Once when Landor was dining at Gore House, his attire had become slightly disordered, to which fact D’Orsay smilingly drew attention as they rose to join the ladies. “My dear Count d’Orsay,” exclaimed Landor, “I thank you! My dear Count d’Orsay I thank you from my soul for pointing out to me the abominable condition to which I am reduced! If I had entered the drawing-room, and presented myself before Lady Blessington in so absurd a light, I would have instantly gone home, put a pistol to my head, and blown my brains out!”
In January 1840, Henry Reeve was at dinner at Gore House, and gives a capital account of the fun there:—
“Our dinner last night was very good fun, but we made rather too many puns. Landor rode several fine paradoxes with savage impetuosity: particularly his theory that the Chinese are the only civilised people in the world. I am sure the Ching dynasty has not a firmer adherent than Landor within its own imperial capital. Landor, you know, is quite as vain of not being read, as Bulwer is of being the most popular writer of the day. Nothing can equal the contempt with which he treats anybody who has more than six readers and three admirers unless it be that saying of Hegel’s, when he declared that nobody understood his writings but himself, and that not always. Lady B(lessington) said the finest thing of Carlyle’s productions that ever was uttered; she called them ‘spangled fustian.’”
Forster and D’Orsay got on very well together, which was perhaps due to the almost if not quite exaggerated respect paid by the former to the latter. He was heard above the roar of talk at one of his dinners, absolutely shouting to his man Henry: “Good heavens, sir, butter for the Count’s flounders!” D’Orsay contrived to misunderstand him very nicely on an occasion. Forster when expecting a visit from the Count was urgently summoned to his printers. He gave his servant strict injunction to tell the Count, should he call before his return, that he had just gone round to Messrs Spottiswoode. He missed his visitor entirely, and his explanation when next he met him was cut short by—“Ah! I know, you had just gone round to Ze Spotted Dog—I understand.”
In 1835 Lady Blessington writes to Forster from Gore House:
“It has given me the greatest pleasure to hear that you are so much better. Count d’Orsay assures me that the improvement is most satisfactory. Tomorrow will be the anniversary of his birthday, and a few friends will meet to celebrate it. How I wish you were to be among the number.” Ten years later, when Forster again was on the sick-list, she writes: “If you knew the anxiety we all feel about your health, and the fervent prayers we offer up for its speedy restoration, you would be convinced, that though you have friends of longer date, you have none more affectionately and sincerely attached to you than those at Gore House. I claim the privilege of an old woman to be allowed to see you as soon as a visitor in a sick-room can be admitted. Sterne says that ‘A friend has the same right as a physician,’ and I hope you will remember this. Count d’Orsay every day regrets that he cannot go and nurse you, and we both often wish you were here, that we might try our power of alleviating your illness, if not of curing you. God bless you, and restore you speedily to health.”
Macready turns up, if we may use words so flippant of a man so serious, at Gore House in 1837. “Reached Lady Blessington’s about a quarter before eight,” he writes. “Found there Fonblanque, Bulwer, Trelawney, Procter, Auldjo, Forster, Lord Canterbury, Fred Reynolds and Mr and Mrs Fairlie, Kenney, a young Manners Sutton, Count d’Orsay and some unknown. I passed an agreeable day, and had a long and interesting conversation in the drawing-room (what an elegant and splendid room it is!) with D’Orsay on pictures.”
Of the members of the party that Macready found himself amongst—Lord Canterbury, when he was the Right Honourable Charles Manners Sutton and Speaker of the House of Commons, had married in 1828 Lady Blessington’s sister Ellen, of whom Moore speaks as “Mrs Speaker”: “Amused to see her, in all her state, the same hearty, lively Irishwoman still.” She had first been married to a Mr Purves. Mrs Fairlie was Mrs Purves’ eldest daughter, Louisa, who while quite young had married Mr John Fairlie. Trelawney was the “Younger Son,” whose “Adventures” are so entertaining and exciting, the intimate of Shelley and Byron, and the model for the old sea captain of Millais’ “North-West Passage.” Procter was “Barry Cornwall”; John Auldjo had been introduced to Lady Blessington by Gell in 1834; Frederick Mansell Reynolds was a minor poet and writer of tales, a letter from whom shows D’Orsay in a pleasant light. It is written from Jersey in 1837—
“My Dear Lady Blessington,—After having so recently seen you, and being so powerfully and so painfully under the influence of a desire never again to place the sea between me and yourself and circle, I feel almost provoked to find how much this place suits me in every physical respect.… You and Count d’Orsay speak kindly and cheerfully to me; but I am un malade imaginaire, for I do not fear death; on the contrary, I rather look to it as my only hope of secure and lasting tranquillity. In the lull which has hitherto accompanied my return to this delicious climate, I have had time and opportunity for ample retrospection, and I find that we have both[11] laid in a stock of regard for Count d’Orsay which is immeasurable: anybody so good-natured and so kind-hearted I never before saw; it seems to me that it should be considered an inestimable privilege to live in his society. When you write to me, pray be good enough to acquaint me whether you have been told verbatim what a lady said on the subject; for praise so natural, hearty and agreeable was never before uttered in a soliloquy, which her speech really was, though I was present at the time.
“At the risk of repeating, I really must tell it to you. After Count d’Orsay’s departure from our house, there was a pause, when it was broken, by her exclaiming, ‘What a very nice man!’ I assented in my own mind, but I was pursuing also a chain of thought of my own, and I made no audible reply. Our ruminations then proceeded, when mine were once more interrupted by her saying: ‘In fact, he is the nicest man I ever saw.’