The Peers and the Parliament generally were a singularly inconsistent

set of people at this time. They passed a law which suppressed gambling

everywhere, _except in the royal palace_, under a penalty of £50; and

they no sooner passed this law than they hurried to many places, and

to Bath especially, to break it. Nash said _he_ was King of Bath, and

that playing in his palace was _not_ infringing the ordinances; but

the Parliament was too much even for him in the long run, and, by the

ultimate suppression of all “tables,” in whatsoever locality, they

deprived the Beau of much of his power to put gold lace on his coat, and

guineas in his pocket.

Still he was the despot of the rooms; and again I say, that the secret of

his power almost defies conjecture. He was indeed a splendid decker of

his person; but that person was clumsy, large, and awkward. His features

were harsh. It is to be remembered however, that he not only had fine

clothes, but a stupendous gift of “flattering;” and he had, besides, more

wit than most of the ladies he cajoled. “Richard,” said a modest young

creature to him one day (and it is painful to think that she might have

been our grandmother;—that is, yours, reader, or mine): “Richard, you

have a tongue that would debauch a nunnery!”

He assumed an airy sort of “indifference” in his method of gallantry,

and the ladies found this deliciously provoking. It set the fashion; and

it became the characteristic of the Georgian beaux. It was a contrast,

much welcomed, after the smartness and pertness of the beaux of the

reign of Queen Anne; and it was preferable to the slimy solemnity of the

beaux of the age of King Charles. And Dick, be it said for him, always

kept hold of a rag of dignity, whereby to help himself; and when he

found that he could not be a seducer, he became a champion. He loved to

rescue damsels from the suit of adventurers, and he _did_ save many. He

chastised scandal; would not tolerate it even in the elder ladies who

sat on his sacred benches. The King of Bath made a royal monopoly of the

article, as the King of France did of tobacco. He had capital opportunity

of indulging in his favourite dish, when he used to consult with the old

Duchess of Marlborough upon the fashion of her liveries.

Like Florian, who used to hunt out distressed subjects for his patron,

the Duc de Penthièvre, to relieve, he took a praiseworthy delight in

discovering worth in adversity, and then compelling the wealthy to do

something to lighten that adversity. It is perfectly true that, having

gained £200 at picquet, and hearing a bystander remark, “How happy that

sum would make me!” Nash threw him the money, saying, “There, then, go

and be happy!”

Among the poor patients at the springs, the Beau once discovered a poor

curate, named Cullender. He had a wife, of course six children, and

naturally only thirty pounds a year. Nash donned his best suit, polished

up the persuasive end of his irresistible tongue, went to a “patron” who

had a living to give, and did not leave him till he had given it to Dr.

Cullender. It was worth £160 per annum. “There, Doctor,” said Nash, “I’ve

brought you half Potosi.” “By G—d!” said the divine, “so you have!” Such

was patronage, pity, and piety, in the days of Beau Nash.

It is not to be supposed that so general a wooer escaped altogether

heart-free. He had a heart; as good a one (as was said in Fontenelle’s

case) as could be made out of brains; and he once proposed marriage to

the lady of his transitory affections. The lady pleaded her devotion to

another lover, and even asked for Nash’s mediation with her father to

consent to the marriage. The honest fellow consented, and went through

infinite trouble before he succeeded. He himself joined the hands of the

affianced pair, and gave them his blessing. Six months afterwards, the

lady eloped with her footman!

Nash ought not to have been disgusted with human nature, for ladies

occasionally were given, in his time, to the observance of this little

fashion; but it did disgust Nash. He turned misogynist, and gave himself

more to philanthropy in its restricted sense. He hated women, he said,

but still had charity for men; and accordingly he was foremost in

founding the Bath Hospital, and alone in raising obelisks to rheumatic

princes,—obelisks for which Pope furnished very inferior superscriptions.

Chesterfield exhibited a “statuary wit” which Pope despised, when the

statue of Nash was placed, a full length, between the busts of Newton

and Pope himself. The epigram is well known, but it is worth repeating:—

“This statue placed the busts between,

Adds to the satire strength;

Wisdom and Wit are little seen,

But Folly at full length.”

This is neat, and also original. The idea was applied by the Paris wits

in an epigram on the group in Paris which represented the equestrian

figure of Louis XV. on a pedestal, the angles of the upper slab of which

were supported by bronze caryatides, representing Faith, Temperance,

Prudence, and Justice. The cardinal virtues thus placed gave good point

to the epigram, which said:—

“Oh, la belle statue! le beau piédestal!

Les Vertus sont à pied, le Vice est à cheval!”

As long as Nash exhibited splendour in his outward man, the public homage

never failed him. Literary musicians, literary cooks, and biographical

highwaymen dedicated their works to him. Was he sick? the entire army

of poetasters invoked the Muse to give him ease. For all of which they

looked for their respective guineas.

He had too another set of worshipers, who used to congregate about him

at his favourite tavern, to listen to his favourite stories,—few and not

well told,—to which they had listened till they could themselves have

narrated them backwards. He recounted them ever _à propos des bottes_,

and he was the hero of every one of them. Therein he shows as outdoing

Fortunatus and all his servants. He was the swiftest runner, the most

expert swimmer, the best swordsman, and—“Upon my soul, it’s true! D—n me!

hem! egad!”

He really had more wit than his stories would authorize us to suppose.

Witness his suggestion at a county-town ball. The county ladies refused

to dance in the same set with the town ladies. The rich tradesmen were

indignant at the slight put upon their spouses, but the suggestive wit

of Nash saved them. They made it known that if the county ladies and

squires would not dance with the town wives and traders, the latter would

refuse all further credit, and would call in their debts. The proud party

immediately yielded, and a grand country-dance of reconciliation followed

to the tune of ‘Money Musk.’

Still, despite his wit and his dazzling dress, Nash was naturally

coarse. Fancy a modern master of the ceremonies saying aloud to a lady

somewhat misshapen, and who, in reply to a question from him, had stated

that she had come to Bath straight from London,—fancy such a dignitary

exclaiming, “You may have come ‘straight’ from London, Madam, but you

have got d—nably warped by the way!” The squires were bigger brutes than

he, and so did not kick him; nay, they only laughed when this glittering

potentate used to ask the ladies who declined to dance, “If by chance

they had bandy legs, and were afraid of showing them?”

The truth is, he feared nobody. He had refused knighthood at the hands

of King William; and he did the same at the hands of Queen Anne. “I will

have none of it, most gracious Madam,” said Nash, as if he were refusing

to grant a favour; “but there is Sir William Read, the mountebank, whom

your Majesty has knighted,—I shall be very happy to call him ‘brother.’”

The Queen smiled, and passed on.

This species of rudeness, which came over him in his later days, helped

to empty the rooms. He no longer could boast of seventeen duchesses and

countesses standing up in his first country-dance. He sometimes too got

vexatiously repulsed, as in the case of a young lady whom he met in the

Grove, leading a spaniel, and whom he asked if she knew the name of

Tobit’s dog. “I know it well enough,” said the lady; “his name is Nash,

and a very impudent dog he is.”

And at length came the “end of an auld sang;” old-age, and with

it infirmity and distress. He could still talk of not following

prescriptions, because he had thrown them out of window; but the clergy

at length took possession of the Beau, and so belaboured him with

pamphlets, visits, exhortations to repentance, and menaces of the devil,

that Nash, who, like Gallio, had cared for none of these things, became

fairly bewildered, and feared death more than ever he had done. He was an

awful coward in presence of that especial antagonist of beaux; but his

cowardice of course was not respected, and he died in abject terror of

dying.

The year was that of 1761, and his age was then hard upon the patriarchal

one of ninety years. He had few of the patriarchal virtues; but Bath,

to whose corporation he bequeathed a “fifty pounds,” which I very much

wish they may have got, honoured him with a public funeral, with more

circumstantial pomp about it than if he had been an incarnation of all

virtue, patriarchal, princely, and of every other degree. The multitude

gazed weepingly, as though another dead Tasso were passing by to cold

obstruction, and had left them a legacy of intellectual worth. The poor

wretch had little to leave, save some _gaillard_ books, and some women’s

toys and trinkets,—the relics of his beauhood, and the testimonies of

his past power. As for the poets, they spoke of the defunct dandy as the

“constellation of a heavenly sphere;” and he had epitaphs enough to make

the very earth lie heavy upon the breast of Beau Nash.

And now, good reader, having sojourned with two exclusively English

beaux, like Fielding and Nash, we will, if you please, to Vienna, and

tarry awhile with a sparkling beau of European reputation. “Place pour le

Prince de Ligne!”

THE PRINCE DE LIGNE.

“This chub-faced fop

Shines sleek with full cramm’d fat of happiness.”

JOHN MARSTON: _Antonio’s Revenge_.

The Prince de Ligne has, at least, the merit of being not only a “beau,”

but a “brave.” The two professions are seldom united, but they were

certainly to be found in this gallant coxcomb.

The Prince, although ever faithful to the fortunes of the House of

Hapsburg, was not himself of Austrian lineage. His patrimonial house,

the Castle of Belveil, still stands in quaint supremacy over the modest

village of Ligne, about six miles from Alt, in Belgium. It has endured

seven centuries of change; and its gothic peculiarities, with its

old-world garden, and its ancient hornbeam hedges, yet answer to the

prolix description thereof given in the Prince’s published letters, as

well as to the concise, if little majestic, line of Delille, who says of

it in his ‘Jardins,’

“Belveil, tout à la fois magnifique et champêtre.”

Here, in 1734, the Prince first saw the light; and the soldiers of his

father’s regiment ‘de Ligne,’ loved to carry the infant son of their

prince-colonel in their arms. The lengthened life of this once celebrated

dandy, author, diplomatist, and soldier, made him the contemporary of

men of many generations. The man who once fraternally embraced our own

Wellington, Prince of Waterloo, had sat on the knee of the famous Prince

Eugene, and had looked upon the matured greatness of Marlborough. Thus

he was contemporary with men who had been born under the son of James I.,

and with others now living under Queen Victoria, whom God preserve!

After, as a boy, carrying the colours of his father’s regiment with

honour, he entered the dragoons of Ligne, and won distinction at

the point of his sword. He was practically a noble soldier, and he

slaughtered as courteously as Bayard. His day was not the day of

carpet-knights, for Europe was then given to settle all her quarrels in

the field; and when cabinets cooled, warriors looked to their corslets.

