DEATH OF LADY BLESSINGTON.
The Parisian correspondent of the London Morning Post thus makes the first mention of this unexpected event:—
“We have all been much shocked this afternoon by the sudden death of Lady Blessington. Her ladyship dined yesterday with the Duchess de Grammont, and returned home late in her usual health and spirits. In the course of this morning she felt unwell, and her homœopathic medical adviser, Dr. Simon, was sent for. After a short consultation, the doctor announced that his patient was dying of apoplexy, and his sad prediction was unhappily verified but too rapidly, as her ladyship expired in his arms about an hour and a half ago.”
We doubt whether a death could have taken place, in private life, in Europe, that would have made a more vivid sensation than this, or have been more sincerely regretted. Indeed, a possessor of more power, in its most attractive shape, could hardly have been named, in life public or private—for the extent of Lady Blessington’s friendships with distinguished men of every nation, quality, character, rank and creed, was without a parallel. Her friends were carefully chosen—but, once admitted to her intimacy, they never were neglected and never lessened in their attachment to her. She has a circle of mourners, at this moment, in which there is more genius, more distinction, and more sincere sorrowing, than has embalmed a name within the lapse of a century. Noblemen, statesmen, soldiers, church-dignitaries, poets and authors, artists, actors, musicians, bankers,—a galaxy of the best of their different stations and pursuits—have received, with tears at the door of the heart, the first intelligence of her death.
The deceased will have a biographer—no doubt an able and renowned one. Bulwer, who enjoyed her friendship as intimately, perhaps, for the last ten years of her life, as any other man, might describe her best, and is not likely to leave, undone, a task so obviously his own. Without hoping to anticipate, at all, the portraiture, by an abler hand, of this remarkable woman, we may venture to send to our readers this first announcement of her death, accompanied with such a sketch of her qualities of mind and heart as our own memory, of the acquaintance we had the privilege of enjoying, enables us easily to draw.
Lady Blessington, as her writings show, was not a woman of genius in the creative sense of the term. She has originated nothing that would, of itself, have made a mark upon the age she lived in. Her peculiarity lay in the curiously felicitous combination of the best qualities of the two sexes, in her single character as it came from nature. She had the cool common sense and intrepid unsubserviency which together give a man the best social superiority, and she had the tact, the delicacy and the impassioned devotedness which are essentials in the finest compounds of woman. She did not know what fear was,—either of persons or of opinions,—and it was as like herself when she shook her gloved fist in defiance at the mob in Whitehall, on their threatening to break her carriage windows if she drove through, as it was to return to London after her long residence on the continent, and establish herself as the centre of a society from which her own sex were excluded. Under more guarded and fortunate circumstances of early life, and had she attained “the age of discretion” before taking any decided step, she would probably have been one of those guiding stars of individualism, in common life, alike peculiar, admirable and irreproachable.
Lady Blessington’s generous estimate of what services were due in friendship—her habitual conduct in such relations amounting to a romantic chivalry of devotedness—bound to her with a naturalness of affection not very common in that class of life, those who formed the circle of her intimacy. She did not wait to be solicited. Her tact and knowledge of the world enabled her to understand, with a truth that sometimes seemed like divination, the position of a friend at the moment—his hopes and difficulties, his wants and capabilities. She had a much larger influence than was generally supposed, with persons in power, who were not of her known acquaintance, many an important spring of political and social movement was unsuspectedly within her control. She could aid ambition, promote literary distinction, remove difficulties in society which she did not herself frequent, serve artists, harmonize and prevent misunderstandings, and give valuable counsel on almost any subject that could come up in the career of a man, with a skill and a control of resources of which few had any idea. Many a one of her brilliant and unsurpassed dinners had a kindly object which its titled guests little dreamed of, but which was not forgotten for a moment, amid the wit and eloquence that seemed so purposeless and impulsive. On some errand of good will to others, her superb equipage, the most faultless thing of its kind in the world, was almost invariably bound, when gazed after in the streets of London. Princes and noblemen, (who, as well as poets and artists, have aims which need the devotion of friendship,) were the objects of her watchful aid and ministration; and we doubt, indeed, whether any woman lived, who was so valuable a friend to so many, setting aside the high careers that were influenced among them, and the high station and rank that were befriended with no more assiduity than lesser ambitions and distinctions.
The conversation, at the table in Gore House, was allowed to be the most brilliant in Europe, but Lady Blessington herself seldom took the lead in it. Her manners were such as to put every one at his ease, and her absolute tact at suggestion and change of topics, made any one shine who had it in him, when she chose to call it forth. She had the display of her guests as completely under her hand as the pianist his keys; and, forgetful of herself—giving the most earnest and appreciative attention to others—she seemed to desire no share in the happiness of the hour except that of making each, in his way, show to advantage. If there was any impulse of her mind to which she gave way with a feeling of carelessness, it was to the love of humor in her Irish nature, and her mirthfulness at such moments, was most joyously unrestrained and natural.
