A taking pair should deign to borrow,
To wit, until All Souls the morrow,
The body of a beau;
But Sunday sets the prisoner free,
He shows the Park, and laughs with glee,
At creditors and Bum.”
Henry Vizetelly used on occasion to make an early call upon Thackeray, and walk into town with him from Kensington. “On one of these journeys,” he says, “soon after Lady Blessington gave up Gore House to reside in Paris, I remember his taking me with him to look over the little crib, adjacent to the big mansion, where Count d’Orsay, Lady Blessington’s recognised lover, was understood to have resided, with the view of saving appearances. For years past the ringleted and white-kidded Count, although his tailor and other obliging tradespeople dressed him for nothing, or rather, in consideration of the advertisement that his equivocal patronage procured for them, had been a self-constituted prisoner through dread of arrest for debt. It was only on Sundays that he ventured outside the Gore House grounds, and for his protection on other days the greatest possible precaution was exercised when it was necessary for any of Lady Blessington’s many visitors to be admitted. D’Orsay’s friend, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, who was mixed up with him in numerous bill transactions, used to say that the Count’s debts amounted to £120,000, and that before he retired to the safe asylum of Gore House, he was literally mobbed by duns.”
HYDE PARK CORNER IN 1824
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