Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

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Thomas Lawrence : Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, oil on canvas, 1822

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (born September 1, 1789 in Knockbrit near Clonmel as Margaret Power , † June 4, 1849 in Paris ) was an Irish writer and gossip columnist and a famous salonnière and beauty of the 19th century.

Life

Journal of conversation with Lord Byron, 1859

Margaret Powers was the daughter of Irish landowner Edmund Powers. At the age of 14 she was married to the captain Maurice St. Leger Farmer († 1817). The marriage was considered unhappy as her husband was a well-known tyrant and bon vivant. Margaret also told her parents that Farmer was prone to violent fits of anger. After fleeing from his creditors, Farmer was taken to King's Bench prison, where he died in October 1817.

The pyramidal tomb at Chambourcy

Four months later, the young widow married the Irish aristocrat and politician Charles Gardiner, 1st Earl of Blessington (1782-1829) in London . In the later years the couple made extensive travels on the continent and made friends in Genoa with the famous poet Lord Byron , of whom she became the most ardent defender. One of her first writings was the Traveling Sketches in Belgium (1825), in which, as later in the Conversations with Lord Byron (1834), she openly advocated Lord Byron.

Gravestone of the Countess of Blessington

She continued to live in the Parisian city apartment Hôtel Maréchal Ney until her second husband died . Lady Blessington received famous figures from society in her literary salon . She later lived in England at her family home, Gore House in Kensington , quite isolated from the London world. Their soirees , from which Lord Byron's opponents were excluded, were well attended. Among the guests were Charles Dickens , Benjamin Disraeli , Thomas Lawrence , Alfred de Vigny , Alphonse de Lamartine , Prince Charles-Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte , Harriet Howard and Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton .

Her love affair with the French aristocrat Alfred d'Orsay (1801-1852), the husband of her stepdaughter Lady Harriet Gardiner, became the scandal of the season. After the income from book sales declined and their legacy was used up on their extravagant lifestyle together, the couple left the UK. Lady Blessington and the Count moved to Paris in 1849, where they died of a heart attack a few weeks after their arrival .

Works (selection)

  • 1825 Traveling sketches in Belgium
  • 1833 Grace Cassidy, or the repealers (3 vol.)
  • 1834 Conversations with Lord Byron
  • 1835 The two friends
  • 1836 Confessions of an elderly gentleman
  • 1837 The victims of society
  • 1838 Confessions of an elderly lady
  • 1839 The governess
  • 1839 Desultory thoughts and reflections
  • 1839–1840 Idler in Italy
  • 1841 Idler in France
  • 1847 Memoirs of a femme de chambre
  • 1850 country quarters

literature

Web links