ROMANCE OF THE WALLACE COLLECTIOn.

Otago Witness, Issue 3488, 18 January 1921, Page 52

ROMANCE OF THE WALLACE COLLECTIOn.

RECORDS OF AN AMAZING FAMILY. By Sidney Dark. The re-opening of the Wallace Collection ir. Manchester square revives interest onoe more in the amazing romance of the gathering together of the many beautiful things in the collection by the third and fourth marquesses of Hertford and by Sir Richard Wallace himself. The story is best told by Lord Redesdale in his “Further Memories.” Lord Redesdale was born in 1837. Before he was raised to the peerage and was known as Algernon Freeman-Mitford, he gained a considerable literary reputation as the author of several charming books on Japan, and at the time o*’ his death in 1916 he was trustee both of the Wallace Collection and the National Gallery. The account of the Wallace romance is supplemented by a letter from Lord Esher, which is printed in the ‘ ‘Memories. ’ ’ The story begins with the marriage of the Earl of Yarmouth, eldest son of the second Marquess of Hertford, to Maria Fagnani at Southampton on May 18, 1798. Maria was tire reputed daughter of the Marchese Fagnani, a member of an old Milanese family, but though there is some doubt who her real father was it certainly was not the Marchese. Her mother had been a ballet dancer, and she appears to have been a lady with many lovers. At any rate both George Selwyn and the notorous Duke of Queensberry—the wicked “Old Q.”—believed he was her father. She lived for years with Selwyn, and both he and Queensberry regarded her with great affection. Lord Redesdale tells us:— “At George Sehvyn’s death in 1791 he left £33,000 to Maria and the rest of his fortune to ‘Old Q.’ When the Duke, in his turn, came to the end of his stormy life, dying in the odour of iniquity in 1810, he bequeathed to Maria, who had married Lord Yarmouth in 1798, a fortune of between three and four hundred thousand pounds, together with the famous house opposite the Green Park in Piccadilly, in the window of which, when he was too old to walk, he used to sit ogling the pretty women as they passed below him. That window, with its leering old tenant, was one of the sights of London.” —“A Sort of Quilp.”— Alalia’s hueband became the third Marquess of Hertford in 1822. He was the original of the Alarquess of Steyn in Thackeray's “Vanity Fair,” and there is no reason to suppose that the original was any less undesirable than Thackeray’s creation. He and his wife were in France after the rupture of the Peace of Amiens, and the Alarquess was for a. while among the English prisoners shut up in the Citadel of Verdun. During his imprisonment a second eon was born to Ataria in Paris, and it is said that the father was Junot, the famous Napoleonic soldier. This son, Lord Henry Seymour, was a most eccentric person. Lord Redesdale says that he was “a sort of Quilp, stunted, misshapen, and of prodigious strength.” He was a famous fencer and one of the founders of the French Jockey Club, and the story goes that he never once set foot in England. His elder brother, Richard, fourth Marquess of Hertford, also lived entirely in France for 28 rears after the death of his father in 1842. Lord Hertford and His Father.— It was in the Rue Lafitte and at Bagatelle that Lord Hertford stored the treasures which are now to be seen in Alancbester square. The reason why Lord Hertford avoided England and liis halfdozen j>alat.ial houses was his deep hatred for his father (the Marquess of Steyn Hertford), who had endeavoured to trick him into a marriage with the daughter of one of his mistresses. The young man, as he then was, took refuge in Paris, where his mother was then living, and hardly ever came back. His mother, hv the wav, and Lord Henry Seymour lived in the Rfio Taitbout, almost the next turning on the Boulevard to the Rue Lafitte. Lord Hertford was on intimate terms with Napoleon 111, and there are many stories told of his life in Paris. On one occasion two acquaintances asked leave to fight a duel in his grounds at Bagatelle. The Alarquess politely replied that lie had not the slightest objection to their shooting one another, but could not trust their skill so far as to risk his statues. Edmund de Ooneourt’s Story.— Edmund da Goncourt, in his famous

