The çoisRenéladies most in fashion pleased me little; there was one, however, who was charming, Lady Gwydyr: she resembled a Frenchwoman in her tone and manners. Lady Jersey still maintained her position as a beauty. I met the Opposition at her house. Lady Conyngham belonged to the Opposition, and the King himself kept a secret liking for his old friends. Among the patronesses of Almack's, one marked the Russian Ambassadress[175].
The Countess de Lieven had had some rather ridiculous affairs with Madame d'Osmond[176] and George IV. As she was audacious and was considered to be in favour at Court, she had become extremely fashionable. She was thought to have wit, because her husband was supposed to have none, which was not true: M. de Lieven[177] was much superior to Madame. Madame de Lieven, with sharp and unprepossessing features, is a commonplace, wearisome, arid woman, who has only one style of conversation: vulgar politics; for the rest, she knows nothing and she hides the dearth of her ideas under the abundance of her words. When she finds herself with people of merit, her sterility is silent; she invests her nullity with a superior air of boredom, as though she had the right to be bored; having fallen through the effect of time, and being unable to keep from meddling with something, the dowager of the Congress has come from Verona to give, in Paris[178], with the permission of the magistrates of St. Petersburg, a representation of the diplomatic puerilities of former days. She keeps up private correspondences and has shown herself a specialist in unhappy marriages. Our novices have rushed to her rooms to learn to know the fine world and the art of secrets; they entrust her with theirs, which, spread abroad by Madame de Lieven, change into underhand tittle-tattle. The ministers, and those who aspire to become so, are quite proud to be protected by a lady who has had the honour to see M. de Metternich at the hours in which the great man, to refresh himself after the weight of business, amused himself by unravelling silk. Ridicule awaited Madame de Lieven in Paris. A serious doctrinaire[179] has fallen at Omphale's feet: "Love, 'twas thou lost Troy."
The day was thus distributed in London: at six o'clock in the morning, one hastened to a party of pleasure, consisting of a breakfast in the country; one returned to lunch in London; one changed one's dress to walk in Bond Street or Hyde Park; one dressed again to dine at half-past seven; one dressed again for the Opera; at midnight, one dressed once more for an evening party or rout. What a life of enchantment! I should a hundred times have preferred the galleys. The supreme height of fashion was to be unable to make one's way into the small rooms of a private ball, to remain on the stair-case blocked by the crowd, and to find one's self nose to nose with the Duke of Somerset[180]; a state of beatitude to which I once attained. The English of the new breed are infinitely more frivolous than we; their heads are turned for a "show:" if the Paris executioner were to go to London, all England would run after him. Did not Marshal Soult enrapture the ladies[181], like Blücher, whose mustachios they kissed? Our marshal, who is not Antipater[182], nor Antigonus[183], nor Seleucus[184], nor Antiochus[185], nor Ptolemy[186], nor any of the captain-kings of Alexander, is a distinguished soldier, who pillaged Spain while getting beaten, and with whom Capuchins redeemed their lives with pictures. But it is true that, in March 1814, he published a furious proclamation against Bonaparte, whom he received in triumph a few days later: he has since done his Easter duty at Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin. They show his old boots in London for a shilling.