; but all this does not make society, in the real meaning of the term. There is a vast deal of coming and going, and eating and drinking, and a corresponding amount of noise, but little or no conversation, discussion, easy quiet interchange of ideas and opinions, no regular social foundation of men of intellectual or literary calibre ensuring a perennial flow of conversation, and which, if it existed, would derive strength and assistance from the light superstructure of occasional visitors, with the much or the little they might individually contribute. The reason of this is that the woman herself, who must give the tone to her own society, and influence its character, is ignorant, vulgar, and commonplace.[13] Nothing can be more dull and uninteresting than her conversation, which is never enriched by a particle of knowledge, or enlivened by a ray of genius or imagination. The fact of her existence as an authoress is an enigma, poor as her pretensions are; for while it is very difficult to write good books, it is not easy to compose even bad ones, and volumes have come forth under her name for which hundreds of pounds have been paid, because (Heaven only can tell how) thousands are found who will read them. Her ‘Works’ have been published in America, in one huge folio, where it seems they meet with peculiar success; and this trash goes down, because it is written by a Countess, in a country where rank is eschewed, and equality is the universal passion. They have (or some of them) been likewise translated into German; and if all this is not proof of literary merit, or at least of success, what is? It would be not uninteresting to trace this current of success to its source, and to lay bare all the springs of the machinery which sustains her artificial character as an authoress. The details of course form the mystery of her craft, but the general causes are apparent enough. First and foremost, her magnificent house and luxurious dinners; then the alliance offensive and defensive which she has contrived (principally through the means of said house and dinners) to establish with a host of authors, booksellers, and publishers, and above all with journalists. The first lend her their assistance in composition, correction, or addition; with the second she manages to establish an interest and an interchange of services; and the last everlastingly puff her performances. Her name is eternally before the public; she produces those gorgeous inanities, called Books of Beauty, and other trashy things of the same description, to get up which all the fashion and beauty, the taste and talent, of London are laid under contribution. The most distinguished artists and the best engravers supply the portraits of the prettiest women in London; and these are illustrated with poetical effusions of the smallest possible merit, but exciting interest and curiosity from the notoriety of their authors; and so, by all this puffing, and stuffing, and untiring industry, and practising on the vanity of some, and the good-nature of others, the end is attained; and though I never met with any individual who had read any of her books, except the Conversations with Byron, which are too good to be hers, they are unquestionably a source of considerable profit, and she takes her place confidently and complacently as one of the literary celebrities of her day.”

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:—

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:—

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 nobody 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 Phoebus 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—?