abroad, and would stay a night at Calais. The pulse of the exiled dandy
must have beat quickly. It was the time for forgiveness; and, after
all, his offence had not been very rank. If there were generosity in
the heart of the monarch, surely, surely he would hold out the right
hand of fellowship to the vanquished foe. The meeting came about
unexpectedly. Brummell went for a walk out of the town in the opposite
direction to that on which the King would enter it. On his return he
tried to get across the street, but the crowd was so great that he
remained perforce on the opposite side. The King’s carriage passed
close to him. “Good God, Brummell!” George cried in a loud voice. Then
Brummell, who was hat in hand at the time, crossed the road, pale as
death, and entered his room.
George dined in the evening at Dessein’s, and Brummell sent his valet
to make the punch, giving him to take over a bottle of rare old
maraschino, the King’s favourite liqueur. The next morning all the
suite called except Bloomfield, and each man tried to persuade him to
ask for an audience. Brummell signed his name in the visitors’ book.
His pride would let him do no more. He had taken the first steps;
would the King send for him? George left without a word. Afterwards he
actually boasted he had been to Calais without seeing Brummell! So the
men went their ways, never to meet again. The King had won. He had seen
his old friend, his old foe--which you will--his old comrade, beaten,
bankrupt, humbled, and he had passed him by. The King had won, yet
perhaps for once it was better to be the vanquished than to win at such
a price. Perhaps in the last years of his life George thought once more
of Brummell, as himself half blind, half mad, utterly friendless, he
went down to the grave unwept and unhonoured.
Others were more generous than the King. The Duke of Wellington invited
two successive Ministers for Foreign Affairs to do something for the
exile. Both hesitated on the ground that his Majesty might disapprove,
whereupon Wellington went to Windsor and spoke to the King, “who had
made objections, abusing Brummell--said he was a damned fellow and
had behaved very ill to him (the old story--_moi_, _moi_, _moi_); but
after having let him run his tether, he had at last extracted his
consent.” Still, nothing was done until after Charles Greville was at
Calais in 1830: “There I had a long conversation with Brummell about
his consulship, and was moved by his account of his own distresses to
write to the Duke of Wellington and ask him to do what he could for
him. I found him in his old lodging, dressing--some pretty pieces of
old furniture in the room, an entire toilet of silver, and a large
green macaw perched on the back of a tattered silk chair with faded
gilding--full of gaiety, impudence, and misery.”
The consulate at Caen, to which a salary of four hundred a year was
attached, was secured for him. Brummell arranged that part of his
income should be set aside to pay his debts (which amounted to about
a thousand pounds), and his creditors allowed him to leave Calais.
He had not long been installed when he wrote a formal letter to
Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, stating that the place was
a sinecure and the duties so trifling that he should recommend its
abolition. It has never been made clear why he took this remarkable
step. Was it in the hope of being appointed to a better position? Was
it in the desire to evade the payment of his debts? Was it honesty?
Whatever the cause, his action recoiled on himself. Lord Palmerston was
regretfully compelled to take the consul at his word, and the place was
reduced.
Brummell continued to live at Caen; but, being without resources, he
sank deeper into debt, and in 1835 his creditors put him into prison.
For the last time his friends came to his assistance. William IV.
subscribed a hundred pounds. Palmerston gave twice that amount from
the public purse. Enough was obtained to secure his liberation and to
settle upon him an annuity of one hundred and twenty pounds. Soon he
sank into a state of imbecility, and he ended his days in the asylum
Bon Sauveur. He died on 30th March 1840.
A moral can easily be drawn from the story of this unfortunate man, and
many writers have dwelt upon the lesson it furnishes. Yet there were
many worse than he in the circle of which he was the arbiter. He lived
his life: he paid the price. Let him rest in peace.
With the departure from England of Brummell the cult of the dandy began
to decline. Count D’Orsay the Magnificent, however, galvanised it into
fashion for a while. “He is a grand creature,” Gronow described him;
“beautiful as the Apollo Belvedere in his outward form; full of health,
life, spirits, wit, and gaiety; radiant and joyous; the admired of all
admirers.”
He had an amusing _naïveté_ in speaking of his personal advantages.
