Beau Brummell

“ Yet Brummell, though he adhered to the happy medium, and was moderate in his starch, was rigorous in his tie. If his cravat did not correspond to his wishes in its first arrangement, it was instantly cast aside. His valet was seen one morning leaving his chamber with an armful of tumbled cravats, and on being asked the cause, solemnly replied, “These are our failures.”
Perfection is slow in all instances; but talent and diligence are sure to advance. Brummell’s “tie” became speedily the admiration of the beau monde. ”

“ Beau Brummell never equalled him in dress, Wolsey in magnificence, Mazarin in peculation, Walpole in corruption, Jeffries in insolence, or Norfolk in pride. He was the constant companion of the king, to whose vices he pandered, and through him the royal favor flowed. But no rewards, or favors, or greatness satisfied him; not so much because he was ambitious, as because, like a spoiled child, he did not appreciate the magnitude of the gifts which were bestowed on him. Nor did he ever know his place; but made love to the queen of France herself, when he was sent on an embassy. ”

“ The Prince, walking down St James’s Street with Lord Moira, and seeing Brummell approaching arm-in-arm with a man of rank, determined to show the openness of the quarrel, stopped and spoke to the noble lord with an apparent unconsciousness of ever having seen the Beau before. The moment he was turning away, Brummell asked, in his most distinct voice, “Pray, who is your fat friend?” Nothing could be more dexterously impudent; for it repaid the Prince’s pretended want of recognition precisely in his own coin, and besides stung him in the very spot where he was known to be most thin-skinned. ”

“ Here is a home for you, Brummell."
"Does Mr. Brummell need a home?" asked Moore, waving his guests to the most comfortable of the chairs.
"Faith, the Beau is better at breaking them than making them," remarked the elder man, with a chuckle.
"Zooks!" drawled Brummell, "that reminds me of an execrable jest of which the Regent was guilty a fortnight ago. 'Why am I like a farmer?' he inquired of Percy Lovelace, who politely confessed that he could detect no resemblance. 'Because,' said his Highness, 'I keep a rake within reach,' and pointed with his monocle at Richard Brinsley." ”

“ Unluckily, Brummell, soon after joining his regiment, was thrown from his horse at a grand review at Brighton, when he broke his classical Roman nose. This misfortune, however, did not affect the fame of the beau; and although his nasal organ had undergone a slight transformation, it was forgiven by his admirers, since the rest of his person remained intact. When we are prepossessed by the attractions of a favourite, it is not a trifle that will dispel the illusion; and Brummell continued to govern society, in conjunction with the Prince of Wales. ”

“ A scarcely less formidable evil arose in his quarreling with Brummell. In the course of hostilities, the Prince pronounced the beau a tailor’s block, fit for nothing but to hang clothes on; while the retaliation came in the shape of a caricature, in which a pair of leather breeches is exhibited lashed up between the bed-posts, and an enormously fat man, lifted up to them, is making a desperate struggle to get his limbs properly seated in their capacity: another operation of a still more difficult nature, the making the waistband meet, still threatening to defy all exertion. ”

“ Men are not fiends; they must and will always feel for their fellow-men, let them die as they will. No doubt Brummell was a fool—a fool of the first water, but that he was equally a knave was not so certain. Let it never be certain to blind man, who cannot read the heart, that any man is a knave. He died on the 30th of March, 1840, and so the last of the Beaux passed away. People have claimed, indeed for D'Orsay, the honour of Brummell's descending mantle, but D'Orsay was not strictly a beau, for he had other and higher tastes than mere dress. ”

“ It must not be thought, however, that Sir Percival was niggardly in his treatment of Farrell. In truth he was far more generous than ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have been under the same circumstances, but it could hardly be expected that the allowance given even by a free-handed patron to a clever protégé would suffice to dethrone such an all-powerful monarch of society as at this time was George Brummell, familiarly known in the circle he graced as the Beau. ”

