Though, speaking of a somewhat later date, Serjeant Ballantine’s account of the place may be quoted:—
“Many also were the pleasant parties at the Star and Garter at Richmond, not then the great ugly staring barrack of a place that occupies the site where Mr Ellis, the picture of a host, used to receive the guests. The old house was burnt down. In itself it had not much pretension, but the garden behind was a perfect picture of loveliness; the small garden-rooms, with honeysuckles, jasmine and roses twining themselves up the sides, with a lovely sweep of lawn, on which were scattered trees that had flourished there for many a long day, affording shade as well as beauty; one magnificent spreading beech, itself a sight, and an avenue of limes forming the prettiest of walks at the bottom of the garden.”
The view was of better quality than the viands.
There was not a fashionable haunt of virtue or of vice in which D’Orsay was not quite at home. There was not any fashionable folly or accomplishment in which he was unskilled; a complete man-about-town, gambler, rake and dandy. We need not pursue him in all his pastimes; dead and gone revelries cannot be resurrected with any satisfaction; they smell musty. Let them lie.
XV
GORE HOUSE
Early in 1836 Lady Blessington moved from Mayfair out to Kensington, or—as it then practically was—from the centre of the town to a suburb, from Seamore Place to Gore House, which in Grantley Berkeley’s blunt phrase became “the headquarters of the demi-monde, with the Countess of Blessington as their queen.” She wrote to Landor, describing her change of home, that she had “taken up her residence in the country, being a mile from London.”
The house stood close down to the roadway, occupying part of the site upon which now stands the Albert Hall—why not named after Alfred, Count d’Orsay? It was secluded from the traffic by a high wall and a sparse row of trees, two large double gates surmounted by old-fashioned lanterns giving access to the short drive. The building was low and quite common-place, painted white, its only external claim to charm being the beautiful gardens at the back. William Wilberforce, a previous tenant, writes:—
“We are just one mile from the turnpike at Hyde Park Corner, having about three acres of pleasure-ground around our house, or rather behind it, and several old trees, walnut and mulberry, of thick foliage. I can sit and read under their shade with as much admiration of the beauties of Nature as if I were down in Yorkshire, or anywhere else 200 miles from the great city.”