Chapter XVI: Act III (11)

Such was the Beau in the Bath rooms; but at that period, the women went thither in aprons, the squires in top-boots, with pipes in their mouths. The longer they kept them there the better, for they were no sooner out than forth flowed a torrent of filthiness. But all Bath, from the days of the farewell to it of the Romans, down to a later period than this of which I am speaking, was a mere _cloaca_; and they who resorted thither were too often as dirty as the place. Its unsavouriness elicited some very stringent remarks from Queen Elizabeth, and a contribution from the royal purse for constructing a common sewer.

It is the custom to look upon Nash as the first of the dynasty of the Bath Masters of the Ceremonies. The true founder of that highly august dynasty however was the Duke of Beaufort himself. For the invalids who resorted to the healing springs, there were but two houses fitted for the reception of a “respectable,” that is, a _moneyed_ class of visitors; namely, the Abbey House and Westgate House. It was not till long after that there was either a ball-room, or any place of public amusement in the city. Sometimes a convivial party of invalids, or their friends, got up a dance on the open bowling-green. But such inconveniences attended this, that the Duke of Beaufort gave up the town-hall for both the dancers and gamblers. His Grace placed the conduct of the amusements under the superintendence of Captain Webster; and that gentleman having respectably inaugurated them, the sceptre of Master was made over to Nash.

The passion for play was long the ruling passion here, among the sick, as well as among the sound. The passion is well illustrated in the epigram, written when subscription books were opened for providing for the expenses of Church service, and for opening a new card-room:—

“The books were open’d t’other day,
At all the shops, for Church and Play.
The Church got _six_; Hoyle _sixty-seven_:
How great the chance for Hell ’gainst Heaven!”

Nash’s great enemy he found in the doctors. They disliked him for helping to cure invalids too quickly, by the general cheerfulness and gaiety which he essayed to establish in the city. They moreover bore him little love for his abolition of the sword, a general and not too deadly use of which was wont to procure for them endless patients, and continual profit.

The profession pursued its vocation at Bath at this period with little delicacy. The carriages of invalids, and the public stage-coach, which reached the city on the third day after its departure from town, were assailed at the outskirts by hosts of “touters,” who were engaged by the physicians to publish their respective merits (they now do that for themselves, thus saving expense), and to carry off as many patients as they could respectively secure. For these the doctors paid the touters a percentage; and as the touters were, in most cases, the husbands of the nurses, all parties played into each other’s hands.

“And so, as I grew ev’ry day worse and worse,
The doctor advised me to send for a nurse;
And the nurse was so willing my health to restore,
She begg’d me to send for a few doctors more.”

As the vivacity which Nash put into the place very much injured the latter gentlemen, one, more angry than the rest, threatened to “throw a toad into the spring,” by writing against the waters. “Fling away!” cried Nash; “we’ll charm him out again by an additional band of music!” And he dealt another blow at them, by decreeing that, in future, the balls should commence at six, and terminate at eleven, instead of lasting, as heretofore, till daybreak.

His code of laws for these balls was the code of a terrible despot, and I can hardly account for the ready obedience which was paid to it. His force of impudence and blaze of dress, with some superiority of mind, perhaps awed the sensual and stupid peers, peeresses, squires, and dames. One of the articles of the code was to the effect, that “very young, and also the ‘elder ladies,’ be content with the second benches at the balls, the one not yet having arrived at, the other being past, perfection.” The rule was obeyed!

Precisely at six the magnificent fellow gave the signal, and the couple present highest in rank, advanced submissively, and walked a minuet. After every couple had gone through the same solemnity, the splendid “Master” gave the word for country-dances. How the ladies and gentlemen went at it in those days, may be seen from what took place when the dial showed eleven o’clock. The jewelled finger of Nash was then raised in the air, the music ceased, and, “Now,” said he, “let the ladies sit down _to cool_, before they go to their chairs!” On one occasion the Princess Amelia begged for another dance after eleven had struck. Nash shook all the powder out of his hair in mute horror at the bare idea of such a solecism.

