Having been reared in poverty, she had no
conception
of the value of
money; and, though the earl was remarkably extravagant, the new countess
was even more so.
money; and, though the earl was remarkably extravagant, the new countess
was even more so.
Orr - Famous Affinities of History, Romacen of Devotion
It is
doubtful whether the name by which she passed was that which had been
given to her at baptism; but, if so, her true name has never been
disclosed.
When she had told the whole of her sad story to Gambetta he made nothing
of it. She said to him again:
"You cannot love me. I should only dim your fame. You can have nothing
in common with a dishonored, ruined girl. That is what I came here to
explain to you. Let us part, and let us for all time forget each other. "
But Gambetta took no heed of what she said. Now that he had found
her, he would not consent to lose her. He seized her slender hands and
covered them with kisses. Again he urged that she should marry him.
Her answer was a curious one. She was a devoted Catholic and would not
regard any marriage as valid save a religious marriage. On the other
hand, Gambetta, though not absolutely irreligious, was leading the
opposition to the Catholic party in France. The Church to him was not so
much a religious body as a political one, and to it he was unalterably
opposed. Personally, he would have no objections to being married by a
priest; but as a leader of the anti-clerical party he felt that he must
not recognize the Church's claim in any way. A religious marriage would
destroy his influence with his followers and might even imperil the
future of the republic.
They pleaded long and earnestly both then and afterward. He urged a
civil marriage, but she declared that only a marriage according to the
rites of the Church could ever purify her past and give her back her
self-respect. In this she was absolutely stubborn, yet she did not urge
upon Gambetta that he should destroy his influence by marrying her in
church.
Through all this interplay of argument and pleading and emotion the
two grew every moment more hopelessly in love. Then the woman, with a
woman's curious subtlety and indirectness, reached a somewhat singular
conclusion. She would hear nothing of a civil marriage, because a civil
marriage was no marriage in the eyes of Pope and prelate. On the other
hand, she did not wish Gambetta to mar his political career by going
through a religious ceremony. She had heard from a priest that the
Church recognized two forms of betrothal. The usual one looked to a
marriage in the future and gave no marriage privileges until after the
formal ceremony. But there was another kind of betrothal known to the
theologians as sponsalia de praesente. According to this, if there were
an actual betrothal, the pair might have the privileges and rights of
marriage immediately, if only they sincerely meant to be married in the
future.
The eager mind of Leonie Leon caught at this bit of ecclesiastical law
and used it with great ingenuity.
"Let us," she said, "be formally betrothed by the interchange of a
ring, and let us promise each other to marry in the future. After such
a betrothal as this we shall be the same as married; for we shall be
acting according to the laws of the Church. "
Gambetta gladly gave his promise. A betrothal ring was purchased; and
then, her conscience being appeased, she gave herself completely to her
lover. Gambetta was sincere. He said to her:
"If the time should ever come when I shall lose my political station,
when I am beaten in the struggle, when I am deserted and alone, will you
not then marry me when I ask you? "
And Leonie, with her arms about his neck, promised that she would. Yet
neither of them specified what sort of marriage this should be, nor did
it seem at the moment as if the question could arise.
For Gambetta was very powerful. He led his party to success in the
election of 1877. Again and again his triumphant oratory mastered the
National Assembly of France. In 1879 he was chosen to be president
of the Chamber of Deputies. He towered far above the president of the
republic--Jules Grevy, that hard-headed, close-fisted old peasant--and
his star had reached its zenith.
All this time he and Leonie Leon maintained their intimacy, though it
was carefully concealed save from a very few. She lived in a plain but
pretty house on the Avenue Perrichont in the quiet quarter of Auteuil;
but Gambetta never came there. Where and when they met was a secret
guarded very carefully by the few who were his close associates. But
meet they did continually, and their affection grew stronger every year.
Leonie thrilled at the victories of the man she loved; and he found joy
in the hours that he spent with her.
Gambetta's need of rest was very great, for he worked at the highest
tension, like an engine which is using every pound of steam. Bismarck,
whose spies kept him well informed of everything that was happening in
Paris, and who had no liking for Gambetta, since the latter always spoke
of him as "the Ogre," once said to a Frenchman named Cheberry:
"He is the only one among you who thinks of revenge, and who is any sort
of a menace to Germany. But, fortunately, he won't last much longer. I
am not speaking thoughtlessly. I know from secret reports what sort of
a life your great man leads, and I know his habits. Why, his life is
a life of continual overwork. He rests neither night nor day. All
politicians who have led the same life have died young. To be able
to serve one's country for a long time a statesman must marry an ugly
woman, have children like the rest of the world, and a country place
or a house to one's self like any common peasant, where he can go and
rest. "
The Iron Chancellor chuckled as he said this, and he was right. And yet
Gambetta's end came not so much through overwork as by an accident.
It may be that the ambition of Mme. Leon stimulated him beyond his
powers. However this may be, early in 1882, when he was defeated in
Parliament on a question which he considered vital, he immediately
resigned and turned his back on public life. His fickle friends soon
deserted him. His enemies jeered and hooted the mention of his name.
He had reached the time which with a sort of prophetic instinct he had
foreseen nearly ten years before. So he turned to the woman who had
been faithful and loving to him; and he turned to her with a feeling of
infinite peace.
"You promised me," he said, "that if ever I was defeated and alone you
would marry me. The time is now. "
Then this man, who had exercised the powers of a dictator, who had
levied armies and shaken governments, and through whose hands there had
passed thousands of millions of francs, sought for a country home. He
found for sale a small estate which had once belonged to Balzac, and
which is known as Les Jardies. It was in wretched repair; yet the small
sum which it cost Gambetta--twelve thousand francs--was practically all
that he possessed. Worn and weary as he was, it seemed to him a haven of
delightful peace; for here he might live in the quiet country with the
still beautiful woman who was soon to become his wife.
It is not known what form of marriage they at last agreed upon. She may
have consented to a civil ceremony; or he, being now out of public life,
may have felt that he could be married by the Church. The day for their
wedding had been set, and Gambetta was already at Les Jardies. But there
came a rumor that he had been shot. Still further tidings bore the news
that he was dying. Paris, fond as it was of scandals, immediately spread
the tale that he had been shot by a jealous woman.
The truth is quite the contrary. Gambetta, in arranging his effects in
his new home, took it upon himself to clean a pair of dueling-pistols;
for every French politician of importance must fight duels, and Gambetta
had already done so. Unfortunately, one cartridge remained unnoticed in
the pistol which Gambetta cleaned. As he held the pistol-barrel against
the soft part of his hand the cartridge exploded, and the ball passed
through the base of the thumb with a rending, spluttering noise.
The wound was not in itself serious, but now the prophecy of Bismarck
was fulfilled. Gambetta had exhausted his vitality; a fever set in, and
before long he died of internal ulceration.
This was the end of a great career and of a great romance of love.
Leonie Leon was half distraught at the death of the lover who was so
soon to be her husband. She wandered for hours in the forest until she
reached a convent, where she was received. Afterward she came to Paris
and hid herself away in a garret of the slums. All the light of her life
had gone out. She wished that she had died with him whose glory had been
her life. Friends of Gambetta, however, discovered her and cared for her
until her death, long afterward, in 1906.
She lived upon the memories of the past, of the swift love that had come
at first sight, but which had lasted unbrokenly; which had given her the
pride of conquest, and which had brought her lover both happiness and
inspiration and a refining touch which had smoothed away his roughness
and made him fit to stand in palaces with dignity and distinction.
As for him, he left a few lines which have been carefully preserved, and
which sum up his thought of her. They read:
To the light of my soul; to the star, of my life--Leonie Leon. For ever!
For ever!
LADY BLESSINGTON AND COUNT D'ORSAY
Often there has arisen some man who, either by his natural gifts or
by his impudence or by the combination of both, has made himself a
recognized leader in the English fashionable world. One of the first of
these men was Richard Nash, usually known as "Beau Nash," who flourished
in the eighteenth century. Nash was a man of doubtful origin; nor was
he attractive in his looks, for he was a huge, clumsy creature with
features that were both irregular and harsh. Nevertheless, for nearly
fifty years Beau Nash was an arbiter of fashion. Goldsmith, who wrote
his life, declared that his supremacy was due to his pleasing manners,
"his assiduity, flattery, fine clothes, and as much wit as the ladies
had whom he addressed. " He converted the town of Bath from a rude little
hamlet into an English Newport, of which he was the social autocrat. He
actually drew up a set of written rules which some of the best-born and
best-bred people follow slavishly.
Even better known to us is George Bryan Brummel, commonly called "Beau
Brummel," who by his friendship with George IV. --then Prince Regent--was
an oracle at court on everything that related to dress and etiquette and
the proper mode of living. His memory has been kept alive most of all by
Richard Mansfield's famous impersonation of him. The play is based upon
the actual facts; for after Brummel had lost the royal favor he died an
insane pauper in the French town of Caen. He, too, had a distinguished
biographer, since Bulwer-Lytton's novel Pelham is really the narrative
of Brummel's curious career.