“You know, my dear friend, I am not on a par with my antagonist,” he
said to his second on the eve of a duel. “He is a very ugly man, and if
I wound him in the face he won’t look much the worse for it; but on my
side it ought to be agreed that he shall not aim higher than my chest,
for if my face should be spoiled _ce serait vraiment dommage_.”
The dandies of a later day were but poor things--pinchbeck. Captain
Gronow, in his youth a _beau_ of no mean order, pours contempt upon
their pretensions in no measured terms. “How unspeakably odious--with a
few brilliant exceptions, such as Alvanley and others--were the dandies
of forty years ago [1822]! They were generally middle-aged, some even
elderly, men, had large appetites and weak digestions, gambled freely,
and had no luck. They hated everybody and abused everybody, and would
sit together in White’s bay window or the pit-boxes at the opera
weaving tremendous crammers. They swore a good deal, never laughed, had
their own particular slang, looked hazy after dinner, and had most of
them been patronised at one time or other by Brummell and the Prince
Regent.... They gloried in their shame, and believed in nothing good or
noble or elevated. Thank Heaven, that miserable race of used-up dandies
has long been extinct! May England never look upon their like again!”
The prayer may well be echoed. The bad influence of the dandies can
scarcely be over-estimated; and the effect upon their own class
of society was terrible. Their morals were contemptible, and they
were without principle. Prodigality was their creed, gambling their
religion. The list of those who died beggared is not much longer than
the list of those who died by their own hands. They indulged in no
manly exercises, and devoted their days to their personal decoration
and to the card-table. Extravagance of all kinds was fashionable.
Clothes, canes, snuff-boxes, must be expensive to be worthy of such
distinguished folk, whose sole aim it was to outvie each other. A
guinea was the least that could be given to the butler when dining out;
but this was an improvement upon the day when Pope, finding it cost
him five guineas in tips whenever he dined with the Duke of Montagu,
informed that nobleman he could not dine with him in future unless he
sent him an order for the tribute-money.
There was Wellesley Pole, who, after the opera, gave magnificent
dinners at his home at Wanstead, where rare dishes were served and the
greatest luxury obtained. He married Miss Tylney Pole, who brought him
fifty thousand a year; and he died a beggar. There was “Golden Ball”
Hughes, with forty thousand a year, who, when the excitements of the
gaming-room were not to be had, would play battledore and shuttlecock
through the whole night, backing himself for immense sums. He married
a beautiful Spanish _danseuse_, Mercandotti, who appeared in London in
1822. Whereupon Ainsworth made an epigram:
“The fair damsel is gone, and no wonder at all
That, bred to the dance, she is gone to a Ball.”
The honeymoon was spent at Oatlands, purchased from the Duke of York.
It was thought to be a foolish investment; but when Hughes fell upon
evil days he was able to sell the estate for a large sum, as the new
railway skirted it, and speculative builders were anxious to acquire
the land, and so some of his old prosperity returned. There was Lord
Fife, an intimate friend of the Regent’s, who spent forty thousand
pounds on Mademoiselle Noblet the dancer. A chapter would not suffice
for an account of the vicious and foolish habits of these men.
The clubs were then a far more important feature in social life
than they are to-day. They were accessible only to those who were
in society, which in those days was exclusive, and consisted of a
comparatively small body in which everyone knew everyone else, if not
personally, at least by name. There were then no clubs for professional
men save those of the first rank, or for merchants, or for the _hoi
polloi_.
In more or less direct rivalry with the clubs were some of the hotels,
and men such as Wellington, Nelson, Collingwood and Sir John Moore used
them as a meeting-place--at the beginning of the eighteenth century
about fifteen in number, not including, of course, the large coaching
inns, coffee, eating, and the _à la mode_ beef houses, most of which
had beds for customers. First and foremost of these, kept by a French
_chef_, Jacquiers, who had served Louis XVIII. and Lord Darnley, was
the Clarendon, built upon a portion of the gardens of Clarendon House,
between Bond Street and Albemarle Street, in each of which the hotel
had a frontage. This was the only place in England where a French
dinner was served that was worthy of mention in the same breath with
those obtainable in Paris at the Maison Doré or Rocher de Cancalle’s.
The prices were very high. Dinner cost three or four pounds a head,
and a bottle of claret or champagne was not obtainable under a guinea.
