Part 12
The way in which the third and fourth lords elected to spend their wealth had woven round them a whole tissue of legends, chiefly founded upon mere vulgar gossip. Virtuous and highly-respectable London delighted in crowning them with a halo of ill-fame, and when Lord Yarmouth, afterwards fourth Marquess, bought Bagatelle, it was declared to be the scene of orgies compared with which the mysteries of the Bona Dea were as innocent as nursery teas. Many of the stories were started by the rather second-class, or even demirep, English Society which was gathered together at Paris, jealous at being kept out from the intimacy of a very exclusive man.
These stories when repeated, we may be sure, lost nothing in the telling, and so Bagatelle came to be looked upon as a sort of Parc aux Cerfs, while Bishop Luscombe’s congregation stalked with virtuously uplifted noses along the Rue d’Aguesseau, thanking Heaven that they were not as Lord Hertford. Such a reputation, even if it were a mere scandalous libel, was hardly such as would commend itself to General Sir Francis Seymour, the proud patrician who was to succeed to the title as fifth Marquess. Indeed, it must have been gall and wormwood to a man trained as he had been for many years in the solemn dignity of the staid Victorian Court. There could be no sympathy, still less affection, between the cousins. But there was more than all this to influence Lord Hertford when he made his will, which left his successor practically nothing but the broad acres of Warwickshire, with a great costly palace to keep up, at a moment when land was falling in value every day and agriculture was drifting no man could tell whither.
Whatever shape Richard Lord Hertford’s eccentricities may have taken, he had one redeeming virtue. He was a model son, and his love for his mother was the great passion of his life. To attack her, to be in any way wanting in respect for her, was in his eyes the one crime for which there was no forgiveness, and that was precisely the crime of which Sir Francis Seymour was guilty. It was a pity, to say the least of it, that the unkind things, sure to be repeated, of which he was so prodigal in speaking of Lady Hertford, should ever have been uttered. However much he might disapprove of Lord Hertford’s way of life, it would have been wise to remember that a man is not responsible for his grandmother’s indiscretions, and the shady parentage of Maria Fagnani might well have been allowed the benefit of silence. At any rate, it was not the business of Sir Francis to trumpet that or any other scandal about her.
Her story was curious. All the actors in the play have long been dead, but it is so intimately connected with the history of the Wallace Collection that, while there is no one left to whom its relation could give pain, it still retains a special interest. Anything that can throw light upon the passing of all those treasures into the possession of the nation is worth recording; and it is, moreover, an act of justice to clear the memory of a lady who has been somewhat roughly—and, as I believe, without foundation—handled in the “Dictionary of National Biography.”
Under the blessing of the law, Maria was the daughter of the Marchese and Marchesa Fagnani, and the adopted child of George Selwyn. But the Marchesa, who was said to have been a ballet-dancer, must have been none too faithful to her husband; for, as a matter of fact, George Selwyn was said to dispute with the Duke of Queensberry, the wicked “Old Q,” the honour of being her father. As to that there seems to be no certain evidence, but one would have thought that such a rivalry, or partnership—whichever it might be—would have bred a jealousy between the two men. Not a bit of it! They remained fast friends, were constantly together, and, when apart, wrote to one another in the most affectionate terms.
At George Selwyn’s death in 1791 he left thirty-three thousand pounds to Maria and the rest of his fortune to “Old Q.” When the Duke, in his turn, came to an 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.
The Marchese Fagnani (Fagniani is a misspelling in all the English books) belonged to an old Milanese family. In the sixteenth century there was a poet of the name who gained some literary fame; others of the family were well-known lawyers, archæologists, mathematicians and churchmen in the seventeenth century—all men of good repute; and as Maria was undoubtedly born in holy wedlock, the _mésalliance_ was not so very great.
In spite of this there must have been some doubt as to the desirability of alliance with the Fagnanis, for the marriage with Lord Yarmouth was a hole-and-corner affair, hustled through at Southampton on the 18th of May, 1798. Southampton was then quite a small country town, very different from what it is now, just the sort of place where a marriage could be celebrated without fuss and in some secrecy. Indeed, when I remember it fifty years later it was still in its infancy and very primitive, with at least one delightful old house standing in its own grounds in the High Street above Bar. Altogether it was not the sort of wedding that certainly would have been arranged for the heir of the proud and royal Seymours had the magnates of the family not disapproved of the match. The French writers in newspapers, who made great capital out of the whole romance at the time of Lord Hertford’s death in 1870, went out of their way to associate the Prince Regent with the Fagnani mystery. They hinted that the prince also claimed the paternity of Maria, and that he even attended the marriage. But that is an utter absurdity, for which there was no foundation. Immediately after the marriage Lord and Lady Yarmouth made their home in Piccadilly, next door to “Old Q,” who did not die till twelve years later.