Theoretically, the Prince does not shine. Nobody reads his ‘Commentaries

on the Art of War;’ and I have no doubt that the martial portion of

his departed spirit is sorely vexed, at seeing his own highly-prized

instructions for infantry manœuvres less cared for by posterity than the

old Greek’s dissertation upon the forming of the phalanx.

For more than half a century he lived in camps, and was daily familiar

with every dread circumstance of war. He bore himself bravely at the

bloody siege of fatal Ismael, and was among the most active at that

taking of Belgrade, which Storace put so pleasantly to music for the

delight of our fathers. In the fields of death, whereon, with varied

fortune, the Great Frederick and the crafty Maria Theresa fought out

their envenomed quarrels, there he was ever present, the finest, the

foremost, and the fiercest in the fray. And most of all, on that famous

day at Maxen, when the Austrian Daun caught Frederick’s general, Finck,

in the defiles, and took bloody advantage of the opportunity,—on that day

of untold horrors, courage and murder reigned supreme. Ere night came on,

the Black Eagle of Brandenburg had yielded to his double-necked cousin

from the Danube. Every Prussian who survived the fight, surrendered.

The _matériel_ for a hundred such fields passed into the hands of the

Austrians, and the museums of Vienna still hold the countless trophies of

that day.

It was a day on which compensation was taken for the adverse fields of

Stringau, Reichemberg, and Johr; for the defeats at Pirna, Rosbach, and

Lissa. The women of Berlin were rendered widows and childless, while

the flaunting dames of Vienna shouted “_Hoch!_” and declared that their

victorious lovers at Maxen had surpassed all the glories connected with

old triumphs at Kolin, Gabel, and Zittau; at Liegnitz, Schweidnitz, and

Hochkirchen.

Maria Theresa dubbed the young Prince knight of that order of chivalry

which bore her name,—an Order into which no aspirant could find

admittance unless he had achieved some conquest which he had no positive

order to undertake. She further honoured him by despatching him to France

with the news of the great victory; and there he became the intimate

friend of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the cavalier of the basely brilliant Du

Barry, and the cynosure of all the hooped ladies and red-heeled gallants

who killed Time on the verdant lawns of the Trianon or in the gilded

saloons of Versailles. He became at once the King of Fashion, as he _was_

the favourite of a dozen kings. Two Louises named him “friend;” and he

sat, a gallant servitor, at the feet of Marie Antoinette. The great

Frederick showed his affection for him by bestowing on him that very

bad pen with which the King wrote very bad poetry, and the Prince still

worse. The great Catherine he served in many acceptable offices. She

loved the man and his humour. Once, when accompanying the imperial mother

of All the Russias in a progress through her southern dominions, they

skirted, in a yacht, the coast of Old Tauris. On passing the promontory

of Iphigenia, the Empress made present of it to the Prince, who thereon,

accoutred as he was, leaped overboard, and, with sword drawn, swam

ashore, to take formal possession of the territorial gift. He was indeed

a sort of cousin to the living heads of kingly houses; and, at one time,

was looked upon as the probable occupant of the uneasy throne of Poland.

Like many a kingly contemporary, he might for a long time have thanked

Heaven that he was without a crown. But he was equal to the difficulties

consequent upon a light purse. On one occasion he wished to proceed from

Paris to Brussels; but, prince as he was, he lacked the means. Hearing

that the Duke d’Aremberg was about to travel that way, he presented

himself at the post-house as his courier, rode the journey through in

that character, and so got to his destination—_gratis_.

Such, in his early days, was the gay gentleman who, at the last Congress

of Vienna, bore still gaily the weight of eighty summers. His lean horses

used to gallop through that city with his ancient carriage behind them,

on which was inscribed the punning device—“Quo res cumque cadunt, stat

_linea_ recta.” This vehicle was almost as large as his house. The latter

was of the smallest dimensions; and in that small dwelling, he gave small

dinners to small parties. The dishes served were in strict keeping with

the size of the table, and he generally ate four-fifths of what they

contained. This superbly-dressed Amphitryon actually expected that his

guests would let their hunger be appeased on the supply he liberally

poured forth of brilliant but unsubstantial wit.

According to Johnson, who says that quotation is the watchword of

literary men, he was a literary man, for he had ever ready a magazine of

citations adapted to all purposes. The variety was some warrant of wide

reading; and the Prince was, at all events, not like Pozzo di Borgo,

who made the same triad of quotations endure a three-months’ duty. At

the side of the Prince’s little bed, in the very least of libraries,

his little commonplace book, on an almost invisible desk, received the

brief record of ideas that visited his gossamer brain. All around this

room were strewn, in most admired disorder, a mountain of manuscripts,

and a wilderness of works on love, philosophy, poetry, and war. Amidst

this mass, the old Prince would leap about with the agility of a monkey.

Fatigue he never acknowledged, and sleep he little cared for. He would

sit up whole nights, half a week through, to read dry works on strategy;

and then fall asleep over erotic songs, of which he commenced many, and

finished few. Those that he did terminate have as little of the echo of

nature as Watteau’s shepherdesses have of its aspect. One of the most

innocent of his pursuits was to attend at the Opera, and applaud Frederic

Venua’s pretty music to the pretty ballet of ‘Flore et Zéphyre.’

The once young leader of fashion would not lay down his sceptre when he

grew old; and as an octogenarian he played, in the eyes of Vienna, an

airier “ci-devant jeune homme” than was ever conceived or executed by the

inimitable Potier. He could be a boy with the boys; and the old gentleman

played heartily at soldiers with the little King of Rome, before that

shadow of a monarch grew up to welcome those other favourites, one of

whom especially was as fatal to him as the Fornarina to the gifted

Raphael.

But the Prince loved to be with young men, and to be thought of by

them; and did not love to be reminded either of old-age or of death.

His little summer residence at the Kalemberg was the locality whence

Sobieski departed to save Austria from the infidel, and to earn for it,

what Austria has ever paid to her benefactors, eternal ingratitude. The

spirit of the heroic no longer resided there at the period of which I

am treating. The walls of the house were covered with the portraits

of ladies whose hearts, or what they called such, had yielded to the

assaults of De Ligne; and above the portal was inscribed this motto of

mingled impiety, mendacity, and impudence:—

“Sans remords, sans regret, sans crainte, sans envie.”

The slippered soldier who, in his decrepitude, flung out his banner with

this device upon it, belied at least a portion thereof. He caught cold,

by keeping an assignation near the bastion, on one of the coldest nights

of the Congress-winter, and while waiting vainly for the _innamorata_

who had fooled him. The consequent symptoms soon assumed a fatal aspect;

and straightway “this god did shake,” and made his motto pointless, save

against himself. His remorse might have been small, and doubtless no

one envied a dying dandy; but the latter was himself no longer without

fear or regret. He feared the slow approach of death; and his regret

was not that life had been misspent, but that it had come to its limit.

He aggravated his malady by defying it, and appearing at a ball. It was

the last occasion on which he was seen in public, and it killed him.

He took to his couch, and, in ignoble prostration, he bewailed that he

could not die like Petronius Arbiter, that accomplished _roué_, base as

man and great as consul, who played with death; now pricked a vein, and

now bandaged it; now whipped a slave, and now freed one; now listened

to gay music, now trilled a gay song; anon, cursed the whole world, and

forthwith fell dead, like a dog in his uncleanness.

“After all,” said the Prince, “I shall be better off than Petronius; and

friends and dear ones will receive my last sigh. Not,” said poor fearful

nature, speaking through the Prince,—“not that I am going to die just

yet. There is no cause for fear. Let us banish sadness. I am living,

and I _will_ live!” And then the moribund beau made puns, as if death

could be delayed by playing upon words. Or he called up old souvenirs,

and gossiped about the famous “fine eyes” of the Countess de Witt. “You

should have seen her,” said the dying Prince; “her eyes were so bepraised

that she at length never spoke of them but as her ‘fine eyes.’” Once

the admirable Marie Antoinette expressed regret at her looking unwell,

and asked from what she suffered. “May it please your Majesty,” answered

the simple Countess, “I am suffering from cold _in my fine eyes!_”—and

then the dying prater laughed, and they who stood around him smiled in

melancholy accord.

At length, the arrow of the Inevitable Angel was poised, but the sinking

Prince still formed projects for the future. He would see the Czar

Alexander upon affairs of state; and many a gay day, he averred, should

yet make glad the gardens of Belveil. His medical attendant, Malfati,

came in for a share of observation; and the whole profession of which

Malfati was a member was made subject for satire. “When he was with

the great Catherine,” he remarked, “he could do more for himself than

the doctors were then doing for him.” Malfati inquired, “In what way?”

“Whenever I was well,” said the son of fashion, “I used to invite Ségur

and Cobentzel to my quarters. I gave medicine to one, and bled the other;

and thereupon I got well!” And as the sinking octogenarian laughed, Death

steadied his javelin for the throw.

Malfati delicately hinted that age opposed greater difficulties now than

before; and in gentle spirit, he essayed to prepare the Prince for the

coming and irresistible change. But no! the Prince had work yet to do,

and must live to do it. “I have no intention yet,” he said, “nor shall

have for a long time to come, to make use of the epitaph written for me

by my old friend, the Marquis de Bonney:—

“‘Ci gît le Prince de Ligne,

Il est tout de son long couché.

Jadis il a beaucoup _péché_,—

Mais ce n’etait pas à la ligne!’”

We may excuse Malfati for smiling at the refined wit of the once famous

_jeu d’esprit_; but it did not restrain him from making the Prince aware

of the danger of his position. The latter received the intelligence with

disgust, ill-concealed under a few light words; and with the assurance

that, like Adrian, he had verses to write to his soul, but that he had

not time just then!

It was true; for Death, at that moment, laid upon him that hand which

mortal may not resist. The Prince not only felt, but he beheld, the

terrible and unconquerable aggressor. The hour was dull midnight when

the old warrior and “macaroni” frantically fought his last battle,

and succumbed ingloriously. He sprang from a recumbent into a sitting

position, shrieked aloud, ordered the door to be closed; and as Death

pressed upon him, he struggled and wrestled with the calm, strong

phantom, as though a substantial foe was before him, who might be

strangled by bodily effort. But it was fruitless, for the decree had

gone forth, and doom had come. In the midst of cries for help, and

writhing efforts to get free, the stroke was given, and the Prince fell

dead. The day was the 13th of December, 1814. What was mortal of him was

magnificently entombed, and the terms of his epitaph were more poetical

than veracious. But, beneath it all,—brass, marble, and mendacity,—the

dandy of two centuries was left to sleep as undisturbedly as the curses

of unpaid tailors would allow him to do.

