The Third Marquis of Hertford.(From the engraving by W. Holl, of the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence)
The Fourth Marquis of Hertford. (From a photograph)
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It will be noticed that in this photograph Lord Hertford wears his Star of the Order of the Garter, to obtain which he made the “tremendous sacrifice” of which an amusing account is given in the Lippincott article mentioned above. Of him the Speaker wrote at the time of his death:
Living in Paris a quiet and rather solitary life—in habits more a Frenchman than an Englishman; in tastes an artist and a connoisseur; in purse and opportunity unlimited by any niggard need of self-control—the fourth Marquis of Hertford busied himself in gathering together from the treasure-houses of Europe innumerable precious specimens of the painter’s, the goldsmith’s, and the cabinetmaker’s art. Year after year, with tranquil perseverance, he heaped up on every side of him all the beautiful objects on which he could lay hands—pictures, miniatures, furniture, enamels, china and plate, bronzes, and coats of armour—until his storehouses were full to overflowing of treasures which, except for the pleasure of procuring them, he could hardly ever have enjoyed. In this congenial task he was assisted by a young Englishman, the secret of whose connection with the Hertford family, if any such there was, the public has never penetrated yet. To this young Englishman, who was well known and liked in Parisian society in the tawdry splendour of the Second Empire, and whose active generosity {22} won him wide esteem in that desolated capital amid the terrible events of the winter of 1870–71, Lord Hertford bequeathed the wonderful possessions which he had accumulated in a lifetime of discriminating labour. When the Franco-German War and the Commune were over, Richard Wallace brought his spoils safely home, and exhibited them for a time at the Bethnal Green Museum while he built the great galleries to hold them in Manchester Square. But even here they were not destined to bring much happiness to their possessor. After a short time Sir Richard Wallace was left heirless—like Lord Hertford—by a cruel stroke of fate; and now, by his widow’s gift, the splendid inheritance, which has passed so quickly from the keeping of the hands that laid it up, goes to enrich a public which will not be ungrateful for the donor’s rare munificence, or unmindful of the sad and curious story it recalls.[9]
[9] A footnote on p. 229, vol. iv. of G. E. C.’s Complete Peerage says: “[The fourth Marquis] is said never to have been in England. He left his Irish estates (worth £50,000 a year) and most of his personalty (which included the well-known Hertford collection of pictures) to Sir Richard Wallace, Bart. (so cr. 1866), who is supposed to have been an illegit. son, either of himself (when aged 18), or of his father, or even (not improbably) of his mother; which Richard (b. in London, 26th July 1818) d. s.p. at Paris, 20th July 1890, in his 72nd year, and was bur. in the family vault at Père-la-Chaise. Sir Richard’s ‘art treasures’ (derived as above stated) were valued at his death in 1890 at above two millions.”
To return again to the suppressed wood engraving itself, it is curious to notice that old “Lady Kew” of The Newcomes was sister to Lord Steyne. Now the name “Kew” at once suggests {23} to those conversant with the early doings of the century the nickname of the notorious Duke of Queensberry, known to all and sundry as “Old Q,” and sets us considering why the name should suggest itself to Thackeray in connection with Lord Hertford. And what do we find?
When the third Marquis was but twenty-one, he married a young lady named Marie Fagniani. She was believed to be the daughter of the Duke of Queensberry and an opera dancer of that name. Nothing would be more natural, therefore, than that Thackeray, having saturated himself with the surroundings of the prototypes of his characters, should, probably half unconsciously, have seized upon a capital name suggested to him in the course of preparing for his novel, and so adapted it to his requirements. This suggestion I only make for what it is worth. It may, of course, merely be that a search through the suburban directory suggested the name, as was no doubt the case in apportioning to her ladyship’s husband his second title of Lord Walham. At any rate, the coincidence seems worth recording.
In conclusion, there can be no possible doubt {24} that so far as Thackeray’s letterpress is concerned, the prototype of the Marquis of Steyne (Lord of the Powder Closet, etc. etc.) was Francis Charles Seymour Conway (third Marquis of Hertford) of his branch; Earl of Hertford and Yarmouth, Viscount Beauchamp, Baron Conway, and Baron of Ragley in England; and Baron Conway and Kilultagh in the peerage of Ireland; and as regards the suppressed wood engraving, there will, I think, be little question that Thackeray the artist dotted his i’s by an intentional representation of the noble lord’s not altogether attractive features.