It is pretty clear that the marriage with Maria did not lower Lord Yarmouth’s social position, otherwise Lord Castlereagh would hardly have chosen him as his second in his famous duel with Mr. Canning, for whom Mr. Charles Ellis, afterwards Lord Seaford, acted. Both men missed their first shots; in the second shot Mr. Canning was grazed in the leg. A duel between the Minister of War and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was a matter of too great importance to be entrusted to a gentleman who was under a cloud. After Lord Yarmouth succeeded to the Marquisate in 1822, he received the Garter himself, and was sent by George the Fourth as special ambassador to carry the same order to the Emperor Nicholas in 1827.
At the time of her marriage the bride was no longer in her first youth; she was at least twenty-seven years old. For the correspondence between George Selwyn and the Duke of Queensberry shows that in 1772 she was already teething, and under the care of the former at Paris as his adopted child; and he was fretting himself into bad health lest the mother should take the little creature—Mie Mie, as she was called—away from him. The Duke, then Lord March, while abounding in good advice to his friend, promised his good offices, saying at the time that the Marchesa was sure to act in opposition to his (the Duke’s) wishes and advice. The child was taken away by her mother for a time, but ultimately and permanently given back to her adoring guardian or father. From that time forth the noble Italian lady seems to have troubled herself about her baby no more.
As I have already said, there is no certainty as to Maria’s parentage; indeed, the published letters leave the whole story in a state of confusion which is perfect. Robinson, in his Life of “Old Q” (page 143), says:
“Jesse, who was privileged to go over Selwyn’s correspondence, though refusing as a false affectation of delicacy to pass over in complete silence the mysterious reports respecting the true parentage of Selwyn’s infantine charge, asserts that although references occur in the most private papers of Selwyn which unquestionably lead to the supposition that either Lord March (Old Q) or Selwyn was, or, rather, that each severally believed himself to be, the father of the child, yet no certain proofs exist. Further, a letter addressed by Madame Fagnani to Selwyn, July 31st, 1772 (of which Jesse gives a translation), does not express any but the most polite feelings of friendship for the guardian of her child. Lest I may be misrepresented in alluding to a matter that a faithful record of established facts incident to my subject warrants, Madame Fagnani’s letter is inserted in justice to all concerned:
“‘MY VERY DEAR AND RESPECTABLE FRIEND,
“‘I cannot find terms sufficiently expressive to thank you for all your kindness, and more particularly for the pains you take in regard to my daughter. I can assure you that nothing is more sensibly felt by me than the proofs of friendship which I have received from you on this occasion. The more I know the world, the more I perceive the difficulty of finding a person who resembles you, and I consider myself the happiest of mortals solely from the happiness I have had in forming your acquaintance and obtaining your friendship.
“‘I am enchanted in learning that my daughter is in good health, though I fear she will suffer much in cutting her teeth. I venture to beg of you to continue to give me tidings of her, as without your kindness in writing to me from time to time, I should have been ignorant for the last three months of the fate of _ma petite_. My lord,[14] on his part, is a little indolent, but I forgive him this little fault on account of the many good qualities of his heart which he has to counterbalance it.
“‘I hope that your health is good. Pray present my compliments to Lord March, and tell him that I expect to hear from him. Preserve your friendship for me, and do not forget the most grateful and affectionate of all your friends, who makes it her duty and pleasure to be,
“‘Your very sincere servant and friend,
“‘COSTANZA FAGNANI.’”
Surely that is a letter which must have been written without any idea that it would ever be published, and it certainly gives no sunlight to clear away the clouds of the story. To add to the mystery of Maria’s parentage, Roscoe, in his book on Selwyn, publishes two letters, one from Dr. Warner, the witty Chaplain to the British Embassy in Paris in 1780, when she was nine years old, in which, writing to Selwyn, he makes no disguise of his belief in the paternity of the Duke. The letter is also interesting as giving some slight idea of the impression which the child created:
“That freshness of complexion I should have great pleasure in beholding. It must add to her charms, and cannot diminish the character, sense and shrewdness which distinguish her physiognomy, and which she possesses in a great degree, with a happy engrafting of a high-bred foreign air upon an English stock. But how very pleasant to me was your honest and naïve confession of the joy your heart felt at hearing her admired. It is, indeed, most extraordinary that a certain person who has great taste (would he had as much nature)[15] should not see her with very different eyes from what he does. I can never forget that naïve expression of Madame de Sévigné: ‘Je ne sais comment l’on fait de ne pas aimer sa fille.’”
