Tipperary-born socialite was Britain's best-selling author

Many motorists who have parked in the car park at Suir Island in Clonmel, or taken a stroll through the Old Bridge or the nearby Denis Burke Park may be unaware that the area is synonymous with one of the town’s most famous historical figures, who was brought back into the spotlight in a book published just over a  year ago.

The fantastical life of writer and socialite Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington, forms the basis of the novel Bounty of a Stolen Empire.

Author and Blessington expert Martin Cohen says his aim is to reintroduce Gardiner, who died in 1849, to a new generation of readers after decades of what he calls "criminal neglect".

His book is believed to mark the first time that the Countess, who for a time was Britain’s bestselling author, has been the central character in a novel.

Cohen, a retired history lecturer, says he first learned about Blessington while studying for a PhD in economic history and felt compelled to champion such an extraordinary character.

“The Countess led an incredible life, akin to that of a real-world Cinderella”, he said. 

“She had to cope with a great deal of grief, betrayal and brutality, but somehow managed to transcend it all to become the UK’s bestselling author.

“Yet today, both she and her work have long since faded into obscurity, which is a crying shame for such an extraordinary character.

“Having spent many years researching her life, I wanted to do my bit to put her back on the literary map.”

Born Margaret Power in Knockbrit, Fethard in 1789, she was the daughter of small landowner Edmund Power and his wife, Ellen Sheehy.

Suir Island in Clonmel was her childhood home and she gave her name to Lady Blessington’s Bath, or Weir, on the nearby River Suir.  

Her upbringing wasn’t a happy one. Her drunken, spendthrift father sold her in marriage to a mentally unstable soldier, Captain Maurice St. Leger Farmer, when she was only 14.

Within three months she left Farmer, but not before his violent attacks had cost the life of her unborn child and left her sterile.

Upon hearing of her husband’s intentions to reclaim her, she fled to Hampshire under the protection of suitor Captain Thomas Jenkins, living at his estate which later became the home of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. 

For the next five years, under the patronage of Jenkins’ mother, she devoured the family library to become, says Cohen, the best-read woman in England.

However Jenkins couldn’t marry her because she was still married to Farmer.  

When finances became tight he agreed to sell her to Charles John Gardiner, the First Earl of Blessington, for the equivalent of £10,000 (£5 million sterling, or €5.65 million in today’s money).

She married the Earl, heir to half of Dublin and vast estates in County Tyrone, in 1818 after Farmer was murdered. 

She soon became a noted socialite, mixing with prime ministers and the leading literary figures of the day, including Benjamin Disraeli and Charles Dickens.

Scandal and envy drove the Blessingtons from London. 

For seven years they roamed Europe, living in splendour in a sexually complex menage a trois with the flamboyant dandy and artist Comte D’Orsay, who was Marguerite’s junior by some years.

She was famed for her beauty, intelligence and wit, and was immortalised in a famous portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence that now resides in the Wallace Collection in London’s Manchester Square.

Having changed her name to the more continental-sounding Marguerite, she turned to writing after the Earl died prematurely, leaving her with a pitiful allowance.

In the remaining 20 years of her life she wrote many novels, poetry, travelogues and reminiscences.

She settled at Genoa for four months from March 31 1823. On several occasions she met Lord Byron - the English poet, peer, politician, and a leading figure in the Romantic movement, and who was regarded as one of the greatest British poets -  giving Lady Blessington material for her Conversations with Lord Byron (1834).

Byron called her his “Irish Aspasia” (Aspasia was an influential immigrant to Classical-era Athens who was the lover and partner of the statesman Pericles).

She died in Paris in 1849 at the age of 59 and is buried beside Comte D’Orsay in the mausoleum he designed for them both at Chambourcy, outside Paris.

In Bounty of a Stolen Empire, Cohen wittily resurrects the Countess in the present day to recount her colourful life, as well as berating her past biographers for getting so much wrong.

Cohen says that Blessington deserves to be better known not so much for her writing, which he admits isn’t “the most sparkling”, but because of her personality and determination to rise to the top.

Describing her as a forgotten feminist icon, he added “as well as looks she had brains, a shrewd business sense and a fiery will that drove her on to rise above her hardships and enter the aristocracy.

“Today, that sort of social shift would be remarkable but given the era, when social boundaries were much more rigid, it is incredible. She’s an inspirational yet forgotten feminist icon who deserves better treatment in posterity.”

Bounty of a Stolen Empire by Martin Cohen costs £11.99 in paperback and £11.39 in the Kindle edition. 

Visit Amazon UK.

For more Tipperary news read Call for statue to honour famous Clonmel composer Micheál Ó'Súilleabháin