two, the latter being translated into English and published in London in 1855.

Since the return to England scandal had been busy with the names of her husband and stepmother, and to allay it D'Orsay took a small house in Curzon Street, though it would have been better if he had gone quite for society only smiled, regarding his removal simply

away,

as a ruse.

From the time D'Orsay entered England he was in monetary difficulties. He had not been long here when he was arrested for a debt of £300, pressed by a fashionable Parisian bootmaker named McHenry, and he was only saved from imprisonment by the acceptance on the part of his creditor of bail on that occasion. McHenry acknowledged that he was under great obligations to the Count, for the mere fact being known that he made D'Orsay's boots was enough to bring him all the best custom of Paris. This was the case all through D'Orsay's career; for him to deal with a tradesman meant the making of a fortune, not for himself but for his creditor, but that did not alter the law that a buyer must pay, and D'Orsay was always in danger of arrest.

Socially he was very popular, being a member of Crockford's, but he was blackballed at White's, probably because of the irregularity of his domestic life. However, hostesses opened their doors to him, and he was received everywhere as frankly as Lady Blessington was shunned. Mrs. Charles Mathews, the mother of Charles James, was one of the few women who remained Lady Blessington's friend, and Mrs. Disraeli was a frequent visitor.

Mr. N. P. Willis, the American gossiper, has given us some pictures of life at the house in Seamore Place which are worth presenting. He was visiting London in 1834 after his travels in Europe, and speaks of spending

Lady Blessington

357

an evening at the house of Lady Blessington, who sat in the drawing-room with several gentlemen round her. One was one of the brothers Smith, authors of " Rejected Addresses "; another Henry Bulwer, the brother of the novelist. Then there was a German prince, a famous traveller; "and the splendid person of Count d'Orsay, in a careless attitude upon the ottoman, completed the cordon." He also accepted an invitation to go one evening at ten, and found Lady Blessington "in a long library lined alternately with splendidly bound books and mirrors, and with a deep window of the breadth of the room, opening upon Hyde Park :

"The picture to my eye, as the door opened, was a very lovely one :-a woman of remarkable beauty half buried in a fauteuil of yellow satin, reading by a magnificent lamp suspended from the centre of the arched ceiling; sofas, couches, ottomans, and busts arranged in rather a crowded sumptuousness through the room; enamel tables, covered with expensive and elegant trifles in every corner; and a delicate white hand relieved on the back of a book, to which the eye was attracted by the blaze of its diamond rings. As the servant mentioned my name, she rose and gave me her hand very cordially; and a gentleman entering immediately after, she presented me to Count d'Orsay, the well-known 'Pelham' of London, and certainly the most splendid specimen of a man and a well-dressed one that I had ever seen. Tea was brought in immediately, and conversation went swimmingly on."

In the course of a long conversation, mostly about America, Lady Blessington told Willis how she was with Lord Blessington in his yacht at Naples when the American fleet was lying there, ten or eleven years earlier, and they were constantly on board the American ships, adding:

"I remember very well the bands playing always God save the King as we went up the side. Count d'Orsay here, who spoke very little English at that time, had a great passion for Yankee Doodle, and it was always played at his request."

"The Count, who still speaks the language with a very slight accent, but with a choice of words that shows him to be a man of uncommon taste and elegance of mind, inquired after several of the officers, whom I have not the pleasure of knowing. He seemed to remember his visits to the frigate with great pleasure."

Willis also says of Lady Blessington :

"Her excessive beauty is less an inspiration than the wondrous talent with which she draws, from every person around her, his peculiar excellence. Talking better than anybody else, and narrating, particularly, with a graphic power that I never saw excelled, this distinguished woman seems striving only to make others unfold themselves, and never had diffidence a more apprehensive and encouraging listener. But this is a subject with which I should never be done.

"I was at Lady Blessington's at eight. Moore had not arrived, but the other persons of the party— a Russian count, who spoke all the languages of Europe as well as his own; a Roman banker, whose dynasty is more powerful than the Pope's; a clever English nobleman, and the observed of all observers,' Count d'Orsay, stood in the window upon the park, killing, as they might, the melancholy twilight half-hour preceding dinner."

A word more concerning the end of the evening:

"We all sat around the piano, and after two or three songs of Lady Blessington's choice, he (Moore) rambled over the keys awhile and sang When First I Met Thee,