Long after Brummel, Lord Banelagh led the gilded youth of London, and
it was at this time that the notorious Lola Montez made her first
appearance in the British capital.
These three men--Nash, Brummel, and Ranelagh--had the advantage of
being Englishmen, and, therefore, of not incurring the old-time English
suspicion of foreigners. A much higher type of social arbiter was a
Frenchman who for twenty years during the early part of Queen Victoria's
reign gave law to the great world of fashion, besides exercising a
definite influence upon English art and literature.
This was Count Albert Guillaume d'Orsay, the son of one of Napoleon's
generals, and descended by a morganatic marriage from the King of
Wurttemburg. The old general, his father, was a man of high courage,
impressive appearance, and keen intellect, all of which qualities he
transmitted to his son. The young Count d'Orsay, when he came of age,
found the Napoleonic era ended and France governed by Louis XVIII. The
king gave Count d'Orsay a commission in the army in a regiment stationed
at Valence in the southeastern part of France. He had already visited
England and learned the English language, and he had made some
distinguished friends there, among whom were Lord Byron and Thomas
Moore.
On his return to France he began his garrison life at Valence, where he
showed some of the finer qualities of his character. It is not merely
that he was handsome and accomplished and that he had the gift of
winning the affections of those about him. Unlike Nash and Brummel,
he was a gentleman in every sense, and his courtesy was of the highest
kind. At the balls given by his regiment, although he was more courted
than any other officer, he always sought out the plainest girls and
showed them the most flattering attentions. 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? But all these
things were to come to pass by a mere accident of fortune.
During his firsts visit to London, which has already been mentioned,
Count d'Orsay was invited once or twice to receptions given by the Earl
and Countess of Blessington, where he was well received, though this was
only an incident of his English sojourn. Before the story proceeds
any further it is necessary to give an account of the Earl and of Lady
Blessington, since both of their careers had been, to say the least,
unusual.
Lord Blessington was an Irish peer for whom an ancient title had been
revived. He was remotely descended from the Stuarts of Scotland, and
therefore had royal blood to boast of. He had been well educated, and in
many ways was a man of pleasing manner. On the other hand, he had early
inherited a very large property which yielded him an income of about
thirty thousand pounds a year. He had estates in Ireland, and he owned
nearly the whole of a fashionable street in London, with the buildings
erected on it.
This fortune and the absence of any one who could control him had made
him wilful and extravagant and had wrought in him a curious love of
personal display. Even as a child he would clamor to be dressed in the
most gorgeous uniforms; and when he got possession of his property his
love of display became almost a monomania. He built a theater as an
adjunct to his country house in Ireland and imported players from London
and elsewhere to act in it. He loved to mingle with the mummers, to try
on their various costumes, and to parade up and down, now as an oriental
prince and now as a Roman emperor.
In London he hung about the green-rooms, and was a well-known figure
wherever actors or actresses were collected. Such was his love of the
stage that he sought to marry into the profession and set his heart on a
girl named Mary Campbell Browne, who was very beautiful to look at, but
who was not conspicuous either for her mind or for her morals. When Lord
Blessington proposed marriage to her she was obliged to tell him that
she already had one husband still alive, but she was perfectly willing
to live with him and dispense with the marriage ceremony. So for several
years she did live with him and bore him two children.
It speaks well for the earl that when the inconvenient husband died a
marriage at once took place and Mrs. Browne became a countess. Then,
after other children had been born, the lady died, leaving the earl a
widower at about the age of forty. The only legitimate son born of this
marriage followed his mother to the grave; and so for the third time the
earldom of Blessington seemed likely to become extinct. The death of
his wife, however, gave the earl a special opportunity to display his
extravagant tastes. He spent more than four thousand pounds on the
funeral ceremonies, importing from France a huge black velvet catafalque
which had shortly before been used at the public funeral of Napoleon's
marshal, Duroc, while the house blazed with enormous wax tapers and
glittered with cloth of gold.
Lord Blessington soon plunged again into the busy life of London. Having
now no heir, there was no restraint on his expenditures, and he borrowed
large sums of money in order to buy additional estates and houses and to
experience the exquisite joy of spending lavishly. At this time he had
his lands in Ireland, a town house in St. James's Square, another in
Seymour Place, and still another which was afterward to become famous as
Gore House, in Kensington.
Some years before he had met in Ireland a lady called Mrs. Maurice
Farmer; and it happened that she now came to London. The earlier story
of her still young life must here be told, because her name afterward
became famous, and because the tale illustrates wonderfully well the
raw, crude, lawless period of the Regency, when England was fighting
her long war with Napoleon, when the Prince Regent was imitating all
the vices of the old French kings, when prize-fighting, deep drinking,
dueling, and dicing were practised without restraint in all the large
cities and towns of the United Kingdom. It was, as Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle has said, "an age of folly and of heroism"; for, while it produced
some of the greatest black-guards known to history, it produced also
such men as Wellington and Nelson, the two Pitts, Sheridan, Byron,
Shelley, and Sir Walter Scott.
Mrs. Maurice Farmer was the daughter of a small Irish landowner named
Robert Power--himself the incarnation of all the vices of the time.
There was little law in Ireland, not even that which comes from public
opinion; and Robert Power rode hard to hounds, gambled recklessly,
and assembled in his house all sorts of reprobates, with whom he held
frightful orgies that lasted from sunset until dawn. His wife and his
young daughters viewed him with terror, and the life they led was a
perpetual nightmare because of the bestial carousings in which their
father engaged, wasting his money and mortgaging his estates until the
end of his wild career was in plain sight.
There happened to be stationed at Clonmel a regiment of infantry in
which there served a captain named Maurice St. Leger Farmer. He was a
man of some means, but eccentric to a degree. His temper was so utterly
uncontrolled that even his fellow officers could scarcely live with
him, and he was given to strange caprices. It happened that at a ball in
Clonmel he met the young daughter of Robert Power, then a mere child of
fourteen years. Captain Farmer was seized with an infatuation for the
girl, and he went almost at once to her father, asking for her hand in
marriage and proposing to settle a sum of money upon her if she married
him.
The hard-riding squireen jumped at the offer. His own estate was being
stripped bare. Here was a chance to provide for one of his daughters,
or, rather, to get rid of her, and he agreed that she should be married
out of hand. Going home, he roughly informed the girl that she was to
be the wife of Captain Farmer. He so bullied his wife that she was
compelled to join him in this command.
What was poor little Margaret Power to do? She was only a child. She
knew nothing of the world. She was accustomed to obey her father as she
would have obeyed some evil genius who had her in his power. There were
tears and lamentations. She was frightened half to death; yet for her
there was no help. Therefore, while not yet fifteen her marriage took
place, and she was the unhappy slave of a half-crazy tyrant. She had
then no beauty whatsoever. She was wholly undeveloped--thin and pale,
and with rough hair that fell over her frightened eyes; yet Farmer
wanted her, and he settled his money on her, just as he would have spent
the same amount to gratify any other sudden whim.
The life she led with him for a few months showed him to be more of
a devil than a man. He took a peculiar delight in terrifying her, in
subjecting her to every sort of outrage; nor did he refrain even from
beating her with his fists. The girl could stand a great deal, but this
was too much. She returned to her father's house, where she was received
with the bitterest reproaches, but where, at least, she was safe from
harm, since her possession of a dowry made her a person of some small
importance.
Not long afterward Captain Farmer fell into a dispute with his
colonel, Lord Caledon, and in the course of it he drew his sword on
his commanding officer. The court-martial which was convened to try him
would probably have had him shot were it not for the very general belief
that he was insane. So he was simply cashiered and obliged to leave the
service and betake himself elsewhere. Thus the girl whom, he had married
was quite free--free to leave her wretched home and even to leave
Ireland.
She did leave Ireland and establish herself in London, where she had
some acquaintances, among them the Earl of Blessington. As already said,
he had met her in Ireland while she was living with her husband; and now
from time to time he saw her in a friendly way. After the death of his
wife he became infatuated with Margaret Farmer. She was a good deal
alone, and his attentions gave her entertainment. Her past experience
led her to have no real belief in love. She had become, however, in a
small way interested in literature and art, with an eager ambition to be
known as a writer. As it happened, Captain Farmer, whose name she bore,
had died some months before Lord Blessington had decided to make a new
marriage. The earl proposed to Margaret Farmer, and the two were married
by special license.
The Countess of Blessington--to give the lady her new title--was now
twenty-eight years of age and had developed into a woman of great
beauty. She was noted for the peculiarly vivacious and radiant
expression which was always on her face. She had a kind of vivid
loveliness accompanied by grace, simplicity, and a form of exquisite
proportions. The ugly duckling had become a swan, for now there was no
trace of her former plainness to be seen.
Not yet in her life had love come to her. Her first husband had been
thrust upon her and had treated her outrageously. Her second husband was
much older than she; and, though she was not without a certain kindly
feeling for one who had been kind to her, she married him, first of all,
for his title and position.
