When Jekyll asked him why he had never married, the response came in verse—
“Should I seek Hymen’s tie?
As a poet I die,
Ye Benedicts mourn my distresses.
For what little fame
Is annexed to my name,
Is derived from Rejected Addresses.”
But we must return to the drawing-room in Seamore Place.
On the other side of the hostess, busily discussing a speech of Dan O’Connell, stood a dapper little man, rather languid in appearance, but with winning, prepossessing manners, and a playful, ready tongue; Henry Bulwer. There were others, such as a German prince and a French duke and a famous traveller. And—there was D’Orsay, a host in himself in both senses of the word, the best-looking, best-dressed, most fortunate man in the room; yet despite it all—there he sat in a careless attitude upon an ottoman.
It was nearly twelve o’clock, the witching hour, before Mr Lytton Bulwer (“Pelham”) was announced, who ran gaily up to his hostess, and was greeted with a cordial chorus of “How d’ye, Bulwer?” Gay, quick, partly satirical, his conversation was fresh and buoyant. A dandy, too!