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Reminiscences of a Literary Life
CHAP. XXVII
BEAU BRUMMELL
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
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INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
CONTENTS
CHAP. I
SHELLEY
CHAP. II
JOHN KEATS
THOMAS CAMPBELL
CHAP. III
GEORGE DOUGLAS
CHAP. IV
WILLIAM STEWART ROSE
CHAP. V
SAMUEL ROGERS
SAMUEL COLERIDGE
CHAP. VI
HARTLEY COLERIDGE
CHAP. VII
THOMAS MOORE
WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES
CHAP. VIII
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
JAMES MATHIAS
CHAP. IX
MISS MARTINEAU
WILLIAM GODWIN
CHAP. X
LEIGH HUNT
THOMAS HOOD
HORACE SMITH
CHAP. XI
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
MRS. JAMESON
JANE AND ANNA PORTER
CHAP. XII
TOM GENT
CHAP. XIII
VISCOUNT DILLON
SIR LUMLEY SKEFFINGTON
JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE
CHAP. XIV
LORD DUDLEY
LORD DOVER
CHAP. XV
SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE
WILLIAM BROCKEDON
CHAP. XVI
SIR ROBERT PEEL
SPENCER PERCEVAL
CHAP. XVII
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE
MR. DAVIS
CHAP. XVIII
ELIJAH BARWELL IMPEY
CHAP. XIX
ALEXANDER I.
GEORGE CANNING
NAPOLEON
QUEEN HORTENSE
ROSSINI
CHAP. XX
COUNT PECCHIO
MAZZINI
COUNT NIEMCEWITZ
CHAP. XXI
CARDINAL RUFFO
CHAP. XXII
PRINCESS CAROLINE
BARONNE DE FEUCHÈRES
CHAP. XXIII
SIR SIDNEY SMITH
CHAP. XXIV
SIR GEORGE MURRAY
CHAP. XXV
VISCOUNT HARDINGE
CHAP. XXVI
REV. C. TOWNSEND
CHAP. XXVII
‣ BEAU BRUMMELL
CHAP. XXVIII
AN ENGLISH MERCHANT
THE BRUNELS
APPENDIX
INDEX
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CHAPTER XXVII
BEAU BRUMMELL

There has been nothing like a good, fair account of this Autocrat of the Dandies.

Captain Jesse, who published two volumes of Memoirs about him some years ago, could never have seen Brummell, and knew very little of his life, character, and conversation; while the little he did know was only by hearsay. Raikes’s account, just published (1856), is by far the fairest I have seen, and yet it scarcely does justice to Brummell’s wit and humour, and two or three things seem to me incorrectly stated. Brummell ended his days at Caen, and would have ended them in downright misery but for the Sœurs de Charité. The way in which he lost the consulship was this. Being weary of Caen and of having nothing to do there, he represented to Lord Palmerston that a British Consul was hardly wanted in that place, and that he was very desirous of getting a change by being appointed to some other place where there were English interests to attend to, and where he could be useful and earn the salary he received from his country. Palmerston abolished the Caen Consulship, but would not give Brummell another. If Brummell had not confidently counted on being employed elsewhere, he would never have written this letter to the Foreign Secretary. The pay at Caen was £300 a year; and when it was so suddenly suspended, the aged man of fashion, once the constant companion of Royalty, was left penniless. There were some
CHAP. XXVII]THE DANDIES’ INFLUENCE267
other cases in which Viscount Palmerston was equally hard. Pensions from the Crown have always been considered as safe from the grip of creditors. They are given because the recipients are poor and are likely to be embarrassed. Yet, on the application of a set of Jews and other usurers and cheats, Palmerston stopped and sequestrated the pension of
Lady Hester Stanhope, thus reducing her to cruel straits in her Syrian retreat. More lenity might have been expected from him, as Palmerston has been nearly all his life in debt and difficulties himself. Until recently, when his wife had an accession of property, he was considered one of the very worst “payers” in all London. I once heard a St. James’s Street hatter tell his valet that he would not send another hat until his lordship should have paid for the many hats he had already had. But London used to ring with stories about Palmerston and his duns, and about his ingenious devices to put off paying. About the same time poor Lord Alvanley was abundantly furnishing similar matter for town talk.

