and had once actually extricated him.1 I have since his demise, and even before,-done what I could: but it is not in my power to make this permanent. I want Hunt to return to England, for which I would furnish him with the means in comfort; and his situation there, on the whole, is bettered, by the payment of a portion of his debts, etc.; and he would be on the spot to continue his Journal, or Journals, with his brother, who seems a sensible, plain, sturdy, and enduring person. 1065. To the Earl of Blessington. April 2nd, 1823. MY DEAR LORD,-I send you to-day's (the latest) Galignani. My banker tells me, however, that his letters from Spain state, that two regiments have revolted, 1. Moore (Life, p. 573) prints the following letter from Shelley to Byron on the subject of Hunt :- "February 15, 1822. "MY DEAR LORD BYRON,-I enclose you a letter from Hunt, "which annoys me on more than one account. You will observe "the postscript, and you know me well enough to feel how painful a "task is set me in commenting upon it. Hunt had urged me more "than once to ask you to lend him this money. My answer con"sisted in sending him all I could spare, which I have now literally "done. Your kindness in fitting up a part of your own house "for his accommodation I sensibly felt, and willingly accepted "from you on his part; but, believe me, without the slightest "intention of imposing, or, if I could help it, allowing to be "imposed, any heavier task on your purse. As it has come to this "in spite of my exertions, I will not conceal from you the low ebb "of my own money affairs in the present moment,—that is, my "absolute incapacity of assisting Hunt farther. "I do not think poor Hunt's promise to pay in a given time is "worth very much; but mine is less subject to uncertainty, and I "should be happy to be responsible for any engagement he may "have proposed to you. I am so much annoyed by this subject "that I hardly know what to write, and much less what to say; and "I have need of all your indulgence in judging both my feelings "and expressions. "I shall see you by and by. Believe me, "Yours most faithfully and sincerely, which is a great vex, as they say in Ireland. I shall be very glad to see your friend's journal. He seems to 1. Count Alfred d'Orsay (1801-1852) was the only son of one of Napoleon's generals, aussi brave que beau, Count Albert d'Orsay, by a daughter of the King of Wurtemburg and his morganatic wife, who afterwards married "Mr. Crawford, well known for many years "as a rich collector of pictures and articles of vertu at Paris " (Journal of T. Raikes, vol. i. p. 41). The general's only daughter, Ida, married the Duc de Guiche, afterwards Duc de Grammont, who had been brought up in England, and introduced his brother-in-law to Lady Blessington and English society in 1821-22. Count Alfred d'Orsay's journal, to which Byron alludes, was the fruit of this visit; but it was destroyed by the author, lest it should be supposed to express his matured opinions of England. Lord Blessington persuaded d'Orsay to throw up his commission in the Guards of the French king, and provided for him by marrying him to his only legitimate daughter and heiress, Lady Harriet Gardiner (December 1, 1827). Owing to his conduct to his wife, the marriage ended in a separation. The handsomest man of his day, "an Antinous of beauty" (Letters of Joseph Jekyll, p. 270), excelling in all sports, and a Parisian exquisite, Count d'Orsay was not only the Pelham of the fashionable world in London, but in his accomplishments an Admirable Crichton. His knowledge of art was considerable, and, as a painter and sculptor, he was in the front rank of amateurs, though Greville (Memoirs, vol. vi. p. 274) suggests that he was largely indebted to the assistance of professional artists. Haydon's description of him is overwhelming. Haydon was at work on an equestrian picture of the Duke of Wellington, when d'Orsay called. "He took my brush in his dandy gloves, which made my heart "ache, and lowered the hind quarters 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 hogtool, and immortalised Copenhagen (the charger) by "touching the sky" (Life of B. R. Haydon, vol. iii. p. 115). The visit of this "Paphian apparition" to Carlyle was paid in April, 1839. "This Phoebus Apollo of dandyism," writes Carlyle (Froude's Thomas Carlyle: a History of his Life in London, 1834-81, vol. i. pp. 158, 159), came whirling" to Cheyne Row "in a chariot that struck all Chelsea into mute amazement with splendour. "Nevertheless, we did amazingly well, the count and I. He is a " tall fellow of six feet three, built like a tower, with floods of dark. "auburn hair, with a beauty, with an adornment unsurpassable on "this planet; withal a rather substantial fellow at bottom, by no "means without insight, without fun, and a sort of rough sarcasm "rather striking out of such a porcelain figure." 66 Few foreigners ever took root so firmly in English soil. He have all the qualities requisite to have figured in his Your obliged and faithful servant, 1066.