At three o’clock in the morning of the fourth of August 1852, aged fifty-one, died Alfred, Count d’Orsay, the last and the greatest of the dandies.
He was buried at Chambourcy; the same monument covers his ashes and those of Lady Blessington. In the absence of the Duke de Grammont, who was confined to bed by illness, D’Orsay’s nephews, Count Alfred de Grammont and the Duke de Lespare, were the chief mourners; the Duchesse de Grammont, his sister, was there, and among others Prince Napoleon, Count de Montaubon, M. Emile de Girardin, M. Charles Lafitte, M. Alexandre Dumas fils, Mr Hughes Ball, and several other Englishmen.
Gronow says: “His death produced, both in London and Paris, a deep and universal regret.”
But one who did not love him, Count Horace de Viel Castel, whom we have before quoted, did not join in the chorus of regrets:—
“Count d’Orsay is dead, and all the papers are mourning his loss. He leaves behind him they say, many chefs-d’œuvres, and on his death-bed requested Clésinger to finish his bust of Prince Jérôme.
“D’Orsay had no talent; his statuettes are detestable and his busts very bad; but a certain set cried him up for their own purposes, and called him a great man. One newspaper goes so far as to affirm that on hearing of his death the President said: ‘I have lost my best friend,’ a statement which I know to be perfectly false.
“D’Orsay’s friends were the President’s enemies—the Jérôme Bonapartes, Emile de Girardin, Lamartine, etc. He never pardoned the Prince for not appointing him Ambassador to the Court of St James’, forgetting, or purposely ignoring, the fact that such a thing was impossible. No Government would have received him. His debts are fabulous.… The papers inform us that he has been buried at Chambourcy (on the property of his sister, the Duchesse de Grammont) in the same grave as his mother-in-law, Lady Blessington. The incident is sublime; to make it complete, perhaps they will engrave on his tombstone: ‘That his inconsolable and heart-broken widow, etc. etc.’
“He died ten years too late, for he became at last merely a ridiculous old doll. The President does not lose his best friend; on the contrary, he is well rid of, a compromising schemer.”
Clésinger one day asked D’Orsay why he did not come to see him oftener.