A great deal used to be said of Beau Nash and his witticisms; but
certainly we never met with any thing of his which was at all equal to
the oracular sentences of the gentleman who gives a name to this
article. Of all the beaux that ever flourished--at least, of all that
ever flourished on the same score--exemplary of waistcoat, and having
authoritative boots from which there was no appeal--he appears to us to
have been the only one who made a proper and perfect union of the
coxcombical and ingenious. Other men may have been as scientific on the
subject of bibs, in a draper-like point of view; and others may have
said as good things, which had none of the colouring arising out of the
consciousness of fashionable preeminence. Beau _Fielding_, we believe,
stands on record as the handsomest of beaux. There is Beau
_Skeffington_, now rather sir Lumley, who, under all his double-breasted
coats and waistcoats, never had any other than a single-hearted soul; he
is to be recorded as the most amiable of beaux; but Beau Brummell for
your more than finished coxcomb. He could be grave enough, but he was
any thing but a solemn coxcomb. He played with his own sceptre. It was
found a grand thing to be able to be a consummate fop, and yet have the
credit of being something greater; and he was both. Never was any thing
more exquisitely conscious, yet indifferent; extravagant, yet judicious.
His superiority in dress gave such importance to his genius, and his
genius so divested of insipidity his superiority in dress, that the
poet’s hyperbole about the lady might be applied to his coat; and
“You might almost say the body thought.”
It was a moot point which had the more tact, his gloves or his fingers’
ends. He played the balls of wit and folly so rapidly about his head,
that they lost their distinctions in one crowning and brilliant halo.
Mr. Brummell, it is true, is no longer in favour as a settler of
fashions. Why, it is not our business to inquire. But though it may be
said of his waistcoat, like Troy, that it _was_, his wit _is_, and will
remain; and here, for the first time, a few specimens of it are
collected. If George Etheridge himself would not have acknowledged a
brother in George Brummell, then are no two gloves of a colour.
To begin with what is usually reckoned the prince of his good things.
Mr. Brummell having fallen out of favour with an illustrious person,
was of course to be _cut_, as the phrase is, when met in public. Riding
one day with a friend, who happened to be otherwise regarded, and
encountering the personage in question, who spoke to the friend without
noticing Mr. Brummell, he affected the air of one who waits aloof while
a stranger is present; and then, when the great man was moving off, said
to his companion, loud enough for the other to hear, and placidly
adjusting his bibs, “Eh! who is our fat friend?”
Having taken it into his head, at one time, to eat no vegetables, and
being asked by a lady if he had never eaten any in his life, he said,
“Yes, madam, I once eat a pea.”
Being met limping in Bond-street, and asked what was the matter, he said
he had hurt his leg, and “the worst of it was, it was his favourite
leg.”
Somebody inquiring where he was going to dine next day, was told that he
really did not know: “they put me in my coach and take me somewhere.”
He pronounced of a fashionable tailor that he made a good coat, an
exceedingly good coat, all but the collar: nobody could achieve a good
collar but Jenkins.
Having borrowed some money of a city beau, whom he patronised in return,
he was one day asked to repay it; upon which he thus complained to a
friend: “Do you know what has happened?”--“No.”--“Why, do you know,
there’s that fellow, Tomkins, who lent me five hundred pounds, has had
the face to ask me for it; and yet I had called the dog ‘Tom,’ and let
myself dine with him.”
“You have a cold, Mr. Brummell,” observed a sympathizing group. “Why do
you know,” said he, “that on the Brighton road, the other day, that
infidel, Weston, (his valet,) put me into a room with a damp stranger.”
Being asked if he liked port, he said, with an air of difficult
recollection, “Port? port?--Oh, _port_!--Oh, ay; what, the hot
intoxicating liquor so much drank by the lower orders?”
Going to a rout, where he had not been invited, or rather, perhaps,
where the host wished to mortify him, and attempted it, he turned
placidly round to him, and, with a happy mixture of indifference and
surprise, asked him his _name_. “Johnson,” was the answer. “Jauhnson,”
said Brummell, recollecting, and pretending to feel for a card; “Oh, the
name, I remember, was Thaun-son (Thompson;) and Jauhnson and Thaunson,
you know, Jauhnson and Thaunson, are really so much the same kind of
thing!”
A beggar petitioned him for charity “even if it was only a
farthing.”--“Fellow,” said Mr. Brummell, softening the disdain of the
appellation in the gentleness of his tone, “I don’t know the coin.”
