‘— Secret shades
Of woody Ida’s inmost grave,
While yet there was no fear of Jove.’

I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and more healthy for it.”

That is the point of view we must take if we are to judge D’Orsay justly; we must lock up our conscience for the nonce, we must get away from the unimaginative atmosphere of the law-courts, we must snap the shackles of convention which always make it impossible for us to form a fair opinion of the unconventional.

Judged by the standards of life and conduct which must control everyday men and women, D’Orsay was a monster of iniquity, and also, as Punch would put it, he was worse than wicked, he was vulgar. His friends cannot have weighed him by any such standards, or they would have condemned him and scorned him. They could not then have accepted him as one of themselves, as a man to be almost loved; they would have turned cold shoulders to any ordinary mortal who treated the love of woman as a comedy and debts of honour as mere farce.

But your real dandy is not an ordinary man and must not be judged by common standards. He stands outside and above the ordinary rules of life and conduct; he has not any conscience, and questions of morality do not affect him. All that is for us to do in viewing such a one as D’Orsay is to weigh his physical and mental gifts, and to examine the uses to which he put them, to look to the opportunities which were given to him and the advantage which he took of them.

Of the multitude of witnesses whom we have summoned there is not one who denies that D’Orsay was a man of supreme physical beauty, and the portraits of him support their verdict. Good looks that were almost effeminate in their charm were supported by the physique of a perfect man, and in all manly sports and pursuits he was highly accomplished. Of his mental qualities it is not so easy justly to weigh the worth; he was an accomplished amateur in art some say, others deny it, but on the whole the evidence seems to be in his favour; he was endowed with a pleasing habit of talk, though scarcely with wit. He was good-humoured, a bon garçon and good-natured. He was an accomplished gourmet. In the art of dress he was supreme. He was more greatly skilled, perhaps, than any other man, in the art of gaining and giving pleasure. He was brave.

Morality, as has been said, does not enter into the consideration of such a man; he was above morality, or outside it. There have been and there are others like him. They are grown-up children, utterly irresponsible; not immoral but unmoral; they “please to live and live to please” themselves. They do not realise that their actions may prove costly to others and therefore do not count the cost. They are children of impulse not of calculation. They are emotional not logical. Pleasure is their pursuit and they shun all that is unpleasing and displeasing. They are so different from us ordinary folk that we cannot appraise them or even fully understand them. Fear of consequences that would appal us have no terrors for them; they do not need to set them aside, they are not aware of them. Conventions which hamper us, for them do not exist. To fulfil the desire of to-day is their one aim and ambition and they take no heed of to-morrow.

It is as a dandy that D’Orsay must be judged, and in that rôle he achieved triumph. It was as a dandy he lived and as a dandy that he is immortal. Such men as he, if indeed there are others with his genius, should—as we have said—be pensioned by the State, should be set above the carking cares of questions of want of pounds—shillings and pence do not trouble them; they should be cherished and sustained as rarely-gifted and rare beings, to whom life presents not any serious problems, and to whom life is a space of time only too brief for all the pleasures which should be crowded into it. “Life’s fitful fever” should be kept apart from such sunny souls, and our only regret should be that there are so few of them.

There are mouldy-minded people who put out the finger of scorn at D’Orsay. Is it not the truth that they are jealous of him, and that at the bottom of their hearts there is a muttered prayer: “I would thank God if He had made me such a man”?

FOOTNOTES

[1] De Guiche. See p. 35.

[2] D’Orsay was but twenty at the time of his first appearance in London.

[3] Cf. Sterne, A Sentimental Journey, ch. i. l. 1.

[4] Sir David Wilkie.

[5] His unsuccessful three-volume novel.

[6] If any, only a temporary estrangement.

[7] Created Baron Dalling and Bulwer in 1871.

[8] France, Social, Literary and Political.

[9] He died in 1839.

[10] See page 202.

[11] Referring to his devoted wife.

[12] The first mention of His Imperial Majesty Napoleon III., who was an habitué of Gore House, and well known to all who frequented it. The A.D.C. was M. de Persigny, who accompanied the Prince everywhere.—[Note in Greville.]

[13] Lady Blessington had a good deal more talent and reading than Mr Greville gives her credit for. Several years of her agitated life were spent in the country in complete retirement, where she had no resources to fall back upon but a good library. She was well read in the best English authors, and even in translations of the Classics; but the talent to which she owed her success in society was her incomparable tact and skill in drawing out the best qualities of her guests. What Mr Greville terms her vulgarity might be more charitably described as her Irish cordiality and bonhomie. I have no doubt that her Conversations with Lord Byron were entirely written by herself.—[Note in Greville.]

[14] Forster.

[15] Possibly Lady Canterbury.

[16] If Lady Blessington wrote this in good faith, “our Count” must have deceived her grossly as to the amount of his debts.

[17] Bulwer was at this time chargé d’affaires at Paris.

[18] Son of Lord Tankerville.

[19] Did he love D’Orsay?

[20] The Duke de Guiche, son of D’Orsay’s sister, had been attacked by a wild boar while out hunting.

[21] The inaccuracies here are obvious.

[22] Now (1910) no more.

[23] Better known to us now as Bernal Osborne.

[24] Frederick Henry Yates, actor and theatrical manager. Father of Edmund Yates.

[25] Probably the founder of the famous menagerie.

[26] The first is meant.

[27] Alias Sloman, a well-known catchpole.

[28] A shy cock being a “Sunday” man, such as D’Orsay.

[29] M.P. for Southwark.

[30] At Crockford’s.

[31] In 1880. He was born in 1796.

[32] She never was there. Seamore Place is meant.

[33] Apparently they had been pawned.

[34] See Infra.

[35] I.e. in Paris.

[36] Of Lady Blessington.

[37] Vide supra, p. 225.

[38] The well-known poet and lyricist.

[39] An amazing version of D’Orsay’s death has recently been made public; namely, that in addition to the disease of the spine, the Count suffered also from a carbuncle, which “was a euphemism for a bullet aimed at the Emperor as they were walking together in the gardens of the Elysée.”

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