Having been reared in poverty, she had no conception of the value of
money; and, though the earl was remarkably extravagant, the new countess
was even more so. One after another their London houses were opened
and decorated with the utmost lavishness. They gave innumerable
entertainments, not only to the nobility and to men of rank,
but--because this was Lady Blessington's peculiar fad--to artists and
actors and writers of all degrees. The American, N. P. Willis, in his
Pencilings by the Way, has given an interesting sketch of the countess
and her surroundings, while the younger Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) has
depicted D'Orsay as Count Mirabel in Henrietta Temple. Willis says:
In a long library, lined alternately with splendidly bound books and
mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room opening upon
Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington alone. The picture, to my eye, as
the door opened, was a very lovely one--a woman of remarkable beauty,
half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent
lamp suspended from the center of the arched ceiling. Sofas, couches,
ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through
the room; enameled tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in
every corner, and a delicate white hand in relief on the back of a book,
to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of diamond rings.
All this "crowded sumptuousness" was due to the taste of Lady
Blessington. Amid it she received royal dukes, statesmen such as
Palmerston, Canning, Castlereagh, Russell, and Brougham, actors such
as Kemble and Matthews, artists such as Lawrence and Wilkie, and men of
letters such as Moore, Bulwer-Lytton, and the two Disraelis. To maintain
this sort of life Lord Blessington raised large amounts of money,
totaling about half a million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his
different estates and giving his promissory notes to money-lenders. Of
course, he did not spend this vast sum immediately. He might have lived
in comparative luxury upon his income; but he was a restless, eager,
improvident nobleman, and his extravagances were prompted by the urgings
of his wife.
In all this display, which Lady Blessington both stimulated and shared,
there is to be found a psychological basis. She was now verging upon the
thirties--a time which is a very critical period in a woman's emotional
life, if she has not already given herself over to love and been loved
in return. During Lady Blessington's earlier years she had suffered in
many ways, and it is probable that no thought of love had entered her
mind. She was only too glad if she could escape from the harshness
of her father and the cruelty of her first husband. Then came her
development into a beautiful woman, content for the time to be
languorously stagnant and to enjoy the rest and peace which had come to
her.
When she married Lord Blessington her love life had not yet commenced;
and, in fact, there could be no love life in such a marriage--a marriage
with a man much older than herself, scatter-brained, showy, and having
no intellectual gifts. So for a time she sought satisfaction in social
triumphs, in capturing political and literary lions in order to exhibit
them in her salon, and in spending money right and left with a lavish
hand. But, after all, in a woman of her temperament none of these things
could satisfy her inner longings. Beautiful, full of Celtic vivacity,
imaginative and eager, such a nature as hers would in the end be starved
unless her heart should be deeply touched and unless all her pent-up
emotion could give itself up entirely in the great surrender.
After a few years of London she grew restless and dissatisfied. Her
surroundings wearied her. There was a call within her for something more
than she had yet experienced. The earl, her husband, was by nature no
less restless; and so, without knowing the reason--which, indeed, she
herself did not understand--he readily assented to a journey on the
Continent.
As they traveled southward they reached at length the town of Valence,
where Count d'Orsay was still quartered with his regiment. A vague,
indefinable feeling of attraction swept over this woman, who was now a
woman of the world and yet quite inexperienced in affairs relating to
the heart. The mere sound of the French officer's voice, the mere sight
of his face, the mere knowledge of his presence, stirred her as nothing
had ever stirred her until that time. Yet neither he nor she appears to
have been conscious at once of the secret of their liking. It was enough
that they were soothed and satisfied with each other's company.
Oddly enough, the Earl of Blessington became as devoted to D'Orsay as
did his wife. The two urged the count to secure a leave of absence and
to accompany them to Italy. This he was easily persuaded to do; and the
three passed weeks and months of a languorous and alluring intercourse
among the lakes and the seductive influence of romantic Italy. Just
what passed between Count d'Orsay and Margaret Blessington at this time
cannot be known, for the secret of it has perished with them; but it
is certain that before very long they came to know that each was
indispensable to the other.
The situation was complicated by the Earl of Blessington, who, entirely
unsuspicious, proposed that the Count should marry Lady Harriet
Gardiner, his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife. He pressed
the match upon the embarrassed D'Orsay, and offered to settle the sum
of forty thousand pounds upon the bride. The girl was less than fifteen
years of age. She had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence; and,
in addition, D'Orsay was now deeply in love with her stepmother.
On the other hand, his position with the Blessingtons was daily growing
more difficult. People had begun to talk of the almost open relations
between Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. Lord Byron, in a letter
written to the countess, spoke to her openly and in a playful way
of "YOUR D'Orsay. " The manners and morals of the time were decidedly
irregular; yet sooner or later the earl was sure to gain some hint of
what every one was saying. Therefore, much against his real desire, yet
in order to shelter his relations with Lady Blessington, D'Orsay agreed
to the marriage with Lady Harriet, who was only fifteen years of age.
This made the intimacy between D'Orsay and the Blessingtons appear to be
not unusual; but, as a matter of fact, the marriage was no marriage.
The unattractive girl who had become a bride merely to hide the
indiscretions of her stepmother was left entirely to herself; while the
whole family, returning to London, made their home together in Seymour
Place.
Could D'Orsay have foreseen the future he would never have done what
must always seem an act so utterly unworthy of him. For within two years
Lord Blessington fell ill and died. Had not D'Orsay been married he
would now have been free to marry Lady Blessington. As it was, he was
bound fast to her stepdaughter; and since at that time there was no
divorce court in England, and since he had no reason for seeking
a divorce, he was obliged to live on through many years in a most
ambiguous situation. He did, however, separate himself from his childish
bride; and, having done so, he openly took up his residence with Lady
Blessington at Gore House. By this time, however, the companionship of
the two had received a sort of general sanction, and in that easy-going
age most people took it as a matter of course.
The two were now quite free to live precisely as they would. Lady
Blessington became extravagantly happy, and Count d'Orsay was accepted
in London as an oracle of fashion. Every one was eager to visit Gore
House, and there they received all the notable men of the time. The
improvidence of Lady Blessington, however, was in no respect diminished.
She lived upon her jointure, recklessly spending capital as well as
interest, and gathering under her roof a rare museum of artistic
works, from jewels and curios up to magnificent pictures and beautiful
statuary.
D'Orsay had sufficient self-respect not to live upon the money that had
come to Lady Blessington from her husband. He was a skilful painter, and
he practised his art in a professional way. His portrait of the Duke of
Wellington was preferred by that famous soldier to any other that had
been made of him. The Iron Duke was, in fact, a frequent visitor at Gore
House, and he had a very high opinion of Count d'Orsay. Lady Blessington
herself engaged in writing novels of "high life," some of which were
very popular in their day. But of all that she wrote there remains only
one book which is of permanent value--her Conversations with Lord Byron,
a very valuable contribution to our knowledge of the brilliant poet.
But a nemesis was destined to overtake the pair. Money flowed through
Lady Blessington's hands like water, and she could never be brought to
understand that what she had might not last for ever. Finally, it
was all gone, yet her extravagance continued. Debts were heaped up
mountain-high. She signed notes of hand without even reading them. She
incurred obligations of every sort without a moment's hesitation.
For a long time her creditors held aloof, not believing that her
resources were in reality exhausted; but in the end there came a crash
as sudden as it was ruinous. As if moved by a single impulse, those to
whom she owed money took out judgments against her and descended
upon Gore House in a swarm. This was in the spring of 1849, when Lady
Blessington was in her sixtieth year and D'Orsay fifty-one.
It is a curious coincidence that her earliest novel had portrayed the
wreck of a great establishment such as her own. Of the scene in Gore
House Mr. Madden, Lady Blessington's literary biographer, has written:
Numerous creditors, bill-discounters, money-lenders, jewelers,
lace-venders, tax-collectors, gas-company agents, all persons having
claims to urge pressed them at this period simultaneously. An execution
for a debt of four thousand pounds was at length put in by a house
largely engaged in the silk, lace, India-shawl, and fancy-jewelry
business.
This sum of four thousand pounds was only a nominal claim, but it opened
the flood-gates for all of Lady Blessington's creditors. Mr. Madden
writes still further:
On the 10th of May, 1849, I visited Gore House for the last time. The
auction was going on. There was a large assemblage of people of fashion.
Every room was thronged; the well-known library-salon, in which the
conversaziones took place, was crowded, but not with guests. The
arm-chair in which the lady of the mansion was wont to sit was occupied
by a stout, coarse gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, busily engaged
in examining a marble hand extended on a book, the fingers of which
were modeled from a cast of those of the absent mistress of the
establishment. People, as they passed through the room, poked the
furniture, pulled about the precious objects of art and ornaments of
various kinds that lay on the table; and some made jests and ribald
jokes on the scene they witnessed.
At this compulsory sale things went for less than half their value.
Pictures by Lawrence and Landseer, a library consisting of thousands
of volumes, vases of exquisite workmanship, chandeliers of ormolu, and
precious porcelains--all were knocked down relentlessly at farcical
prices. Lady Blessington reserved nothing for herself. She knew that
the hour had struck, and very soon she was on her way to Paris, whither
Count d'Orsay had already gone, having been threatened with arrest by a
boot-maker to whom he owed five hundred pounds.