Having thought himself invited to somebody’s country seat, and being
given to understand, after one night’s lodging, that he was in error, he
told an unconscious friend in town who asked him what sort of a place it
was, that it was an “exceedingly good place for stopping one night in.”
Speaking lightly of a man, and wishing to convey his maximum of
contemptuous feeling about him, he said, “He is a fellow, now, that
would send his plate up twice for soup.”
It was his opinion, that port, and not porter, should be taken with
cheese. “A gentleman,” said he, “never _malts_ with his cheese, he
always _ports_.”
It being supposed that he once failed in a matrimonial speculation,
somebody condoled with him; upon which he smiled, with an air of better
knowledge on that point, and said, with a sort of indifferent feel of
his neckcloth, “Why, sir, the truth is, I had great reluctance in
cutting the connection; but what could I do? (Here he looked deploring
and conclusive.) Sir, I discovered that the wretch positively ate
cabbage.”
Upon receiving some affront from an illustrious personage, he said that
it was “rather too good. By gad, I have half a mind to cut the young
one, and bring old G--e into fashion.”
When he went visiting, he is reported to have taken with him an
elaborate dressing apparatus, including a silver basin; “For,” said he,
“it is impossible to spit in clay.”
On being asked by a friend, during an unseasonable summer, if he had
ever seen such a one? “Yes,” replied B. “last winter.”
On a reference being made to him as to what sum would be sufficient to
meet the annual expenditure for clothes, he said, “that with a moderate
degree of prudence and economy, he thought it might be managed for eight
hundred per annum.”
He told a friend that he was reforming his way of life, “For instance,”
said he, “I sup early; I take a-a-little lobster, an apricot puff, or
so, and some burnt champaigne, about twelve; and my man gets me to bed
by three.”[194]
[194] Literary Pocket Book.
Vol. I.--22.
[Illustration: ~The Crooked Billet, on Penge Common.~]
_Friday, May, -- 1827._
I had appointed this morning with my friend W. for a visit to the
gallery of paintings at Dulwich College; and he was to obtain from a
printseller an admission ticket, and bring it with him. He came
furnished with the ticket, but as the ticket provided that the public
were not to be admitted on a Friday, our seeing the pictures was out of
the question. Neither of us, however, was in a humour to be disappointed
of a holiday; we therefore set out in the direction we had intended. A
coachman hailed us from the box of a Dulwich stage; we gave him an
assenting nod, and mounted the roof: and after a brisk drive through
Walworth and Camberwell, which are now no other way distinguishable from
the metropolis, than by the irregular forms and sizes of the houses, and
the bits of sickly grass and bottle-green poplars that further diversify
them, we attained to the sight of the first out-of-town looking trees
and verdure on the ascent towards Herne-hill. Here we began to feel
“another air;” and during the calm drive down the hill into Dulwich--the
prettiest of all the village entrances in the environs of London--we had
glimpses, between the elms and sycamores, of pleasant lawns And blooming
gardens, with bursts of the fine distances. The calm of the scene was
heightened by the note of the cuckoo: it was no “note of fear” to us--we
remembered our good wives surrounded by their families; they had greeted
our departure with smiles, and hopes that the day would be pleasant, and
that we should enjoy ourselves;--the mother and the children rejoiced in
“father’s holiday” as a day of happiness to them, because it would make
him happier.
Leaving Dulwich College on our right, with an useless regret, that, by
our mistake as to the day, the picture-gallery was closed to us, we
indulged in a passing remark on the discrepancies of the building--the
hall and west wing of the Elizabethan age; the east wing in the Vanbrugh
style; and the gallery differing from each. Alighting, just beyond, at
the end of the old road, and crossing to the new one in the same line,
we diligently perused an awful notice from the parochial authorities
against offenders, and acquainted ourselves with the rewards for
apprehending them. The board seemed to be a standing argument in behalf
of reading and writing, in opposition to some of the respectable
inhabitants of Dulwich, who consider ignorance the exclusive property of
labourers and servants, which they cannot be deprived of without injury
to their morals.
Ascending the hill, and leaving on the left hand a large house, newly
built by a rich timber-merchant, with young plantations that require
years of growth before they can attain sufficient strength to defend the
mansion from the winds, we reached the summit of the hill, and found a
direction-post that pointed us to a choice of several roads. We strolled
into one leading to Penge Common through enclosed woodlands. Our ears
were charmed by throngs of sweet singing birds; we were in a cathedral
of the feathered tribes, where “every denomination” chanted rapturous
praises and thanksgivings; the verger-robins twittered as they
accompanied us with their full sparkling eyes and bright liveried
breasts.--
Chiefs of the choir, and highest in the heavens,
As emulous to join the angels’ songs,
Were soaring larks; and some had dared so far
They seem’d like atoms sailing in the light;
Their voices and themselves were scarce discern’d
Above their comrades, who, in lower air
Hung buoyant, brooding melody, that fell
Streaming, and gushing, on our thirsty ears.