On the day of the Prince’s decease, a very fine gentleman indeed was

sunning himself on the Steyne at Brighton. He was the cynosure of all

observers, and his magnificent shadow glides this way. Do not mistake him

for Romeo Coates. It is the famous Mr. Brummell. _Chapeau bas_ at that

illustrious name!

BEAU BRUMMELL.

“I scorn’d to crowd among the muddy throng

Of the rank multitude, whose thicken’d breath

(Like to condensed fogs) do choke that beauty

Which else would dwell in every kingdom’s cheek.

No: I still boldly stepp’d into kings’ courts,

For there to live is rare.”

DECKER’S _Fortunatus_.

The distinction of Nash was his impertinence; the characteristic of

Orlando the Fair, his affectation. To make a third, Jove joined the other

two; and George Bryan Brummell was, as the elder Mr. Weller says, “the

consikence of the manœuvre.” Had he only possessed intellect rightly

directed, and even an infinitesimal degree of principle, he might have

achieved a better reputation. The Greek sage who declared that man needed

but three things whereby to prosper,—first, impudence; second, impudence;

third, impudence,—rather overrated his ἀυαδεια. 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. I mean him of whom Lord Charles Cavendish

wrote:—

“I would not willingly

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 not a baby to suck a coral of less aristocratic value than

that old mouthpiece of the unfortunate Monmouth which for years has given

solace to the gums of the babies of Buccleuch. He was a lad who had an

aversion for steel forks long before silver implements were familiar

furniture at the tables of the middle classes, of which his father was a

member; and scarcely was he a youth _ex ephebis_, and felt himself free

from home restraints in gentle Henry’s shades at Eton, when he not only

modernized the white cravat or stock which marks the Eton boy, but he put

a gold buckle to it; and all the school “confessed the present god.”

The _condiscipuli_ of that time and place have as much realized Hood’s as

Gray’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.’ The most rollicking

tumbled into discretion, and became bishops; the most gentle were drafted

into the army, and became blackguards. Some took to the stage, and some

took portraits. A few achieved greatness; the majority have died away

and are forgotten. “Blithe Carew was hung,” and Brummell “went up like a

rocket and came down like the stick.”

Brummell was like Goldsmith. Do not smile: I do not mean that he had

the great writer’s simplicity, industry, or goodness of heart. He was,

nevertheless, like him in one respect. Poor Oliver, at Trinity College,

Dublin, went in for honours, and failed. So Brummell, who, in 1793, was

an undergraduate at Oxford, was a competitor for the Newdegate Prize,

and lost it. From that hour he abhorred books and bookish men. He had

condescended to exert himself so far as to faintly run for the laurel.

When he saw it awarded to a better man, he declared that he would never

run again, but walk over the course of the world and win his prizes

without effort. He had already indicated the paths by which he meant to

gain the honours dimly alluded to. His example at college had already

abolished cotton stockings, and made dingy cravats vulgar. Even D.D.’s

looked at the audacious innovator, and ceased to be, what the initials

designated, “deucedly dirty.”

The unsuccessful student was soon in possession of what he considered

far better than “book learning,” a third of £65,000. It was no great

inheritance for a cornet in the 10th Hussars. That illustrious regiment

had not yet achieved that renown of folly and of shame for which Croly

pilloried it nightly, to the delight of assembled thousands, in his

‘Pride shall have a Fall.’ It was however the aspiration and the terror

of all young heroes who longed to be enrolled in the sacred cohort,

and who dreaded the fabulous cost of the luxury. The officers, like

their ancestors at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, wore their estates

upon their backs,—some of them before they had inherited the paternal

acres. If the gorgeous costume and its never-ending variations did not

effect this consummation, the expenses of the mess, where the mild

warriors banqueted like barbaric sovereigns, and the cost of the delicate

amusements of those perfumed knights, rarely failed to accomplish it.

At the head of all, glittering example of the “gentleman,” careful of

carriage, courteous of speech, not ungenerous by impulse, but icy-cold

of heart, was the Prince-Colonel, George, afterwards Fourth of the name.

The Prince’s chief intimate was Lord James Murray, subsequently Lord

Glenlyon; at whose house at Datchet, old Queen Charlotte “did _never_

counsel take, _but_ sometimes tea.”

The new cornet superseded the old friend. The latter was a mild,

gentleman-like man, popular with everybody but his creditors, _quorum

pars fui_; and I may add, that he is pleasantly and gratefully remembered

by _one_ at least of them. Brummell however took the Regent by storm.

There was no resisting him. The Prince was fascinated. Brummell might

be absent from parade, neglect duties even more important, and laugh at

all suggestion and reproach,—“our general’s friend was now the general.”

He did precisely what he pleased, nothing that he ought; and in three

years he was full captain, to the as full disgust of older officers, who

enviously admired while they deeply cursed him.

Never probably was the Beau in such full-blown glory as at this period of

his gold-lace, best jokes, and increasing sway. He was in the very height

of his ecstatic enjoyment, luxuriating in the gentility of a “gentil

Hussard,” and mastering his profession, not exactly after the fashion

of Marlborough;—he was in the very paradisiacal state of aristocratic

soldiership, when the regiment was ordered to Manchester. Brummell

nearly fainted at the idea of such vulgarity, and he left the regiment

in infinite disgust. The step gained for him an immense increase of

reputation—among fools!

The world had not been to him hitherto as to our old friend, Pistol,—an

oyster, which he with sword could open. He may be said to have failed,

both by book and blade. He was now to really soar by other means. Now

came the period when he evinced his disgust of vegetables by confessing

that he had once eaten—a pea. Then was the funny time when his slavish

hearers laughed at the joke wherein he wrapped an excuse for being

hoarse, on the ground, that he had slept in a house with a damp stranger.

It was not half so excellent a joke as that enunciated, unwittingly, by

the poor old Irishwoman suffering from catarrh, and who accounted for

the same by stating that she “slept last night in a field and forgot to

shut the gate.” However, it was good enough for a man who really fancied

that he manifested humour when he expressed unconsciousness of there

being such a place as Bloomsbury-square; and we may add, that it was good

enough for his hearers also.

It was at this period that he patronized the late George Lane Fox, of

Bramham Park, Yorkshire; and the patronage cost the latter a superb gold

box, set with diamonds,—a present, if I remember rightly,—for I have

heard Mr. Fox tell the story as often as Diggory heard Mr. Hardcastle

tell his one story, from the Czar Alexander. Mr. Fox and Brummell had

been seriously engaged, for some hours, on matters of dress, after which

they discussed the not less serious question of dinner. At the banquet,

the first-named gentleman showed his golden and glittering gift to the

select company, who were loud in their praise, and unbounded in their

admiration. As the party were to adjourn to the Opera, to hear Ambrogetti

and Camporese, Mr. Fox announced his intention of depositing his box,

by the way, at his house in Albemarle-street. “The whole court,” said

he, “will be at the Opera, and I may get robbed of my _souvenir_!” The

company laughed at the _saillie_, and the wine span round.

After a _sederunt_ of some continuance, the select society departed for

“the old house in the Haymarket.” Mr. Fox and Brummell rode together.

The carriage stopped in Albemarle-street, according to directions given

to the coachman; but what with the wine, and a new dispute touching the

depth of cravats and the height of collars, the gentlemen had forgotten

why they had ordered the driver to pull up; and after striving for some

time, in vain, to remember, they grew tired of conjecturing, and sped

away to hear “Fin ch’ han del Vino!”

They had been perhaps an hour in the house, when Brummell, in the

very middle of “Il mio tesoro,” came to the end of a dissertation on

pantaloons. The gentlemen with thin legs, and no calves to them, were

great patrons of what had not hitherto been admitted into the category of

“dress,”—namely, trousers. Conservatives and Irish gentlemen advocated

pantaloons. Brummell had given his judgement with the sententious

elaboration of Dr. Chalmers on a question of Erastianism; and to refresh

himself after the fatigue of the process, he begged of Fox to furnish him

with a “_prise de tabac!_”

The request for a pinch of snuff reminded the then heir of Bramham Park

of the fact, that it was his much-prized box which he had designed to

leave in Albemarle-street. He proceeded however to perform the required

act of hospitality; but on putting his hand to his pocket he found the

latter empty, and the box gone. In two minutes he was in the passage

below, recounting his loss to Leadbitter and Townsend, and asking from

them what hope existed of his recovering the abstracted property.

When they learned that an hour had elapsed since it had been stolen,

Leadbitter gave the opinion of himself and brother that the loss was

irreparable.

“By this time,” said Townsend, “it’s in the melting-pot of Slack Sam, the

Jew _Gonoff_.”

“What’s a _Gonoff_?” asked Mr. Fox.

“Oh!” said Townsend, with an air of learning and superiority, “_Gonoff_

is Hebrew for a ‘thief.’ Did you pass any suspicious character on going

upstairs?”

“I passed nobody but Lady Cork,” said Mr. Fox.

“And Lady Cork, George,” said that vivacious lady, who was coming out,

“does not pick gentlemen’s pockets of snuff-boxes.”

“No,” replied the young Yorkshire squire, “Lady Cork is only a _voleuse

de cœurs_. In the meantime, I have the satisfaction of knowing that my

gold box is gone to a _Gonoff_.”

“And that _Gonoff_,” said Townsend, with his familiar laugh, “is Hebrew

for ‘thief.’”

* * * * *

Captain Jesse has limned Brummell at elaborate full length, and the

gallant artist has done his spiriting very impartially, considering the

Cruikshank sort of portraiture with which the beau once affected to

represent the captain. “My dear Jesse,” said the dandy once to him,—“My

dear Jesse, excuse me, but you look very much like a magpie!”