D'Orsay very naturally went to Paris, for, like his father, he had
always been an ardent Bonapartist, and now Prince Louis Bonaparte had
been chosen president of the Second French Republic. During the prince's
long period of exile he had been the guest of Count d'Orsay, who had
helped him both with money and with influence. D'Orsay now expected
some return for his former generosity. It came, but it came too late. In
1852, shortly after Prince Louis assumed the title of emperor, the count
was appointed director of fine arts; but when the news was brought to
him he was already dying. Lady Blessington died soon after coming to
Paris, before the end of the year 1849.
Comment upon this tangled story is scarcely needed. Yet one may quote
some sayings from a sort of diary which Lady Blessington called her
"Night Book. " They seem to show that her supreme happiness lasted only
for a little while, and that deep down in her heart she had condemned
herself.
A woman's head is always influenced by her heart; but a man's heart is
always influenced by his head.
The separation of friends by death is less terrible than the divorce of
two hearts that have loved, but have ceased to sympathize, while memory
still recalls what they once were to each other.
People are seldom tired of the world until the world is tired of them.
A woman should not paint sentiment until she has ceased to inspire it.
It is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than
to be pardoned for it.
Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our
buried hopes.
BYRON AND THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
In 1812, when he was in his twenty-fourth year, Lord Byron was more
talked of than any other man in London. He was in the first flush of his
brilliant career, having published the early cantos of "Childe Harold. "
Moreover, he was a peer of the realm, handsome, ardent, and possessing a
personal fascination which few men and still fewer women could resist.
Byron's childhood had been one to excite in him strong feelings of
revolt, and he had inherited a profligate and passionate nature. His
father was a gambler and a spendthrift. His mother was eccentric to a
degree. Byron himself, throughout his boyish years, had been morbidly
sensitive because of a physical deformity--a lame, misshapen foot.
This and the strange treatment which his mother accorded him left him
headstrong, wilful, almost from the first an enemy to whatever was
established and conventional.
As a boy, he was remarkable for the sentimental attachments which he
formed. At eight years of age he was violently in love with a young girl
named Mary Duff. At ten his cousin, Margaret Parker, excited in him a
strange, un-childish passion. At fifteen came one of the greatest
crises of his life, when he became enamored of Mary Chaworth, whose
grand-father had been killed in a duel by Byron's great-uncle. Young as
he was, he would have married her immediately; but Miss Chaworth was
two years older than he, and absolutely refused to take seriously the
devotion of a school-boy.
Byron felt the disappointment keenly; and after a short stay at
Cambridge, he left England, visited Portugal and Spain, and traveled
eastward as far as Greece and Turkey. At Athens he wrote the pretty
little poem to the "maid of Athens"--Miss Theresa Macri, daughter of
the British vice-consul. He returned to London to become at one leap the
most admired poet of the day and the greatest social favorite. He was
possessed of striking personal beauty. Sir Walter Scott said of him:
"His countenance was a thing to dream of. " His glorious eyes, his
mobile, eloquent face, fascinated all; and he was, besides, a genius of
the first rank.
With these endowments, he plunged into the social whirlpool, denying
himself nothing, and receiving everything-adulation, friendship, and
unstinted love. Darkly mysterious stories of his adventures in the East
made many think that he was the hero of some of his own poems, such
as "The Giaour" and "The Corsair. " A German wrote of him that "he was
positively besieged by women. " From the humblest maid-servants up to
ladies of high rank, he had only to throw his handkerchief to make
a conquest. Some women did not even wait for the handkerchief to be
thrown. No wonder that he was sated with so much adoration and that he
wrote of women:
I regard them as very pretty but inferior creatures. I look on them as
grown-up children; but, like a foolish mother, I am constantly the slave
of one of them. Give a woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she
will be content.
The liaison which attracted the most attention at this time was that
between Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron has been greatly blamed for
his share in it; but there is much to be said on the other side. Lady
Caroline was happily married to the Right Hon. William Lamb, afterward
Lord Melbourne, and destined to be the first prime minister of Queen
Victoria. He was an easy-going, genial man of the world who placed too
much confidence in the honor of his wife. She, on the other hand, was
a sentimental fool, always restless, always in search of some new
excitement. She thought herself a poet, and scribbled verses, which
her friends politely admired, and from which they escaped as soon as
possible. When she first met Byron, she cried out: "That pale face is my
fate! " And she afterward added: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know! "
It was not long before the intimacy of the two came very near the point
of open scandal; but Byron was the wooed and not the wooer. This woman,
older than he, flung herself directly at his head. Naturally enough,
it was not very long before she bored him thoroughly. Her romantic
impetuosity became tiresome, and very soon she fell to talking always
of herself, thrusting her poems upon him, and growing vexed and peevish
when he would not praise them. As was well said, "he grew moody and she
fretful when their mutual egotisms jarred. "
In a burst of resentment she left him, but when she returned, she was
worse than ever. She insisted on seeing him. On one occasion she made
her way into his rooms disguised as a boy. At another time, when she
thought he had slighted her, she tried to stab herself with a pair of
scissors. Still later, she offered her favors to any one who would kill
him. Byron himself wrote of her:
You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things that she has said
and done.
Her story has been utilized by Mrs. Humphry Ward in her novel, "The
Marriage of William Ashe. "
Perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of dissipation.
At any rate, in 1813, he proposed marriage to Miss Anne Millbanke,
who at first refused him; but he persisted, and in 1815 the two were
married. Byron seems to have had a premonition that he was making a
terrible mistake. During the wedding ceremony he trembled like a leaf,
and made the wrong responses to the clergyman. After the wedding was
over, in handing his bride into the carriage which awaited them, he said
to her:
"Miss Millbanke, are you ready? "
It was a strange blunder for a bridegroom, and one which many regarded
at the time as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons could
have been more thoroughly mismated--Byron, the human volcano, and his
wife, a prim, narrow-minded, and peevish woman. Their incompatibility
was evident enough from the very first, so that when they returned from
their wedding-journey, and some one asked Byron about his honeymoon, he
answered:
"Call it rather a treacle moon! "
It is hardly necessary here to tell over the story of their domestic
troubles. Only five weeks after their daughter's birth, they parted.
Lady Byron declared that her husband was insane; while after trying many
times to win from her something more than a tepid affection, he gave up
the task in a sort of despairing anger. It should be mentioned here, for
the benefit of those who recall the hideous charges made many decades
afterward by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe on the authority of Lady Byron,
that the latter remained on terms of friendly intimacy with Augusta
Leigh, Lord Byron's sister, and that even on her death-bed she sent an
amicable message to Mrs. Leigh.
Byron, however, stung by the bitter attacks that were made upon him,
left England, and after traveling down the Rhine through Switzerland,
he took up his abode in Venice. His joy at leaving England and ridding
himself of the annoyances which had clustered thick about him, he
expressed in these lines:
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!
Meanwhile he enjoyed himself in reckless fashion. Money poured in upon
him from his English publisher. For two cantos of "Childe Harold" and
"Manfred," Murray paid him twenty thousand dollars. For the fourth
canto, Byron demanded and received more than twelve thousand dollars.
In Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelley and Thomas Moore; but
eventually he parted from them both, for he was about to enter upon a
new phase of his curious career.
He was no longer the Byron of 1815. Four years of high living and much
brandy-and-water had robbed his features of their refinement. His look
was no longer spiritual. He was beginning to grow stout. Yet the change
had not been altogether unfortunate. He had lost something of his wild
impetuosity, and his sense of humor had developed. In his thirtieth
year, in fact, he had at last become a man.
It was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him for
the rest of his life what a well-known writer has called "a star on the
stormy horizon of the poet. " This woman was Teresa, Countess Guiccioli,
whom he first came to know in Venice. She was then only nineteen years
of age, and she was married to a man who was more than forty years her
senior. Unlike the typical Italian woman, she was blonde, with dreamy
eyes and an abundance of golden hair, and her manner was at once modest
and graceful. She had known Byron but a very short time when she found
herself thrilling with a passion of which until then she had never
dreamed. It was written of her:
She had thought of love but as an amusement; yet she now became its
slave.
To this love Byron gave an immediate response, and from that time until
his death he cared for no other woman. The two were absolutely mated.
Nevertheless, there were difficulties which might have been expected.
Count Guiccioli, while he seemed to admire Byron, watched him with
Italian subtlety. The English poet and the Italian countess met
frequently. When Byron was prostrated by an attack of fever, the
countess remained beside him, and he was just recovering when Count
Guiccioli appeared upon the scene and carried off his wife. Byron was in
despair. He exchanged the most ardent letters with the countess, yet he
dreaded assassins whom he believed to have been hired by her husband.
Whenever he rode out, he went armed with sword and pistols.
Amid all this storm and stress, Byron's literary activity was
remarkable. He wrote some of his most famous poems at this time, and he
hoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might be united
once for all.
doubtful whether the name by which she passed was that which had been
given to her at baptism; but, if so, her true name has never been
disclosed.
