THE STORY OF LADY BLESSING-Ton.

Otago Witness, Issue 1981, 11 February 1892, Page 40

THE STORY OF LADY BLESSINGTon.

Messrs Ward and Downey, of Londftn, have just republished the memoirs of Dr Madden, a bright and vivacious Irish surgeon, who, living in the days of our grandfathers, went everywhere and saw everybody. Among the more interesting of his recollections are those which deal with Lady Blessington, brightest and least fortunate of Irishwomen. The daughter of a raffish Irish squire, she became, in her early womanhood, the wife of Lord Blessington, and for many years lived the life of a woman of fashion. As long as her husband lived her income was L 30.000 a year ; when he died this was reduced to L2OOO. Notwithstanding her altered fortunes, she continued to live expensively, entertaining every

evening. Moreover, she contracted an irregular connection with the famous Count d'Orsay, and this was a still further drain on her means. The following is Dr Maddens description of Lady Blessington's salon :—

"Each evening from 10 to half-past 12 o'clock Gore House was thrown open to visitors, like a temple of Miner7a, to which all literary votaries went up nightly to worship. Stars there were plenty, from the great Wellington down to Alaric Watts (one of the smallest of the annualists), a perfect tit; lactea of celebrities great and small swept through the salons, whtra, as in her former residence, might be seen whosoever were notable for social or political position, eccentricity, fashion, or geniu3 in art, science, or literature. In those cosmopolitan assemblages, the passport ro which was the 'guinea stamp' of celebrity of any kind, were admitted all classes and- conditions of men — politicians of every shade of opinion, Chartists and Tories, Repealers and their foes, divines and jesters, historians and novelist.*, poets and scientists, bishops and actors, men of pleasure and of learning, Midas and Diogene3. There •My Lord Tom Noddy and Sir Carnaby Jenks of the Blues ' stood on terms of temporary equality with toilirg men of letters, whose only rent-roll was derived from these 'airy nothings' to which their geniu3 gave ' a local habitation and a name, 1 probably more enduring than any left by the leaders of fashion or great statesmen with whom they commingled in Lady Blessington's salons. Amongst the guests thus gathered in Gore House were many whose names are still 'familiar as household words.' There might be seen the Conservative Bulwer Lytton in friecd'y chat with the Right Hon. ' Tom ' Duncombe, who, being ultra-Liberal, Chanist, and tradC'Unionist, combined in his own person the not very harmonious character of a tribune of the people and a man of pleasure and fashion. Or Mr Benjamin Disraeli, afterwards the Tory Earl of Beaconsfield, then a red-hot Radical, eager to get into Parliament, and electrifying society by works of fiction, in which the celebrities of the day were sketched and satirised." To keep up all this magnificence— ab the same time to give some help to the large and poor family of her father in Tipperary — the poor woman bad to work for hours every day for 20 years. Her letters are full of pathetic pictures of the strain upon her. "I am literally worn out," she wrote. " I look for release from toils more than a slave ever did from bondage. I never get out any day before 5 o'clock. I am suffering in health from too much writing."

But though she was thus working herself to death, and though year after year the excess of expenditure over income mounted higher and higher, she still appeared every night with smiling face and. unbroken gaiety— the skeleton was hid away frcni none but li£r own eyes. To her, however, as to so many others, the hideous famine years brought the crash ; the money from rents entirely disappeared ; the unpaid bills brought the executions and the bailiffs. For two years Lady Blessington, still entertaining, every night remained, a prisoner in her house ; until at last one bailiff, shrewder than his brethren, entered the fortress, and then came the end.

Count d'Orsay fled for refuge to France, leaving debts behind him to the amount of LIOO.OOO. A fortnight afterwards Lady Blessington, with her nieces, also quitted London for ever, leaving her entire property at the mercy of her creditors. Then commenced a nine days' sale at Gore House, the long-cheiished treasures of which were ruthlessly dispersed among brokers and dealers. Every article in the house, including the library of 5000 volumes, was sold off without reserve. By her ladyship's express command the creditors got all she had, except her own picture by Chalon. The sale realised above LI 8,000, out of which Lll balance, aftejr paying the debt=, was handed over to Lady Biessington.

Lady Blessington was 60 when she had thus to fly to Paris from the scene of her triumphs, but her strong will kept her up. She settled down in a house in her new home, and managed to furnish it with her usual taste. There was some hope that Louis Napoleon, who was then the French President, would remember Count d'Orsay, the friend of his exile and obscurity. But Lady Blessington's 20 years of overwork and incessant anxiety had worn out her frame. Just seven weeks after her flight from London she was seized with apoplexy, and died after a few hours' illness. She was buried at St. Germain, where her mausoleum was designed by Count d'Orsay, her epitaph written by Barry Cornwall and Walter Savage Landor; whilst Irish ivy, brought from her native island was planted around her grave.