This impertinence was not met in a vindictive spirit. The biographer of

Brummell describes him as a _beau_, but not a beau of the Sir Fopling

Flutter or Fieldingschool, That is, he was not so nastily nice as the

first, nor so irretrievably nasty as the second. The captain thinks

that _his_ beau would not have been guilty, like Charles James Fox, of

wearing red-heeled shoes. I am not so sure of this. Fox was, like all

democrats, proud of spirit, and he wore red heels, because these were the

distinctive marks of nobility in the galleries of Versailles. Brummell

was more original, and he would not have adopted the _talons rouges_,

simply because they were the productions of the inventive genius of

another. He had at first a taste that was not unimpeachable. There was

too much _variety_ about him. He dealt in contrasts, and he was given to

jewellery. His example in the latter way was seized, not by the young

aristocracy of England, so unlike their Elizabethan ancestors, who not

only covered themselves with gold and jewellery, but took gold-dust,

liquid pearls, and coral draughts for their medicine; Brummel’s example

was not adopted by these, but it was by their men-cooks. These latter

blazed in the pit of the Opera like the caballeros at a Chilian theatre

when the chief magistrate retires to the back of his box; and flint,

steel, _allumettes_, and cigars are all in a glow, or helping to produce

it. I have heard abundant wonder expressed at the amount of jewellery and

precious stones which were then worn by culinary artists who loved music

and patronized the Opera. It was, however, all borrowed finery. The pins

and brooches, the chains, the breloques, the virgin gold and the diamonds

pure, were the property of Ude, who realized a good share of the thirty

thousand pounds he bequeathed to his disconsolate widow, by letting the

finery out nightly, at sums varying from two to five shillings!

Brummell, with his usually acute perception,—that is, acute in one

direction,—saw that fame was to be achieved by simplicity; and, as

Captain Jesse remarks, “scorning to share his fame with his tailor, he

soon shunned all external peculiarity, and trusted alone to that ease

and grace of manner which he possessed in a remarkable degree. His chief

aim,” adds the biographer, “was to avoid anything marked: one of his

aphorisms being, that the severest mortification a gentleman could incur,

was to attract observation in the street by his outward appearance.

He exercised the most correct taste in the selection of each article

of apparel of a form and colour harmonious with all the rest, for the

purpose of producing a perfectly elegant general effect; and no doubt he

spent much time and pains in the attainment of his object.” This is no

doubt true. Brummell put in practice, he hardly knew why, the principles

of harmony and contrast of colours, long before Monsieur Chevreul wrote

his theory and explanation of those principles.

He had quite as correct an eye with regard to harmony of shape as to that

of colour. The highest in the land were not ashamed to seek a sort of

professional opinion from this man as to the propriety of their costume.

The Duke of Bedford once did this touching a coat. Brummell examined his

Grace with the cool impertinence which was his Grace’s due. He turned him

about, scanned him with scrutinizing, contemptuous eye, and then taking

the lappel between his dainty finger and thumb, he exclaimed in a tone of

pitying wonder, “Bedford! do you call this thing a coat?”

But he did not spare his own relations. He was one day standing in the

bow-window at White’s, amid a knot of well-dressed admirers, when one

of them remarked, “Brummell, your brother William is in town. Is he

not coming here?” “Yes,” said Brummell, “in a day or two; but I have

recommended him to walk the back streets till his new clothes come home.”

Brummell however may be excused if he became vain of his power. For a

season he was undoubtedly the very King of Fashion, and a terrible despot

he was; but he was flattered by kings, or by their representatives. The

Prince of Wales passed long matutinal hours in Brummell’s dressing-room

in Chesterfield-street, watching the progress of his friend’s toilet. The

progress was occasionally so extended that the Prince would dismiss his

equipage, invite himself to dinner, and the master and pupil, _Arcades

ambo_, set to; and “fore gad, they made a night of it!”

Never had tailor two such patrons as these two. The young lord, who

numbered among what the “Clerical Tap-Tub”—as the clergy call a certain

“religious” print, famous for its nasty advertisements—styles “perverts,”

was nothing to these illustrious two. When the young lord of whom I

speak was at Oxford, and got, as young lords sometimes _will_, into

difficulties,—on the overhauling of his wardrobe, it was found that

he had ordered, in seven months, upwards of three hundred and seventy

waistcoats! The youthful aristocrat however was a follower of the two

Georges, only “longo intervallo.” George Brummell’s wardrobe, indeed,

dwindled down to the suit in which he died; but the wardrobe of the other

George sold, after his death, for upwards of fifteen thousand pounds. How

many a poor man might have been warmed beneath the cloth the Sovereign

never used! The original cost of the wardrobe would not have surprised

Alexander, but we do not live in the days of the Macedonian; and in the

era of high-priced bread, England was half-appalled at the thought that a

hundred thousand pounds had scarcely purchased what was sold for fifteen.

Among it all was a celebrated cloak, the sable lining of which alone

had originally cost eight hundred pounds. Lord Chesterfield, as little

nice about wearing a cheap cast-off garment as one of his own lacqueys,

procured this mantle for little more than a fourth of the original price

of the lining.

Brummell never recovered the effects of the wager which he won by telling

“Wales” to “ring the bell,” and which order, although obeyed, was

followed by another for “Mr. Brummell’s carriage.” He struggled indeed

long, and not unsuccessfully, to retain his place among dandies and wits;

but his _prestige_ gradually failed, play went against him, liabilities

increased, and creditors were clamorous. He put a bold face on his ugly

position, and was never more brilliant or at his ease than the last night

he appeared at the Opera,—one Saturday night, when, with the Sunday

before him, he had determined to fly leisurely to the Continent, and

leave his creditors to regret their confidence in him.

He was eloquent that night with an anecdote having reference to Weston,

the famous tailor of Bond-street. “That fellow Weston,” said Brummell,

“is an inimitable fellow,—a little defective perhaps in his ‘linings,’

but irreproachable for principle and button-holes. He came to London,

Sir, without a shilling; and he counts more realized thousands than

our fat friend does ‘frogs’ on his Brandenburg. 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; and who was so over-civil to the

prettier of the two, that the persecuted creature appealed to quiet

little Weston for protection. Weston, Sir, talked to the fellow with

an _aplomb_ that would have done honour to either of my friends the

Lord Primate or the Lord Chancellor. The brute,—not the tailor, but the

‘gentleman,’—was deaf to remonstrance, and ruder than ever. Thereupon,

Weston, without losing his self-possession, stopped the coach, dragged

the astonished fellow out, explained to the outside passengers the state

of the case, and found his challenge to fight received with acclamations

by everybody but his designated opponent. He compelled his unwilling

adversary, however, to stand upon the defensive, and a most terrible

thrashing he gave him. But his _coup de grâce_, Sir,” said Brummell, “was

the most finished thing I ever heard of. Weston, Sir, picked him up from

the ground, held him at arm’s length, and in a cruel loud voice exclaimed

to him, ‘Now, Sir, it may be a pleasure to you and to your friends, to

know that you have not only been well licked, but you have been licked by

a tailor! ’

“From this time forth,” continued Brummell, after the generally excited

laugh had subsided, “I shall religiously pay my tailors’ bills. The act

of Weston has heroified the profession.”

Alas! poor fallen potentate! he could not have paid his share of the

_table d’hôte_, had he sat down at that at which Candide encountered

half-a-dozen dethroned kings in Venice. A few hours after he was an

Adullamite in Calais, warming the poor palette afterwards to be occupied

by Romeo Coates.

Some half-century to come, the grandson of Mr. Millais perhaps may limn

the scene when George IV., on his Hanover trip, suddenly observing at

Calais his ex-friend making his way, pale and serious, through the crowd,

sank back in his carriage with a “Good God,—Brummell!” and almost fainted

at the recognition.

During fourteen years did the fallen dandy impatiently support his

exile, and very patiently endure the disgrace of living on the charity

of his friends and on that of compassionate and, too often, insulted

acquaintances. He abused the fare set before him with delicate courtesy,

and ridiculed the hosts who had gone to some expense to make his misery

tolerable. He never learned modesty; never had a heart; not even one

made out of brains, as in the case of Fontenelle. In his fallen state

he annoyed his hearers with repetitions of abuse, levied against those

he had known in the period of his spangled vanity. He was particularly

bitter against the Duke of Clarence, whom he described as “a man who did

very well to wear a cocked hat and walk about the quarter-deck crying

‘luff!’” and who was so rough and uncivilized, according to the narrator,

that the latter was compelled to “cut” him!

Destitute, idle, and in debt, his position at Calais was one that would

have appalled any honest and industrious man. It simply annoyed our hero,

because he was no longer imperious master. His impudence however did

not forsake him, but his independence _did_; and when he accepted the

consulship at Caen, with its poor £80 per annum set apart to provide for

his necessities, the remainder to be devoted to the liquidation of his

Calais debts, he was as much a pensioned slave as the veriest lacquey

_could_ be.

His pride was wounded, but his arrogance flourished. This too was shaken

when the consulship was suppressed; and pride and arrogance were crushed

when his friends had died off, contributions ceased, debts increased,

and the solid door of the gloomiest of prisons stood barred and locked

between him and the world.

Retributive justice fell upon this splendidly-useless human being. He

had been proud of two things, his extreme refinement and his mental

qualifications. He was terribly smitten in both directions. After his

release from prison he fell into the tender keeping of the Sisters of

Charity of the “Bon Sauveur” at Caen. He was an abject pauper, and worse.

His infirmities were of that sort at which a nice and healthy nature

is repelled; and he who had detected vulgarity in the odour of a rose

became, in his degraded hours, ere death relieved him, offensive to a

degree that turned sick and disgusted the charity of all but of the

Sisters who nursed him.

There was something again awful in the direction in which his mind

“drove,” while his soul itself was fast drifting over the turbulent

cataracts of time into the boundless lake of calm eternity. He was for

ever imagining himself among the scenes and companions of his days

of noisy but empty triumph. It was his custom of an afternoon, when

convalescent and clean, to arrange the furniture of his little room as

for expected company. There all alone sat the spectral fop waiting for

spectres; and as to his mind’s diseased eye these glided in, and to his

deceived ear were duly announced, that ghastly shattered beau arose and

went into mock raptures: he received his “dear duchess” with delight;

and favoured shadowy countesses were led by him to the visionary sofa;

and intangible lords were touched familiarly upon their non-existent

shoulders; and the whole phantom _soirée_ was gone through with a solemn

trifling, till the shadows which came had as shadows departed, leaving

with the solitary host just sufficient reason to enable him to appreciate

the utter nothingness of all the scene, and to burst into childish tears

at the recollection of the stupendous folly.