When she had told the whole of her sad story to Gambetta he made nothing
of it. She said to him again:
"You cannot love me. I should only dim your fame. You can have nothing
in common with a dishonored, ruined girl. That is what I came here to
explain to you. Let us part, and let us for all time forget each other. "
But Gambetta took no heed of what she said. Now that he had found
her, he would not consent to lose her. He seized her slender hands and
covered them with kisses. Again he urged that she should marry him.
Her answer was a curious one. She was a devoted Catholic and would not
regard any marriage as valid save a religious marriage. On the other
hand, Gambetta, though not absolutely irreligious, was leading the
opposition to the Catholic party in France. The Church to him was not so
much a religious body as a political one, and to it he was unalterably
opposed. Personally, he would have no objections to being married by a
priest; but as a leader of the anti-clerical party he felt that he must
not recognize the Church's claim in any way. A religious marriage would
destroy his influence with his followers and might even imperil the
future of the republic.
They pleaded long and earnestly both then and afterward. He urged a
civil marriage, but she declared that only a marriage according to the
rites of the Church could ever purify her past and give her back her
self-respect. In this she was absolutely stubborn, yet she did not urge
upon Gambetta that he should destroy his influence by marrying her in
church.
Through all this interplay of argument and pleading and emotion the
two grew every moment more hopelessly in love. Then the woman, with a
woman's curious subtlety and indirectness, reached a somewhat singular
conclusion. She would hear nothing of a civil marriage, because a civil
marriage was no marriage in the eyes of Pope and prelate. On the other
hand, she did not wish Gambetta to mar his political career by going
through a religious ceremony. She had heard from a priest that the
Church recognized two forms of betrothal. The usual one looked to a
marriage in the future and gave no marriage privileges until after the
formal ceremony. But there was another kind of betrothal known to the
theologians as sponsalia de praesente. According to this, if there were
an actual betrothal, the pair might have the privileges and rights of
marriage immediately, if only they sincerely meant to be married in the
future.
The eager mind of Leonie Leon caught at this bit of ecclesiastical law
and used it with great ingenuity.
"Let us," she said, "be formally betrothed by the interchange of a
ring, and let us promise each other to marry in the future. After such
a betrothal as this we shall be the same as married; for we shall be
acting according to the laws of the Church. "
Gambetta gladly gave his promise. A betrothal ring was purchased; and
then, her conscience being appeased, she gave herself completely to her
lover. Gambetta was sincere. He said to her:
"If the time should ever come when I shall lose my political station,
when I am beaten in the struggle, when I am deserted and alone, will you
not then marry me when I ask you? "
And Leonie, with her arms about his neck, promised that she would. Yet
neither of them specified what sort of marriage this should be, nor did
it seem at the moment as if the question could arise.
For Gambetta was very powerful. He led his party to success in the
election of 1877. Again and again his triumphant oratory mastered the
National Assembly of France. In 1879 he was chosen to be president
of the Chamber of Deputies. He towered far above the president of the
republic--Jules Grevy, that hard-headed, close-fisted old peasant--and
his star had reached its zenith.
All this time he and Leonie Leon maintained their intimacy, though it
was carefully concealed save from a very few. She lived in a plain but
pretty house on the Avenue Perrichont in the quiet quarter of Auteuil;
but Gambetta never came there. Where and when they met was a secret
guarded very carefully by the few who were his close associates. But
meet they did continually, and their affection grew stronger every year.
Leonie thrilled at the victories of the man she loved; and he found joy
in the hours that he spent with her.
Gambetta's need of rest was very great, for he worked at the highest
tension, like an engine which is using every pound of steam. Bismarck,
whose spies kept him well informed of everything that was happening in
Paris, and who had no liking for Gambetta, since the latter always spoke
of him as "the Ogre," once said to a Frenchman named Cheberry:
"He is the only one among you who thinks of revenge, and who is any sort
of a menace to Germany. But, fortunately, he won't last much longer. I
am not speaking thoughtlessly. I know from secret reports what sort of
a life your great man leads, and I know his habits. Why, his life is
a life of continual overwork. He rests neither night nor day. All
politicians who have led the same life have died young. To be able
to serve one's country for a long time a statesman must marry an ugly
woman, have children like the rest of the world, and a country place
or a house to one's self like any common peasant, where he can go and
rest. "
The Iron Chancellor chuckled as he said this, and he was right. And yet
Gambetta's end came not so much through overwork as by an accident.
It may be that the ambition of Mme. Leon stimulated him beyond his
powers. However this may be, early in 1882, when he was defeated in
Parliament on a question which he considered vital, he immediately
resigned and turned his back on public life. His fickle friends soon
deserted him. His enemies jeered and hooted the mention of his name.
He had reached the time which with a sort of prophetic instinct he had
foreseen nearly ten years before. So he turned to the woman who had
been faithful and loving to him; and he turned to her with a feeling of
infinite peace.
"You promised me," he said, "that if ever I was defeated and alone you
would marry me. The time is now. "
Then this man, who had exercised the powers of a dictator, who had
levied armies and shaken governments, and through whose hands there had
passed thousands of millions of francs, sought for a country home. He
found for sale a small estate which had once belonged to Balzac, and
which is known as Les Jardies. It was in wretched repair; yet the small
sum which it cost Gambetta--twelve thousand francs--was practically all
that he possessed. Worn and weary as he was, it seemed to him a haven of
delightful peace; for here he might live in the quiet country with the
still beautiful woman who was soon to become his wife.
It is not known what form of marriage they at last agreed upon. She may
have consented to a civil ceremony; or he, being now out of public life,
may have felt that he could be married by the Church. The day for their
wedding had been set, and Gambetta was already at Les Jardies. But there
came a rumor that he had been shot. Still further tidings bore the news
that he was dying. Paris, fond as it was of scandals, immediately spread
the tale that he had been shot by a jealous woman.
The truth is quite the contrary. Gambetta, in arranging his effects in
his new home, took it upon himself to clean a pair of dueling-pistols;
for every French politician of importance must fight duels, and Gambetta
had already done so. Unfortunately, one cartridge remained unnoticed in
the pistol which Gambetta cleaned. As he held the pistol-barrel against
the soft part of his hand the cartridge exploded, and the ball passed
through the base of the thumb with a rending, spluttering noise.
The wound was not in itself serious, but now the prophecy of Bismarck
was fulfilled. Gambetta had exhausted his vitality; a fever set in, and
before long he died of internal ulceration.
This was the end of a great career and of a great romance of love.
Leonie Leon was half distraught at the death of the lover who was so
soon to be her husband. She wandered for hours in the forest until she
reached a convent, where she was received. Afterward she came to Paris
and hid herself away in a garret of the slums. All the light of her life
had gone out. She wished that she had died with him whose glory had been
her life. Friends of Gambetta, however, discovered her and cared for her
until her death, long afterward, in 1906.
She lived upon the memories of the past, of the swift love that had come
at first sight, but which had lasted unbrokenly; which had given her the
pride of conquest, and which had brought her lover both happiness and
inspiration and a refining touch which had smoothed away his roughness
and made him fit to stand in palaces with dignity and distinction.
As for him, he left a few lines which have been carefully preserved, and
which sum up his thought of her. They read:
To the light of my soul; to the star, of my life--Leonie Leon. For ever!
For ever!
LADY BLESSINGTON AND COUNT D'ORSAY
Often there has arisen some man who, either by his natural gifts or
by his impudence or by the combination of both, has made himself a
recognized leader in the English fashionable world. One of the first of
these men was Richard Nash, usually known as "Beau Nash," who flourished
in the eighteenth century. Nash was a man of doubtful origin; nor was
he attractive in his looks, for he was a huge, clumsy creature with
features that were both irregular and harsh. Nevertheless, for nearly
fifty years Beau Nash was an arbiter of fashion. Goldsmith, who wrote
his life, declared that his supremacy was due to his pleasing manners,
"his assiduity, flattery, fine clothes, and as much wit as the ladies
had whom he addressed. " He converted the town of Bath from a rude little
hamlet into an English Newport, of which he was the social autocrat. He
actually drew up a set of written rules which some of the best-born and
best-bred people follow slavishly.
Even better known to us is George Bryan Brummel, commonly called "Beau
Brummel," who by his friendship with George IV. --then Prince Regent--was
an oracle at court on everything that related to dress and etiquette and
the proper mode of living. His memory has been kept alive most of all by
Richard Mansfield's famous impersonation of him. The play is based upon
the actual facts; for after Brummel had lost the royal favor he died an
insane pauper in the French town of Caen. He, too, had a distinguished
biographer, since Bulwer-Lytton's novel Pelham is really the narrative
of Brummel's curious career.
Long after Brummel, Lord Banelagh led the gilded youth of London, and
it was at this time that the notorious Lola Montez made her first
appearance in the British capital.
These three men--Nash, Brummel, and Ranelagh--had the advantage of
being Englishmen, and, therefore, of not incurring the old-time English
suspicion of foreigners. A much higher type of social arbiter was a
Frenchman who for twenty years during the early part of Queen Victoria's
reign gave law to the great world of fashion, besides exercising a
definite influence upon English art and literature.