As boy and youth I frequently saw Beau Brummell in the parks and other regions of the West. Though an exquisite dandy, he never seemed to me to be overdressed or stiff, or in any way guindé. His carriage was easy, free, and manly. He was a remarkably well-made man, but his face was scarcely equal to his figure. I quite agree with my friend Mountstuart Elphinstone that English society owed a debt of gratitude to the dandies. When they triumphantly took the field, and for a good many years previously, our young nobility and gentry adopted the dress, and too often the language and manners, of the coach-box, stable, or turf. To be fashionable, was to dress like a coachman or groom. I am quite old enough to remember how widely this coarse, bad, vulgar taste prevailed. It was checked at about the time the Regency of George,
268BEAU BRUMMELL [CHAP. XXVII
Prince of Wales, commenced in 1810; but it took the dandies more than seven years to subdue and expel it. It was through Brummell,
Luttrell, Sir Harry Mildmay, Lord Kinnaird, and a few others—for the original school was very limited in number—that our young men of fortune and fashion began to dress like gentlemen. If some of them overdid it, and were too fastidious and by far too extravagant, this could scarcely be said of Brummell. The stories told of his notions of expense in dress were mere jokes, and were never intended by him to be taken seriously.

One of these tales was, for a long time, in everyone’s mouth. A wealthy, old-fashioned country squire, who had a son and heir to launch into the gay world, asked Brummell, one day, what he ought to allow young hopeful for his tailor’s bills, or for what annual sum the youngster might be well and fashionably dressed? “Oh!” said Brummell after some consideration, and with a very solemn countenance, “with the strictest economy—mind, I say the strictest economy—it may be done for £1,000 a year.”

I saw the Beau, in full feather, rather late one afternoon, in the spring of the year 1815, the day before I took my departure for Portugal. He was evidently just out of bed; or rather, quite fresh from the toilette. So late a sitter could hardly be an early riser. He used to say that, whether it was summer or winter, he always liked to have the morning well-aired before he got up.

A friend of W. S. Rose once gently reproved the Beau for passing so many of the daylight hours in bed.

“Dear me!” said Brummell. “Don’t you know that I am quite a reformed man? Now, I always begin to rise with the first muffin bell!” The muffin bell is, I believe, quite silenced through my friend Ben Hawes and his London Street Police Bill, or Bills. At least, I never hear it in the West End of London;
CHAP. XXVII]AT CALAIS269
but in 1815 the muffin bells began to be heard between four and five o’clock in the afternoon.

The next time, being the last time of all, that I saw Brummell was at an hotel in Calais, in the autumn of 1820, as I was on my way to the south of Italy.

H. and A., two very considerable dandies of that day, who had crossed over with me from Dover, were pupils and almost idolaters of Brummell. They invited him to dinner, but he was engaged, if I remember right, with Scrope Davies, who had taken refuge in that dull old French town. However, he came in towards the small hours, and sat until long after sunrise.