A suite of apartments was reserved for banquets, and it was in these
that the famous dinner, ordered by Count D’Orsay, was given to Lord
Chesterfield when he resigned the office of Master of the Buckhounds.
Covers were laid for thirty, and the bill, exclusive of wine, came to
one hundred and eighty guineas.
Limmer’s was another well-known hotel, the resort of the sporting world
and of rich country squires. It was gloomy and ill-kept, but renowned
for its plain English cooking and world-famous for gin-punch. The
clergy went to Ibbetson’s, naval men to Fladong’s in Oxford Street,
and army officers and men about town to Stephen’s in Bond Street. Most
of these hostelries had their regular frequenters, and strangers were
not, as a rule, encouraged to use them as a house of call.
Clubs were few in number. There was “The Club” of Johnson; the
Cocoa-Tree, which arose out of the Tory Chocolate House of Anne’s
reign; the Royal Naval Club, a favourite haunt of the Duke of Clarence;
and the Eccentrics, which numbered among its members such well-known
men as Fox, Sheridan, Lord Petersham, Brougham, Lord Melbourne, and
Theodore Hook. Graham’s was second rate; nor was Arthur’s in the
first flight. When Arthur died, his son-in-law, Mackreth, became the
proprietor. He prospered, became a member of Parliament in 1774, and
was afterwards knighted. His name is preserved in a very good epigram:
“When Mackreth served in Arthur’s crew,
He said to Rumbold, ‘Black my shoe’;
To which he answered, ‘Ay, Bob.’
But when return’d from India’s land,
And grown too proud to brook command,
He sternly answered, ‘Nay, Bob.’”[13]
[13] It was said Sir Thomas Rumbold was originally a waiter at White’s,
obtained an appointment in India, and rose to be Governor of Madras.
This, however, has been demonstrated to be merely a legend by his
descendant, Sir Horace Rumbold.
An institution of a somewhat different class was the Beefsteak Society,
which flourished so long ago as the early years of the eighteenth
century. The Prince of Wales became a member in 1785, when the number
of the Steaks was increased from twenty-four to twenty-five in order
to admit him; and subsequently the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex were
elected. The bill of fare was restricted to beefsteaks, and the
beverages to port wine and punch; but the cuisine on at least one
occasion left something to be desired, for when, in 1830, the English
Opera House was burnt down, Greville remarked in his diary: “I trust
the paraphernalia of the Beefsteak Club perished with the rest, for
the enmity I bear that society for the dinner they gave me last year.”
Charles Morris was the bard of the Beefsteak Society, and he has come
down to posterity on the strength of four lines:
“In town let me live then, in town let me die,
For in truth I can’t relish the country, not I.
If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,
Oh, give me the sweet, shady side of Pall Mall!”
In spite of his prayer, he spent the last years of his life in the
rural retreat of Brockham, in Surrey, in a little place presented to
him by his fellow-Steak, the Duke of Norfolk. He lived to the great age
of ninety-two, and was so hale and hearty and cheerful that, not long
before his death, Curran said to him, “Die when you will, Charles,
you will die in your youth.”
[Illustration: _Lumley S^t. George Skeffington Esq^r._]
The greatest club of its day was Almack’s, at 5 Pall Mall, founded
in 1740 by Macall, a Scotsman. This institution was nicknamed the
“Macaroni Club,” owing to the fashion of its members; and Gibbon
remarked that “the style of living, though somewhat expensive, is
exceedingly pleasant, and notwithstanding the rage of play, I have
found more entertainment and rational society here than in any other
club to which I belong.” The high play, which was the bane of half the
English aristocracy, ruined many members. The club fell upon evil days,
and was absorbed by Brooks’s.
White’s and Brooks’s took the place of Almack’s. The former,
established in 1698 as “White’s Chocolate-House,” five doors from the
bottom of the west side of St James’s Street, became a club in 1755,
when it moved to No. 38, on the opposite side of the street. It was
owned successively by Arthur Mackreth, John Martindale, and in 1812 by
Raggett, whose son eventually inherited it. Brooks’s was founded by a
wine merchant and money-lender of the name, who has been described by
Tickell in verses addressed to Sheridan, when Charles James Fox was to
give a supper at his rooms near the club:
“Derby shall send, if not his plate, his cooks;
And know, I’ve bought the best champagne from Brooks,
From liberal Brooks, whose speculative skill
Is hasty credit and a distant bill;
Who, nursed in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade,
Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid.”
