The King of Bath.--Nash at Oxford.--'My Boy Dick.'--Offers of
Knighthood.--Doing Penance at York.--Days of Folly.--A very
Romantic Story.--Sickness and Civilization.--Nash descends upon
Bath.--Nash's Chef-d'oeuvre.--The Ball.--Improvements in the
Pump-room, &c.--A Public Benefactor.--Life at Bath in Nash's
time.--A Compact with the Duke of Beaufort.--Gaming at
Bath.--Anecdotes of Nash.--'Miss Sylvia.'--A Generous
Act.--Nash's Sun setting.--A Panegyric.--Nash's Funeral.--His
Characteristics.
There is nothing new under the sun, said Walpole, by way of a very
original remark. 'No,' whispered George Selwyn, 'nor under the grandson,
either.'
Mankind, as a body, has proved its silliness in a thousand ways, but in
none, perhaps, so ludicrously as in its respect for a man's coat. He is
not always a fool that knows the value of dress; and some of the wisest
and greatest of men have been dandies of the first water. King Solomon
was one, and Alexander the Great was another; but there never was a more
despotic monarch, nor one more humbly obeyed by his subjects, than the
King of Bath, and he won his dominions by the cut of his coat. But as
Hercules was killed by a dress-shirt, so the beaux of the modern world
have generally ruined themselves by their wardrobes, and brought remorse
to their hearts, or contempt from the very people who once worshipped
them. The husband of Mrs. Damer, who appeared in a new suit twice a-day,
and whose wardrobe sold for £15,000, blew his brains out at a
coffee-house. Beau Fielding, Beau Nash, and Beau Brummell all expiated
their contemptible vanity in obscure old age of want and misery. As the
world is full of folly, the history of a fool is as good a mirror to
hold up to it as another; but in the case of Beau Nash the only question
is, whether he or his subjects were the greater fools. So now for a
picture of as much folly as could well be crammed into that hot basin in
the Somersetshire hills, of which more anon.
It is a hard thing for a man not to have had a father--harder still,
like poor Savage, to have one whom he cannot get hold of; but perhaps it
is hardest of all, when you have a father, and that parent a very
respectable man, to be told that you never had one. This was Nash's
case, and his father was so little known, and so seldom mentioned, that
the splendid Beau was thought almost to have dropped from the clouds,
ready dressed and powdered. He dropped in reality from anything but a
heavenly place--the shipping town of Swansea: so that Wales can claim
the honour of having produced the finest beau of his age.
Old Nash was, perhaps, a better gentleman than his son; but with far
less pretension. He was a partner in a glass-manufactory. The Beau, in
after-years, often got rallied on the inferiority of his origin, and the
least obnoxious answer he ever made was to Sarah of Marlborough, as rude
a creature as himself, who told him he was ashamed of his parentage.
'No, madam,' replied the King of Bath, 'I seldom mention my father, in
company, not because I have any reason to be ashamed of him, but because
he has some reason to be ashamed of me.' Nash, though a fop and a fool,
was not a bad-hearted man, as we shall see. And if there were no other
redeeming point in his character, it is a great deal to say for him,
that in an age of toadyism, he treated rank in the same manner as he did
the want of it, and did his best to remove the odious distinctions which
pride would have kept up in his dominions. In fact, King Nash may be
thanked for having, by his energy in this respect, introduced into
society the first elements of that middle class which is found alone in
England.
Old Nash--whose wife, by the way, was niece to that Colonel Poyer who
defended Pembroke Castle in the days of the first Revolution--was one of
those silly men who want to make gentlemen of their sons, rather than
good men. He had his wish. His son Richard was a very fine gentleman, no
doubt; but, unfortunately, the same circumstances that raised him to
that much coveted position, also made him a gambler and a profligate.
Oh! foolish papas, when will you learn that a Christian snob is worth
ten thousand irreligious gentlemen? When will you be content to bring up
your boys for heaven rather than for the brilliant world? Nash, senior,
sent his son first to school and then to Oxford, to be made a gentleman
of. Richard was entered at Jesus College, the haunt of the Welsh. In my
day, this quiet little place was celebrated for little more than the
humble poverty of its members, one-third of whom rejoiced in the
cognomen of Jones. They were not renowned for cleanliness, and it was a
standing joke with us silly boys, to ask at the door for 'that Mr. Jones
who had a tooth-brush.' If the college had the same character then, Nash
must have astonished its dons, and we are not surprised that in his
first year they thought it better to get rid of him.
His father could ill afford to keep him at Oxford, and fondly hoped he
would distinguish himself. 'My boy Dick' did so at the very outset, by
an offer of marriage to one of those charming sylphs of that academical
city, who are always on the look-out for credulous undergraduates. The
affair was discovered, and Master Richard, who was not seventeen, was
removed from the University.[19] Whether he ever, in after-life, made
another offer, I know not, but there is no doubt that he _ought_ to have
been married, and that the connections he formed in later years were far
more disreputable than his first love affairs.
The worthy glass manufacturer, having failed to make his son a gentleman
in one way, took the best step to make him a blackguard, and, in spite
of the wild inclinations he had already evinced, bought him a commission
in the army. In this new position the incipient Beau did everything but
his duty; dressed superbly, but would not be in time for parade, spent
more money than he had, but did not obey orders; and finally, though not
expelled from the army, he found it convenient to sell his commission,
and return home, after spending the proceeds.
Papa was now disgusted, and sent the young Hopeless to shift for
himself. What could a well-disposed, handsome youth do to keep body and,
not soul, but clothes together? He had but one talent, and that was for
dress. Alas, for our degenerate days! When we are pitched upon our own
bottoms, we must work; and that is a highly ungentlemanly thing to do.
But in the beginning of the last century, such a degrading resource was
quite unnecessary. There were always at hand plenty of establishments
where a youth could obtain the necessary funds to pay his tailor, if
fortune favoured him; and if not, he could follow the fashion of the
day, and take to what the Japanese call 'the happy Despatch.' Nash
probably suspected that he had no brains to blow out, and he determined
the more resolutely to make fortune his mistress. He went to the
gaming-table, and turned his one guinea into ten, and his ten into a
hundred, and was soon blazing about in gold lace, and a new sword, the
very delight of dandies.
He had entered his name, by way of excuse, at the Temple, and we can
quite believe that he ate all the requisite dinners, though it is not so
certain that he paid for them. He soon found that a fine coat is not so
very far beneath a good brain in worldly estimation, and when, on the
accession of William the Third, the Templars, according to the old
custom, gave his Majesty a banquet, Nash, as a promising Beau, was
selected to manage the establishment. It was his first experience of the
duties of an M.C., and he conducted himself so ably on this occasion
that the king even offered to make a knight of him. Probably Master
Richard thought of his empty purse, for he replied with some of that
assurance which afterwards stood him in such good stead, 'Please your
majesty, if you intend to make me a knight, I wish I may be one of your
poor knights of Windsor, and then I shall have a fortune, at least able
to support my title.' William did not see the force of this argument,
and Mr. Nash remained Mr. Nash till the day of his death. He had another
chance of the title, however, in days when he could have better
maintained it, but again he refused. Queen Anne once asked him why he
declined knighthood. He replied: 'There is Sir William Read, the
mountebank, who has just been knighted, and I should have to call him
"brother."' The honour was, in fact, rather a cheap one in those days,
and who knows whether a man who had done such signal service to his
country did not look forward to a peerage? Worse men than even Beau Nash
have had it.
Well, Nash could afford to defy royalty, for he was to be himself a
monarch of all he surveyed, and a good deal more; but before we follow
him to Bath, let us give the devil his due--which, by the way, he
generally gets--and tell a pair of tales in the Beau's favour.
Imprimis, his accounts at the Temple were £10 deficient. Now I don't
mean that Nash was not as great a liar as most of his craft, but the
truth of this tale rests on the authority of the 'Spectator,' though
Nash took delight in repeating it.
'Come hither, young man,' said the Benchers, coolly: 'Whereunto this
deficit?'
'Pri'thee, good masters,' quoth Nash, 'that £10 was spent on making a
man happy.'
'A man happy, young sir, pri'thee explain.'
'Odds donners,' quoth Nash, 'the fellow said in my hearing that his wife
and bairns were starving, and £10 would make him the happiest man _sub
sole_, and on such an occasion as His Majesty's accession, could I
refuse it him?'
Nash was, proverbially more generous than just. He would not pay a debt
if he could help it, but would give the very amount to the first friend
that begged it. There was much ostentation in this, but then my friend
Nash _was_ ostentatious. One friend bothered him day and night for £20
that was owing to him, and he could not get it. Knowing his debtor's
character, he hit, at last, on a happy expedient, and sent a friend to
_borrow_ the money, 'to relieve his urgent necessities.' Out came the
bank note, before the story of distress was finished. The friend carried
it to the creditor, and when the latter again met Nash, he ought to have
made him a pretty compliment on his honesty.
Perhaps the King of Bath would not have tolerated in any one else the
juvenile frolics he delighted in after-years to relate of his own early
days. When at a loss for cash, he would do anything, but work, for a
fifty pound note, and having, in one of his trips, lost all his money
at York, the Beau undertook to 'do penance' at the minster door for that
sum. He accordingly arrayed himself--not in sackcloth and ashes--but in
an able-bodied blanket, and nothing else, and took his stand at the
porch, just at the hour when the dean would be going in to read service.
'He, ho,' cried that dignitary, who knew him, 'Mr. Nash in
masquerade?'--'Only a Yorkshire penance, Mr. Dean,' quoth the reprobate;
'for keeping bad company, too,' pointing therewith to the friends who
had come to see the sport.
This might be tolerated, but when in the eighteenth century a young man
emulates the hardiness of Godiva, without her merciful heart, we may not
think quite so well of him. Mr. Richard Nash, Beau Extraordinary to the
Kingdom of Bath, once rode through a village in that costume of which
even our first parent was rather ashamed, and that, too, on the back of
a cow! The wager was, I believe, considerable. A young Englishman did
something more respectable, yet quite as extraordinary, at Paris, not a
hundred years ago, for a small bet. He was one of the stoutest,
thickest-built men possible, yet being but eighteen, had neither whisker
nor moustache to masculate his clear English complexion. At the Maison
Dorée one night he offered to ride in the Champs Elysées in a lady's
habit, and not be mistaken for a man. A friend undertook to dress him,
and went all over Paris to hire a habit that would fit his round figure.
It was hopeless for a time, but at last a good-sized body was found, and
added thereto, an ample skirt. Félix dressed his hair with _mainte_
plats and a _net_. He looked perfect, but in coming out of the
hairdresser's to get into his fly, unconsciously pulled up his skirt and
displayed a sturdy pair of well-trousered legs. A crowd--there is always
a ready crowd in Paris--was waiting, and the laugh was general. This
hero reached the horse-dealer's--'mounted,' and rode down the Champs. 'A
very fine woman that,' said a Frenchman in the promenade, 'but what a
back she has!' It was in the return bet to this that a now well-known
diplomat drove a goat-chaise and six down the same fashionable resort,
with a monkey, dressed as a footman, in the back seat. The days of folly
did not, apparently end with Beau Nash.
There is a long lacuna in the history of this worthy's life, which may
have been filled up by a residence in a spunging-house, or by a
temporary appointment as billiard-marker; but the heroic Beau accounted
for his disappearance at this time in a much more romantic manner. He
used to relate that he was once asked to dinner on board of a man-of-war
under orders for the Mediterranean, and that such was the affection the
officers entertained for him, that, having made him drunk--no difficult
matter--they weighed anchor, set sail, and carried the successor of King
Bladud away to the wars. Having gone so far, Nash was not the man to
neglect an opportunity for imaginary valour. He therefore continued to
relate, that, in the apocryphal vessel, he was once engaged in a yet
more apocryphal encounter, and wounded in the leg. This was a little too
much for the good Bathonians to believe, but Nash silenced their doubts.
On one occasion, a lady who was present when he was telling this story,
expressed her incredulity.
'I protest, madam,' cried the Beau, lifting his leg up, 'it is true, and
if I cannot be believed, your ladyship may, if you please, receive
further information and feel the ball in my leg.'
Wherever Nash may have passed the intervening years, may be an
interesting speculation for a German professor, but is of little moment
to us. We find him again, at the age of thirty, taking first steps
towards the complete subjugation of the kingdom he afterwards ruled.
There is, among the hills of Somersetshire, a huge basin formed by the
river Avon, and conveniently supplied with a natural gush of hot water,
which can be turned on at any time for the cleansing of diseased bodies.
This hollow presents many curious anomalies; though sought for centuries
for the sake of health, it is one of the most unhealthily-situated
places in the kingdom; here the body and the pocket are alike cleaned
out, but the spot itself has been noted for its dirtiness since the days
of King Bladud's wise pigs; here, again, the diseased flesh used to be
healed, but the healthy soul within it speedily besickened: you came to
cure gout and rheumatism, and caught in exchange dice-fever.
The mention of those pigs reminds me that it would be a shameful
omission to speak of this city without giving the story of that
apocryphal British monarch, King Bladud. But let me be the one
exception; let me respect the good sense of the reader, and not insult
him by supposing him capable of believing a mythic jumble of kings and
pigs and dirty marshes, which he will, if he cares to, find at full
length in any 'Bath Guide'--price sixpence.
But whatever be the case with respect to the Celtic sovereign, there is,
I presume, no doubt, that the Romans were here, and probably the
centurians and tribunes cast the _alea_ in some pristine assembly-room,
or wagged their plumes in some well-built Pump-room, with as much spirit
of fashion as the full-bottomed-wig exquisites in the reign of King
Nash. At any rate Bath has been in almost every age a common centre for
health-seekers and gamesters--two antipodal races who always flock
together--and if it has from time to time declined, it has only been for
a period. Saxon churls and Norman lords were too sturdy to catch much
rheumatic gout; crusaders had better things to think of than their
imaginary ailments; good-health was in fashion under Plantagenets and
Tudors; doctors were not believed in; even empirics had to praise their
wares with much wit, and Morrison himself must have mounted a bank and
dressed in Astleyian costume in order to find a customer; sack and
small-beer were harmless, when homes were not comfortable enough to keep
earl or churl by the fireside, and 'out-of-doors' was the proper
drawing-room for a man: in short, sickness came in with civilization,
indisposition with immoral habits, fevers with fine gentlemanliness,
gout with greediness, and valetudinarianism--there _is_ no Anglo-Saxon
word for that--with what we falsely call refinement. So, whatever Bath
may have been to pampered Romans, who over-ate themselves, it had little
importance to the stout, healthy middle ages, and it was not till the
reign of Charles II. that it began to look up. Doctors and touters--the
two were often one in those days--thronged there, and fools were found
in plenty to follow them. At last the blessed countenance of portly Anne
smiled on the pig styes of King Bladud. In 1703 she went to Bath, and
from that time 'people of distinction' flocked there. The assemblage was
not perhaps very brilliant or very refined. The visitors danced on the
green, and played privately at hazard. A few sharpers found their way
down from London; and at last the Duke of Beaufort instituted an M.C. in
the person of Captain Webster--Nash's predecessor--whose main act of
glory was in setting up gambling as a public amusement. It remained for
Nash to make the place what it afterwards was, when Chesterfield could
lounge in the Pump-room and take snuff with the Beau; when Sarah of
Marlborough, Lord and Lady Hervey, the Duke of Wharton, Congreve, and
all the little-great of the day thronged thither rather to kill time
with less ceremony than in London, than to cure complaints more or less
imaginary.
The doctors were only less numerous than the sharpers; the place was
still uncivilized; the company smoked and lounged without etiquette, and
played without honour: the place itself lacked all comfort, all
elegance, and all cleanliness.
Upon this delightful place, the avatár of the God of Etiquette,
personified in Mr. Richard Nash, descended somewhere about the year
1705, for the purpose of regenerating the barbarians. He alighted just
at the moment that one of the doctors we have alluded to, in a fit of
disgust at some slight on the part of the town, was threatening to
destroy its reputation, or, as he politely expressed it, 'to throw a
toad into the spring.' The Bathonians were alarmed and in consternation,
when young Nash, who must have already distinguished himself as a
macaroni, stepped forward and offered to render the angry physician
impotent. 'We'll charm his toad out again with music,' quoth he. He
evidently thought very little of the watering-place, after his town
experiences, and prepared to treat it accordingly. He got up a band in
the Pump-room, brought thither in this manner the healthy as well as the
sick, and soon raised the renown of Bath as a resort for gaiety as well
as for mineral waters. In a word, he displayed a surprising talent for
setting everything and everybody to rights, and was, therefore, soon
elected, by tacit voting, the King of Bath.
He rapidly proved his qualifications for the position. First he secured
his Orphean harmony by collecting a band-subscription, which gave two
guineas a-piece to six performers; then he engaged an official pumper
for the Pump-room; and lastly, finding that the bathers still gathered
under a booth to drink their tea and talk their scandal, he induced one
Harrison to build assembly-rooms, guaranteeing him three guineas a week
to be raised by subscription.
All this demanded a vast amount of impudence on Mr. Nash's part, and
this he possessed to a liberal extent. The subscriptions flowed in
regularly, and Nash felt his power increase with his responsibility. So,
then, our minor monarch resolved to be despotic, and in a short time
laid down laws for the guests, which they obeyed most obsequiously. Nash
had not much wit, though a great deal of assurance, but these laws were
his _chef-d'oeuvre_. Witness some of them:--
1. 'That a visit of ceremony at first coming and another at going away,
are all that are expected or desired by ladies of quality and
fashion--except impertinents.
4. 'That no person takes it ill that any one goes to another's play or
breakfast, and not theirs--except captious nature.
5. 'That no gentleman give his ticket for the balls to any but
gentlewomen. N.B.--Unless he has none of his acquaintance.
6. 'That gentlemen crowding before the ladies at the ball, show ill
manners; and that none do so for the future--except such as respect
nobody but themselves.
9. 'That the younger ladies take notice how many eyes observe them.
N.B.--This does not extend to the _Have-at-alls_.
10. 'That all whisperers of lies and scandal be taken for their
authors.'
Really this law of Nash's must have been repealed some time or other at
Bath. Still more that which follows:--
11. 'That repeaters of such lies and scandal be shunned by all company,
except such as have been guilty of the same crime.'
There is a certain amount of satire in these Lycurgus statutes that
shows Nash in the light of an observer of society; but, query, whether
any frequenter of Bath would not have devised as good?
The dances of those days must have been somewhat tedious. They began
with a series of minuets, in which, of course, only one couple danced at
a time, the most distinguished opening the ball. These solemn
performances lasted about two hours, and we can easily imagine that the
rest of the company were delighted when the country dances, which
included everybody, began. The ball opened at six; the country dances
began at eight: at nine there was a lull for the gentlemen to offer
their partners tea; in due course the dances were resumed, and at eleven
Nash held up his hand to the musicians, and under no circumstances was
the ball allowed to continue after that hour. Nash well knew the value
of early hours to invalids, and he would not destroy the healing
reputation of Bath for the sake of a little more pleasure. On one
occasion the Princess Amelia implored him to allow one dance more. The
despot replied, that his laws were those of Lycurgus, and could not be
abrogated for any one. By this we see that the M.C. was already an
autocrat in his kingdom.
Nor is it to be supposed that his majesty's laws were confined to such
merely professional arrangements. Not a bit of it; in a very short time
his impudence gave him undenied right of interference with the coats and
gowns, the habits and manners, even the daily actions of his subjects,
for so the visitors at Bath were compelled to become. _Si parvis
componere magna recibit_, we may admit that the rise of Nash and that of
Napoleon were owing to similar causes. The French emperor found France
in a state of disorder, with which sensible people were growing more and
more disgusted; he offered to restore order and propriety; the French
hailed him, and gladly submitted to his early decrees; then, when he had
got them into the habit of obedience, he could make what laws he liked,
and use his power without fear of opposition. The Bath emperor followed
the same course, and it may be asked whether it does not demand as great
an amount of courage, assurance, perseverance, and administrative power
to subdue several hundreds of English ladies and gentlemen as to rise
supreme above some millions of French republicans. Yet Nash experienced
less opposition than Napoleon; Nash reigned longer, and had no infernal
machine prepared to blow him up.
Everybody was delighted with the improvements in the Pump-room, the
balls, the promenades, the chairmen--the _Rouge_ ruffians of the mimic
kingdom--whom he reduced to submission, and therefore nobody complained
when Emperor Nash went further, and made war upon the white aprons of
the ladies and the boots of the gentlemen. The society was in fact in a
very barbarous condition at the time, and people who came for pleasure
liked to be at ease. Thus ladies lounged into the balls in their
riding-hoods or morning dresses, gentlemen in boots, with their pipes in
their mouths. Such atrocities were intolerable to the late frequenter of
London society, and in his imperious arrogance, the new monarch used
actually to pull off the white aprons of ladies who entered the
assembly-rooms with that _dégagé_ article, and throw them upon the back
seats. Like the French emperor, again, he treated high and low in the
same manner, and when the Duchess of Queensberry appeared in an apron,
coolly pulled it off, and told her it was only fit for a maid-servant.
Her grace made no resistance.
The men were not so submissive; but the M.C. turned them into ridicule,
and whenever a gentleman appeared at the assembly-rooms in boots, would
walk up to him, and in a loud voice remark, 'Sir, I think you have
forgot your horse.' To complete his triumph, he put the offenders into a
song called 'Trentinella's Invitation to the Assembly.'
'Come, one and all,
To Hoyden Hall,
For there's the assembly this night:
None but proud fools,
Mind manners and rules;
We Hoydens do decency slight.
'Come trollops and slatterns,
Cockt hats and white aprons;
This best our modesty suits:
For why should not we
In a dress be as free
As Hogs-Norton squires in boots?'
and as this was not enough, got up a puppet-show of a sufficient
coarseness to suit the taste of the time, in which the practice of
wearing boots was satirized.
His next onslaught was upon that of carrying swords; and in this respect
Nash became a public benefactor, for in those days, though Chesterfield
was the writer on etiquette, people were not well-bred enough to keep
their tempers, and rivals for a lady's hand at a minuet, or gamblers who
disputed over their cards, invariably settled the matter by an option
between suicide or murder under the polite name of duel. The M.C. wisely
saw that these affairs would bring Bath in bad repute, and determined to
supplant the rapier by the less dangerous cane. In this he was for a
long time opposed, until a notorious torchlight duel between two
gamblers, of whom one was run through the body, and the other, to show
his contrition, turned Quaker, brought his opponents to a sense of the
danger of a weapon always at hand; and henceforth the sword was
abolished.
These points gained, the autocrat laid down rules for the employment of
the visitors' time, and these, from setting the fashion to some, soon
became a law to all. The first thing to be done was, sensibly enough,
the _ostensible_ object of their residence in Bath, the use of the
baths. At an early hour four lusty chairmen waited on every lady to
carry her, wrapped in flannels, in
'A little black box, just the size of a coffin,'
to one of the five baths. Here, on entering, an attendant placed beside
her a floating tray, on which were set her handkerchief, bouquet, and
_snuff-box_, for our great-great-grandmothers _did_ take snuff; and here
she found her friends in the same bath of naturally hot water. It was,
of course, a réunion for society on the plea of health; but the early
hours and exercise secured the latter, whatever the baths may have done.
A walk in the Pump-room, to the music of a tolerable band, was the next
measure; and there, of course, the gentlemen mingled with the ladies. A
coffee-house was ready to receive those of either sex; for that was a
time when madame and miss lived a great deal in public, and English
people were not ashamed of eating their breakfast in public company.
These breakfasts were often enlivened by concerts paid for by the rich
and enjoyed by all.
Supposing the peacocks now to be dressed out and to have their tails
spread to the best advantage, we next find some in the public
promenades, others in the reading-rooms, the ladies having their clubs
as well as the men; others riding; others, perchance, already gambling.
Mankind and womankind then dined at a reasonable hour, and the evening's
amusements began early. Nash insisted on this, knowing the value of
health to those, and they were many at that time, who sought Bath on its
account. The balls began at six, and took place every Tuesday and
Friday, private balls filling up the vacant nights. About the
commencement of his reign, a theatre was built, and whatever it may have
been, it afterwards became celebrated as the nursery of the London
stage, and now, _O tempo passato!_ is almost abandoned. It is needless
to add that the gaming-tables were thronged in the evenings.
It was at them that Nash made the money which sufficed to keep up his
state, which was vulgarly regal. He drove about in a chariot, flaming
with heraldry, and drawn by six grays, with outriders, running footmen,
and all the appendages which made an impression on the vulgar minds of
the visitors of his kingdom. His dress was magnificent; his gold lace
unlimited, his coats ever new; his hat alone was always of the same
colour--_white_; and as the emperor Alexander was distinguished by his
purple tunic and Brummell by his bow, Emperor Nash was known all England
over by his white hat.
It is due to the King of Bath to say that, however much he gained, he
always played fair. He even patronized young players, and after fleecing
them, kindly advised them to play no more. When he found a man fixed
upon ruining himself, he did his best to keep him from that suicidal
act. This was the case with a young Oxonian, to whom he had lost money,
and whom he invited to supper, in order to give him his parental advice.
The fool would not take the Beau's counsel and 'came to grief.' Even
noblemen sought his protection. The Duke of Beaufort entered on a
compact with him to save his purse, if not his soul. He agreed to pay
Nash ten thousand guineas, whenever he lost the same amount at a
sitting. It was a comfortable treaty for our Beau, who accordingly
watched his grace. Yet it must be said, to Nash's honour, that he once
saved him from losing eleven thousand, when he had already lost eight,
by reminding him of his compact. Such was play in those days! It is said
that the duke had afterwards to pay the fine, from losing the stipulated
sum at Newmarket.
He displayed as much honesty with the young Lord Townshend, who lost him
his whole fortune, his estate, and even his carriage and horses--what
madmen are gamblers!--and actually cancelled the whole debt, on
condition my lord should pay him £5000 whenever he chose to claim it. To
Nash's honour it must be said that he never came down upon the nobleman
during his life. He claimed the sum from his executors, who paid
it.--'Honourable to both parties.'
But an end was put to the gaming at Bath and everywhere else--_except in
a royal palace_, and Nash swore that, as he was a king, Bath came under
the head of the exceptions--by an Act of Parliament. Of course Nash and
the sharpers who frequented Bath--and their name was Legion--found means
to evade this law for a time, by the invention of new games. But this
could not last, and the Beau's fortune went with the death of the dice.
Still, however, the very prohibition increased the zest for play for a
time, and Nash soon discovered that a private table was more comfortable
than a public one. He entered into an arrangement with an old woman at
Bath, in virtue of which he was to receive a fourth share of the
profits. This was probably not the only 'hell'-keeping transaction of
his life, and he had once before quashed an action against a cheat in
consideration of a handsome bonus; and, in fact, there is no saying what
amount of dirty work Nash would not have done for a hundred or so,
especially when the game of the table was shut up to him. The man was
immensely fond of money; he liked to show his gold-laced coat and superb
new waistcoat in the Grove, the Abbey Ground, and Bond Street, and to be
known as Le Grand Nash. But, on the other hand, he did not love money
for itself, and never hoarded it. It is, indeed, something to Nash's
honour, that he died poor. He delighted, in the poverty of his mind, to
display his great thick-set person to the most advantage; he was as vain
as any fop, without the affectation of that character, for he was
always blunt and free-spoken, but, as long as he had enough to satisfy
his vanity, he cared nothing for mere wealth. He had generosity, though
he neglected the precept about the right hand and the left, and showed
some ostentation in his charities. When a poor ruined fellow at his
elbow saw him win at a throw £200, and murmured 'How happy that would
make me!' Nash tossed the money to him, and said, 'Go and be happy
then.' Probably the witless beau did not see the delicate satire implied
in his speech. It was only the triumph of a gamester. On other occasions
he collected subscriptions for poor curates, and so forth, in the same
spirit, and did his best towards founding an hospital, which has since
proved of great value to those afflicted with rheumatic gout. In the
same spirit, though himself a gamester, he often attempted to win young
and inexperienced boys, who came to toss away their money at the rooms,
from seeking their own ruin; and, on the whole, there was some goodness
of heart in this gold-laced bear.
That he was a bear there are anecdotes enough to show, and whether true
or not, they sufficiently prove what the reputation of the man must have
been. Thus, when a lady, afflicted with a curvature of the spine, told
him that 'She had come _straight_ from London that day,' Nash replied
with utter heartlessness, 'Then, ma'am, you've been damnably warpt on
the road.' The lady had her revenge, however, for meeting the beau one
day in the Grove, as she toddled along with her dog, and being
impudently asked by him if she knew the name of Tobit's dog, she
answered quickly, 'Yes, sir, his name was Nash, and a most impudent dog
he was too.'
It is due to Nash to state that he made many attempts to put an end to
the perpetual system of scandal, which from some hidden cause seems
always to be connected with mineral springs; but as he did not banish
the old maids, of course he failed. Of the young ladies and their
reputation he took a kind of paternal care, and in that day they seem to
have needed it, for even at nineteen, those who had any money to lose,
staked it at the tables with as much gusto as the wrinkled, puckered,
greedy-eyed 'single woman,' of a certain or uncertain age. Nash
protected and cautioned them, and even gave them the advantage of his
own unlimited experience. Witness, for instance, the care he took of
'Miss Sylvia,' a lovely heiress who brought her face and her fortune to
enslave some and enrich others of the loungers of Bath. She had a
terrible love of hazard, and very little prudence, so that Nash's good
offices were much needed in the case. The young lady soon became the
standing toast at all the clubs and suppers, and lovers of her, or her
ducats, crowded round her; but though at that time she might have made a
brilliant match, she chose, as young women will do, to fix her
affections upon one of the worst men in Bath, who, naturally enough, did
not return them. When this individual, as a climax to his misadventures,
was clapt into prison, the devoted young creature gave the greater part
of her fortune in order to pay off his debts, and falling into disrepute
from this act of generosity, which was, of course, interpreted after a
worldly fashion, she seems to have lost her honour with her fame, and
the fair Sylvia took a position which could not be creditable to her. At
last the poor girl, weary of slights, and overcome with shame, took her
silk sash and hanged herself. The terrible event made a nine
hours'--_not_ nine days'--sensation in Bath, which was too busy with
mains and aces to care about the fate of one who had long sunk out of
its circles.
When Nash reached the zenith of his power, the adulation he received was
somewhat of a parody on the flattery of courtiers. True, he had his
bards from Grub Street who sang his praises, and he had letters to show
from Sarah of Marlborough and others of that calibre, but his chief
worshippers were cooks, musicians, and even imprisoned highwaymen--one
of whom disclosed the secrets of the craft to him--who wrote him
dedications, letters, poems, and what not. The good city of Bath set up
his statue, and did Newton and Pope[20] the great honour of playing
'supporters' to him, which elicited from Chesterfield some well-known
lines:--
'This statue placed the busts between
Adds to the satire strength;
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length.'
Meanwhile his private character was none of the best. He had in early
life had one attachment, besides that unfortunate affair for which his
friends had removed him from Oxford, and in that had behaved with great
magnanimity. The young lady had honestly told him that he had a rival;
the Beau sent for him, settled on her a fortune equal to that her father
intended for her, and himself presented her to the favoured suitor. Now,
however, he seems to have given up all thoughts of matrimony, and gave
himself up to mistresses, who cared more for his gold than for himself.
It was an awkward conclusion to Nash's generous act in that one case,
that before a year had passed, the bride ran away with her husband's
footman; yet, though it disgusted him with ladies, it does not seem to
have cured him of his attachment to the sex in general.
In the height of his glory Nash was never ashamed of receiving
adulation. He was as fond of flattery as Le Grand Monarque--and he paid
for it too--whether it came from a prince or a chair-man. Every day
brought him some fresh meed of praise in prose or verse, and Nash was
always delighted.
But his sun was to set in time. His fortune went when gaming was put
down, for he had no other means of subsistence. Yet he lived on: he had
not the good sense to die; and he reached the patriarchal age of
eighty-seven. In his old age he was not only garrulous, but bragging: he
told stories of his exploits, in which he, Mr. Richard Nash, came out as
the first swordsman, swimmer, leaper, and what not. But by this time
people began to doubt Mr. Richard Nash's long-bow, and the yarns he spun
were listened to with impatience. He grew rude and testy in his old age;
suspected Quin, the actor, who was living at Bath, of an intention to
supplant him; made coarse, impertinent repartees to the visitors at that
city, and in general raised up a dislike to himself. Yet, as other
monarchs have had their eulogists in sober mind, Nash had his in one of
the most depraved; and Anstey, the low-minded author of 'The New Bath
Guide,' panegyrized him a short time after his death in the following
verses:--
'Yet here no confusion--no tumult is known;
Fair order and beauty establish their throne;
For order, and beauty, and just regulation,
Support all the works of this ample creation.
For this, in compassion to mortals below,
The gods, their peculiar favour to show,
Sent Hermes to Bath in the shape of a beau:
That grandson of Atlas came down from above
To bless all the regions of pleasure and love;
To lead the fair nymph thro' the various maze,
Bright beauty to marshal, his glory and praise;
To govern, improve, and adorn the gay scene,
By the Graces instructed, and Cyprian queen:
As when in a garden delightful and gay,
Where Flora is wont all her charms to display,
The sweet hyacinthus with pleasure we view,
Contend with narcissus in delicate hue;
The gard'ner, industrious, trims out his border,
Puts each odoriferous plant in its order;
The myrtle he ranges, the rose and the lily,
With iris, and crocus, and daffa-down-dilly;
Sweet peas and sweet oranges all he disposes,
At once to regale both your eyes and your noses.
Long reign'd the great Nash, this omnipotent lord,
Respected by youth, and by parents ador'd;
For him not enough at a ball to preside,
The unwary and beautiful nymph would he guide;
Oft tell her a tale, how the credulous maid
By man, by perfidious man, is betrayed:
Taught Charity's hand to relieve the distrest,
While tears have his tender compassion exprest;
But alas! he is gone, and the city can tell
How in years and in glory lamented he fell.
Him mourn'd all the Dryads on Claverton's mount;
Him Avon deplor'd, him the nymph of the fount,
The crystalline streams.
Then perish his picture--his statue decay--
A tribute more lasting the Muses shall pay.
If true, what philosophers all will assure us,
Who dissent from the doctrine of great Epicurus,
That the spirit's immortal (as poets allow):
In reward of his labours, his virtue and pains,
He is footing it now in the Elysian plains,
Indulged, as a token of Proserpine's favour,
To preside at her balls in a cream-colour'd beaver.
Then peace to his ashes--our grief be supprest,
Since we find such a phoenix has sprung from his nest;
Kind heaven has sent us another professor,
Who follows the steps of his great predecessor.'
The end of the Bath Beau was somewhat less tragical than that of his
London successor--Brummell. Nash, in his old age and poverty, hung about
the clubs and supper-tables, button-holed youngsters, who thought him a
bore, spun his long yarns, and tried to insist on obsolete fashions,
when near the end of his life's century.
The clergy took more care of him than the youngsters. They heard that
Nash was an octogenarian, and likely to die in his sins, and resolved to
do their best to shrive him. Worthy and well-meaning men accordingly
wrote him long letters, in which there was a deal of warning, and there
was nothing which Nash dreaded so much. As long as there was immediate
fear of death, he was pious and humble; the moment the fear had passed,
he was jovial and indifferent again. His especial delight, to the last,
seems to have been swearing against the doctors, whom he treated like
the individual in Anstey's 'Bath Guide,' shying their medicines out of
window upon their own heads. But the wary old Beckoner called him in, in
due time, with his broken, empty-chested voice; and Nash was forced to
obey. Death claimed him--and much good it got of him--in 1761, at the
age of eighty-seven: there are few beaux who lived so long.
Thus ended a life, of which the moral lay, so to speak, out of it. The
worthies of Bath were true to the worship of Folly, whom Anstey so well,
though indelicately, describes as there conceiving Fashion; and though
Nash, old, slovenly, disrespected, had long ceased to be either beau or
monarch, treated his huge unlovely corpse with the honour due to the
great--or little. His funeral was as glorious as that of any hero, and
far more showy, though much less solemn, than the burial of Sir John
Moore. Perhaps for a bit of prose flummery, by way of contrast to
Wolfe's lines on the latter event, there is little to equal the account
in a contemporary paper:--'Sorrow sate upon every face, and even
children lisped that their sovereign was no more. The awfulness of the
solemnity made the deepest impression on the minds of the distressed
inhabitants. The peasant discontinued his toil, the ox rested from the
plough, all nature seemed to sympathise with their loss, and the muffled
bells rung a peal of bob-major.'
The Beau left little behind him, and that little not worth much, even
including his renown. Most of the presents which fools or flatterers had
made him, had long since been sent _chèz ma tante_; a few trinkets and
pictures, and a few books, which probably he had never read, constituted
his little store.[21]
Bath and Tunbridge--for he had annexed that lesser kingdom to his
own--had reason to mourn him, for he had almost made them what they
were; but the country has not much cause to thank the upholder of
gaming, the institutor of silly fashion, and the high-priest of folly.
Yet Nash was free from many vices we should expect to find in such a
man. He did not drink, for instance; one glass of wine, and a moderate
quantity of small beer, being his allowance for dinner. He was early in
his hours, and made others sensible in theirs. He was generous and
charitable when he had the money; and when he had not he took care to
make his subjects subscribe it. In a word, there have been worse men and
greater fools; and we may again ask whether those who obeyed and
flattered him were not more contemptible than Beau Nash himself.
So much for the powers of impudence and a fine coat!