journal, tells another characteristic story : “Old Hertford, the prisoner of the Empire, had read ‘La Fille aux Yeux ( > Or' . . and thought that he recognised the girl whom Balzac had sketched in his story. Hertford thereupon asked Lacroix to arrange him a dinner with the author at the Maison d’Or, where he invite 1 him. On the dav fixed Lacroix came alone, saying that it was not possible to meet Balzac . . . and said Hugo and his friends only communicated with him by letter. Hertford, nevertheless, with the despotism of his caprices, was determined to meet him at all costs, and at last it was agreed that he should have an interview with the novelist on a first floor in the Porte St. Martin. But, there, too, Lacroix came alone, and said that at that moment Balzac was threatened with Clichy (the debtor’s prison), and that he only dared go out in the evenings, ant that he spent the evenings with his friends. Then Hertford shouted : ‘Clichy, Clichy—what does he owe?’ “ ‘A huge sum,’ replied Lacroix, ‘perhaps 40,000 francs, perhaps 50,000 francs, perhaps more.’ ‘l’ll pay his debts. Let him come and see me!’ “In spite of this promise, Lord Hertfort never succeeded in persuading Balzac to meet him.’’ Wallace’s Origin.— The origin of Sir Richard Wallace is told in a letter by Lord Esher, quoted by Lord Redesdale. Lord Esher, as a very small boy, was taken by his grandmother to tea with Lord Hertford m the Rue Lafitte, and his grandfather was one of Hertford's few friends. He, therefore, speaks with real authority. He says “.Many times have 1 heard my grandmother and my mother tell the story of Sir Richard Wallace’s adoption by Lord Hertford. Wallace was the son of Lord Yarmouth by a girl, Agnes Jackson by name, who was a kind of fille du regiment of the 10th Hussars, and young Seymour made a home, for her in Paris while the liaison lasted. There Wallace was horn, and when Seymour parted from his mistress the child was placed with a concierge in the Rue de Clichy, where he ran wild under a porte-cochere until he was about six years old. . “There is, and never was, the slightest foundation for the absurd legend that Alaria Fagnani was Sir Richard Wallace’s mother, although the writer in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography,’ who cannot possibly know anything of the facts, adopts it.” Through the influence of his mother, Lord Hertford became on the best of terms with his natural son. lie died in Paris in 1870. His cousin and successor, the fifth Alarquess, had rather foolishly talked a good deal about Alaria Fagnani’s past, an offence which her son never forgave, and when his will was read it was found that he had left his cousin nothing that he could will away from him. Worth Ten Alillionj;.—

Sir Richard stopped in Paris through the siege, and in 1871 he was created a baronet in recognition of his services to the English in the beleagured city. In the same year he married Allle. Ca'stlenau, with whom he lived for many years. His only son served in the French army, hut he and his father had a quarrel which was never made up. When Sir Richard died in 1890 he bequeathed his whole fortune to his widow.

lor many years Sir Richard Wallace had Air (afterwards Sir John) Scott as a confidential secretary, and it was owing to his urgings that Lady Wallace eventiu ally left the famous collection to tho British nation —the collection which is now estimated is worth ten million pounds. Alost of the exhibits in Alanchester Square were bought at a time when, owing to the disturbed state of Europe, valuable objects of art could be bought very cheap. But the fourth Alarquess” of Hertford, like Airs Gilpin, had a frugal mind, and Lord Redesdale quotes many letters in which he deplores the high prices that he had to pay—prices which, to the modern dealer, would appear merely ridiculous. The affairs of Sir John Scott himself were not without their share of romance. Lady Wallace left him a considerable fortune, which included many valuable pictures. He was one of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, and he actually died in the galleries in 1912. He made Lady Sackville of Knole his heiress, and his will, it may be remembered, led to a famous suit in the Probate Court in which Lady Sackville triumphed.—John o’ London’s Weekly.