The flattered guest of princes died in a workhouse. He who had sat at

palace-banquets would have died of starvation and uncleanness but for the

alms and the hearts of the charitable Sisters, to whom, rare occurrence!

he was not ungrateful. At the period of his decease, in the month of

March, 1840, he was in his sixty-second year; and the “old man” had

not died within him ere he breathed his last. After his death, we are

told that several packets of letters,—tied up with different-coloured

ribbons, and carefully numbered,—a miniature, a silver shaving-dish, a

gold ring, and a few silver spoons, were found in a trunk at the hôtel.

The miniature and letters were taken possession of by the vice-consul,

and the remaining effects by the landlord, in liquidation of an account

which had only been partially cancelled. This person said, that in the

same parcel with the letters was another containing a great many locks

of hair. Oh, poor human nature! what demoniacal vanity was here! But let

us be just to this once-glittering simpleton. If he kept letters, he at

least kept them sacred. He never published one to injure even a living

enemy. Vain as he was, he was not revengeful; and no provocation could

have worked upon him as a fancied provocation did upon “the Right Hon.

John Wilson Croker,” who red-taped the open-hearted notes of Moore, and

produced them as _petards_ to blow to pieces the poet’s reputation when

that once gayest of bards lay mute and defenceless in his grave.

Hugh Miller, in his excellent Autobiography, remarks that the _Loligo

vulgaris_, or cuttle-fish, swims with its feet foremost,—in other words,

_follows its tail_, and often gets “gravelled,” by darting blindly

ashore, whence it cannot regain its home within the waters. Something

like this has ever been the fate of the “beau;” for he who follows rather

the animal than the intellectual propensities, is sure to rush, sooner or

later, upon his own destruction.

Besides, how great is the outlay required to make a “beau,”—well-scented

and useless, though perhaps temporarily agreeable! The sacrifices are

greater than I have space to enumerate; the result in proportion is

infinitesimally small. It reminds me of the six hundred pounds’ weight of

rose-leaves required to produce a single ounce of the _attar_. Sad waste

of many values in order to achieve a fashionable smell!

Not that a man should be indifferent to dress or to personal appearance.

Dr. Chalmers himself illustrates the fact that some care about costume

is consistent with the occupations of the mightiest intellect. In his

‘Journal’ (July, 1824), he says:—“Dressed for dinner. Have got a new way

of folding up my coat, which I shall teach you when I get home, as it is

of great use to a traveller. I am about as fond of it as I was of the new

method of washing my hands.” From Chalmers to Chifney is perhaps going

a long way for another illustration. They however who remember the late

celebrated jockey in the days of his retirement will admit its propriety.

How glossily patriarchal the old rider used to look, when, turned

pedestrian, he was wont to pace Regent-street, in broad-brimmed hat and a

clerical-looking surtout! Had he only been less grave of aspect, and more

frolicsome of action, one might have taken him for Wilberforce.

It is really pleasant to trace how celebrated men in other climes

than that of England make of costume a means to an end. I am reminded

of this by a passage in one of the late Lord Metcalfe’s letters, in

which he records his visit to the camp of Holkar, and notices one of

that chief’s dandy captains, Ameer Khan. “Ameer Khan,” he says, “is

blackguard in his looks, and affected on the occasion of my reception

to be particularly fierce, by rubbing his coat over with gunpowder,

and assuming in every way the air of a common soldier.” This was only

Brummell “with a difference;” the Beau used to anoint himself with the

oil of impudence in order to impose on the world, as Ameer Khan rubbed

his coat with gunpowder that he might excite admiration in the breast of

the civilian-soldier of Deeg.

For the reason that induced Miss Agnes Strickland to close her record

of the Queens with the reign of Queen Anne, so do I close that of the

beaux with the biography of Brummell. D’Orsay was indeed a greater

than he; but he has too recently shuffled off this mortal coil to be

strictly dealt with, and the truth concerning him might hurt the feelings

of those of his followers who continue to wear deep stocks with long

ends. His career only furnished a further proof that the profession of

a “beau” is not a paying one. He was _great_ in a Fielding-ian sense,

and according to the poet’s maxim which says, “Base is the slave that

pays.” Mere generosity does not make a gentleman; and even generosity

that is oblivious of justice is of no value. There was really nothing

to admire in him. A recent “friend and acquaintance” indeed has been so

hard put to it to find out a virtue in D’Orsay, that he has fixed upon

his neglect of paying his creditors as one; and the “friend” thinks that

it was sufficient honour for tradesmen to have him for their debtor! He

resided at Gore House; gave dinners to Louis Napoleon, which cost the

giver nothing in money, and the hungry recipient as little in gratitude;

he drew caricature portraits of his “familiars;” proposed a public

subscription for the polluting Paul de Kock; and was the author of a

portrait or figure of our Saviour, the idea of which seemed to be taken

from that of Decker in the old comedy, who dared to say of Him that He

was—

“The first true gentleman that ever breathed.”

Finally, the worst thing that could happen for the reputation of the

deceased Count is, that he should have so mistaken an advocate as the

author of ‘Friends and Acquaintances.’ Better would it have been for the

irreproachably-dressed D’Orsay, if he could have said as the Psalmist

did:—“My lovers and friends hast thou put away from me, and hid mine

acquaintance out of my sight.”

In the annals of dress however, the doctors of the olden time claim as

much notice as the beaux. If my readers be sick of the latter, here are a

few medical gentlemen, in full costume, ready to be consulted.

DOCTORS READY DRESSED.

“These, Sir,

Are Death’s Masters of the Ceremonies;

More strangely-clad officials never yet

Usher’d the way to Death’s cold festival.”

OLD PLAY.

Of all the doctors on the learned _rota_, there may have been more

famous, but none more deserving, than Freake. He was regardless of

nothing but dress; and he had a capital appreciation of fun, and a strong

predilection for matters of fantasy.

Dr. Freake of St. Bartholomew’s, and his cousin the Justice, were not

only given to dreaming, but to publish their dreams. They deemed their

visions not only important to themselves and the public generally,

but to the sovereigns of Europe especially. The dreams were wildly

unintelligible, and the interpretations unintelligibly wild. But the

Justice had active common-sense about him when he was awake. He was a

careful dresser, which is more than can be said for the Doctor, and he

presented the Bodleian Library with a collection of medals. Their tricksy

spirits added the word _freak_ to the vocabulary of the English language.

The Doctor’s cousin, like the Doctor, was not a fop; and as much could

scarcely be said of the profession generally. Granger says indeed of Dr.

Col that he was _not_ a coxcomb. This was at a time when the physicians

_were_ coxcombs; and the apothecaries, who followed and copied the more

dignified brethren, were coxcombs and _meta_-physicians. The medical

coxcomb of the day has thus been dressed up by a popular poet:—

“Each son of Sol, to make him look more big,

Had on a large, grave, decent, three-tail’d wig;

His clothes full-trimm’d, with button-holes behind;

Stiff were the skirts with buckram stoutly lined;

The cloth, cut velvet, or more reverend black,

Full made, and powder’d, half-way down his back;

Large decent cuffs, which near the ground did reach,

With half-a-dozen buttons fix’d on each.

Grave were their faces, fix’d in solemn state!

These men struck awe, their presence carried weight;

In reverend wigs, old heads young shoulders bore,

And twenty-five or thirty seem’d threescore.”

Such was the learned and able individual by whose help we became the

heirs of our forefathers,—helping the one into life, the other out

of it. I will add a sketch of a German doctor, and then of a French

doctor of some celebrity, both for his costume and his professional and

personal qualities. And first, of the professional dress of the _Medicus

Germanicus_.

Madame Schopenhauer says of the German doctors of the last century that

they were all aged—not so much by weight of years as of preconceived

opinions. She could not imagine that any of them had ever been young, or

had ever condescended to the sports of the young. For many years of her

life she never either saw or heard of a young physician. These vice-lords

of human life, incomparably clever at guessing, were addressed by the

style and title of “Excellency;” and even as Falstaff was “Jack Falstaff”

only with his familiars, so he must have been a very intimate friend

indeed who ventured to call a German physician “Herr Doctor.”

He who has seen Bundle in the ‘Waterman’ may have a very good idea of a

German medico’s wig:—snow white, thickly powdered, and excruciatingly

curled. It had further the distinction of resting, one portion on the

back and two descending in front of the shoulders. A scarlet cloth coat

adorned with gold lace, ruffles deeper plaited than Lord Ogilvie’s,

a shirt-frill as wide as a mainsail, silk stockings, knee-breeches,

and an acre of buckles on the shoes enriched with gold and gems, a

low-crowned cocked hat under the arm, too small for the head, and a stout

walking-stick or fancy cane, with clouded or carved head-pieces,—and ever

applied to prop the chin in cases where it was necessary to let it be

thought that the physician was thinking,—it was thus attired that these

patented murderers went forth to slay. What should we think _now_ of Dr.

Locock in a gold-laced scarlet coat, like Lablache in ‘Dulcamara’?

The ‘Connoisseur,’ speaking of the medical dress in England, says:—“When

we see a snuff-coloured suit of ditto, with bolus-buttons, a metal-headed

cane, and an enormous bushy grizzle, we as readily know the wearer to be

a dispenser of life and death, as if we had seen him pounding a mortar

or⸺, etc.”

In France, the medical costume of the last century and of the preceding

one was quite as singular. At an earlier period the dress of the

“mire,” that primitive healer of the people, was a familiar sight to

the Parisians, especially in the neighbourhood of the Rue de la Harpe.

A long black robe covered the dirt, and stood for dignity in this once

remarkable personage, who traversed the streets, vending dreadful

unctions. He was always escorted by a boy bearing a monkey, and this

monkey was bled a dozen times a day by the learned gentleman, to satisfy

the passers-by that he, the professor, and not the monkey, was a skilful

hand at phlebotomy.

In a street adjacent to the Rue de la Harpe resided, during a portion of

the troubled reign of Louis XVI., the celebrated Dr. Audry. He had lived

there for twenty years without being able to achieve any of the renown

which he subsequently acquired. He had fallen in love, but _that_ did

not help him. He lacked one indispensable thing, wanting which nobody

trusted him. He wore no wig. He had a magnificent head of hair of his

own; but to retain that was only wearing a testimonial of incapacity.

The fair lady, who was his heart’s familiar friend, resided in a house

opposite his own; and when she heard that her Samson was about to be

shorn, she burst into tears, and reproached him with infidelity. “Such

splendid curls!” sobbed the damsel.

“My colleagues do not wear them!” said Audry.

“You in a peruke!” exclaimed the lady, hardly knowing whether to laugh or

to cry at the idea of her lover in a wig.

“It is the symbol and livery of science. Without it, it appears, I cannot

be a doctor.”

The lady insisted, by way of compromise, that she should be permitted to

select the wig; and she expressly made choice of one of such colossal

dimensions and of so easy a fit, that poor Audry looked more like a

fool than a physician in it. But it helped to bring him into fashion.

He was considered as an old gentleman; and young ladies admitted him to

their circles and _causeries_, from which they affected to banish youth

of aspect less mature. His popularity was on the increase, just as an

adventure happened to him, which might have shaken a reputation more

firmly established.

He was one evening summoned to attend a wealthy English Peer, whose

mansion was in the Rue Tournon. His way thither led him beneath the

window of his fair friend, who had been rather piqued by his success

among the ladies, and who had previously resolved to overthrow both cause

and effect connected therewith. She was a pretty, sparkling, and joyously

mischievous girl of some three-and-twenty years; and her father loved her

nearly as much as he did fishing, which, for an enthusiastic angler as he

was, was no small proof of paternal affection. The damsel contrived so

well that, as the doctor passed, she flung her line, with the paternal

fish-hook at the end of it, and caught up the wig therewith as lightly

as her father would have picked up a trout.

Dr. Audry looked up in astonishment, and prayed for his professional

peruke in vain. Being hurried, moreover, he passed on his way, and

repaired to his patient with a head like Mr. Buckstone’s in Scrub.

When Lord A⸺ beheld him he exclaimed, “What! waited upon by the

assistant, when I sent for the principal?—by a student, when I needed a

practitioner?—but perhaps you are Doctor Audry’s nephew:—well, my groom

has the same sort of rheumatism that I have; be kind enough to go and

look after him.”

Audry, in his memoirs, in telling the tale, does not forget the sequel.

Thus insulted, he rushed, in a rage, to the offending lady, who met him

with open arms and laughing eyes. “My dear doctor,” said she, “do not

storm; Papa was just on the point of securing to you something better

than a peruke,—a fortune!”

“You are a light—”

“Thing to be loved, as you love me: I know it,” said the lady archly,

“but St. Severin is our parish nevertheless.”

“St. Severin our parish? I do not comprehend; unless I am authorized to

go there and arrange for our marriage.”

“Take all that papa prescribes upon that head; and, talking of heads, you

shall have your peruke again after the honeymoon.” Audry was content;

and the wedding went off as merrily as though it had been the last act

in an old comedy; though the newly-espoused couple did not lead quite so

angelical a life afterwards, as either St. Severin of Cologne, or his

namesake of Bordeaux. But it was neither to be expected nor required of

them. They would not have been half as profitable to the state if they

had followed, throughout, the example set them by the saint whose name

graced the church wherein they were united.

A Dacota doctor is perhaps, neither in costume nor practice, more absurd

than his European brethren of the early part of the last century. His fee

is a blanket, a buffalo robe, or a pipe; his dress is chiefly composed of

the first two articles; and his cunning lies in his sacred rattle, which

he shakes as Christian doctors do their heads, and there is no doubt as

much in one as in the other. Wherever he goes he carries with him his

medicine-bag; and to ask him what that mysterious article contains, and

upon what grounds he applies its contents, would be an insult as profound

as if you asked your own medical man for the reasons of his practice, and

expected that he would (or could) give you an answer. The Winnebagoes are

attired like their learned brethren among the Dacotas; but dress is not

thought so much of by them as possession of the medicine-bag: to lose

this is to lose reputation. But, savages as these are, they have some

very wise observances. The chief of these is the medicine-dance. This

is a grand solemnity, given by the doctors, for two reasons: one, for

the increase of practice, just as we find the fashion to be at home; the

other reason is, in order to appease the dead who have died under medical

treatment. And perhaps _that_ is also the reason why our own medicine-men

give such neat dinners, such splendid balls, or such enjoyable quadrilles

on the carpet and _soirées dansantes_. These entertainments are born

of remorse; and when next you join the saltatory throng at the house

of your medical friend, ponder gravely, good reader, on the solemnity

of the occasion, and impress upon that fair girl, with her hair _à

l’Impératrice_, that the object for which you mutually point the light

fantastic toe, is to rescue the medical master of the house from the

revengeful visits of the unskilfully slain at his hands. That understood,

plunge with frantic velocity into the _valse à deux temps_. The sacred

rattles of the Dacotas and Winnebagoes are always shaken with maddening

rapidity on these occasions, and you are the rattles by which doctors

live. The more you are shaken, the better they live; and should you have

the honour of perishing by their prescription, find comfort in knowing

that other waltzers will perform, not in your memory, but that you may be

peacefully forgotten, the “medicine-dance” of the medically murdered.

It will be found only another division of this subject to treat of odd

dressers and dresses, after touching upon doctors and costume,—doctors

who so often looked like the Laird of Cockpen, of whom we are told that

“His wig was well powther’d and as good as new,

His jacket was red, and his hose they were blue;

He put on a ring, a sword, and cock’d hat;

Ah, who could refuse the Laird wi’ a’ that?”

If the doctors were sometimes queerly costumed, their matches might be

occasionally found among the laity. For these I open the last scene, and

“Enter mob variously attired.”

ODD FASHIONS.

“Avec ceci finit la comédie; allez-vous-en, gens de la noce, et

dites du bien de l’auteur.”—_Crispin à la Foire._

The fashion of tattooing has a singular origin. We are indebted for our

knowledge thereof to Clearchus, who tells us that the women of Scythia,

having seized upon some Thracian women who dwelt in their vicinity,

traced on their bodies, by means of needles, certain marks, which the

latter could not contemplate without being made very angry. The lady who

went down Regent-street the other day with the shop-ticket affixed to

her new shawl, and which contained the announcement, “Very chaste, £1.

5_s._,” was not half so ridiculous as these poor Thracian ladies, with

the etchings about them drawn by their dear Scythian cousins. It does not

seem ever to have entered the heads of the victims that they might have

concealed their annoyance beneath a garment. They did not wear garments

at that time. They however hit upon a device not unworthy of that page of

the Duke de Vendôme who, losing his shoulder-knot of ribbons, on being

pursued as he was leaving the boudoir of a maid of honour, hurried to

the room where his fellow-pages were sleeping and cut the knots off from

every laced coat in the apartment, and so escaped detection.

The Thracian women fixed upon as happy an expedient. They so mixed up

the tattooed marks with other designs, that the original drawings were

entirely lost in the embellishments, like Handel’s airs in a certain

lady’s cadences. By this means the characteristic sign of their shame and

ignominy was no longer discernible, and the mode of tattooing became a

mode indeed in Thrace. A young lady there could not have had a greater

compliment paid to her at a ball than to be told that, front and back,

her tattooing was in the true style of the Thracian improvement on the

Scythian design. The dear creature might blush, but she would feel

happily sure that she had made a conquest, and would make all her young

friends savage by telling them the secret.

Among the odd dressers of the last century was the celebrated French

philosopher and poet, Monsieur de la Condamine. Like George Selwyn, he

was an indefatigable attendant at executions. He of course did not forget

that of Damiens, the most horrible butchery ever enacted on the Grève,

and at which French ladies were present with opera glasses, the better to

enjoy the spectacle. Even so wits, philosophers, and “females” honoured

the Mannings with their presence, in front of Horsemonger-lane gaol.

Condamine went for ever in search of truth, like Diogenes looking for a

man. At the execution of Damiens, he pushed his way close to the dread

officers of the law, and there, with his trumpet fastened to his ear (for

he was “as deaf as a post”), and his pencil and tablets in his hands,

he watched and recorded progress. At each tearing of the flesh by the

pincers, or at each blow dealt by the bar which crushed the limbs on

which it fell, Condamine exclaimed, “What does he say now? what does he

say now?” The satellites of Charlot, the hangman, wished to drive him

away as a troublesome fellow, but the executioner civilly remarked that

“the gentleman was an amateur, and might stay if he liked.” With all

this, De la Condamine was a simple-minded and humane man. In our London

streets he produced a great effect; there he walked, dressed as laxly as

Sir Simon Slack, and carrying with him a huge umbrella, almost as huge

an ear-trumpet, a telescope, a compass, and a map of London permanently

unfolded. He questioned everybody he met, but as he did this in English,

as he thought, of which he did not comprehend a word, he was exceedingly

like a metaphysician, who necessarily does not understand either what

he says or what is said to him. His singular appearance in the streets

speedily brought a counterfeit presentment of him on the stage, and, from

King downwards, all the English actors who played Frenchmen dressed them

after the pattern of M. De la Condamine.

As I have above noticed the Paris executioner,—“Monsieur de Paris,”

as he used to be called,—I may further remark that the personage who

filled that office some twenty years ago was one of the best-dressed

and best-informed men I ever met with. He might have been taken for a

reverend abbé, who did not deem that the dignity of priest was hurt by

uniting with it the joviality of man. He was a man indeed of bloody

hands, but he had gentle affections too; and he loved his children, ay,

reader, as well as thou lovest thine own.

The Earl of Ferrers, who murdered his steward in 1760, was condemned to

be executed for his crime. He had been originally married in a suit of

white kerseymere and silver; and he chose to be hung in the same suit,

it being as appropriate to one occasion, he said, as the other. Walpole,

discerning the effect this might have on fashion, remarks, “I suppose

every highwayman will preserve the blue handkerchief he has about his

neck when he is married, that he may die like a lord.”

The Earl dated his misfortunes from the day on which he married the

sister of Sir William Meredith. He accused the lady of having _met_ him

drunk at an assembly, and having kept him so till the ceremony was over.

Had he charged her with making him drunk, the lady, who was a faithful

wife, might have been more to blame; and as for keeping him drunk

afterwards, he was seldom subsequently sober, and had only himself to

blame.

This coroneted brute, who was remarkable for his taste in dress, was at

once fond and faithless. He kept his Countess in continual fear of her

life, beating her by day and threatening to shoot her at night. They

were separated; and it was because Johnson, his steward, advanced her

some portion of her allowance without the knowledge of the Earl, that

the latter shot him at three o’clock in the afternoon, and continued

tormenting him till one in the morning, rejoicing to kill him slowly!

After being sentenced by a unanimous vote of the House of Lords, he

passed his time in the Tower in playing picquet with the warders; and,

like Jerome Cardan, he would not play for pastime, but for money. He

drank as much wine as he could get, and then took to beer, for want of

something better.

In the procession, which moved from the Tower to Tyburn, this doomed

man, in his wedding clothes, was the only person who did not appear

affected. His coachman blubbered and the officials looked grave, but the

indifferent Lord made comments on the crowd, alluded now and then to the

purpose in hand, and had the condescension to acknowledge that he _did_

believe in a God.

As connected with fashion, it may be noticed that the Earl was the first

man who suffered by the “new drop.” To travel to the other world by the

“Ferrers’ Stage,” of course had its popular and peculiar signification.

Let me add, that while he was hanging in white, the sheriffs, in mourning

and robes of office, were coolly standing on the scaffold, eating

and drinking, and helping up their friends to drink with them. The

executioners fought for the rope, and he who lost it cried; “but,” says

Walpole, who was not there to see, “the universal crowd behaved with

great decency and admiration.”

There is another act to this tragedy. Lady Ferrers subsequently married

Lord Frederick Campbell, brother of the Duke of Argyle, at whose seat,

Combe Bank, Kent, she was unfortunately burnt to death.

There was about this time another celebrated personage remarkable for

her style of dress. We have all heard of “Sappho’s diamonds on her dirty

smock,” and Pope’s line does not seem overcharged. “I have seen Lady Mary

Wortley Montague,” writes Walpole in 1762; “I think her avarice, her

dirt, and her vivacity are all increased. Her dress, like her languages,

is a _galimatias_ of several countries; the ground-work rags, and the

embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no

petticoat, no shoes. An old black-lace hood represents the first; the fur

of a horseman’s coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second; a

dimity petticoat is deputy, and officiates for the fourth; and slippers

act the part of the last. When I was at Florence, and she was expected

there, we drew _Sortes Virgilianas_ for her; we literally drew

‘Insanam vatem aspicies.’

It would have been a stronger prophecy now even than it was then.”

I think it was said of Lady Mary, that, on being once at the French

Opera, some one remarked to her, “Mon dieu, Miladi, que vous avez les

mains sales!” “Ah!” exclaimed the dirty lady with a conscious pride, “si

vous voyiez mes pieds!” This story however is something apocryphal.

The worst feature in Lady Mary was that she was not only dirty as an

elderly woman, but had been so as a young one. Two-and-twenty years

before Walpole wrote the above account of her, he thus photographed the

nymph whom Pope had transiently adored. Walpole met her at Florence in

1740, and there, he says, she was “laughed at by the whole town. Her

dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one that never

heard her name. She wears a foul mob that does not cover her greasy

black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine

blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face

swelled violently on one side, with the remains of a ⸺ partly covered

with a plaister, and partly with white paint, which, for cheapness, she

has bought so coarse, that you would not use it to wash a chimney.”

Spence, who saw this clever and eccentric lady during the following

year at Rome, describes her as brilliant, irregular, and erratic as a

comet; at once wise and imprudent, “the loveliest, most disagreeable,

best-natured, cruellest woman in the world; all things by turns, and

nothing long.”

Three foreign travellers in England have pleasantly remarked upon an old

custom which would now be considered more honoured in the breach than

the observance. The custom alluded to is that of kissing. Chalcondyles,

the Greek, who visited our respected ancestors between four and five

centuries ago, was highly surprised, delighted, and edified with this

novel mode. He says of it:—“As for English females and children, their

customs are liberal in the extreme. For instance, when a visitor calls

at a friend’s house, his first act is to kiss his friend’s wife; he is

then a duly installed guest. Persons meeting in the street follow the

same custom, and no one sees anything improper in the action.” Nicander

Nucius, another Greek traveller, of a century later, also adverts to this

oscillatory fashion. “The English,” he says, “manifest much simplicity

and lack of jealousy in their habits and customs as regards females; for

not only do members of the same family and household kiss them on the

lips with complimentary salutations and enfolding of the arms round the

waist, but even strangers when introduced follow the same mode; and it is

one which does not appear to them in any degree unbecoming.”

The third commentator is Erasmus, and it is astonishing how lively the

Dutchman becomes when expatiating on this ticklish subject. Writing from

England to Andrelinus in 1499, he says unctuously:—“They have a custom

too which can never be sufficiently commended. On your arrival, you are

welcomed with kisses. On your departure, you are sent off with kisses. If

you return, the embraces are repeated. Do you receive a visit, your first

entertainment is of kisses. Do your guests depart, you distribute kisses

amongst them. Wherever you meet them they greet you with a kiss. In

short, whichever way you turn, there is nothing but kissing. Ah! Faustus,

if you had once tasted the tenderness, the fragrance of these kisses, you

would wish to stay in England, not for a ten years’ voyage, like Solon’s,

but as long as you lived.”

I leave to the bachelors to pronounce upon the merits of this

custom—which must have had its disadvantages too;—a qualified remark

which I the more feel bound to make, as, were I to join in the ecstatic

laudation of the grave Dutchman,—why, to use Hood’s words,

“I have my fears about my ears, I’m not a single man!”

Let us now turn from English fashions to French incidents. Some years

ago, the summer evening _habitués_ of the Champs Elysées used to find

amusement in listening to an open-air entertainment of some singularity.

A pale, thin, fragile, but bright-eyed and intellectual-looking girl of

perhaps ten or twelve years of age used to appear in the most crowded

part of the walk, an hour or so before sunset, attended by an old woman

who carried a violin, a tin cup, and a carpet. While the girl stood apart

for a moment, with something of a rapt look, the old woman spread the

carpet, put down the cup at one corner, and scraped a preliminary air

upon the violin. The air was not always appropriate to the drama that was

to follow, for the favourite overture of the performer was “Ma’m’selle

Pinson est une blonde!”—and that was like making “Yankee Doodle” or

“Nancy Dawson” pass as introductory symphonies to ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Macbeth.’

However, the orchestra having terminated the prelude, the girl stepped

on to the carpet, with the air of a little tragedy queen, and recited

long tirades from Racine and Corneille. But then she recited them

superbly; and despite her air of suffering and her exceedingly poor

attire, she produced such an effect upon her hearers that while she

rested, the audience were never weary of filling the cup carried round

by the old woman, with sous and half-franc pieces, in order to encourage

her to new efforts. The collection was always a large one; and when the

delicate-looking child retired, all palpitating and with a flush upon

her cheek, of which it were difficult to say whether it were the flush

of her own triumph or that of death destined to triumph over her, the

acclamations and cordial compliments of her hearers greeted her as she

passed.

Well, a winter had gone, and a summer had come, but with it did not come

to the loiterers in the Elysian fields the Tragic Muse whom they were

disposed and eager to welcome. But during the year a marvellous child

appeared on the stage of the Gymnase Dramatique. She came like a meteor

and so departed. The truth was, that her friends saw at once that she

was too good for that stage, and she was withdrawn, in order to appear

on one more classical. Well do I remember that we loiterers in the shady

avenues that lead to Neuilly used to dispute, and we youths the loudest

of all, as to whether the _débutante_ of the Gymnase was or was not the

inspired nymph that used in the public highway to create as much delight

as Duchesnois herself before the critical pit of the “Français.”

The dispute was not to be determined by us, and in the meantime we spoke

of our absent delight as of a lost Pleiad, and so the year wore away.

And then came the eventful night on which a girl, of whom no one had

previously heard by the name which she now wore, glided on to the stage

of the Théâtre Français, and in a moment awoke French Tragedy out of

the shroud in which she had been decently enveloped since Duchesnois

had laid her down to die. The name of the girl was RACHEL; and so pale

and unearthly was she, yet so inspired in her look, so commanding, so

irresistible, that every one was not only ready to acknowledge the new

sovereign of the tragic throne, but all Paris declared that the Rachel

who was now famous for ever was no other than the poor girl who used to

stand on a carpet in the Champs Elysées and recite Racine for sous and

half-franc pieces.

The lady most concerned maintained a discreet silence, and various were

opinions as to the identity. In course of time, however, she seems

herself to have cleared up the mystery by one of the prettiest possible

and most practical of confessions. As this is a question of evidence, I

think it better to let my witness speak rather than myself condense the

testimony, and here is the deposition—_ce dont il s’agit_. I have only

first to premise that it is given by Madame Colmache in one of those

pleasant Paris letters which used to appear in the ‘Atlas,’ to the great

amusement and edification of the readers. The following is a portion of a

letter which appeared in February, 1851.

“Rachel’s hôtel in the Rue Trudon is gradually growing into the most

exquisite little palace in the world. The long-talked of _fête_, which

was to have been given by the Tragedian upon the occasion of the Mardi

Gras, and to which all Paris was intriguing and disputing to get invited,

has been postponed _sine die_, and a literary and poetical festival was

offered to her friends instead, on Sunday last. The inauguration of the

hôtel took place under the most brilliant auspices. The vast number of

rooms contained in the hôtel excited some surprise; the more so as it is

formally announced that the fair owner intends for the future to reside

entirely alone. ‘By whom will all these apartments be occupied?’ said

Alexandre Dumas to Viennet, as they strolled through the long suite of

saloons and boudoirs. ‘By the owner’s _souvenirs_, of course,’ replied

the latter. ‘Oh! then I fear they will be terribly crowded,’ replied

Alexandre laughing. To those who complain of the sadness of the times

and of the sad neglect of art manifested by the public of our own day, a

walk through that exquisitely adorned temple, which certainly may rival,

both in elegance and richness, the dwelling of Aspasia and the villa of

Lais, would be productive of an immediate change of opinion. No expense

has been spared upon the decoration of the hôtel; some of the artists

who stand highest have not disdained to furnish some of the designs for

the moulding; the ceilings are all painted by the greatest masters; and

the rich draperies which conceal the walls have all been taught to hang,

according to the strictest rules of symmetry, by the great master hand.”

The _fête_, says the writer, was concluded by an epilogue of great

interest; and it is this epilogue which connects the Tragédienne of the

“Français,” with the little Thespian of the Champs Elysées. The epilogue

is truly described as one displaying a strange and singular aspect of the

human heart.

“The _soirée_ had been accepted as one of a purely literary character,

and every celebrity appertaining to every branch of literature came,

of course. The fair hostess recited in costume every one of her

principal _tirades_, from all the great tragedies wherein she has

acquired undying fame, and then withdrew amid the hearty applause

and unfeigned expressions of delight of the whole company. Presently

she returned before them in a new character to them, but of an old

one to herself,—that of a street-singer, her head bound by a Madras

handkerchief, her shoulders enveloped in an old Tartan shawl, a cotton

petticoat descending just below the knee, and an old guitar slung across

her bosom. Her appearance caused an almost painful interest. There

was poetry in the whole scene—in the very clatter of her sabots as she

passed up the splendid gallery, all hung with looking-glass, and adorned

with gilt tripods—in the wooden bowl with the sou at the bottom, which

she rattled as she stepped forward with a melancholy smile. She walked

straight to the head of the gallery, and standing motionless for a

moment, began the ballad which she had sung the last of all before she

was summoned from the street to the stage, from rags and poverty, to

glory, influence, and riches. By a singular coincidence, this ballad

happened to be the same formerly sung in ‘Fanchon la Veilleuse,’—‘Elle

a quitté,’—relating how Fanchon had left her humble home for wealth

and grandeur, and how she was gradually pining amidst the splendour of

her lot for the love and liberty she had once enjoyed. The voice of

the singer, perhaps from fatigue, perhaps from emotion, was low and

faltering, and produced an effect such as not the most powerful of her

_tirades_ from Racine or Corneille has ever been able to produce,—_tears_

from her audience. This incident will long be remembered by those who

witnessed it.”

No doubt; and the writer might have added a closing incident which is

said to have followed the song, namely, that the singer, or reciter,

for even her songs were recited, as every one will remember who has

witnessed her ‘Lycisca’ in the high-coloured tragedy of ‘Valeria,’—having

terminated her song, carried round the little cup or bowl, as of yore,

only this time intimating to those to whom her trembling hand extended

it—“It is for the poor!” But to revert to older, as well as odder

fashions.

The consequences of the treaty which the Colophonians made with

the Lydians, will serve to show that alliances are not necessarily

advantageous to the weaker party. The Colophonians were an austere

people. They were the Quakers of antiquity, and Mr. Bright himself

might admire them. But no sooner were they united with the Lydians than

Colophon became full of Lydian milliners, tailors, jewellers, and

hairdressers, and the reign of simplicity was over for ever. Prior to

this a Colophonian woman no more thought about her dress than did Maria

Theresa, who, on being told that she was a grandmother, rushed into the

neighbouring Opera-house, in her flannel nightdress and huge nightcap, in

which she looked like Mrs. Gamp, and announced to the ecstatic audience

that an heir was born to the greatness of Hapsburg Lorraine.

The Colophonians were once as careless of appearances, but now, men and

women, they all adopted Lydian fashions. In one day, a thousand of the

former, who had never known what a mantle was before, were seen on the

public place, as proud of their jaunty purple cloaks as Rubini of his

‘Almaviva.’ Men and women alike had a gold ornament at the end of every

lock of hair; and as for perfume, it was used to such an extent that for

miles round the air was full of it, and the Lydian Atkinsons toiled in

vain to meet the demand by supply.

Extravagance in dress has brought many a family to two-and-sixpence in

the pound, but it ruined Miletus outright. The rich people there not

only impoverished themselves by their incredible extravagance in finery,

worse than our ancestors at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, who wore

whole estates upon their backs, but they despised the poor, who were

offensive to them for their homely fashions and rough tongues. Well,

these extravagant persons became insolent and helpless, or what we should

now call so; and the poor then sued them after the fashion of men who

knew not of Bankruptcy Courts. They expelled the old oppressors, but

they seized their children; and confining them in different granges,

caused them to be trodden to death by the oxen used for treading out

the corn. The rich however returned in strength, and seizing the poor

men, women, and children, they covered them with pitch and put light to

them,—so leaving them to perish. The sacred olive-tree in the Temple

was so disgusted at both parties that it set fire to itself, and died

of spontaneous combustion. The colour of its crackling leaves became a

favourite one with religious persons; and a “robe feuille-morte” was as

much in vogue in the district as it more recently was in Paris and the

provinces.

There are some very odd “habits” about some of the swarthy potentates

of torrid Africa. Of these I can however mention but the following:—The

territory of Damagram, in Central Africa, is inhabited by the wildest

of the African races. The method of supplying the slave-market there is

truly nefarious. If the Sultan of Zinder wants goar nuts for his dessert,

or calico to make what the good King Dagobert had so much difficulty in

adjusting to his royal person, and if he has no money to purchase them,

he sends his officials to a neighbouring village, in open day, to steal

two or three families and bring them to the Sultan. These families are

immediately exchanged for the goar nuts or the calico, and the swarthy

tailor who makes up the royal suit perhaps reflects, as he sews, that

the stuff has cost two or three living cousins, whose fate it is to be

sent beyond the Atlantic to raise more cotton, that shall find its way

again to the African tailors’ hands, after it has been paid for with

more human flesh. It is not _all_ the African chiefs that care to be

dressed in calico. The Marghi, for instance, give little employment for

tailors: their dress consists of a simple band of leather passed between

their loins and fixed round their girdle. When this and a profusion of

neatly-made rings of iron and ivory are fixed on the arms and legs, the

Marghi gentlemen are dressed for the day.

The oddest of fashions or dresses was one which was once adopted by the

rich but parsimonious Fountayn Wilson, the wealthy but thrifty landowner

of Yorkshire. When loyal gentlemen were raising militia companies

during the late war, Mr. Wilson not only followed the fashion, but he

bought, at a low rate, a quantity of grey cloth, in the expectation that

Government would purchase it at an advanced price, and so put a profit

into Fountayn’s pocket. He was disappointed, but he consoled himself by

wearing nothing for years but dresses made out of this coarse militia

grey. But London once saw him in a stranger dress than this.

Mr. Wilson, having accepted an invitation to dinner on a day whereon he

had to attend as member of a committee of the House of Commons, ordered

his servant to bring down to the house at six o’clock, a change of dress,

and a hackney coach, in which he said he would effect the change as he

rode in it. Ablution he did not think about; but if his old black coat

would do to dine in, he felt bound to change his nether garment. He had

just reached the Horse Guards, and he had just taken off his trousers,

and was about to put his legs into the other pair, when _crack!_ went

the axle-tree, and down came the coach! An officious mob assembled to

lend help; but when they beheld an embarrassed gentleman with two pairs

of trousers, and neither of them on, great was their astonishment,

and loudly did they publish the fact. Poor Fountayn sat helpless and

victimized, till a good-natured officer who was passing, and knew the

eccentric M.P., released him, by claiming him as a relative; and as he

led him covered with a cloak through the shrieking crowd, he calmed the

laughers into silence by significantly pointing with his finger to his

forehead,—which seemed to imply that they ought to have compassion on the

infirmity of an imbecile gentleman, so well provided with garments and so

apparently indifferent as to their use.

If Oliver Goldsmith went up in red plush breeches to be ordained by a

bishop, the celebrated Daniel Webster once appeared in as singular a

costume, considering the occasion on which he wore it. The time had

come when he was required to leave his old home at Elms Farm, to visit

Dartmouth College, for the purpose of being matriculated. A neighbour,

in honest zeal for his credit, made for him a complete new suit of

clothes,—all of homespun cloth,—the colour “deeply, darkly, beautifully

blue.” Thus attired, he set off on horseback; and he had not got far on

his way when a storm suddenly overtook him, to which he was exposed for

many hours. The river in his way became swollen, the bridge was destroyed

by the freshet, and he was obliged to ride many miles round ere he could

again strike into a direct path. The rain descended in ceaseless torrents

during the whole time. The homespun suit was not made of fast colour. The

rain sank into the cloth, and the indigo-blue, politely making way for

it, soaked off into the shirt and skin of the young student. His features

too partook of the general hue, and when the scholar reached Hanover, he

was dyed blue from head to foot. Like Essex, when he came travel-soiled

from Ireland, and proceeded to an interview with Queen Elizabeth, he

went straight before the college authorities; without wiping—indeed he

could _not_ wipe the now fixed cerulean from his face, neck, and hands.

Every shade of blue, and all moist, could be seen upon his clothes, the

darker deposit upon his flesh. “Who is he?” asked one. “At home,” said

he, laughing, “they call me _black_ Dan; here I appear as _blue_ Dan!—and

trouble enough have I had to arrive among you; but you see me as I am, in

a condition which, if it does not entitle me to your approbation, should

at least secure for me your sympathy.” Daniel suffered no disparagement

by appearing before his grave seniors like a man who had been dyeing all

his life. He passed the dreaded ordeal with honour, and the wits said

that he had no reason to be discontented with the storm which _blew_ him

into a port where honour and welcome attended him; at the same time they

advised him not to stick to the colour, and proposed to him a thesis,

which should have for its device, “Nimium ne fide colori.” “Ne fide

colori!” I hear re-echoed by my readers; “‘Ne fide nimium patientiæ,’

Sirrah; do not super-abuse our patience.” Be it so, ever-courteous

Public. _Pauca verba_, as Pistol has it, is a good maxim, particularly

when one has nothing more to say. I will conclude, not only with the

sentiment I promised, but also with something more valuable,—a recipe to

keep you from ever getting wet through. A barrister was once bewailing to

Mr. Cresswell, when the latter was also at the Bar, that on going down

to Salisbury, outside the mail, he had got his clothes completely wet

through. “That calamity need never befall a man, however exposed,” said

Mr. Cresswell. “Why,” said the other, “what is he to do?” “Do!” exclaimed

the elder practitioner, “why, he has nothing in the world to do but to

take off his clothes and sit upon them!”

And now for the sentiment, in which my readers will find a value greater

than that which attaches to the recipe for keeping a suit dry. Hear what

Cowper says:—

“We sacrifice to dress, till household joys

And comforts cease. Dress drains our cellars dry,

And keeps our larder bare; puts out our fires,

And introduces hunger, frost, and woe,

Where peace and hospitality might reign.”

Well, I will not moralize upon this truth. I should become more unwelcome

than Joseph Surface himself; but I will say this, that Cowper’s lines

are as applicable now as they were of old, and in that they are so do I

distinguish the cause why on many careers joyously begun, there descends

so dismal and so dreary a

FINIS.

JOHN EDWARD TAYLOR, PRINTER,

LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS.

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