“ It was to request the honour of your company at dinner.” The culprit and the disciplinarian grinned together; the general coughed, and cleared his throat sufficiently to express his thanks in these words—“Ah! why, really I feel and am very much obliged to his grace. Pray, Major Brummell, tell the duke I shall be most happy;” and melodiously raising his voice, (for the Beau had turned his horse once more towards Belvoir,) “Major Brummell, as to this little affair, I am sure no man can regret it more than you do. ”

“ They are the most importantest part o' the fashionable world, lad. Now there's Mr. Brummell—him as they call the 'Beau'—well, he ain't exactly a Lord Nelson nor yet a Champion of England, he ain't never done nothing, good, bad, or indifferent—but he does know how to wear his clothes—consequently he's a very famous gentleman indeed—in the per-lite world, Barnabas. ”

“ The beau's father, also William Brummell, an intelligent boy, acted for some time as Mr. Jenkinson's amanuensis; was in 1763 appointed to a clerkship in the treasury, and during the whole administration from 1770 to 1782 was private secretary to Lord North, by whose favour he received several lucrative appointments (Gent. Mag. lxiv. 285) . He further increased his means by his marriage with Miss Richardson, daughter of the keeper of the lottery office. The younger William Brummell died in 1794, leaving 65,000l. to be divided equally among his three children, two sons and a daughter (ib.) ”

“ It was not necessary for a man to cloak his vices, nor be ashamed of his cloak. The beau then-a-day openly and arrogantly gloried in the grandeur of his attire; and bragging was a part of his character. Fielding was made by his tailor; Brummell made his tailor: the only point in common to both was that neither of them paid the tailor's bill.
The fine gentleman, under the Stuarts, was fine only in his lace and his velvet doublet; his language was coarse, his manners coarser, his vices the coarsest of all. ”

“ All delicate spirits, to whatever art they turn, even if they turn to no art, assume an oblique attitude towards life. Of all dandies, Mr. Brummell did most steadfastly maintain this attitude. Like the single-minded artist that he was, he turned full and square towards his art and looked life straight in the face out of the corners of his eyes. ”

“ A party of the boys having quarreled with the boatmen of the Thames, had fallen on one who had rendered himself obnoxious, and were about to throw him into the river. Brummell, who never took part in those affrays, but happened to pass by at the time, said, “My good fellows, don’t throw him into the river; for, as the man is in a high state of perspiration, it amounts to a certainty that he will catch cold.” The boys burst into laughter, and let their enemy run for his life. ”

“ Be pointed at in every company,
As was the little tailor that to death
Was hot in love with Queen Elizabeth.” Brummell, like that audacious schneider, had a soul that was at once given to the “confectioning of costume,” and consorting with the great.
Brummell, like many a steward’s son, was partly the victim of his father’s ambition. His sire was smitten with more desire to see him a gentleman than an honest man. The lad was brought up with as much reference to his future condition of gentility, as Miss Killmansegge was with respect to her present and future prospects of Pactolian hue. ”

“ Brummell was a dandy by instinct, a good dresser by the force of original genius; a first-rate tyer of cravats on the involuntary principle. When a boy at Eton, in 1790, he acquired his first distinction not by “longs and shorts,” but by the singular nicety of his stock with a gold buckle, the smart cut of his coat, and his finished study of manners. Others might see glory only through hexameters and pentameters; renown might await others only through boating or cricket ”

“ There is no practical joke like that of asking a man if he came to Saratoga to drink the waters. Every man justly feels insulted by such a suspicion. "Am I an invalid, sir? Have I the air of disease, I should like to know?" responds Brummell, fiercely, as he turns suddenly round from tying his cravat, upon which he has lavished all his genius, and with which he hoped to achieve successes. "Do I look weak, sir? Why the deuce should you think I came to Saratoga to drink the waters?"
At Niagara it is different. There you naturally speak of water—over your champagne or chambertin at dinner ”

“ Shall not the painter show his work in galleries, the poet flit down Paternoster Row? Of rank, for its own sake, Mr. Brummell had no love. He patronised all his patrons. Even to the Regent his attitude was always that of a master in an art to one who is sincerely willing and anxious to learn from him.
Indeed, English society is always ruled by a dandy, and the more absolutely ruled the greater that dandy be. For dandyism, the perfect flower of outward elegance, is the ideal it is always striving to realise in its own rather incoherent way. ”