The other letter to which I allude is one from George Selwyn to Lord Carlisle, written at a time when complaining that he was “le jouet des autres,” and was being annoyed beyond all bearing by the way in which Madame Fagnani behaved to him about Maria, threatening to take her away from him altogether. In that letter he writes: “Hélas! rende mi figlia mis!” That may have meant no more than that the child was very dear to him, and need not necessarily imply that he believed himself to be her father. That he did so believe, however, is pretty certain. He educated her, placed her at school with Mrs. Terry at Campden House in Kensington, then a beautiful old house almost in the country, and having finally succeeded in getting rid of the mother’s importunities, kept her with him until his death in 1791, introducing her into the best society. Gainsborough painted her portrait, as did Sir Joshua Reynolds, but the pictures no longer exist, or, at any rate, are lost.
Of the legal father, the Marquis Fagnani, we hear very little. The only notice I have found of him is in a letter from Selwyn to Lord Carlisle dated June 19th, 1781:
“Belgiojoso told me last night that he had had letters from Milan, by which he was informed that the M. [Marquis] Fagnani was gone quite mad. He has been stone blind for a considerable time, and I take it for granted that both these misfortunes are come from the same cause—that is, mercury. His experiments to ease the one probably occasioned the other. I never hear one syllable from any of the family. I hope in God that I never shall, nor poor Mie Mie either. It grows every day less likely, and yet when I am out of spirits, that dragon, among others, comes across me and distresses me, and the thought of what must happen to that child if I am not alive to protect her.”
George Selwyn was no further molested in the possession of the child. He lived for ten years after that letter was written, and by that time Maria had grown to woman’s estate. She was twenty years of age, and had, under George Selwyn’s will, a snug little fortune of her own, besides expectations, amply to be realized, of further benefits from the Duke of Queensberry. He doubtless took paternal care of the young lady who was to inherit all that he could alienate from the Douglas family. She became one of the greatest heiresses, if not the greatest, of her day.
In her youth Maria Fagnani must have been a very fascinating girl. To George Selwyn, as we have seen, she was as the apple of his eye. He simply adored her. If she had a cold in the head, or an infantile ailment, however trivial, it was torture to him, provoking sympathy from his correspondents, who themselves seemed to be quite under the spell of the delightful child; and as he apparently never destroyed a note, there are plenty of these condolences in the budget of letters published by Jesse. To have won the heart of Thackeray’s Marquess of Steyne, if that fastidious personage ever possessed such an organ, was another feather in her cap, and in her old age we know how tenderly her son and Richard Wallace both loved her.
In 1803 Lord and Lady Yarmouth were detained in France—he interned at Verdun—when war was again declared after the rupture of the Peace of Amiens, and their second son, Lord Henry Seymour, was born in Paris in 1805. Scandal declared that he was the son of Junot, Duc d’Abrantès, with whom Lady Yarmouth was very intimate. There is a note in Roscoe, page 8, which says: “She led a life of pleasure (1802-1807), travelling on the Continent with the Marshal Andoche.” That was Junot’s Christian name—but that he never was a marshal was his great grievance against Napoleon.
This Lord Henry is not to be confounded, as is commonly done, with the Lord Henry Seymour, son of the first Marquess, who lived at Norris Castle, near Cowes, and spent a fortune in building the famous sea-wall. The Lord Henry with whom we have to deal was a very eccentric personage. Unlike his brother, Richard Lord Hertford, who was a handsome man, and in his youth a dandy of the 10th Hussars, Lord Henry was singularly ugly, even grotesque. There was in the Rue Lafitte a sketch or caricature of him, which I have seen, in which he was represented as a sort of Quilp, stunted, misshapen, and of prodigious strength. He was a hero of the various Salles d’Armes, a famous fencer and athlete, and the founder, or, at any rate, one of the founders, of the French Jockey Club. A kindly man withal, for by his will, in which his horses appeared as legatees—never to be crossed again—he left the bulk of his fortune to the hospitals of Paris. He died in 1859, three years after the loss of his mother. It used to be said that he never even set foot in England, but that was probably only one of the many fables set afloat about the two brothers. So curious a quartet as the mother, the two sons, and the enigma that was M. Richard, afterwards Sir Richard Wallace, furnished fine food for eavesdroppers and gossip-mongers.
