It took much to disturb D’Orsay’s serenity and peace of mind; he was one of those blessed beings, whom all we poor miserable sinners must envy, who did not own to a conscience. Certainly the being head over ears in debt did not cause him a moment’s anxiety. He did not realise that money had any value; guineas to him were simply counters of which it was convenient to have a sufficient supply wherewith to pay gambling debts and to discharge the incidental ready-money expenditure of each day. As for other expenses, were not tradesmen honoured by his custom, were they not a race of slaves ordained to supply the necessities of noble men such as D’Orsay, was it not a scandal that they should dare to ask him to pay his bills? What pleasure is there in the bills we pay? D’Orsay never denied himself anything which he could obtain for love or by owing money. It has even been said of him—and what will not little men say of even the greatest?—that he was “unscrupulous and indelicate about money matters.” How poor-spirited the creature who could ask such a man as D’Orsay to pay back the money he had lent him or to render their due to the tailors and such like whom he had honoured with his patronage! The spirit of a D’Orsay cannot be appreciated rightly save by one of kindred genius. Who that was worthy to be his friend would not feel honoured by a request from him for a loan, and injured by even a hint at repayment? Of what value is a rich friend if he will not be your banker?
D’Orsay’s finances from now onward were in a state of hopeless chaos, from which the efforts of his friends signally failed to extricate him. Which failure, however, in the long run cannot have made any difference; to have hauled him out of his ocean of debt would only have landed him for a brief space upon dry land, whereon he would have gasped like a fish out of water; he was a born debtor. His marriage had replenished, or rather filled, his exchequer; then he proceeded with skill and rapidity to empty it. Why should not a colourless wife contribute to the support of a resplendent husband? Yet, marvellous, almost incredible, there were carping and jealous spirits who boggled over this and other transactions of Count d’Orsay.
As for instance Patmore, commenting on D’Orsay’s social difficulties, writes:—
“And yet it was in England, that Count d’Orsay while a mere boy, made the fatal mistake of marrying one beautiful woman, while he was, without daring to confess it even to himself, madly in love with another, still more beautiful, whom he could not marry—because, I say, under these circumstances, and discovering his fatal error when too late, he separated himself from his wife almost at the church door, he was, during the greatest part of his social career in England, cut off from the advantages of the more fastidious portion of female society, by the indignant fiat of its heads and leaders.”
There are quite a wonderful number of blunders in the above meandering sentences.
True as it was that he was cut by “the more fastidious portion of female society,” D’Orsay found consolation, sympathy and understanding—doubtless also advice and counsel—in the comradeship of Lady Blessington—and others. Grantley Berkeley tells us that D’Orsay “was as fickle as a French lover might be expected to be to a woman some years his senior.” In which sneer there is a smack of insular envy. On the other hand Dickens, the exponent of the middle-class conscience, wrote of him as one “whose gentle heart even a world of fashion left unspoiled!” How can history be written with any approach to truth when contemporary evidence differs so widely? Was D’Orsay a saint or a sinner? Who dare say?
Society gossiped evilly about him, as it will do about anyone and everyone, telling tales that did not redound to his credit. The Duchesse de Dino retails this, under date February 20th, 1834:—
“A new and very ugly story is afloat concerning Count Alfred d’Orsay, which is as follows: Sir Willoughby Cotton, writing from Brighton at the same time to Count d’Orsay and to Lady Fitzroy Somerset, cross-directed the letters so that M. d’Orsay on opening the letter which he received, instead of seeing the mistake and stopping at the first line, which ran ‘Dear Lady Fitzroy,’ read it through and found, among other Brighton gossip, some pleasantries about Lady Tullemore and one of her lovers, and a sharp saying about himself. What did he do but go to the club, read out the letter before every one, and finally put it under cover and send it to Lord Tullemore! The result very nearly was a crop of duels. Lady Tullemore is very ill, and the guilty lover has fled to Paris. Friends intervened, however, and the thing was hushed up for the sake of the ladies, but M. d’Orsay cut (and cuts) an odious figure.”
Such a story disgraces those who tell it, not him of whom it is told. D’Orsay guilty of hurting a woman’s reputation, directly or indirectly? The idea is absurd! Of a man too who was a philanthropist and one of the founders of the Société de Bienfaisance in London!