The Duchess of Queensberry was also once daring enough to infringe his rules by appearing in the rooms in a laced apron. He tore it off, and threw it among the servants; and to the richest squire of the county, who presumed to appear, contrary to Nash’s own decree, in boots, he exclaimed, “Holloa, Hog’s Norton, haven’t you forgot to bring your horse?” The squire talked of swords. “No, no,” replied Nash, “I have put an end to duels; and thereby, Squire, I have prevented people from doing what they have no mind to.”

This sort of coarseness was refinement in Elizabethan days. I may cite in proof thereof, that when the valiant Welsh commander, Sir Roger Williams, knelt to Queen Elizabeth, in his rough untanned leather boots, to present a petition she was determined not to grant, she only remarked, “Williams, how your boots stink!” “Tut, Madam!” answered the Welshman, “it is my suit, and not my boots, that stink!” So did she affect to annoy Cecil, by wearing his portrait for a day tied to her shoe. On another occasion she admitted to her presence a whole bevy of country-cousins named Brown. They were of the kindred of Anne Boleyn; but when Elizabeth saw them in their queer old-fashioned dresses, she fairly frightened them by her coarse remarks, from ever coming to court again. Perhaps hence is derived the popular saying, in which allusion is made to “_astonishing the Browns_.” It is an Elizabethan phrase!

In the recess, Nash used to cross the country to Tunbridge. His equipage was a flaming carriage, drawn by six greys; with outriders all embroidery, and French horns all brass and bluster. He wore a white hat, of which he was the introducer; and he did so, he said, that, it being the only one of the sort, his hat might never be stolen.

In his dress he combined the fashions of two centuries; and, thanks to his luck at play, he lived as grandly as half-a-dozen kings. But none knew better than he the folly of gambling. He once lost a considerable sum to an Oxford lad who had just come into a large fortune. “Boy,” said he, “take my advice. You are a young Crœsus; play no more.” Nash himself would not play with him, but the _millionnaire_ collegian found men less scrupulous; and the prodigal, ere he had attained his twenty-fifth year, could, like the gentleman in Shakspeare, “Thank Heaven that he was not worth a ducat.”

Nash was the same sort of Mentor to the gambling Duke of Bedford; and the Duke entered with the Beau into a gambling compact, whereby he bound himself to put restraint upon his spirit of gambling. Nash gave him £100, to receive £1000 whenever the Duke lost the latter sum at one sitting. Nash came upon his Grace a month after, just as he had lost £8000, and was about to throw for £3000 more. Nash reminded him of the compact. The Duke paid the forfeit, threw his main, and lost. Perhaps the Beau expected some such profitable result of his little investment.

He may not however have deserved this remark; for Nash could be most romantically generous. Thus, Lord Townsend lost to him a sum which he could not conveniently pay; the Beau forgave the debt, some £20,000, on condition that the Peer should give him £5000 whenever asked to do so. Nash never troubled Lord Townsend further; but, after the Lord’s decease, when the Beau had fallen into adversity, he applied to the Peer’s representatives, exhibited his vouchers, and was paid his claim. This is honourable to both parties.

The Peers and the Parliament generally were a singularly inconsistent set of people at this time. They passed a law which suppressed gambling everywhere, _except in the royal palace_, under a penalty of £50; and they no sooner passed this law than they hurried to many places, and to Bath especially, to break it. Nash said _he_ was King of Bath, and that playing in his palace was _not_ infringing the ordinances; but the Parliament was too much even for him in the long run, and, by the ultimate suppression of all “tables,” in whatsoever locality, they deprived the Beau of much of his power to put gold lace on his coat, and guineas in his pocket.

Still he was the despot of the rooms; and again I say, that the secret of his power almost defies conjecture. He was indeed a splendid decker of his person; but that person was clumsy, large, and awkward. His features were harsh. It is to be remembered however, that he not only had fine clothes, but a stupendous gift of “flattering;” and he had, besides, more wit than most of the ladies he cajoled. “Richard,” said a modest young creature to him one day (and it is painful to think that she might have been our grandmother;—that is, yours, reader, or mine): “Richard, you have a tongue that would debauch a nunnery!”