This was Count Albert Guillaume d'Orsay, the son of one of Napoleon's
generals, and descended by a morganatic marriage from the King of
Wurttemburg. The old general, his father, was a man of high courage,
impressive appearance, and keen intellect, all of which qualities he
transmitted to his son. The young Count d'Orsay, when he came of age,
found the Napoleonic era ended and France governed by Louis XVIII. The
king gave Count d'Orsay a commission in the army in a regiment stationed
at Valence in the southeastern part of France. He had already visited
England and learned the English language, and he had made some
distinguished friends there, among whom were Lord Byron and Thomas
Moore.
On his return to France he began his garrison life at Valence, where he
showed some of the finer qualities of his character. It is not merely
that he was handsome and accomplished and that he had the gift of
winning the affections of those about him. Unlike Nash and Brummel,
he was a gentleman in every sense, and his courtesy was of the highest
kind. At the balls given by his regiment, although he was more courted
than any other officer, he always sought out the plainest girls and
showed them the most flattering attentions. 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? But all these
things were to come to pass by a mere accident of fortune.
During his firsts visit to London, which has already been mentioned,
Count d'Orsay was invited once or twice to receptions given by the Earl
and Countess of Blessington, where he was well received, though this was
only an incident of his English sojourn. Before the story proceeds
any further it is necessary to give an account of the Earl and of Lady
Blessington, since both of their careers had been, to say the least,
unusual.
Lord Blessington was an Irish peer for whom an ancient title had been
revived. He was remotely descended from the Stuarts of Scotland, and
therefore had royal blood to boast of. He had been well educated, and in
many ways was a man of pleasing manner. On the other hand, he had early
inherited a very large property which yielded him an income of about
thirty thousand pounds a year. He had estates in Ireland, and he owned
nearly the whole of a fashionable street in London, with the buildings
erected on it.
This fortune and the absence of any one who could control him had made
him wilful and extravagant and had wrought in him a curious love of
personal display. Even as a child he would clamor to be dressed in the
most gorgeous uniforms; and when he got possession of his property his
love of display became almost a monomania. He built a theater as an
adjunct to his country house in Ireland and imported players from London
and elsewhere to act in it. He loved to mingle with the mummers, to try
on their various costumes, and to parade up and down, now as an oriental
prince and now as a Roman emperor.
In London he hung about the green-rooms, and was a well-known figure
wherever actors or actresses were collected. Such was his love of the
stage that he sought to marry into the profession and set his heart on a
girl named Mary Campbell Browne, who was very beautiful to look at, but
who was not conspicuous either for her mind or for her morals. When Lord
Blessington proposed marriage to her she was obliged to tell him that
she already had one husband still alive, but she was perfectly willing
to live with him and dispense with the marriage ceremony. So for several
years she did live with him and bore him two children.
It speaks well for the earl that when the inconvenient husband died a
marriage at once took place and Mrs. Browne became a countess. Then,
after other children had been born, the lady died, leaving the earl a
widower at about the age of forty. The only legitimate son born of this
marriage followed his mother to the grave; and so for the third time the
earldom of Blessington seemed likely to become extinct. The death of
his wife, however, gave the earl a special opportunity to display his
extravagant tastes. He spent more than four thousand pounds on the
funeral ceremonies, importing from France a huge black velvet catafalque
which had shortly before been used at the public funeral of Napoleon's
marshal, Duroc, while the house blazed with enormous wax tapers and
glittered with cloth of gold.
Lord Blessington soon plunged again into the busy life of London. Having
now no heir, there was no restraint on his expenditures, and he borrowed
large sums of money in order to buy additional estates and houses and to
experience the exquisite joy of spending lavishly. At this time he had
his lands in Ireland, a town house in St. James's Square, another in
Seymour Place, and still another which was afterward to become famous as
Gore House, in Kensington.
Some years before he had met in Ireland a lady called Mrs. Maurice
Farmer; and it happened that she now came to London. The earlier story
of her still young life must here be told, because her name afterward
became famous, and because the tale illustrates wonderfully well the
raw, crude, lawless period of the Regency, when England was fighting
her long war with Napoleon, when the Prince Regent was imitating all
the vices of the old French kings, when prize-fighting, deep drinking,
dueling, and dicing were practised without restraint in all the large
cities and towns of the United Kingdom. It was, as Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle has said, "an age of folly and of heroism"; for, while it produced
some of the greatest black-guards known to history, it produced also
such men as Wellington and Nelson, the two Pitts, Sheridan, Byron,
Shelley, and Sir Walter Scott.
Mrs. Maurice Farmer was the daughter of a small Irish landowner named
Robert Power--himself the incarnation of all the vices of the time.
There was little law in Ireland, not even that which comes from public
opinion; and Robert Power rode hard to hounds, gambled recklessly,
and assembled in his house all sorts of reprobates, with whom he held
frightful orgies that lasted from sunset until dawn. His wife and his
young daughters viewed him with terror, and the life they led was a
perpetual nightmare because of the bestial carousings in which their
father engaged, wasting his money and mortgaging his estates until the
end of his wild career was in plain sight.
There happened to be stationed at Clonmel a regiment of infantry in
which there served a captain named Maurice St. Leger Farmer. He was a
man of some means, but eccentric to a degree. His temper was so utterly
uncontrolled that even his fellow officers could scarcely live with
him, and he was given to strange caprices. It happened that at a ball in
Clonmel he met the young daughter of Robert Power, then a mere child of
fourteen years. Captain Farmer was seized with an infatuation for the
girl, and he went almost at once to her father, asking for her hand in
marriage and proposing to settle a sum of money upon her if she married
him.
The hard-riding squireen jumped at the offer. His own estate was being
stripped bare. Here was a chance to provide for one of his daughters,
or, rather, to get rid of her, and he agreed that she should be married
out of hand. Going home, he roughly informed the girl that she was to
be the wife of Captain Farmer. He so bullied his wife that she was
compelled to join him in this command.
What was poor little Margaret Power to do? She was only a child. She
knew nothing of the world. She was accustomed to obey her father as she
would have obeyed some evil genius who had her in his power. There were
tears and lamentations. She was frightened half to death; yet for her
there was no help. Therefore, while not yet fifteen her marriage took
place, and she was the unhappy slave of a half-crazy tyrant. She had
then no beauty whatsoever. She was wholly undeveloped--thin and pale,
and with rough hair that fell over her frightened eyes; yet Farmer
wanted her, and he settled his money on her, just as he would have spent
the same amount to gratify any other sudden whim.
The life she led with him for a few months showed him to be more of
a devil than a man. He took a peculiar delight in terrifying her, in
subjecting her to every sort of outrage; nor did he refrain even from
beating her with his fists. The girl could stand a great deal, but this
was too much. She returned to her father's house, where she was received
with the bitterest reproaches, but where, at least, she was safe from
harm, since her possession of a dowry made her a person of some small
importance.
Not long afterward Captain Farmer fell into a dispute with his
colonel, Lord Caledon, and in the course of it he drew his sword on
his commanding officer. The court-martial which was convened to try him
would probably have had him shot were it not for the very general belief
that he was insane. So he was simply cashiered and obliged to leave the
service and betake himself elsewhere. Thus the girl whom, he had married
was quite free--free to leave her wretched home and even to leave
Ireland.
She did leave Ireland and establish herself in London, where she had
some acquaintances, among them the Earl of Blessington. As already said,
he had met her in Ireland while she was living with her husband; and now
from time to time he saw her in a friendly way. After the death of his
wife he became infatuated with Margaret Farmer. She was a good deal
alone, and his attentions gave her entertainment. Her past experience
led her to have no real belief in love. She had become, however, in a
small way interested in literature and art, with an eager ambition to be
known as a writer. As it happened, Captain Farmer, whose name she bore,
had died some months before Lord Blessington had decided to make a new
marriage. The earl proposed to Margaret Farmer, and the two were married
by special license.
The Countess of Blessington--to give the lady her new title--was now
twenty-eight years of age and had developed into a woman of great
beauty. She was noted for the peculiarly vivacious and radiant
expression which was always on her face. She had a kind of vivid
loveliness accompanied by grace, simplicity, and a form of exquisite
proportions. The ugly duckling had become a swan, for now there was no
trace of her former plainness to be seen.
Not yet in her life had love come to her. Her first husband had been
thrust upon her and had treated her outrageously. Her second husband was
much older than she; and, though she was not without a certain kindly
feeling for one who had been kind to her, she married him, first of all,
for his title and position.
Having been reared in poverty, she had no conception of the value of
money; and, though the earl was remarkably extravagant, the new countess
was even more so. One after another their London houses were opened
and decorated with the utmost lavishness. They gave innumerable
entertainments, not only to the nobility and to men of rank,
but--because this was Lady Blessington's peculiar fad--to artists and
actors and writers of all degrees. The American, N. P. Willis, in his
Pencilings by the Way, has given an interesting sketch of the countess
and her surroundings, while the younger Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) has
depicted D'Orsay as Count Mirabel in Henrietta Temple. Willis says:
In a long library, lined alternately with splendidly bound books and
mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room opening upon
Hyde Park, I found Lady Blessington alone. The picture, to my eye, as
the door opened, was a very lovely one--a woman of remarkable beauty,
half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent
lamp suspended from the center of the arched ceiling. Sofas, couches,
ottomans, and busts, arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through
the room; enameled tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in
every corner, and a delicate white hand in relief on the back of a book,
to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of diamond rings.
All this "crowded sumptuousness" was due to the taste of Lady
Blessington. Amid it she received royal dukes, statesmen such as
Palmerston, Canning, Castlereagh, Russell, and Brougham, actors such
as Kemble and Matthews, artists such as Lawrence and Wilkie, and men of
letters such as Moore, Bulwer-Lytton, and the two Disraelis. To maintain
this sort of life Lord Blessington raised large amounts of money,
totaling about half a million pounds sterling, by mortgaging his
different estates and giving his promissory notes to money-lenders. Of
course, he did not spend this vast sum immediately. He might have lived
in comparative luxury upon his income; but he was a restless, eager,
improvident nobleman, and his extravagances were prompted by the urgings
of his wife.
In all this display, which Lady Blessington both stimulated and shared,
there is to be found a psychological basis. She was now verging upon the
thirties--a time which is a very critical period in a woman's emotional
life, if she has not already given herself over to love and been loved
in return. During Lady Blessington's earlier years she had suffered in
many ways, and it is probable that no thought of love had entered her
mind. She was only too glad if she could escape from the harshness
of her father and the cruelty of her first husband. Then came her
development into a beautiful woman, content for the time to be
languorously stagnant and to enjoy the rest and peace which had come to
her.
When she married Lord Blessington her love life had not yet commenced;
and, in fact, there could be no love life in such a marriage--a marriage
with a man much older than herself, scatter-brained, showy, and having
no intellectual gifts. So for a time she sought satisfaction in social
triumphs, in capturing political and literary lions in order to exhibit
them in her salon, and in spending money right and left with a lavish
hand. But, after all, in a woman of her temperament none of these things
could satisfy her inner longings. Beautiful, full of Celtic vivacity,
imaginative and eager, such a nature as hers would in the end be starved
unless her heart should be deeply touched and unless all her pent-up
emotion could give itself up entirely in the great surrender.
After a few years of London she grew restless and dissatisfied. Her
surroundings wearied her. There was a call within her for something more
than she had yet experienced. The earl, her husband, was by nature no
less restless; and so, without knowing the reason--which, indeed, she
herself did not understand--he readily assented to a journey on the
Continent.
As they traveled southward they reached at length the town of Valence,
where Count d'Orsay was still quartered with his regiment. A vague,
indefinable feeling of attraction swept over this woman, who was now a
woman of the world and yet quite inexperienced in affairs relating to
the heart. The mere sound of the French officer's voice, the mere sight
of his face, the mere knowledge of his presence, stirred her as nothing
had ever stirred her until that time. Yet neither he nor she appears to
have been conscious at once of the secret of their liking. It was enough
that they were soothed and satisfied with each other's company.
Oddly enough, the Earl of Blessington became as devoted to D'Orsay as
did his wife. The two urged the count to secure a leave of absence and
to accompany them to Italy. This he was easily persuaded to do; and the
three passed weeks and months of a languorous and alluring intercourse
among the lakes and the seductive influence of romantic Italy. Just
what passed between Count d'Orsay and Margaret Blessington at this time
cannot be known, for the secret of it has perished with them; but it
is certain that before very long they came to know that each was
indispensable to the other.
The situation was complicated by the Earl of Blessington, who, entirely
unsuspicious, proposed that the Count should marry Lady Harriet
Gardiner, his eldest legitimate daughter by his first wife. He pressed
the match upon the embarrassed D'Orsay, and offered to settle the sum
of forty thousand pounds upon the bride. The girl was less than fifteen
years of age. She had no gifts either of beauty or of intelligence; and,
in addition, D'Orsay was now deeply in love with her stepmother.
On the other hand, his position with the Blessingtons was daily growing
more difficult. People had begun to talk of the almost open relations
between Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. Lord Byron, in a letter
written to the countess, spoke to her openly and in a playful way
of "YOUR D'Orsay. " The manners and morals of the time were decidedly
irregular; yet sooner or later the earl was sure to gain some hint of
what every one was saying. Therefore, much against his real desire, yet
in order to shelter his relations with Lady Blessington, D'Orsay agreed
to the marriage with Lady Harriet, who was only fifteen years of age.
This made the intimacy between D'Orsay and the Blessingtons appear to be
not unusual; but, as a matter of fact, the marriage was no marriage.
The unattractive girl who had become a bride merely to hide the
indiscretions of her stepmother was left entirely to herself; while the
whole family, returning to London, made their home together in Seymour
Place.
Could D'Orsay have foreseen the future he would never have done what
must always seem an act so utterly unworthy of him. For within two years
Lord Blessington fell ill and died. Had not D'Orsay been married he
would now have been free to marry Lady Blessington. As it was, he was
bound fast to her stepdaughter; and since at that time there was no
divorce court in England, and since he had no reason for seeking
a divorce, he was obliged to live on through many years in a most
ambiguous situation. He did, however, separate himself from his childish
bride; and, having done so, he openly took up his residence with Lady
Blessington at Gore House. By this time, however, the companionship of
the two had received a sort of general sanction, and in that easy-going
age most people took it as a matter of course.
The two were now quite free to live precisely as they would. Lady
Blessington became extravagantly happy, and Count d'Orsay was accepted
in London as an oracle of fashion. Every one was eager to visit Gore
House, and there they received all the notable men of the time. The
improvidence of Lady Blessington, however, was in no respect diminished.
She lived upon her jointure, recklessly spending capital as well as
interest, and gathering under her roof a rare museum of artistic
works, from jewels and curios up to magnificent pictures and beautiful
statuary.
D'Orsay had sufficient self-respect not to live upon the money that had
come to Lady Blessington from her husband. He was a skilful painter, and
he practised his art in a professional way. His portrait of the Duke of
Wellington was preferred by that famous soldier to any other that had
been made of him. The Iron Duke was, in fact, a frequent visitor at Gore
House, and he had a very high opinion of Count d'Orsay. Lady Blessington
herself engaged in writing novels of "high life," some of which were
very popular in their day. But of all that she wrote there remains only
one book which is of permanent value--her Conversations with Lord Byron,
a very valuable contribution to our knowledge of the brilliant poet.
But a nemesis was destined to overtake the pair. Money flowed through
Lady Blessington's hands like water, and she could never be brought to
understand that what she had might not last for ever. Finally, it
was all gone, yet her extravagance continued. Debts were heaped up
mountain-high. She signed notes of hand without even reading them. She
incurred obligations of every sort without a moment's hesitation.
For a long time her creditors held aloof, not believing that her
resources were in reality exhausted; but in the end there came a crash
as sudden as it was ruinous. As if moved by a single impulse, those to
whom she owed money took out judgments against her and descended
upon Gore House in a swarm. This was in the spring of 1849, when Lady
Blessington was in her sixtieth year and D'Orsay fifty-one.
It is a curious coincidence that her earliest novel had portrayed the
wreck of a great establishment such as her own. Of the scene in Gore
House Mr. Madden, Lady Blessington's literary biographer, has written:
Numerous creditors, bill-discounters, money-lenders, jewelers,
lace-venders, tax-collectors, gas-company agents, all persons having
claims to urge pressed them at this period simultaneously. An execution
for a debt of four thousand pounds was at length put in by a house
largely engaged in the silk, lace, India-shawl, and fancy-jewelry
business.
This sum of four thousand pounds was only a nominal claim, but it opened
the flood-gates for all of Lady Blessington's creditors. Mr. Madden
writes still further:
On the 10th of May, 1849, I visited Gore House for the last time. The
auction was going on. There was a large assemblage of people of fashion.
Every room was thronged; the well-known library-salon, in which the
conversaziones took place, was crowded, but not with guests. The
arm-chair in which the lady of the mansion was wont to sit was occupied
by a stout, coarse gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, busily engaged
in examining a marble hand extended on a book, the fingers of which
were modeled from a cast of those of the absent mistress of the
establishment. People, as they passed through the room, poked the
furniture, pulled about the precious objects of art and ornaments of
various kinds that lay on the table; and some made jests and ribald
jokes on the scene they witnessed.
At this compulsory sale things went for less than half their value.
Pictures by Lawrence and Landseer, a library consisting of thousands
of volumes, vases of exquisite workmanship, chandeliers of ormolu, and
precious porcelains--all were knocked down relentlessly at farcical
prices. Lady Blessington reserved nothing for herself. She knew that
the hour had struck, and very soon she was on her way to Paris, whither
Count d'Orsay had already gone, having been threatened with arrest by a
boot-maker to whom he owed five hundred pounds.
