Under those shady trees far other folk now sat, and we doubt not their meditations were of the town rather than of the beauties of Nature. Of such an assemblage D’Orsay painted a picture, which to a certain extent gives the keynote to the history of Gore House for the next fourteen years. It is a view of the garden side of the house and among those portrayed in the groups that occupy the foreground are in addition to D’Orsay and Lady Blessington, the Duke of Wellington and his son, Lord Douro, of which latter Greville says: “Une lune bien pâle auprès de son père, but far from a dull man, and not deficient in information”; Sir Edwin Landseer, sketching a cow, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Brougham, and Lady Blessington’s fair nieces, the two Misses Power.
Of course D’Orsay also moved out to Kensington, at first living next door to Gore House at No. 4 Kensington Gore.
Bulwer writing to Lord Durham on many matters, notes the move from Seamore Place:—
“Lady Blessington has moved into Wilberforce’s old house at Knightsbridge.… She has got Gore House for ten years. It cost her a thousand pounds in repairs, about another thousand in new furniture, entails two gardeners, two cows, and another housemaid; but she declares with the gravest of all possible faces she only does it for—economy! D’Orsay is installed in a cottage orné next door, and has set up an aviary of the best-dressed birds in all Ornithology. He could not turn naturalist in anything else but Dandies. The very pigeons have trousers down to their claws and have the habit of looking over their left shoulder,” of course to see that no evil-minded man-of-law was approaching with a writ.
Afterward, doubtless realising that any further pretence at propriety was mere waste of energy and money, he lived in Gore House itself, in the grounds of which he erected his studio. Charles Greville, who so often dipped his pen in gall, speaking of D’Orsay’s art work, declares that he “constantly got helped, and his works retouched by eminent artists, whose society he cultivated, and many of whom were his intimate friends.” Yet we find Benjamin Robert Haydon recording on 10th July 1839, while he was painting his portrait of Wellington:—
“D’Orsay called, and pointed out several things to correct in the horse.… I did them, and he took my brush in his dandy gloves, which made my heart ache, and lowered his hindquarters by bringing over a bit of the sky. Such a dress! white great-coat, blue satin cravat, hair oiled and curling, hat of the primest curve and purest water, gloves scented with eau de Cologne, or eau de jasmin, primrose in tint, skin in tightness. In this prime of dandyism he took up a nasty, oily, dirty hog-tool, and immortalised Copenhagen by touching the sky. I thought, after he was gone, this won’t do—a Frenchman touch Copenhagen! So out I rubbed all he had touched, and modified his hints myself.”
So strange that Haydon should not have recognised that the touch of the dandy’s handiwork would immortalise the picture! There are many historical painters, but only a few great dandies. So little do great men appreciate greater men! D’Orsay was from now onward to the day of his fall at the top of his fame.
At Gore House the salon presided over by D’Orsay and Lady Blessington was even more brilliant than that at Seamore Place, though time was beginning to play his unkindly tricks at the lady’s expense, and debt was dogging the footsteps of the gentleman.
Of the former William Archer Shee gives a description too glowing to be true:—