There was a terrible change in other things besides the financial ones; but still he was an elegant, striking man, and became very amusing and rather animated, though he drank but moderately. At times, however, I thought I saw a look of sadness and despondency. There was reason for it. At this moment he was cruelly embarrassed. Before H. left for Paris, he was obliged to administer to some of Brummell’s pressing wants, and H. himself was rather “hard up.” Brummell’s anecdotes were innumerable. They were all told with admirable humour, and most of them with good nature. I can remember only two that were spiteful, or calculated to give pain to deserving persons, and these two I shall certainly not tell. After this symposium, I could understand a good deal of the secret of Brummell’s extraordinary success and influence in the highest society. He was a vast deal more than a mere dandy; he had wit as well as humour and drollery, and the most perfect coolness and self-possession. He did not speak harshly of his ci-devant friend the Regent, by this time His Majesty George IV.; on the contrary, he related several clever and two or three kind things of him, and gave him credit for a great deal of natural ability and esprit. He confirmed what Raikes and others have said of the Prince’s extraordinary powers
270BEAU BRUMMELL [CHAP. XXVII
of mimicry. “If his lot had fallen that way,” said he, “he would have been the best comic actor in Europe.” Brummell confessed to the story of the “stout friend,” and to his threat, after his quarrel with the Prince, to go down to Windsor and make the old people fashionable; but he emphatically denied that other common tale, “George, ring the bell!” “I knew the Prince too well,” said he, “ever to take any kind of liberty with him! Drunk or sober, he would have resented it, with a vengeance! His vindictive spirit—and he could be vindictive about trifles—was the worst part of him; and where he once took a spite he never forgave. There might have been twenty good reasons for the rupture, but the world always guesses wrong in these matters.” If my observations were shrewd and correct, I should say that at this period the Beau did not quite despair of a reconciliation, or at least of some token of the Royal bounty. In the following year, 1821, when the King, on his way to Hanover, landed at Calais, he put himself in his way, in the hope that he might be noticed. I was told that many of the English purposely made room for him, sharing in his hope and expectation that His Majesty would at least recognize him with a gracious smile, which might have the effect of tranquillizing some of his Calais creditors; that the King, who almost touched him as he passed up the pier, must have seen him; that he turned his Royal head another way; and that Brummell turned as pale as a ghost. Falstaff was not so sad when turned off by “sweet Prince Hal.” Fifteen years after this, in 1836, my friend W. P., in the course of one of his Cambridge long vacation rambles, put up at Caen for a few days, in the very comfortable Hôtel d’Angleterre. Twice at the table d’hôte he noticed a very quiet, very refined, and on the whole very interesting-looking, elderly gentleman, to whom some of the guests and all the servants of the house seemed to pay unusual attention.

CHAP. XXVII] LAST DAYS IN FRANCE 271

W. P. took him for a French gentleman of the old school, or for some retired diplomatist whose life had been spent in the highest society; but on making inquiry he was told that this was poor Beau Brummell, and that he was then “poor indeed.” W. P., being a remarkably quiet, modest, retiring person, made no attempt to draw him out; but he was interested by his distinguished manners, his humility, and apparent submission to his fate. Even the French frequenters of the table d’hôte, or most of them, seemed to be aware that poor Brummell, who could now scarcely pay for his cheap dinner, had lived in all the splendour of London, and had been for years the almost constant companion of the Regent. A few months later, my old friend, Major ——, then fast approaching the end of his days, put up at the same hotel, and went to dine at the same table d’hôte. In the doorway he ran against Brummell, whom he had not seen for twenty years or more. They had been rather intimate in the days of the Beau’s prepotency, for the Major had been a man of Fashion; and was always, and even to the last, when very penitent for past misdeeds, a man of pleasantry and wit.

They immediately recognized each other. “On est bien changé,” said Brummell, “voilà tout!” He uttered no complaint, but could not conceal his poverty and painful embarrassments. He was no longer the scoffer that he had been; he even seemed to entertain deep, religious convictions.

I believe that he died professing the faith of the Roman Catholic Church. The last friends he had on earth were the Sisters of Charity. Raikes deplores that by his precept and example he demoralized and ruined, in more senses than one, many young men of family and fortune. But is it not at least probable that these extravagant, unthinking fellows would have run the road to ruin if they had never known Brummell; and that, without his acquaintance and tuition, their vices would only have been
272BEAU BRUMMELL [CHAP. XXVII
more gross and disgusting? For a long time there was a popular belief that the Beau was of very low birth. Even now it is not rare to meet people who believe that he was the son of a footman or valet. Brummell was a “gentleman by birth as well as by education.” His father had considerable West Indian property, at a time when such estates were worth holding. He was a man of great address and business ability, the most intimate friend and confidential adviser of
Lord North; to whom, during his lordship’s Premiership, he acted as Private Secretary. All the time that Lord North remained Prime Minister, Brummell père was courted by the highest of the land, and by all who looked for employment or ministerial patronage. Some of Warren Hasting’s letters, which have been published, sufficiently show the importance of Brummell père, and the consideration in which he was held by the first and greatest of our Governors-General in India.