For twenty-eight years after the death of his father in 1842, Richard Lord Hertford lived practically altogether in Paris, passing his time between the Rue Lafitte and Bagatelle, the little toy house on the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne, which in 1780 was built by Bellanger in a few weeks at the order of the Comte d’Artois (Charles the Tenth), for a bet, in order to entertain Queen Marie Antoinette on a fixed day. The repetition in one of the rooms of the decoration of peacocks with spread tails in the boudoir of the Queen at Versailles was probably a delicate compliment—a little surprise—addressed to her on her visit. When I first saw it some fifteen years ago, although the house was empty and the famous statues had been removed and sold, it was still instinct with a certain eighteenth-century charm. The daintily laid-out grounds were still beautifully kept, and I should hardly have been surprised had I suddenly come upon one of Fragonard’s idylls, with shepherdesses powdered and hooped, and gentle shepherds to match, appropriately dressed in spotless pink and blue silk.
In that house, as in those idylls, there are tears when we remember how soon so many of those pretty, frivolous, powdered heads were to fall into the basket of Monsieur de Paris. Although the famous “Nelly O’Brien” of Sir Joshua, and perhaps Romney’s “Perdita,” were bought by the second Marquess, the foundation of the collection of art treasures which, since the militant ladies three or four years ago took to fighting pictures in the National Gallery, have been stored away in the cellars of Hertford House, was laid by Francis, third Lord Hertford, who bought the glorious “Perseus and Andromeda” by Titian, which the keen eyes of Sir Claude Phillips rescued from a bath-room, where it had been stored away and forgotten, a number of the Dutch pictures and two of the Vandycks. But by far the greater part of it was acquired by his son Richard, the fourth Marquess.
Very important additions, especially in the armoury, were made by Sir Richard Wallace, who was himself a born collector, and had acquired no little experience, both on his own account, and as Lord Hertford’s representative at the great auction sales of Paris. His taste in Oriental art was distinctly bad. He bought a few very inferior specimens of Chinese cloisonné enamel, and two porcelain bowls of the Chia Ching reign, 1796-1821, a period when the art of China reached almost its lowest level, with very inferior mounts by some English bungler. Of these he was inordinately proud. There are two or three very fine céladon vases, with exquisitely chiselled French mounts, in one of the glass cases, but there is no evidence as to who bought them.
The reason of the fourth Lord Hertford’s self-condemned exile in Paris, when he owned five palatial houses in London, besides Ragley, Sudbourne and other places, is not easy to ascertain. There was a story, firmly believed in my youth, and confirmed by Sir Richard Wallace to Sir John Scott, that his father tried to force him into a cruel marriage with the daughter of one of his mistresses, with whom he conspired to make it appear that Lord Yarmouth, as he then was, had compromised the girl. The young man deeply resented this outrage, and took refuge in Paris, where his mother was living. Certainly he had established himself there during his father’s lifetime, for it was as Lord Yarmouth that he bought Bagatelle in 1830, and he did not succeed to the marquisate until twelve years later.
Yriarte’s story that he left London on account of a quarrel with the parish over the rates of his house in Piccadilly, is hardly to be accepted. It is far more likely that he left England in order to free himself from his father, for whom he had no love or respect, and made Paris his home that he might be with his mother, whom he adored. She, with Lord Henry Seymour and Monsieur Richard, lived at No. 1, Rue Taitbout, Lord Hertford’s head-quarters being hard by at No. 2, Rue Lafitte. There he lived the life of an invalid and sybarite, hardly to be called happy in spite of his great possessions—a recluse, the darkness of whose hypochondria was only cheered by his correspondence with Mr. S. Mawson, who was his agent in London for the purchase, restoration and care of pictures, or by some brilliant triumph at Christie’s or in the Paris auction-rooms.
Few people saw him, and still fewer knew him. And yet he had all the qualifications which would have enabled him to shine among his fellows. Yriarte said of him: “Causeur célèbre, très spirituel, très lettré, d’une politesse accomplie, d’un raffinement rare, ses goûts personnels l’éloignaient cependant de la société, et il a vécu toute sa vie dans un milieu inférieur. Il y apportait même avec ses intimes une manière d’être dissimulée, peu conforme avec le cant anglais, et il affichait une sorte de cynisme que les deux ou trois amis intimes qu’il a conservés jusqu’à sa mort regardaient comme son masque d’emprunt.” His wit, if sometimes a little cynical, or even a little risky, was undeniable, and what are called “good stories” of him were the joy of clubs.
That he suffered acutely there can be no doubt, for Sir Richard Wallace once told me that he went with him to Contrexéville—we know what that means—which fifty years ago was a very different place from what it is now, and where all the sordid details of life at that time must have been torture to a man of his exquisite refinement. With public life he had no concern. As a young man he was for a few years in the House of Commons, and on succeeding to the title, he delivered a maiden speech in the House of Lords, and that was all. His one and only participation in affairs was in 1855, when he consented to act as one of the jury at the Exhibition of Paris.
Upon this subject he wrote a characteristic letter to Mawson: