was either a treasury porter, or a confectioner, or something else.[10]
At any rate he let lodgings in Bury Street, and whether from the fact
that his wife did not purloin her lodgers' tea and sugar, or from some
other cause, he managed to ingratiate himself with one of them--who
afterwards became Lord Liverpool--so thoroughly, that through his
influence he obtained for his son the post of Private Secretary to Lord
North. Nothing could have been more fortunate, except, perhaps, the
son's next move, which was to take in marriage the daughter of
Richardson, the owner of a well-known lottery-office. Between the
lottery of office and the lottery of love, Brummell _père_ managed to
make a very good fortune. At his death he left as much as £65,000 to be
divided among his three children--Raikes says as much as £30,000
a-piece--so that the Beau, if not a fool, ought never to have been a
pauper.
[10: Mr. Jesse says that the Beau's grandfather was a servant of Mr.
Charles Monson, brother to the first Lord Monson.]
George Bryan Brummell, the second son of this worthy man, honoured by
his birth the 7th of June, 1778. No anecdotes of his childhood are
preserved, except that he once cried because he could not eat any more
damson tart. In later years he would probably have thought damson tart
'very vulgar.' He first turns up at Eton at the age of twelve, and even
there commences his distinguished career, and is known as 'Buck
Brummell.' The boy showed himself decidedly father to the man here.
Master George was not vulgar enough, nor so imprudent, it may be added,
as to fight, row, or play cricket, but he distinguished himself by the
introduction of a gold buckle in the white stock, by never being
flogged, and by his ability in toasting cheese. We do not hear much of
his classical attainments.
The very gentlemanly youth was in due time passed on to Oriel College,
Oxford. Here he distinguished himself by a studied indifference to
college discipline and an equal dislike to studies. He condescended to
try for the Newdigate Prize poem, but his genius leaned far more to the
turn of a coat-collar than that of a verse, and, unhappily for the
British poets, their ranks were not to be dignified by the addition of
this illustrious man. The Newdigate was given to another; and so, to
punish Oxford, the competitor left it and poetry together, after having
adorned the old quadrangle of Oriel for less than a year.
He was now a boy of seventeen, and a very fine boy, too. To judge from a
portrait taken in later life, he was not strictly handsome; but he is
described as tall, well built, and of a slight and graceful figure.
Added to this, he had got from Eton and Oxford, if not much learning,
many a well-born friend, and he was toady enough to cultivate those of
better, and to dismiss those of less distinction. He was, through life,
a celebrated 'cutter,' and Brummell's cut was as much admired--by all
but the _cuttee_--as Brummel's coat. Then he had some £25,000 as capital
and how could he best invest it? He consulted no stockbroker on this
weighty point; he did not even buy a shilling book of advice such as we
have seen advertised for those who do not know what to do with their
money. The question was answered in a moment by the young worldling of
sixteen: he would enter a crack regiment and invest his guineas in the
thousand per cents. of fashionable life.
His namesake, the Regent, was now thirty-two, and had spent those years
of his life in acquiring the honorary title of the 'first gentleman of
Europe' by every act of folly, debauch, dissipation, and degradation
which a prince can conveniently perpetrate. He was the hero of London
society, which adored and backbit him alternately, and he was precisely
the man whom the boy Brummell would worship. The Regent was colonel of a
famous regiment of fops--the 10th Hussars. It was the most expensive,
the most impertinent, the best-dressed, the worst-moralled regiment in
the British army. Its officers, many of them titled, all more or less
distinguished in the trying campaigns of London seasons, were the
intimates of the Prince-Colonel. Brummell aspired to a cornetcy in this
brilliant regiment, and obtained it; nor that alone; he secured, by his
manners, o his dress, or his impudence, the favour and companionship--
friendship we cannot say--of the prince who commanded it.
By this step his reputation was made, and it was only necessary to keep
it up. He had an immense fund of good nature, and, as long as his money
lasted, of good spirits, too. Good sayings--that is, witty if not wise--
are recorded of him, and his friends pronounce him a charming companion.
Introduced, therefore, into the highest circles in England, he could
scarcely fail to succeed. Young Cornet Brummell became a great favourite
with the fair.