Both clubs, although more or less instituted for the purpose of
gambling, were at first political. White’s, however, soon took
down the Tory flag and received members without reference to their
political opinions. Brooks’s, on the other hand, remained true to its
Whig traditions; and it was to counterbalance the influence of this
institution--the “Reform” of that time--that the Carlton Club was
organised by Lord Clanwilliam and others. These, with Boodles’, were
the great resorts of the dandies; and the bay window at White’s, when
Brummell was the lion, was one of the sights of the town. The Prince of
Wales was a member of Brooks’s; but when his boon companions Tarleton
and Jack Payne were blackballed he withdrew, and on his own account
founded a new club, of which the manager was Weltzie, his house-steward.
Watier’s, the great macao gambling-house, was founded in 1807; but play
was very high, and it lasted only for twelve years. According to Gronow
it came into existence in a somewhat curious way. When some members of
White’s and Brooks’s were dining at Carlton House, the Prince of Wales
asked what sort of dinners were served at these institutions. One of
the guests complained: “The eternal joints and beefsteaks, the boiled
fowl with oyster sauce, and an apple-tart. This is what we have, sir,
at our clubs, and very monotonous fare it is.” The Prince sent for
Watier, his _chef_, and asked if he would take a house and organise a
club-dinner. Watier was willing. The scheme was carried out, and the
club was famed for its exquisite cuisine.
Another and more circumstantial account of the founding of the club is
given by Raikes. He says it was originally instituted as a harmonic
meeting by the Maddochs, Calverts and Lord Headfort, who took a house
in Piccadilly, at the corner of Bolton Street, and engaged Watier as
master of the revels. “This destination of the club was soon changed.
The dinners were so _recherché_ and so much talked of in town that all
the young men of fashion and fortune became members of it. The catches
and glees were then superseded by cards and dice; the most luxurious
dinners were furnished at any price, as the deep play at night rendered
all charges a matter of indifference. Macao was the constant game, and
thousands passed from one to another with as much facility as marbles.”
The Duke of York was a member of Watier’s, and so too was Byron, who
christened it “The Dandy Club.”
Another member was Robert Bligh, whose eccentricities were already
verging upon insanity. One night, at the macao-table, Brummell was
losing heavily, and in an affected tone of tragedy he called to a
waiter to bring him a pistol. Thereupon Bligh, who was his _vis-à-vis_,
produced from his coat pockets a pair of loaded pistols, and laying
them on the table, said, “Mr Brummell, if you are really desirous to
put a period to your existence, I am extremely happy to offer you the
means without troubling the waiter.” The feelings of the members may be
imagined when the knowledge was forced upon them that in their midst
was a madman who carried loaded firearms.
Brummell, Raikes has recorded, was the supreme dictator at Watier’s,
“the club’s perpetual president.” At the height of his prosperity, one
night when he entered, the macao-table was full. Sheridan was there
trying his luck with a few pounds he could ill spare, for he had fallen
upon evil days. Brummell, whose good luck was notorious at this time,
offered to take Sheridan’s seat and go shares in his deal. He added
two hundred pounds in counters to the ten pounds in front of him, took
the cards, dealt, and in a quarter of an hour had won fifteen hundred
pounds. Then he left the table and divided his gains with Sheridan.
“Go home, Sheridan,” he said quietly; “go home and give your wife and
brats a supper, and never play again.” It is good to be able to record
a generous act, delicately done, of a much-abused man.
Of Brummell’s witty insolence mention has already been made, but the
laugh was once at least against him. He was at the card-table playing
with Combe the brewer, an Alderman who had passed the chair. “Come,
Mashtub,” he said, being the caster, “what do you set?” “Twenty-five
guineas.” “Well, then, have at the mare’s pony” (twenty-five guineas).
The game progressed, and Brummell won twelve times in succession.
“Thank you, Alderman,” he said; “for the future I shall never drink any
porter but yours.” “I wish, sir,” retorted Combe, “that every other
blackguard in London would say the same.”