“ Mr Brummell has told me,” continued the professor, “that to enter a coach was torture to him. ‘Conceive,’ said he, ‘the horror of sitting in a carriage with an iron apparatus, afflicted with the dreadful thought, the cruel apprehension, of having one’s leg crushed by the machinery. Why are not the steps made to fold outside? The only detraction from the luxury of a vis à vis, is the double distress! for both legs—excruciating idea!’”
Brummell’s first reform was the neckcloth. ”

“ It is a vain and thankless task to defend Brummell from the charge of being a dandy. If one proof of his devotion to dress were wanted, it would be the fact that this hat, once stuck jauntily on one side of the wig, was never removed in the street even to salute a lady—so that, inasmuch as he sacrificed his manners to his appearance, he may be fairly set down as a fop.
The perfect artist could not be expected to be charitable to the less successful. ”

“ The general name for him was the Roi de Calais. An anecdote of his pleasantry in almsgiving reached the public ear. A French beggar asked him for a two-sous piece. “I don’t know the coin,” said Brummell, “never having had one; but I suppose you mean a franc. There, take it.” His former celebrity had also spread far and wide among the population. A couple of English workmen in one of the factories of the town, one day followed a gentleman who had a considerable resemblance to Brummell. ”

“ In the course of the general inspections of the volunteer corps, an officer was sent from the Horse Guards to review the duke’s regiment, the major being in command. On the day of the inspection every one was on parade except the major-commandant. Where is Major Brummell, was the indignant enquiry? He was not to be found. The inspection went on. When it was near its close, Brummell was soon coming full gallop across the country in the uniform of the Belvoir Hunt, terribly splashed. ”

“ He is not only rich, but brave; not only brave, but courteous; and not alone courteous, but candid. The other day he was coming up from some d—d place on the coast, by that thing, the—the—stage-coach.” (It was Brummell’s boast,—not a true one, as it was with the last Marquis of Bath, who died full of years,—that he had never ridden by a “public” conveyance of any kind, whether by sea or land.) But to resume: “There were two women in the coach,” said Brummell, “two deucedly pretty women, and an over-dressed fellow, who was of course an ass ”

“ One day at Oatlands, as he was mounting his horse to ride to town, seeing a poor woman driven from the door, he asked the servant what she was. “A beggar, your royal highness: nothing but a soldier’s wife.”—“Nothing but a soldier’s wife! And pray, sir, what is your mistress?” Of course, the poor woman was called back and relieved.
Still Brummell continued in high life, and was one of the four who gave the memorable fête at the Argyll Rooms in July 1813, in consequence of having won a considerable sum at hazard. The other three were, Sir Henry Mildmay, Pierrepoint, and Lord Alvanley. ”

“ While promenading the streets with him, I would, every other minute, glance into his face, reflecting: "The handsomest and best dressed young fellow of the Rialto is MINE." While we were seated in a theatre together, I would often gaze into his face instead of at the players, reflecting: "New York's Beau Brummel is MY SOUL-MATE." For no soft hair, no rosebud cheeks in a male, no arched eyebrows—ever surpassed those of the Adonis now being described. He was perfection in face, head, and body. ”

“ The man who could not eat cabbages, drive in a hackney-coach, or wear less than three shirts a day, was now supported by voluntary contributions, and did not see anything derogatory to a gentleman in their acceptance. If Brummell had now turned his talents to account ”

“ It is true that a modest man runs great risk of being overwhelmed in this mortal “passage of the Beresina,” but he usually has principle to float him; whereas the knave who swims or struggles near him, be he never so impudent, ultimately exhibits an alacrity in sinking. It is in the immortal fitness of things that it should be so ordained.
I think Brummell must have been a descendant of the little tailor who is said by another tailor, Stow, to have whined himself to death for the love of Queen Elizabeth. ”