Lady Blessington’s birthday, September 1st, was celebrated during this visit to Paris, and she tells us that after a woman has passed the age of thirty the recurrence of birthdays is not a matter for congratulation, concluding with the striking remark: “Youth is like health, we never value the possession of either until they have begun to decline.”
From Paris they went on to Switzerland. Their travelling equipage not unnaturally aroused the wonderment of the onlookers who assembled to witness their departure. Travelling carriages and a baggage wagon—a fourgon—piled high with imperials and packages of all sizes; the courier, as important in his mien as a commander of an army corps, bustling here, bustling there; lady’s maid busily packing; valets and footmen staggering and grumbling under heavy trunks. Lady Blessington heard a Frenchman under her window exclaim: “How strange those English are! One would suppose that instead of a single family, a regiment at least were about to move!”
Move at last the regiment did, though not without dire struggling. They are off! Amid a tornado of expostulations and exhortations; off along the straight, dusty roads to Switzerland. Further we need not accompany them. For us the centre of interest lies at Valence, on the Rhone, where D’Orsay was with his regiment under orders to march with the Duc d’Angoulême over the Pyrenees. But to war’s alarms D’Orsay was now deaf. He heard above the din of trumpet and of drum the call of love, and answered to it. He resigned his commission. For at the hotel where was established the regimental mess the Blessingtons arrived on November 15th; the romance of love eclipsed the romance of war.
From this point onward there can be little doubt as to D’Orsay’s position as regards Lady Blessington, but as concerns Blessington everything grows more and more extraordinary, and more and more discreditable to the blind or easy-going husband. Charles Greville says that Blessington was really fond of the fascinating young Frenchman. He looked on him as a charming, happy comrade. It was at his persuasion that D’Orsay threw up his commission, Blessington making “a formal promise to the Count’s family that he should be provided for.” At any rate such provision was made later on. Greville adds that D’Orsay’s early connection with Lady Blessington was a mystery; certainly it was so as far as concerns the behaviour of the lady’s husband. D’Orsay’s conduct is explicable in two ways: either infatuation for a beautiful woman blinded him to his real interests and rendered him unable to count the cost of the course he now decided to pursue, or he preferred to that of the soldier the dolce far niente life of a dependent loafer. Possibly, however, the two motives mingled.
The company was now complete and each member of it apparently entirely content. They moved on to Orange, and on November 20th reached Avignon, at which place a considerable stay was made. Avignon! Petrarch and Laura! Lady Blessington and Count d’Orsay! Glory almost overwhelming for any one town. The battlemented walls; the ancient bridge; the swift stream of the Rhone; the storied palace of the Pope; and the famous fountain of Vaucluse, given to fame by Petrarch; a proper setting for the love of Alfred and of Marguerite.
They stayed at the Hôtel de l’Europe, a comfortable hostelry, an inn which many years before had been the scene of an incident which formed the groundwork of the comedy of The Deaf Lover. It was now the scene of incidents which might well have supplied the materials for a comedy of The Blind Husband: or, There are None so Short-sighted as those who Won’t See!
There was gaiety and society at Avignon, much social coming and going, dinners, dances, receptions and routs. The Duc and Duchesse de Caderousse Grammont, who resided in a château close to the town, were doubtless delighted to see their young connection the Count, and to welcome his friends. Lady Blessington enjoyed herself immensely, and it is interesting to know that her refined taste was charmed by the decorum of French dancing:—
“The waltz in France,” she writes, “loses its objectionable familiarity by the manner in which it is performed. The gentleman does not clasp his fair partner round the waist with a freedom repugnant to the modesty and destructive to the ceinture of the lady; but so arranges it, that he assists her movements, without incommoding her delicacy or her drapery. In short, they manage these matters better in France than with us;[3] and though no advocate for this exotic dance, I must admit that, executed as I have seen it, it could not offend the most fastidious eye.”
Lady Blessington was, as we know, an authority upon “objectionable familiarity.” What would this fastidious dame have thought of the shocking indelicacy of modern ball-room romps? Would “kitchen” Lancers have appealed favourably to her? Would her approbation have honoured the graceful cake-walk? But we must not linger over such nice inquiries; we must not lose ourselves in the maze of might-have-beens, but must move on to fact, Southward ho! To Italy, the land of Love and Olives.