Everybody played cards in those days. Even at the quiet Court of
“Farmer” George the tables were set out in the Queen’s drawing-rooms.
Ladies gambled with as much zest as their husbands and brothers,
and at the end of the eighteenth century several held gaming-tables.
“Faro goes on as briskly as ever; those who have not fortune enough
of their own to live on have recourse to this profitable game in
order to raise contributions on their friends,” wrote Anthony Storer
to Lord Auckland in 1791. “The ladies are all embarked in banks. Mrs
Strutt, Lady Archer, Mrs Hobart, Lady Elizabeth Luttrell (sister of
the Duchess of Cumberland), are avowed bankers; others, I suppose,
are secretly concerned.” Information was laid against Lady Archer and
Lady Buckinghamshire, who were convicted and fined; and Lord Kenyon,
delivering judgment in another case, actually declared that if any
titled ladies were found guilty of the offence before him they should
stand in the pillory. No one was bold enough to test the sincerity of
the threat. As _The Morning Post_ put it in its issue for 15th January
1800: “Society has reason to rejoice in the complete downfall of the
Faro Dames who were so long the disgrace of human nature. Their _die_
is cast, and their _odd tricks_ avail no longer. The _game_ is up, and
very few of them have _cut_ with _honours_.”
Play was taken very seriously, for the stakes were always heavy, and
conversation was resented. Sir Philip Francis came to Brooks’s wearing
for the first time the ribbon of the Order of the Bath, for which
Fox had recommended him. “So this is the way they have rewarded you
at last,” remarked Roger Wilbraham, coming up to the whist-table.
“They have given you a little bit of red ribbon for your services, Sir
Philip, have they? A pretty bit of red ribbon to hang about your neck;
and that satisfies you, does it? Now, I wonder what I shall have. What
do you think they will give me, Sir Philip?” “A halter, I trust and
hope!” roared the infuriated player.
It was at Almack’s, and later at White’s, Brooks’s, Weltzie’s and
Watier’s, that the heaviest play prevailed. It is no exaggeration
to say that during the long sittings at macao, hazard and faro many
tens of thousands changed hands. Nelson won three hundred pounds at a
gaming-table when he was seventeen; but he was so horrified when he
reflected if he had lost he could not have paid that he never played
again. Pitt gambled, and George Selwyn, and Fox, who was always unlucky.
“At Almack’s, of pigeons I’m told there are flocks,
But it’s thought the completest is one Mr Fox.
If he touches a card, if he rattles a box,
Away fly the guineas of this Mr Fox.”
Fox lost two hundred thousand pounds in a night. Once he played for
twenty-two hours and lost five hundred pounds an hour. It was he who
said that the greatest pleasure in life, after winning, was losing.
His bad luck was notorious, and Walpole wondered what he would do
when he had sold the estates of all his friends. How Fox contrived
to make a great reputation as a statesman, considering his mode of
life, is truly remarkable. It was noticed that he did not shine in
the debate on the Thirty-Nine Articles (6th February 1772). Walpole
thought it could not be wondered at. “He had sat up playing at hazard
at Almack’s from Tuesday evening, the 4th, till five in the afternoon
of Wednesday, 5th. An hour before, he had recovered twelve thousand
pounds that he had lost, and by dinner, which was at five o’clock, he
had ended losing eleven thousand pounds. On the Thursday he spoke in
the above debate, went to dinner at half-past eleven at night, from
there to White’s, where he drank till seven the next morning; thence to
Almack’s, where he won six thousand pounds, and between three and four
in the afternoon he set out for Newmarket. His brother Stephen lost ten
thousand pounds two nights after, and Charles eleven thousand pounds
more on the 13th, so that in three nights the two brothers, the eldest
not twenty-five, lost thirty-two thousand pounds.” One night when Fox
had been terribly unlucky, Topham Beauclerk followed him to his rooms
to offer consolation, expecting to find him perhaps stretched on the
floor bewailing his losses, perhaps plunged into moody despair. He was
surprised to find him reading Herodotus. “What would you have me do?”
he asked his astonished visitor. “I have lost my last shilling.”
“But, hark! the voice of battle shouts from far,
The Jews and Macaronis are at war
The Jews prevail, and thund’ring from the stocks,
They seize, they bind, they circumcise Charles Fox.”