“April 13, 1845.—To-day, oddly enough, while I was engaged in re-reading Carlyle’s Philosophy of Clothes, Count d’Orsay walked in. I had not seen him for four or five years. Last time he was as gay in his colours as a humming-bird—blue satin cravat, blue velvet waistcoat, cream-coloured coat, lined with velvet of the same hue, trousers also of a bright colour, I forget what; white French gloves, two glorious breastpins attached by a chain, and length enough of gold watch-guard to have hanged himself in. To-day, in compliment to his five more years, he was all in black and brown—a black satin cravat, a brown velvet waistcoat, a brown coat some shades darker than the waistcoat, lined with velvet of its own shade, and almost black trousers, one breast-pin, a large pear-shaped pearl set into a little cup of diamonds, and only one fold of gold chain round his neck, tucked together right on the centre of his spacious breast with one magnificent turquoise. Well! that man understood his trade; if it be but that of dandy, nobody can deny that he is a perfect master of it, that he dresses himself with consummate skill! A bungler would have made no allowance for five more years at his time of life, but he had the fine sense to perceive how much better his dress of to-day sets off his slightly enlarged figure and slightly worn complexion, than the humming-bird colours of five years back would have done. Poor D’Orsay! he was born to have been something better than even the king of dandies. He did not say nearly so many clever things this time as on the last occasion. His wit, I suppose, is of the sort that belongs more to animal spirits than to real genius, and his animal spirits seem to have fallen many degrees. The only thing that fell from him to-day worth remembering was his account of a mask he had seen of Charles Fox, ‘all punched and flattened as if he had slept in a book.’

“Lord Jeffrey came, unexpected, while the Count was here. What a difference! the prince of critics and the prince of dandies. How washed out the beautiful dandiacal face looked beside that little clever old man’s! The large blue dandiacal eyes, you would have said, had never contemplated anything more interesting than the reflection of the handsome personage they pertained to in a looking-glass; while the dark penetrating ones of the other had been taking note of most things in God’s universe, even seeing a good way into millstones.”

XXV
SUNSET

Sunset of the glories of Gore House came in the year 1849, a cold, bitter sunset, presaging a stormy morrow. Lady Blessington was nearly sixty years old, well-preserved indeed, but Time’s footsteps are crow’s-feet. D’Orsay was nearing fifty. Darby and Joan; only the former at fifty is more than ten years younger than the latter at sixty.

Behind all the gaiety of Gore House there had long been a dark background, ever growing more sinister. Without the harassment of any cares it would have been difficult for a woman of Lady Blessington’s age to maintain a sovereignty which depended almost entirely upon her beauty. Troubles met her at every turn, and the last few years at Gore House must have been to her years of torment and despair. She heard her doom approaching with sure foot, and knew that she was unable to stay the advance.

Her jointure of £2000 was entirely inadequate to maintain the expenses of either Seamore Place or Gore House, to the exchequers of which D’Orsay cannot have contributed; any capital that came into his hands was rapidly dispersed by them among hungry debtors, and his income of £500 was probably hypothecated in the same way. It was essential for her, therefore, to add to her revenue, for the reduction of expenditure does not seem to have occurred to this luxury-loving soul. She does indeed seem to have been careful to see that she obtained her money’s worth, and kept a tight hand on the household expenses and accounts. One habit of hers was to keep a “book of dinners,” noting down the names of the guests at each entertainment.

When no other way of securing an income suggests itself to the needy or hard-up, they invariably take up their pens and write. Lady Blessington, if it had not been for her beauty and notoriety, could scarcely have earned a livelihood as a hack writer for the lesser journals, but her name gave to her writings a market value which their intrinsic merit did not. Her Conversations with Byron have already been mentioned, and sufficiently dealt with; she also wrote books of travel, novels, verses, edited such periodicals as The Keepsake and The Book of Beauty, to which the eminent authors who fluttered round her at Gore House contributed, and in the end when these enterprises were failing became a contributor to the Daily News of “exclusive intelligence,” that is to say of “any sort of intelligence she might like to communicate, of the sayings, doings, memoirs or movements in the fashionable world,” for which she received payment at the rate of £400 a year; Dickens and Forster were her editors.

The death in 1848 of Heath, the publisher, in insolvency brought a loss to Lady Blessington of about £700. Her earnings have been placed at a thousand a year, but William Jerdan in his Autobiography declares them to have been much higher. “I have known her to enjoy from her pen an amount somewhere midway between £2000 and £3000 per annum, and her title, as well as talents, had considerable influence in ‘ruling high prices’ as they say in Mark Lane and other markets. To this, also, her well-arranged parties with a publisher now and then, to meet folks of a style unusual to men in business, contributed their attractions; and the same society was in reality of solid value towards the production of such publications as the Annuals, the contents of which were provided by the editor almost entirely from the pens of private friends.”