“We shall be late,” grumbled Allen. “You’re never in time, D’Orsay.”
“You shall see,” answered D’Orsay, unruffled, and drove off at a fine pace.
Even though they arrived in time Allen was not appeased, and grumbled at everything and everybody, and the cup of his wrath hopelessly overflowed when he overheard one of the servants saying to another:
“The gents are come.”
“Gents,” snorted Allen. “Gents! What a wretched low fellow! It’s worthy of a public-house!”
“I beg your pardon, Allen, it is quite correct. The man is a Jew. He means to say the Gentiles have arrived. Gent is the short for Gentile!”
Landor writes in June 1840: “I sat at dinner (at Gore House) by Charles Forester, Lady Chesterfield’s brother. In the last hunting season Lord Chesterfield, wanting to address a letter to him, and not knowing exactly where to find him, gave it to D’Orsay to direct it. He directed it—Charles Forester, one field before the hounds, Melton Mowbray. Lord Alvanley took it, and (he himself told me) gave it to him on the very spot.” Landor goes on to speak of meeting a lady who accosted him with: “Sure, Landor, it is a beautiful book, your Periwinkle and Asparagus!”
But surely the most delightful thing D’Orsay ever said was on the occasion of a visit of him to Lady Blessington’s publishers, whom he rated in high language.
“Count d’Orsay,” said a solemn personage in a high, white neckcloth, “I would sooner lose Lady Blessington’s patronage than submit to such personal abuse.”