His rise in the regiment was of course rapid: in three years he was at
the head of a troop. The onerous duties of a military life, which
vacillated between Brighton and London, and consisted chiefly in making
oneself agreeable in the mess-room, were too much for our hero. He
neglected parade, or arrived too late: it was such a bore to have to
dress in a hurry. It is said that he knew the troop he commanded only by
the peculiar nose of one of the men, and that when a transfer of men had
once been made, rode up to the wrong troop, and supported his mistake by
pointing to the nose in question. No fault, however, was found with the
Regent's favourite, and Brummell might have risen to any rank if he
could have supported the terrific labour of dressing for parade. Then,
too, there came wars and rumours of wars, and our gallant captain
shuddered at the vulgarity of shedding blood: the supply of
smelling-salts would never have been liberal enough to keep him from
fainting on the battle-field. It is said, too, that the regiment was
ordered to Manchester. Could anything be more gross or more ill-bred?
The idea of figuring before the wives and daughters of cotton-spinners
was too fearful; and from one cause or another our brave young captain
determined to retire, which he did in 1798.
It was now, therefore, that he commenced the profession of a beau, and
as he is the Prince of Beaux, as his patron was the Beau of Princes, and
as his fame has spread to France and Germany, if only as the inventor of
the trouser; and as there is no man who on getting up in the morning
does not put on his clothes with more or less reflection as to whether
they are the right ones to put on, and as beaux have existed since the
days of the emperor of beaux, Alexander the Macedonian, and will
probably exist to all time, let us rejoice in the high honour of being
permitted to describe how this illustrious genius clothed his poor
flesh, and made the most of what God had given him--a body and legs.
The private life of Brummell would in itself serve as a book of manners
and habits. The two were his profoundest study; but, alas! his impudence
marred the former, and the latter can scarcely be imitated in the
present day. Still as a great example he is yet invaluable, and must be
described in all detail.
His morning toilette was a most elaborate affair. Never was Brummell
guilty of _déshabille_. Like a true man of business, he devoted the best
and earliest hours--and many of them too--to his profession, namely--
dressing. His dressing-room was a studio, in which he daily prepared
that elaborate portrait of George Brummell which was to be exhibited for
a few hours in the club-rooms and drawing-rooms of town, only to be
taken to pieces again, and again made up for the evening. Charles I.
delighted to resort of a morning to the studio of Vandyck, and to watch
his favourite artist's progress. The Regent George was no less devoted
to art, for we are assured by Mr. Raikes that he often visited his
favourite beau in the morning to watch his toilet, and would sometimes
stay so late that he would send his horses away, insisting on Brummell
giving him a quiet dinner, 'which generally ended in a deep potation.'
There are, no doubt, many fabulous myths floating about concerning this
illustrious man; and his biographer, Captain Jesse, seems anxious to
defend him from the absurd stories of French writers, who asserted that
he employed two glovers to covers his hands, to one of whom were
intrusted the thumbs, to the other the fingers and hand, and three
barbers to dress his hair, while his boots were polished with champagne,
his cravats designed by a celebrated portrait painter, and so forth.
These may be pleasant inventions, but Captain Jesse's own account of his
toilet, even when the Beau was broken, and living in elegant poverty
abroad, is quite absurd enough to render excusable the ingenious
exaggerations of the foreign writer.
The _batterie de toilette_, we are told, was of silver, and included a
spitting-dish, for its owner said 'he could not spit into clay.'
Napoleon shaved himself, but Brummell was not quite great enough to do
that, just as my Lord So-and-so walks to church on Sunday, while his
neighbour, the Birmingham millionaire, can only arrive there in a
chariot and pair.
His ablutions took no less than two whole hours! What knowledge might
have been gained, what good done in the time he devoted to rubbing his
lovely person with a hair-glove! Cleanliness was, in fact, Brummell's
religion; perhaps because it is generally set down as 'next to
godliness,' a proximity with which the Beau was quite satisfied, for he
never attempted to pass on to that next stage. Poor fool, he might rub
every particle of moisture off the skin of his body--he might be clean
as a kitten--but he could not and did not purify his mind with all this
friction; and the man who would have fainted to see a black speck upon
his shirt, was not at all shocked at the indecent conversation in which
he and his companions occasionally indulged.