He assumed an airy sort of “indifference” in his method of gallantry, and the ladies found this deliciously provoking. It set the fashion; and it became the characteristic of the Georgian beaux. It was a contrast, much welcomed, after the smartness and pertness of the beaux of the reign of Queen Anne; and it was preferable to the slimy solemnity of the beaux of the age of King Charles. And Dick, be it said for him, always kept hold of a rag of dignity, whereby to help himself; and when he found that he could not be a seducer, he became a champion. He loved to rescue damsels from the suit of adventurers, and he _did_ save many. He chastised scandal; would not tolerate it even in the elder ladies who sat on his sacred benches. The King of Bath made a royal monopoly of the article, as the King of France did of tobacco. He had capital opportunity of indulging in his favourite dish, when he used to consult with the old Duchess of Marlborough upon the fashion of her liveries.

Like Florian, who used to hunt out distressed subjects for his patron, the Duc de Penthièvre, to relieve, he took a praiseworthy delight in discovering worth in adversity, and then compelling the wealthy to do something to lighten that adversity. It is perfectly true that, having gained £200 at picquet, and hearing a bystander remark, “How happy that sum would make me!” Nash threw him the money, saying, “There, then, go and be happy!”

Among the poor patients at the springs, the Beau once discovered a poor curate, named Cullender. He had a wife, of course six children, and naturally only thirty pounds a year. Nash donned his best suit, polished up the persuasive end of his irresistible tongue, went to a “patron” who had a living to give, and did not leave him till he had given it to Dr. Cullender. It was worth £160 per annum. “There, Doctor,” said Nash, “I’ve brought you half Potosi.” “By G—d!” said the divine, “so you have!” Such was patronage, pity, and piety, in the days of Beau Nash.

It is not to be supposed that so general a wooer escaped altogether heart-free. He had a heart; as good a one (as was said in Fontenelle’s case) as could be made out of brains; and he once proposed marriage to the lady of his transitory affections. The lady pleaded her devotion to another lover, and even asked for Nash’s mediation with her father to consent to the marriage. The honest fellow consented, and went through infinite trouble before he succeeded. He himself joined the hands of the affianced pair, and gave them his blessing. Six months afterwards, the lady eloped with her footman!

Nash ought not to have been disgusted with human nature, for ladies occasionally were given, in his time, to the observance of this little fashion; but it did disgust Nash. He turned misogynist, and gave himself more to philanthropy in its restricted sense. He hated women, he said, but still had charity for men; and accordingly he was foremost in founding the Bath Hospital, and alone in raising obelisks to rheumatic princes,—obelisks for which Pope furnished very inferior superscriptions.

Chesterfield exhibited a “statuary wit” which Pope despised, when the statue of Nash was placed, a full length, between the busts of Newton and Pope himself. The epigram is well known, but it is worth repeating:—

“This statue placed the busts between,
Adds to the satire strength;
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length.”

This is neat, and also original. The idea was applied by the Paris wits in an epigram on the group in Paris which represented the equestrian figure of Louis XV. on a pedestal, the angles of the upper slab of which were supported by bronze caryatides, representing Faith, Temperance, Prudence, and Justice. The cardinal virtues thus placed gave good point to the epigram, which said:—

“Oh, la belle statue! le beau piédestal!
Les Vertus sont à pied, le Vice est à cheval!”

As long as Nash exhibited splendour in his outward man, the public homage never failed him. Literary musicians, literary cooks, and biographical highwaymen dedicated their works to him. Was he sick? the entire army of poetasters invoked the Muse to give him ease. For all of which they looked for their respective guineas.

He had too another set of worshipers, who used to congregate about him at his favourite tavern, to listen to his favourite stories,—few and not well told,—to which they had listened till they could themselves have narrated them backwards. He recounted them ever _à propos des bottes_, and he was the hero of every one of them. Therein he shows as outdoing Fortunatus and all his servants. He was the swiftest runner, the most expert swimmer, the best swordsman, and—“Upon my soul, it’s true! D—n me! hem! egad!”