-To Edward Blaquiere.1 Albaro, April 5, 1823. DEAR SIR, I shall be delighted to see you and your Greek friend, and the sooner the better. I have been neglected his wife, was unscrupulous in money matters, a gambler, a spendthrift, and reputed to be immoral. Yet he had qualities which won him many friends. Good-tempered, agreeable, kindhearted, and generous, he had a genius for society, and a faculty of enjoyment which seemed to grow keener with age. Like the Count Alcibiades de Mirábel in Henrietta Temple, he could talk at all times, and at all times well. He had many imitators, but none succeeded like himself in personifying the spirit of vive la bagatelle! Partly from ostentation, partly from real humanity, he took a prominent part in charitable works, and was the founder of the Société de Bienfaisance, for the relief of his distressed countrymen. For the last few years of his life he never left Gore House, except on Sundays, for fear of arrest, and his flight to Paris, in April, 1849, was made in secret and by night. A Legitimist by descent, a Napoleonist and anti-Orleanist by sympathy, he became, under Louis Napoleon, as President of the French Republic, a frondeur, because he believed himself neglected by his former friend. He died of spinal disease, and is buried at Chambourcy by the side of Lady Blessington. 1. In January, 1823, Andreas Luriottis arrived in England to plead the cause of the Greeks. A Greek Committee was formed, which was joined by Lord Erskine, Sir J. Mackintosh, Joseph Hume, Jeremy Bentham, Hobhouse, and others. At their first meeting (February 28), Edward Blaquiere, author or translator of several books on Spain, the Spanish Revolution, and the Mediterranean, volunteered to return with Luriottis to Greece, and collect information. Leaving London March 4, he landed in the Morea May 3, seeing Byron on his way. Trelawny (Records, pp. 183, 184) states that he brought about Blaquiere's visit to Byron. "At this expecting you for some time,-you will find me at home. I cannot express to you how much I feel interested in the cause, and nothing but the hopes I entertained of witnessing the liberation of Italy itself prevented me long ago from returning to do what little I could, as an individual, in that land which it is an honour even to have visited. Ever yours truly, 66 66 NOEL BYRON. 1067.-To the Earl of Blessington. April 5, 1823. MY DEAR LORD,-How is your gout? or rather, how are you? I return the Count D'Orsay's Journal, which is a very extraordinary production, and of a most melancholy truth in all that regards high life in England. I know, or knew personally, most of the personages and "time a committee was formed in London to aid the Greeks in "their war of independence, and shortly after I wrote to one of the "most active movers in it, Lieut. Blaquiere, to ask information as "to their objects and intentions, and mentioned Byron as being very much interested on the subject of Greece; the lieutenant wrote, as from the Committee, direct to Byron, in the grandiloquent "style which all authorities, especially self-constituted ones, delight "in. In the early part of 1823 Blaquiere, on his way to the Ionian "Islands, stopped at Genoa and saw Byron, whom he informed of "his intention to visit Greece in order to see how matters were pro"gressing. He said that his lordship had been unanimously elected "a member of the Greek Committee, and that his name was a tower "of strength; he brought Byron's credentials, and a mass of papers. "The propositions of the Committee came at the right moment; "the Pilgrim was dissatisfied with himself and his position. Greece " and its memories warmed him, a new career opened before him." The whole passage is interesting, though not written in a kindly spirit. On Blaquiere's return to London, he read his Report on the Present State of the Greek Confederation before the Committee, September 13. The Report was printed for the benefit of subscribers, and also published in The Pamphleteer (vol. xxii.). On his second visit to Greece (Narrative of a Second Visit to Greece, including Facts connected with the Last Days of Lord Byron, London, 1825), Blaquiere did not arrive till after Byron's death. Luriottis was afterwards, with Orlando, a commissioner for the Greek loan. societies which he describes; and after reading his remarks, have the sensation fresh upon me as if I had seen them yesterday. I would however plead in behalf of some few exceptions, which I will mention by and by. The most singular thing is, how he should have penetrated not the fact, but the mystery of the English ennui1 at twoand-twenty. I was about the same age when I made the same discovery, in almost precisely the same circles,— (for there is scarcely a person mentioned whom I did not see nightly or daily, and was acquainted more or less intimately with most of them,)—but I never could have described it so well. Il faut être Français, to effect this. But he ought also to have been in the country during the hunting season, with "a select party of distinguished "guests," as the papers term it. He ought to have seen the gentlemen after dinner (on the hunting days), and the soirée ensuing thereupon,-and the women looking as if they had hunted, or rather been hunted; and I could have wished that he had been at a dinner in town, which I recollect at Lord Cowper's 2-small, but select, and composed of the most amusing people. The dessert was hardly on the table, when, out of twelve, I counted five asleep; of that five, there were Tierney,3 Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Darnley-I forget the other two, but they were either wits or orators-perhaps poets. 1. My residence in the East and in Italy has made me "For ennui is a growth of English root, Though nameless in our language :—we retort Don Juan, Canto XIII. stanza 101. 2. Peter Leopold Louis Francis Nassau Clavering-Cowper, fifth Earl Cowper (1778-1837), married, in 1805, Emily Mary, daughter of the first Viscount Melbourne, and died July, 1837. 3. For the Right Hon. George Tierney, see Letters, vol. ii. p. 372, note I. 4. John Bligh, fourth Earl of Darnley (1767-1831). |