In this celestial chancel we remain’d
To reverence these creatures’ loud Te Deum--
A holy office of their simple natures
To Him--the great Creator and Preserver--
Whom they instinctively adored.
A gate in the road was opened to us by a poor woman, who had seen our
approach from her road-side dwelling; she had the care of collecting the
toll from horsemen and carriage-drivers--we were _foot_-passengers, and
credited our tailors for the civility. At a few yards beyond this
turnpike we stopped to read a dictatorial intimation:--“All trespassers
on these woods will be prosecuted, and the constables have orders to
take them into custody.” I am not sure that there is a “physiognomy of
hand-writing,” but I am a believer in the physiognomy of style, and the
features of this bespoke a Buonaparte of the hundred who had partaken of
the carvings under an enclosure-act. No part was fenced off from the
common road, and the land had been open to all till spoliation deprived
the commoners of their ancient right, and annexed the common soil to a
neighbouring domain. Whose it now is, by law, I know not, nor inquired.
I look around, and cottages have disappeared, and there are villas
instead; and the workhouses are enlarged, and, instead of labour,
tread-mills are provided. According to a political economist of ancient
times, “There is much food in the tillage of the poor;” and “He that
maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.” To whom of old was it
said, “The spoil of the poor is in your houses?”
We lingered on our way, and passed a bridge over the canal, towards a
well-looking public-house, called “the Old Crooked Billet.” Before the
door is, what is called, a “sign,” which, according to modern usage, is
a sign-post, with a sign-board without a sign, inscribed with the name
of what the sign had been. Formerly this was a little ale-house, and to
denote its use to the traveller, the landlord availed himself of one of
the large old trees then before the door, and hung upon the lowest of
its fine spreading branches not the “sign” of the billet, but a real
“crooked billet:” this was the origin of “the Old Crooked Billet” on
(what _was_) Penge Common. We had set out late and loitered, and after a
brief reconnoitre entered the house in search of refreshment. The
landlord and his family were at dinner in a commodious, respectable bar.
He rose to us like “a giant refreshed,” and stood before us a
good-humoured “Boniface”--every inch a man--who had attained to strength
and fair proportion, by virtue of the ease and content wherein he lived.
We found from his notable dame that we could have eggs and bacon, and
spinach put into the pot from the garden, in a few minutes; nothing
could have been suggested more suitable to our inclination, and we had
the pleasure of being smiled into a comfortable parlour, with a
bow-window view of the common. The time necessary for the preparation of
our meal afforded leisure to observe the hostel. W. went out to pencil
the exterior in his sketch-book. Except for the situation, and the
broad, good-humoured, country face of our landlord, we might have
imagined ourselves in town; and this was the only uncomfortable feeling
we had. The sign-board on the other side of the road revealed the name
of our entertainer--“R. Harding,” and the parlour mantlepiece told that
he was a “Dealer in Foreign Wines, Segars, &c.” This inscription,
written in clerk-like German text, framed and glazed, was transportation
against my will, to the place from whence I came. Our attention was
diverted by the rolling up of a gig, espied afar off by “mine host,” who
waited at the door with an eye to business, and his hands in the pockets
of his jean jacket. The driver, a thin, sharp-featured, pock-faced man,
about forty, alighted with as much appearance of kindly disposition as
he could bring his features to assume, and begged the favour of an order
for “a capital article.” His presented card was received with a drop of
the landlord’s countenance, and a shake of the head. The solicitor--and
he looked as keenly as a Chancery-lane one--was a London
Capillaire-maker; he urged “a single bottle;” the landlord pleaded his
usage of sugar and demurred, nor could he be urged on to trial. Our
repast brought in, and finished with a glass of country brewed and a
segar, W. completed his sketch, and we paid a moderate charge, and
departed with “the Old Crooked Billet” as exhibited in the engraving.
The house affords as “good accommodation for man and horse” as can be
found in any retired spot so near London. Our stroll to it was
delightful. We withdrew along the pleasant road to the village of
Beckenham. Its white pointed spire, embowered in trees, had frequently
caught our sight in the course of the day, and we desired to obtain a
near view of a church that heightened the cheerful character of the
landscape. It will form another article--perhaps two.
*
* * * * *
~Witchcraft.~