“In 1808, on the first insurrection of Spain, in June he joined the Viceroy of Gallicia, Blake. The Madrid Gazette of August mentions a gift from him of twenty thousand reals. On the extinction of the Constitution, he returned to Don P. Cavallos the tokens of royal approbation, in no very measured terms. In 1811, he married Julia, daughter of J. Thuillier de Malaperte, descendant and representative of J. Thuillier de Malaperte, Baron de Nieuveville, first gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles the Eighth. He was residing at Tours, when, after the battle of Waterloo, many other Englishmen, to the number of four thousand, went away. He wrote to Carnot that he had no confidence in the moderation or honour of the Emperor, but resolved to stay, because he considered the danger to be greater in the midst of a broken army. A week afterwards, when this wretch occupied Tours, his house was the only one without a billet. In the autumn of that year, he retired to Italy. For seven or eight years, he occupied the Palazzo Medici, in Florence, and then bought the celebrated villa of Count Gherardesea, at Fiesole, with its gardens, and two farms, immediately under the ancient villa of Lorenzo de Medici. His visits to England have been few and short.”
This is but the bare bones of a very interesting life; but its very bluntness seems to illustrate the character of its writer, a member of the genus irritabile, whom many hated, many loved and most men admired. For several years he made his home at Bath, living there from 1838 to 1858, when again he retired to Italy, where he died at Florence.
He is, perhaps, best known to the world at large under the slight disguise of Lawrence Boythorn in Bleak House.
Charles Sumner describes him thus in 1838:—“Dressed in a heavy frock-coat of snuff colour, trousers of the same colour, and boots … with an open countenance, firm and decided, and a head grey and inclining to baldness … conversation … not varied, but it was animated and energetic in the extreme. We crossed each other several times; he called Napoleon the weakest, littlest man in history.”
Forster’s account is more vivid:—
“He was not above the middle stature, but had a short stalwart presence, walked without a stoop, and in his general aspect, particularly the set and carriage of his head, was decidedly of what is called a distinguished bearing. His hair was already silvered grey, and had retired far upward from his forehead, which wide and full but retreating, could never in the earlier time have been seen to such advantage. What at first was noticeable, however, in the broad white massive head, were the full yet strangely-lifted eyebrows. In the large, grey eyes there was a depth of compound expression that ever startled by its contrast to the eager restlessness looking out from the surface of them; and in the same variety and quickness of transition the mouth was extremely striking. The lips, that seemed compressed with unalterable will would in a moment relax to a softness more than feminine; and a sweeter smile it was impossible to conceive.”
Carlyle says that “he was really stirring company; a proud, irascible, trenchant, yet generous, veracious and very dignified old man; quite a ducal or royal man in the temper of him.”
He was very frequently at Gore House, and they must have made a curious trio, the fascinating Lady Blessington, the ducal Landor and dandy D’Orsay.
He addressed these lines to her:—
“What language, let me think, is meet