The body cleansed, the face had next to be brought up as near perfection
as nature would allow. With a small looking-glass in one hand, and
tweezers in the other, he carefully removed the tiniest hairs that he
could discover on his cheeks or chin, enduring the pain like a martyr.
Then came the shirt, which was in his palmy days changed three times a
day, and then in due course the great business of the cravat. Captain
Jesse's minute account of the process of tying this can surely be relied
on, and presents one of the most ludicrous pictures of folly and vanity
that can be imagined. Had Brummell never lived, and a novelist or
play-writer described the toilet which Captain Jesse affirms to have
been his daily achievement, he would have had the critics about him with
the now common phrase--'This book is a tissue, not only of
improbabilities, but of actual impossibilities.' The collar, then, was
so large, that in its natural condition it rose high above the wearer's
head, and some ingenuity was required to reduce it by delicate folds to
exactly that height which the Beau judged to be correct. Then came the
all-majestic white neck-tie, a foot in breadth. It is not to be supposed
that Brummell had the neck of a swan or a camel--far from it. The worthy
fool had now to undergo, with admirable patience, the mysterious process
known to our papas as 'creasing down.' The head was thrown back, as if
ready for a dentist; the stiff white tie applied to the throat, and
gradually wrinkled into half its actual breadth by the slow downward
movement of the chin. When all was done, we can imagine that comfort was
sacrificed to elegance, as it was then considered, and that the sudden
appearance of Venus herself could not have induced the deluded
individual to turn his head in a hurry.
It is scarcely profitable to follow this lesser deity into all the
details of his self-adornment. It must suffice to say that he affected
an extreme neatness and simplicity of dress, every item of which was
studied and discussed for many an hour. In the mornings he was still
guilty of hessians and pantaloons, or 'tops' and buckskins, with a blue
coat and buff waistcoat. The costume is not so ancient, but that one may
tumble now and then on a country squire who glories in it and denounces
us juveniles as 'bears' for want of a similar precision. Poor Brummell,
he cordially hated the country squires, and would have wanted rouge for
a week if he could have dreamed that his pet attire would, some fifty
years later, be represented only by one of that class which he was so
anxious to exclude from Watier's.
But it was in the evening that he displayed his happy invention of the
trouser, or rather its introduction from Germany. This article he wore
very tight to the leg, and buttoned over the ankle, exactly as we see it
in old prints of 'the fashion.' Then came the wig, and on that the hat.
It is a vain and thankless task to defend Brummell from the charge of
being a dandy. If one proof of his devotion to dress were wanted, it
would be the fact that this hat, once stuck jauntily on one side of the
wig, was never removed in the street even to salute a lady--so that,
inasmuch as he sacrificed his manners to his appearance, he may be
fairly set down as a fop.
The perfect artist could not be expected to be charitable to the less
successful. Dukes and princes consulted him on the make of their coats,
and discussed tailors with him with as much solemnity as divines might
dispute on a mystery of religion. Brummell did not spare them.
'Bedford,' said he, to the duke of that name, fingering a new garment
which his grace had submitted to his inspection, 'do you call this
_thing_ a coat?' Again, meeting a noble acquaintance who wore shoes in
the morning, he stopped and asked him what he had got upon his feet.
'Oh! shoes are they,' quoth he, with a well bred sneer, 'I thought they
were slippers.' He was even ashamed of his own brother, and when the
latter came to town, begged him to keep to the back streets till his new
clothes were sent home. Well might his friend the Regent say, that he
was 'a mere tailor's dummy to hang clothes upon.'
But in reality Brummell was more. He had some sharpness and some taste.
But the former was all brought out in sneers, and the latter in
snuff-boxes. His whole mind could have been put into one of these. He
had a splendid collection of them, and was famous for the grace with
which he opened the lid of his box with the thumb of the hand that
carried it, while he delicately took his pinch with two fingers of the
other. This and his bow were his chief acquirements, and his reputation
for manners was based on the distinction of his manner. He could not
drive in a public conveyance, but he could be rude to a well-meaning
lady; he never ate vegetables--_one_ pea he confessed to--but he did not
mind borrowing from his friends money which he knew he could never
return. He was a great gentleman, a gentleman of his patron's school--in
short, a well-dressed snob. But one thing is due to Brummell: he made
the assumption of being 'a gentleman' so thoroughly ridiculous that few
men of keen sense care now for the title: at least, not as a
class-distinction. Nor is it to be wondered at; when your tailor's
assistant is a 'gentleman,' and would be mightily disgusted at being
called anything else, you, with your indomitable pride of caste, can
scarcely care for the patent.
Brummell's claim to the title was based on his walk, his coat, his
cravat, and the grace with which he indulged, as Captain Jesse
delightfully calls it, 'the nasal pastime' of taking snuff, all the rest
was impudence; and many are the anecdotes--most of them familiar as
household words--which are told of his impertinence. The story of Mrs.
Johnson-Thompson is one of those oft-told tales, which, from having
become Joe Millers, have gradually passed out of date and been almost
forgotten. Two rival party-givers rejoiced in the aristocratic names of
Johnson and Thompson. The former lived near Finsbury, the latter near
Grosvenor Square, and Mrs. Thompson was somehow sufficiently fashionable
to expect the Regent himself at her assemblies. Brummell among other
impertinences, was fond of going where he was not invited or wanted. The
two rivals gave a ball on the same evening, and a card was sent to the
Beau by her of Finsbury. He chose to go to the Grosvenor Square house,
in hopes of meeting the Regent, then his foe. Mrs. Thompson was justly
disgusted, and with a vulgarity quite deserved by the intruder, told him
he was not invited. The Beau made a thousand apologies, hummed, hawed,
and drew a card from his pocket. It was the rival's invitation, and was
indignantly denounced. 'Dear me, how very unfortunate,' said the Beau,
'but you know Johnson and Thompson--I mean Thompson and Johnson are so
very much alike. Mrs. Johnson-Thompson, I wish you a very good evening.'
Perhaps there is no vulgarity greater than that of rallying people on
their surnames, but our exquisite gentleman had not wit enough to invent
one superior to such a puerile amusement. Thus, on one occasion, he woke
up at three in the morning a certain Mr. Snodgrass, and when the worthy
put his head out of the window in alarm, said quietly, 'Pray, sir, is
your name Snodgrass?'--'Yes, sir, it is Snodgrass.' 'Snodgrass--
Snodgrass--it is a very singular name. Good-bye, Mr. _Snodgrass_.' There
was more wit in his remark to Poodle Byng, a well-known puppy, whom he
met one day driving in the Park with a French dog in his curricle. 'Ah,'
cried the Beau, 'how d'ye do, Byng? a family vehicle, I see.'
It seems incredulous to modern gentlemen that such a man should have
been tolerated even at a club. Take, for instance, his vulgar treatment
of Lord Mayor Combe, whose name we still see with others over many a
public-house in London, and who was then a most prosperous brewer and
thriving gambler. At Brookes' one evening the Beau and the Brewer were
playing at the same table, 'Come, _Mash-tub_', cried the 'gentleman,'
'what do you set?' Mash-tub unresentingly set a pony, and the Beau won
twelve of him in succession. Pocketing his cash, he made him a bow, and
exclaimed, 'Thank you, Alderman, in future I shall drink no porter but
yours.' But Combe was worthy of his namesake, Shakspere's friend, and
answered very aptly, 'I wish, sir, that every _other_ blackguard in
London would tell me the same.'
Then again, after ruining a young fool of fortune at the tables, and
being reproached by the youth's father for leading his son astray, he
replied with charming affectation, 'Why, sir, I did all I could for him.
I once gave him my arm all the way from White's to Brookes'!'
When Brummell really wanted a dinner, while at Calais, he could not give
up his impertinence for the sake of it. Lord Westmoreland called on him,
and, perhaps out of compassion, asked him to dine at _three o'clock_
with him. 'Your Lordship is very kind,' said the Beau, 'but really I
could not _feed_ at such an hour.' Sooner or later he was glad to _feed_
with any one who was toady enough to ask him. He was once placed in a
delightfully awkward position from having accepted the invitation of a
charitable but vulgar-looking Britisher at Calais. He was walking with
Lord Sefton, when the individual passed and nodded familiarly. 'Who's
your friend, Brummell?'--'Not mine, he must be bowing to you.' But
presently the man passed again, and this time was cruel enough to
exclaim, 'Don't forget, Brum, don't forget--goose at four!' The poor
Beau must have wished the earth to open under him. He was equally
imprudent in the way in which he treated an old acquaintance who arrived
at the town to which he had retreated, and of whom he was fool enough to
be ashamed. He generally took away their characters summarily, but on
one occasion was frightened almost out of his wits by being called to
account for this conduct. An officer who had lost his nose in an
engagement in the Peninsula, called on him, and in very strong terms
requested to know why the Beau had reported that he was a retired
hatter. His manner alarmed the rascal, who apologized, and protested
that there must be a mistake; he had never said so. The officer retired,
and as he was going, Brummell added: 'Yes, it must be a mistake, for now
I think of it, I never dealt with a hatter without a nose.'
So much for the good breeding of this friend of George IV. and the Duke
of York.
His affectation was quite as great as his impudence: and he won the
reputation of fastidiousness--nothing gives more prestige--by dint of
being openly rude. No hospitality or kindness melted him, when he
thought he could gain a march. At one dinner, not liking the champagne,
he called to the servant to give him 'some more of that cider:' at
another, to which he was invited in days when a dinner was a charity to
him, after helping himself to a wing of capon, and trying a morsel of
it, he took it up in his napkin, called to his dog--he was generally
accompanied by a puppy, even to parties, as if one at a time were not
enough--and presenting it to him, said aloud, 'Here, _Atons_, try if you
can get your teeth through that, for I'm d--d if I can!'
To the last he resented offers of intimacy from those whom he considered
his inferiors, and as there are ladies enough everywhere, he had ample
opportunity for administering rebuke to those who pressed into his
society. On one occasion he was sauntering with a friend at Caen under
the window of a lady who longed for nothing more than to have the great
_arbiter elegantiarum_ at her house. When seeing him beneath, she put
her head out, and called out to him, 'Good evening, Mr. Brummell, won't
you come up and take tea?' The Beau looked up with extreme severity
expressed on his face, and replied, 'Madam, you take medicine--you take
a walk--you take a liberty--but you _drink_ tea,' and walked on, having,
it may be hoped, cured the lady of her admiration.
In the life of such a man there could not of course be much striking
incident. He lived for 'society,' and the whole of his story consists in
his rise and fall in that narrow world. Though admired and sought after
by the women--so much so that at his death his chief assets were locks
of hair, the only things he could not have turned into money--he never
married. Wedlock might have sobered him, and made him a more sensible,
if not more respectable member of society, but his advances towards
matrimony never brought him to the crisis. He accounted for one
rejection in his usual way. 'What could I do, my dear _fellar_,' he
lisped, 'when I actually saw Lady Mary eat cabbage?' At another time he
is said to have induced some deluded young creature to elope with him
from a ball-room, but managed the affair so ill, that the lovers (?)
were caught in the next street, and the affair came to an end. He wrote
rather ecstatic love-letters to Lady Marys and Miss ----s, gave married
ladies advice on the treatment of their spouses and was tender to
various widows, but though he went on in this way through life, he was
never, it would seem, in love, from the mere fact that he was incapable
of passion.
Perhaps he was too much of a woman to care much for women. He was
certainly egregiously effeminate. About the only creatures he could love
were poodles. When one of his dogs, from over-feeding, was taken ill, he
sent for two dog-doctors, and consulted very gravely with them on the
remedies to be applied. The canine physicians came to the conclusion
that she must be bled. 'Bled!' said Brummell, in horror; 'I shall leave
the room: inform me when the operation is over.' When the dog died, he
shed tears--probably the only ones he had shed since childhood: and
though at that time receiving money from many an old friend in England,
complained, with touching melancholy, 'that he had lost the only friend
he had!' His grief lasted three whole days, during which he shut himself
up, and would see no one; but we are not told that he ever thus mourned
over any human being.