“Dear Lady Blessington,—If I defer it any longer, I know not how or when I shall be able to fulfil so melancholy a duty. The whole of this day I have spent in that torpid depression, which you may feel without a great calamity, and which others can never feel at all. Every one that knows me, knows the sentiments I bore towards that disinterested, and upright, and kind-hearted man, than whom none was ever dearer, or more delightful to his friends. If to be condoled with by many, if to be esteemed and beloved by all whom you have admitted to your society is any comfort, that comfort at least is yours. I know how inadequate it must be at such a moment, but I know too that the sentiment will survive when the bitterness of sorrow shall have passed away.”
And again he writes to her:
“Too well was I aware how great my pain must be in reading your letter. So many hopes are thrown away from us by this cruel and unexpected blow. I cannot part with the one of which the greatness and the justness of your grief almost deprives me, that you will recover your health and spirits. If they could return at once, or very soon, you would be unworthy of that love which the kindest and best of human beings lavished on you. Longer life was not necessary for him to estimate your affection for him, and those graces of soul which your beauty in its brightest day but faintly shadowed. He told me that you were requisite to his happiness, and that he could not live without you. Suppose that he had survived you, his departure in that case could not have been so easy as it was, unconscious of pain, of giving it, or of leaving it behind. I am comforted at the reflection that so gentle a heart received no affliction from the anguish and despair of those he loved.”
Five years later Lady Blessington writes to Landor:—
“I have often wished that you would note down for me your reminiscences of your friendship, and the conversations it led to with my dear and ever-to-be-lamented husband; he who so valued and loved you, and who was so little understood by the common herd of mankind. We, who knew the nobleness, the generosity, and the refined delicacy of his nature, can render justice to his memory.…”
Amid all this sugar, it is quite refreshing to come across a little acid, and Cyrus Redding speaks out quite plainly of Lady Blessington. He says: “She was a fine woman; she had understood too well how to captivate the other sex. She had won hearts, never having had a heart to return. No one could be more bland and polished, when she pleased. She understood from no short practice, when it was politic to be amiable, and yet no one could be less amiable, bland and polished when her temper was roused, and her language being then well suited to the circumstances of the provocation, both in style and epithet.… The gentry of this country, of all political creeds, are frequently censured for their pride and exclusiveness; but they may sometimes be proud and exclusive to no ill end. The higher ranks have their exceptions, as well as others, of which Lord Blessington himself was an instance. The dissipation of Lord Blessington’s fortune, and the reception of Lady Blessington’s favourite, the handsome youth, D’Orsay, into Lord Blessington’s house, ran together, it has been said, before the finish of his education. Old Countess d’Orsay was scarcely able to do much for her son, owing to the narrowness of her income; but no family could be more respectable than hers. Lord Blessington was a weak-minded creature, and his after-dinner conversations, when the wine was in, became wretchedly maudlin.”
However, exit Lord Blessington and end Act One of our tragi-comedy.