To Lord Alvanley was awarded the reputation, good or bad, of all the
witticisms in the clubs after the abdication of the throne of dandyism
by Brummell; who, before that time, was always quoted as the sayer of
good things, as Sheridan had been some time before. Lord Alvanley had
the talk of the day completely under his control, and was the arbiter
of the school for scandal in St. James's. A bon mot attributed to him
gave rise to the belief that Solomon caused the downfall and
disappearance of Brummell; for on some friends of the prince of dandies
observing that if he had remained in London something might have been
done for him by his old associates, Alvanley replied, "He has done
quite right to be off: it was Solomon's judgment."
When Sir Lumley Skeffington, who had been a lion in his day--and whose
spectacle, the Sleeping Beauty, produced at a great expense on the
stage, had made him looked up to as deserving all the blandishments of
fashionable life--re-appeared some years after his complete downfall
and seclusion in the bench, he fancied that by a very gay external
appearance he would recover his lost position; but he found his old
friends very shy of him. Alvanley being asked, on one occasion, who
that smart-looking individual was, answered, "It is a second edition of
the Sleeping Beauty bound in calf, richly gilt, and illustrated by many
cuts."
One of the gay men of the day, named Judge, being incarcerated in the
Bench, some one observed he believed it was the first instance of a
Judge reaching the bench without being previously called to the bar; to
which Alvanley replied, "Many a bad judge has been taken from the bench
and placed at the bar." He used to say that Brummell was the only
Dandelion that flourished year after year in the hot-bed of the
fashionable world: he had taken root. Lions were generally annual, but
Brummell was perennial, and quoted a letter from Walter Scott: "If you
are celebrated for writing verses, or for slicing cucumbers, for being
two feet taller, or two feet less, than any other biped, for acting
plays when you should be whipped at school, or for attending schools
and institutions when you should be preparing for your grave, your
notoriety becomes a talisman, an 'open sesame,' which gives way to
everything, till you are voted a bore, and discarded for a new
plaything." This appeared in a letter from Walter Scott to the Earl of
Dalkeith, when he himself, Belzoni, Master Betty the Roscius, and old
Joseph Lancaster, the schoolmaster, were the lions of the season, and
were one night brought together by my indefatigable old friend, Lady
Cork, who was "the Lady of Lyons" of that day.