In 1835, when we first saw Lady Blessington, she confessed to forty, and was then exceedingly handsome. Her beauty, it is true, was more in pose and demeanor than in the features of her face, but she produced the full impression of great beauty. Her mouth was the very type of freshness and frankness. The irregularity of her nose gave a vivacity to her expression, and her thin and pliant nostrils added a look of spirit which was unmistakable, but there was a steady penetration in the character of her eye which threw a singular earnestness and sincerity over all. Like Victoria, Tom Moore, the Duke of Wellington and Grisi, she sat tall—her body being longer in proportion than her limbs—and, probably from some little sensitiveness on this point, she was seldom seen walking. Her grace of posture in her carriage struck the commonest observer, and, seated at her table, or in the gold and satin arm-chair in her drawing room, she was majestically elegant and dignified. Of the singular beauty of her hands and arms, celebrated as they were in poetry and sculpture, she seemed at least unconscious, and used them carelessly, gracefully and expressively, in the gestures of conversation. At the time we speak of, she was in perfect maturity portion and figure, but beginning, even then, to conceal, by a peculiar cap, the increasing fullness under her chin. Her natural tendency to plethora was not counteracted by exercise, and when we saw her last, two years ago, she was exceedingly altered from her former self, and had evidently given up to an indolence of personal habits which has since ended in apoplexy and death.
There is an ignorance with regard to the early history of this distinguished woman, and a degree of misrepresentation in the popular report of her life in later years, which a simple statement of the outline of her career will properly correct. Her death takes away from her friends the freedom of speaking carelessly of her faults, but it binds them, also, to guard her memory as far as Truth can do it, from injustice and perversion.
Lady Blessington’s maiden name was Margaret Power. She was born in Ireland, the daughter of the printer and editor of the Clonmel Herald, and up to the age of twelve or fourteen, (as we once heard her say) had hardly worn a shoe or been in a house where there was a carpet. At this age of her girlhood, however, she and her sister (who was afterwards Lady Canterbury) were fancied by a family of wealthy old maids, to whom they were distantly related, and taken to a home where they proved apt scholars in the knowledge of luxury and manners. On their return to Clonmel, two young girls of singular beauty, they became at once the attraction of a dashing English regiment newly stationed there, and Margaret was soon married to an officer by the name of Farmer. From this hasty connection, into which she was crowded by busy and ambitious friends, sprang all the subsequent canker of her life. Her husband proved to be liable to temporary insanity, and, at best, was cruel and capricious. Others were kinder and more attentive. She was but sixteen. Flying from her husband who was pursuing her with a pistol in his hand to take her life, she left her home, and, in the retreat where she took refuge, was found by a wealthy and accomplished officer, who had long been her admirer, and whose “protection” she now fatally accepted.
With this gentleman, Captain Jenkinson, she lived four years in complete seclusion. His return to dissipated habits, at the end of that time, destroyed his fortune and brought about a separation; and, her husband, meantime, having died, she received an offer of marriage from Lord Blessington, who was then a widower with one daughter. She refused the offer, at first, from delicate motives, easily understood: but it was at last pressed on her acceptance, and she married and went abroad.
Received into the best society of the continent at once, and with her remarkable beauty and her husband’s enormous wealth, entering upon a most brilliant career, she became easily an accomplished woman of the world, and readily supplied for herself, any deficiencies in her early education. It was during this first residence in Paris that Lord Blessington became exceedingly attached to Count Alfred D’Orsay, the handsomest and most talented young nobleman of France. Determined not to be separated from one he declared he could not live without, he affianced his daughter to him, persuaded his father to let him give up his commission in the army, and fairly adopted him into his family to share his fortune with him as a son. They soon left Paris for Italy, and at Genoa fell in with Lord Byron, who was a friend of Lord Blessington’s, and with whom they made a party, for residence in that beautiful climate, the delightful socialities of which are well described in her Ladyship’s “Conversations.”
A year or two afterwards, Lord Blessington’s daughter came to him from school, and was married to Count D’Orsay at Naples. The union proved inharmonious, and they separated, after living but a year together. Lord Blessington died soon after, and, on Lady Blessington’s return to England, the Count rejoined her, and they formed but one household till her death.
It was this residence of Lord Blessington’s widow and her son-in-law under the same roof—he, meantime, separated from his wife, Lady Harriet D’Orsay—which, by the English code of appearances in morals, compromised the position of Lady Blessington. She chose to disregard public opinion, where it interfered with what she deliberately made up her mind was best, and, disdaining to explain or submit, guarded against slight or injury, by excluding from her house all who would condemn her, viz:—her own sex. Yet all who knew her and her son-in-law, were satisfied that it was a useful and, indeed, absolutely necessary arrangement for him—her strict business habits, practical good sense, and the protection of her roof, being an indispensable safeguard to his personal liberty and fortunes—and that this need of serving him and the strongest and most disinterested friendship were her only motives, every one was completely sure who knew them at all. By those intimate at her house, including the best and greatest men of England, Lady Blessington was held in unqualified respect, and no shadow even of suspicion, thrown over her life of widowhood. She had many entreaties from her own sex to depart from her resolve and interchange visits, and we chanced to be at her house, one morning, when a note was handed to her from one of the most distinguished noble ladies of England, making such a proposal. We saw the reply. It expressed, with her felicitous tact, a full appreciation of the confidence and kindness of the note she had received, but declined its request, from an unwillingness to place herself in any position where she might, by the remotest possibility, suffer from doubt or injustice. She persevered in this to the end of her life, a few relatives and one or two intimates of her continental acquaintance being the only ladies seen at her house. When seized with her last illness, she had been dining with Count D’Orsay’s sister, the beautiful Duchess de Grammont.
Faulty as a portion of Lady Blessington’s life may have been, we doubt whether a woman has lived, in her time, who did so many actions of truest kindness, and whose life altogether was so benevolently and largely instrumental for the happiness of others. With the circumstances that bore upon her destiny, with her beauty, her fascination and her boundless influence over all men who approached her, she might easily, almost excusably, have left a less worthy memory to fame. Few in their graves, now, deserve a more honoring remembrance.