My friend, the late Elijah Impey, son of the Indian Judge, the pet of Warren Hastings, had in his possession many original letters which still more clearly demonstrated the political importance of the Beau’s father. In one of these letters, the Governor-General, writing from Calcutta to a friend in London, said, “See Mr. Brummell as soon as you can, for he is active and intelligent, and has more influence than any man with Lord North.” This Brummell père left a good fortune to be divided among his children. The Dandy, a younger son, had between £40,000 and £50,000 for his share. Raikes says £30,000; but Brummell always named the larger sum, and Major —— had reasons for believing that his account was the true one. The Brummell family still hold a goodly estate in Essex, where they were known, a few years ago, to my friend Dr. W. Lyall, now Dean of Canterbury. In the winter of 1844, there was an old gentleman staying at Hastings, and driving a four-in-hand. I saw him every day
CHAP. XXVII]SNUFF-BOXES273
for a week or two; he was attired in the “slap-bang” Jehu style, and had always at his side on the coachbox a tall, masculine-looking woman, wearing a light drab greatcoat with capes. One afternoon I inquired of Lord W. F. who the pair might be. “Don’t you know them?” said he. “The driver is Beau Brummell’s
brother; the lady on the coach-box is the coachman’s daughter.”

This is like standing up in judgment against a deceased relative; the prosperous squire was reproducing and maintaining what the poor Dandy had put down. What would the Brummell have thought of these coats and capes? *The manners of both father and daughter appeared to be about as rough as their top-covering. Raikes correctly describes the Dandy’s taste, or rather passion, for costly or curious snuff-boxes. When the light wooden Scottish box, called the “Lawrence Kirk” box, with the ingenious, invisible hinge, first came out, he immediately purchased one. A day or two after, he was dining at Carlton House, where, among other personages, the Earl of Liverpool, the Premier, and rather a solemn, hard, severe man, was present. At the proper moment, the Beau introduced his new snuffbox, praising its lightness and prettiness, and doubting whether any of them would find out the hinge, or know how to open it.

The Regent tried, but soon gave it up, with a d——. When the others had tried and failed, the starch Prime Minister essayed his skill, taking up a knife to help him. “My lord!” cried Brummell. “Allow me to observe that’s not an oyster, but a snuff-box!” The Prince laughed out lustily; the Premier, looking grave, laid down the box, and said there was no opening it.

Brummell, like that late facetious Canon of St. Paul’s, the ever memorable Sydney Smith, had a

* From here, to nearly the end, to the phrase “married to the gout,” in M.’s handwriting.

274BEAU BRUMMELL [CHAP. XXVII
knack of dropping into houses and parties to which he had not been invited, and then pretending it was all through absent-mindedness or some mistake. A Mr. and Mrs. Thomson, rather new to “St. James’s air,” gave a grand rout, and purposely and maliciously omitted inviting the King of the Dandies, of whose satirical tongue they stood in dread. “This Brummell,” said Mr. T., “may have the impudence of the devil, but, as sure as my name’s Thomson, I will show him a bit of my mind if he comes to our party without an invite! I will show him the way to the door in a jiffy!”