D'Orsay very naturally went to Paris, for, like his father, he had
always been an ardent Bonapartist, and now Prince Louis Bonaparte had
been chosen president of the Second French Republic. During the prince's
long period of exile he had been the guest of Count d'Orsay, who had
helped him both with money and with influence. D'Orsay now expected
some return for his former generosity. It came, but it came too late. In
1852, shortly after Prince Louis assumed the title of emperor, the count
was appointed director of fine arts; but when the news was brought to
him he was already dying. Lady Blessington died soon after coming to
Paris, before the end of the year 1849.
Comment upon this tangled story is scarcely needed. Yet one may quote
some sayings from a sort of diary which Lady Blessington called her
"Night Book. " They seem to show that her supreme happiness lasted only
for a little while, and that deep down in her heart she had condemned
herself.
A woman's head is always influenced by her heart; but a man's heart is
always influenced by his head.
The separation of friends by death is less terrible than the divorce of
two hearts that have loved, but have ceased to sympathize, while memory
still recalls what they once were to each other.
People are seldom tired of the world until the world is tired of them.
A woman should not paint sentiment until she has ceased to inspire it.
It is less difficult for a woman to obtain celebrity by her genius than
to be pardoned for it.
Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our
buried hopes.
BYRON AND THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
In 1812, when he was in his twenty-fourth year, Lord Byron was more
talked of than any other man in London. He was in the first flush of his
brilliant career, having published the early cantos of "Childe Harold. "
Moreover, he was a peer of the realm, handsome, ardent, and possessing a
personal fascination which few men and still fewer women could resist.
Byron's childhood had been one to excite in him strong feelings of
revolt, and he had inherited a profligate and passionate nature. His
father was a gambler and a spendthrift. His mother was eccentric to a
degree. Byron himself, throughout his boyish years, had been morbidly
sensitive because of a physical deformity--a lame, misshapen foot.
This and the strange treatment which his mother accorded him left him
headstrong, wilful, almost from the first an enemy to whatever was
established and conventional.
As a boy, he was remarkable for the sentimental attachments which he
formed. At eight years of age he was violently in love with a young girl
named Mary Duff. At ten his cousin, Margaret Parker, excited in him a
strange, un-childish passion. At fifteen came one of the greatest
crises of his life, when he became enamored of Mary Chaworth, whose
grand-father had been killed in a duel by Byron's great-uncle. Young as
he was, he would have married her immediately; but Miss Chaworth was
two years older than he, and absolutely refused to take seriously the
devotion of a school-boy.
Byron felt the disappointment keenly; and after a short stay at
Cambridge, he left England, visited Portugal and Spain, and traveled
eastward as far as Greece and Turkey. At Athens he wrote the pretty
little poem to the "maid of Athens"--Miss Theresa Macri, daughter of
the British vice-consul. He returned to London to become at one leap the
most admired poet of the day and the greatest social favorite. He was
possessed of striking personal beauty. Sir Walter Scott said of him:
"His countenance was a thing to dream of. " His glorious eyes, his
mobile, eloquent face, fascinated all; and he was, besides, a genius of
the first rank.
With these endowments, he plunged into the social whirlpool, denying
himself nothing, and receiving everything-adulation, friendship, and
unstinted love. Darkly mysterious stories of his adventures in the East
made many think that he was the hero of some of his own poems, such
as "The Giaour" and "The Corsair. " A German wrote of him that "he was
positively besieged by women. " From the humblest maid-servants up to
ladies of high rank, he had only to throw his handkerchief to make
a conquest. Some women did not even wait for the handkerchief to be
thrown. No wonder that he was sated with so much adoration and that he
wrote of women:
I regard them as very pretty but inferior creatures. I look on them as
grown-up children; but, like a foolish mother, I am constantly the slave
of one of them. Give a woman a looking-glass and burnt almonds, and she
will be content.
The liaison which attracted the most attention at this time was that
between Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb. Byron has been greatly blamed for
his share in it; but there is much to be said on the other side. Lady
Caroline was happily married to the Right Hon. William Lamb, afterward
Lord Melbourne, and destined to be the first prime minister of Queen
Victoria. He was an easy-going, genial man of the world who placed too
much confidence in the honor of his wife. She, on the other hand, was
a sentimental fool, always restless, always in search of some new
excitement. She thought herself a poet, and scribbled verses, which
her friends politely admired, and from which they escaped as soon as
possible. When she first met Byron, she cried out: "That pale face is my
fate! " And she afterward added: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know! "
It was not long before the intimacy of the two came very near the point
of open scandal; but Byron was the wooed and not the wooer. This woman,
older than he, flung herself directly at his head. Naturally enough,
it was not very long before she bored him thoroughly. Her romantic
impetuosity became tiresome, and very soon she fell to talking always
of herself, thrusting her poems upon him, and growing vexed and peevish
when he would not praise them. As was well said, "he grew moody and she
fretful when their mutual egotisms jarred. "
In a burst of resentment she left him, but when she returned, she was
worse than ever. She insisted on seeing him. On one occasion she made
her way into his rooms disguised as a boy. At another time, when she
thought he had slighted her, she tried to stab herself with a pair of
scissors. Still later, she offered her favors to any one who would kill
him. Byron himself wrote of her:
You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things that she has said
and done.
Her story has been utilized by Mrs. Humphry Ward in her novel, "The
Marriage of William Ashe. "
Perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of dissipation.
At any rate, in 1813, he proposed marriage to Miss Anne Millbanke,
who at first refused him; but he persisted, and in 1815 the two were
married. Byron seems to have had a premonition that he was making a
terrible mistake. During the wedding ceremony he trembled like a leaf,
and made the wrong responses to the clergyman. After the wedding was
over, in handing his bride into the carriage which awaited them, he said
to her:
"Miss Millbanke, are you ready? "
It was a strange blunder for a bridegroom, and one which many regarded
at the time as ominous for the future. In truth, no two persons could
have been more thoroughly mismated--Byron, the human volcano, and his
wife, a prim, narrow-minded, and peevish woman. Their incompatibility
was evident enough from the very first, so that when they returned from
their wedding-journey, and some one asked Byron about his honeymoon, he
answered:
"Call it rather a treacle moon! "
It is hardly necessary here to tell over the story of their domestic
troubles. Only five weeks after their daughter's birth, they parted.
Lady Byron declared that her husband was insane; while after trying many
times to win from her something more than a tepid affection, he gave up
the task in a sort of despairing anger. It should be mentioned here, for
the benefit of those who recall the hideous charges made many decades
afterward by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe on the authority of Lady Byron,
that the latter remained on terms of friendly intimacy with Augusta
Leigh, Lord Byron's sister, and that even on her death-bed she sent an
amicable message to Mrs. Leigh.
Byron, however, stung by the bitter attacks that were made upon him,
left England, and after traveling down the Rhine through Switzerland,
he took up his abode in Venice. His joy at leaving England and ridding
himself of the annoyances which had clustered thick about him, he
expressed in these lines:
Once more upon the waters! yet once more!
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows his rider. Welcome to the roar!
Meanwhile he enjoyed himself in reckless fashion. Money poured in upon
him from his English publisher. For two cantos of "Childe Harold" and
"Manfred," Murray paid him twenty thousand dollars. For the fourth
canto, Byron demanded and received more than twelve thousand dollars.
In Italy he lived on friendly terms with Shelley and Thomas Moore; but
eventually he parted from them both, for he was about to enter upon a
new phase of his curious career.
He was no longer the Byron of 1815. Four years of high living and much
brandy-and-water had robbed his features of their refinement. His look
was no longer spiritual. He was beginning to grow stout. Yet the change
had not been altogether unfortunate. He had lost something of his wild
impetuosity, and his sense of humor had developed. In his thirtieth
year, in fact, he had at last become a man.
It was soon after this that he met a woman who was to be to him for
the rest of his life what a well-known writer has called "a star on the
stormy horizon of the poet. " This woman was Teresa, Countess Guiccioli,
whom he first came to know in Venice. She was then only nineteen years
of age, and she was married to a man who was more than forty years her
senior. Unlike the typical Italian woman, she was blonde, with dreamy
eyes and an abundance of golden hair, and her manner was at once modest
and graceful. She had known Byron but a very short time when she found
herself thrilling with a passion of which until then she had never
dreamed. It was written of her:
She had thought of love but as an amusement; yet she now became its
slave.
To this love Byron gave an immediate response, and from that time until
his death he cared for no other woman. The two were absolutely mated.
Nevertheless, there were difficulties which might have been expected.
Count Guiccioli, while he seemed to admire Byron, watched him with
Italian subtlety. The English poet and the Italian countess met
frequently. When Byron was prostrated by an attack of fever, the
countess remained beside him, and he was just recovering when Count
Guiccioli appeared upon the scene and carried off his wife. Byron was in
despair. He exchanged the most ardent letters with the countess, yet he
dreaded assassins whom he believed to have been hired by her husband.
Whenever he rode out, he went armed with sword and pistols.
Amid all this storm and stress, Byron's literary activity was
remarkable. He wrote some of his most famous poems at this time, and he
hoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might be united
once for all.
