There is every reason to think Marguerite was true to her young "Greek God." But if so, it was not for lack of temptation or opportunity to be otherwise. In her late forties and early fifties, she was still "the most gorgeous Lady Blessington," still as lovely, as magnetic, as adorable as in her teens.
Among the men who delighted to honor her salons with their frequent presence—and more than one of them made desperate love to their hostess—were Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, Sir Robert Peel, Captain Marryat, Brougham, Landseer, Tom Moore, Disraeli, and many another genius.
Disraeli—one day to rule British politics as Lord Beaconsfield—was at that time merely a brilliant politician and an almost equally brilliant novelist. There is a story—I don't vouch for it—that, piqued at Marguerite's coldness toward himself, Disraeli revenged himself by portraying D'Orsay right mercilessly as "Count Mirabeau," in his "Henrietta Temple."
Landor was drawn by her lure into returning to England. The aged Duke of Wellington, too, was a guest at her more informal "at homes." Marguerite used such influence as she possessed over the duke to persuade him to let D'Orsay paint his portrait. So well did the picture turn out that the duke cried in delight:
"At last I've been painted as a gentleman!"
To the Blessington salons came an American, a man whose clothes were the hopeless envy of Broadway, and whose forehead curl was imitated by every Yankee dandy who could afford to buy enough pomatum to stick a similar curl to his own brow. He was N. P. Willis. You don't even start at the name. Yet that name used to thrill your grandmother. Willis was a writer; and gained more temporary fame for less good work than any other author our country has produced.
During a tour of England, he was fortunate enough to receive an invitation to call on Lady Blessington. And thereafter he called almost every day. He fairly raved over her.
"She is one of the most lovely and fascinating women I have ever known!" he wrote.
Then he wrote more; he wrote a story of something that happened at one of her soirees. He sent it to an American paper, never dreaming it would ever be seen in England. But the story was reprinted in an English magazine. And D'Orsay showed Willis the door.
Another visitor to Gore House was a pallid, puffy princeling, out of a job and out of a home. He was Louis Napoleon, reputed nephew of Napoleon the Great; and he was one day to reign as Napoleon III., Emperor of the French. In the meantime, exiled from France, he knocked around the world, morbidly wondering where his next suit of ready-made clothes was to come from. He even visited the United States, for a while, teaching school at Bordentown, New Jersey, and sponging for loans and dinners from the Jumels and other people kindly disposed to the Bonaparte cause.