Vain boast! Brummell went, having previously communicated his intention to some of the Dandies who had been invited. As his name was being telegraphed from the hall to the drawing-room, the Beau tripped up the stairs. On the very threshold of the outer saloon stood Thomson, as stern and as determined-looking as Gog or Magog. With his blandest smile and with extended fingers, the Beau said, in dulcet tone, “What! You here, Mr. Thomson? I did not expect the pleasure of seeing you to-night. How is Mrs. Thomson? Ha! There she is, and looking remarkably well!” Here he kissed the tip of his exquisitely gloved hand to the lady, now close to the door, and returning his smile and salute. Thomson was quite nonplussed, and before he could recover himself or say a single syllable beyond “Sir!” the Marquis of ——, Lord ——, and two or three other Dandies, crême de la crême, and devoted lieges of Brummell, arrived and gathered round their chief, and advanced with him into the drawing-room, bowing to the hostess, who was seen whispering to her husband. She must have made it clear to Thomson that it would never do to insult a man who had such great friends as Beau Brummell. When that hero had spent half an hour ingoing round the saloons and in talking with those who he thought worth talking to, he coolly went up to the host,
CHAP. XXVII]THE BEAU’S ASSURANCE275
who was now quite cooled down, and said: “Dear me, Mr. Thomson, I find I have made a mistake! I was invited to a Mrs. Johnson’s! The names are so much alike! John’s son, Tom’s son! Johnson, Thomson! It is so easy to mistake!” Some of the Dandies laughed, some of the fashionable ladies tittered; Thomson felt that the best thing he could do was to join in the laugh; and Mrs. T., sailing up, said “they were only too happy at a mistake that had procured them the pleasure of Mr. Brummell’s company.” The Beau chatted a few minutes to the smiling, benignant, highly-flattered hostess, and then went his way to another fashionable gathering. Mrs. T. took care that he should have an invitation to all her future parties.

The late Earl of W., Lady J.’s papa, but very unlike his always charming daughter, was scarcely a man to be joked with. He was proud, punctilious, starch, and grim, expecting more deference and peer-worship than he always obtained.

In filling their houses in the country with company, it was, as it still is, the custom of our magnates to reserve all the best chambers and dressing-rooms for the married couples, and to stow away the bachelors, anyhow, in the attics, or in the turrets, or wings. At Lord A.’s, Brummell had been put into an uncomfortable room, at the very top of the high house, more than once. He went to Lord A.’s in very cold Christmas weather, and before he was quite recovered from an attack of gout.

On his arrival the groom of the chambers was conducting him to his old dormitory. “Stop!” cried the Beau. “I cannot go up and down all these infernal stairs! Is there no room lower down? Here, for example?” He threw open the door of a most comfortable, luxurious apartment, and entered. “Sir,” said the groom of the chambers, “this is reserved for the Earl of W., who is expected every minute. The single gentlemen’s apartments are——”
276BEAU BRUMMELL [CHAP. XXVII
“I know! I know! So put Lord W. in one of them, for he is now a bachelor. There! Bring in my portmanteau and dressing-case.” The footman who was following did as he was bidden, and the groom of the chambers went off shrugging his shoulders. The Beau then began to unpack and prepare for his elaborate toilette. Hark! The sound of carriage-wheels in the avenue! He fastens the chamber door, and calmly proceeds with his important operations. In a few minutes the voice of Lord W. is heard on the staircase—in the corridor—and then a petulant, sharp rap at the door. “Mr. Brummell! Mr. Brummell!” cries his lordship. “My lord,” responds the Beau, “I am dressing and cannot be disturbed. I am in my buffs, in naturalibus.” “But this is my room, sir!” “Possession, my lord, possession! You know the rest! You are single, my lord! I am a married man—married to the gout.” His lordship went away with an ominous growl, nor was his ill-humour dissipated by being put into an equally comfortable apartment on the same floor. It was not so much that he cared for this room or that, but that he, the Earl of W., should be dislodged by one of inferior rank, by a commoner, by
Beau Brummell, was hard to bear or to digest. But the noble, easy, good-humoured master of the mansion only laughed at Brummell’s impudence, and long before the company separated, the Beau succeeded in dissipating the Earl’s ill-humour. I have heard other stories of equal assurance and equal success. Until he fell upon his evil days, Beau Brummell appears never to have been “put out” by anybody or by anything. When a friend was condoling with him on his first fit of the gout, Brummell said: “Oh! I should not so much care if the gout had not attacked my favourite leg!”