He really had more wit than his stories would authorize us to suppose. Witness his suggestion at a county-town ball. The county ladies refused to dance in the same set with the town ladies. The rich tradesmen were indignant at the slight put upon their spouses, but the suggestive wit of Nash saved them. They made it known that if the county ladies and squires would not dance with the town wives and traders, the latter would refuse all further credit, and would call in their debts. The proud party immediately yielded, and a grand country-dance of reconciliation followed to the tune of ‘Money Musk.’

Still, despite his wit and his dazzling dress, Nash was naturally coarse. Fancy a modern master of the ceremonies saying aloud to a lady somewhat misshapen, and who, in reply to a question from him, had stated that she had come to Bath straight from London,—fancy such a dignitary exclaiming, “You may have come ‘straight’ from London, Madam, but you have got d—nably warped by the way!” The squires were bigger brutes than he, and so did not kick him; nay, they only laughed when this glittering potentate used to ask the ladies who declined to dance, “If by chance they had bandy legs, and were afraid of showing them?”

The truth is, he feared nobody. He had refused knighthood at the hands of King William; and he did the same at the hands of Queen Anne. “I will have none of it, most gracious Madam,” said Nash, as if he were refusing to grant a favour; “but there is Sir William Read, the mountebank, whom your Majesty has knighted,—I shall be very happy to call him ‘brother.’” The Queen smiled, and passed on.

This species of rudeness, which came over him in his later days, helped to empty the rooms. He no longer could boast of seventeen duchesses and countesses standing up in his first country-dance. He sometimes too got vexatiously repulsed, as in the case of a young lady whom he met in the Grove, leading a spaniel, and whom he asked if she knew the name of Tobit’s dog. “I know it well enough,” said the lady; “his name is Nash, and a very impudent dog he is.”

And at length came the “end of an auld sang;” old-age, and with it infirmity and distress. He could still talk of not following prescriptions, because he had thrown them out of window; but the clergy at length took possession of the Beau, and so belaboured him with pamphlets, visits, exhortations to repentance, and menaces of the devil, that Nash, who, like Gallio, had cared for none of these things, became fairly bewildered, and feared death more than ever he had done. He was an awful coward in presence of that especial antagonist of beaux; but his cowardice of course was not respected, and he died in abject terror of dying.

The year was that of 1761, and his age was then hard upon the patriarchal one of ninety years. He had few of the patriarchal virtues; but Bath, to whose corporation he bequeathed a “fifty pounds,” which I very much wish they may have got, honoured him with a public funeral, with more circumstantial pomp about it than if he had been an incarnation of all virtue, patriarchal, princely, and of every other degree. The multitude gazed weepingly, as though another dead Tasso were passing by to cold obstruction, and had left them a legacy of intellectual worth. The poor wretch had little to leave, save some _gaillard_ books, and some women’s toys and trinkets,—the relics of his beauhood, and the testimonies of his past power. As for the poets, they spoke of the defunct dandy as the “constellation of a heavenly sphere;” and he had epitaphs enough to make the very earth lie heavy upon the breast of Beau Nash.

And now, good reader, having sojourned with two exclusively English beaux, like Fielding and Nash, we will, if you please, to Vienna, and tarry awhile with a sparkling beau of European reputation. “Place pour le Prince de Ligne!”

THE PRINCE DE LIGNE.

“This chub-faced fop
Shines sleek with full cramm’d fat of happiness.”

JOHN MARSTON: _Antonio’s Revenge_.

The Prince de Ligne has, at least, the merit of being not only a “beau,” but a “brave.” The two professions are seldom united, but they were certainly to be found in this gallant coxcomb.

The Prince, although ever faithful to the fortunes of the House of Hapsburg, was not himself of Austrian lineage. His patrimonial house, the Castle of Belveil, still stands in quaint supremacy over the modest village of Ligne, about six miles from Alt, in Belgium. It has endured seven centuries of change; and its gothic peculiarities, with its old-world garden, and its ancient hornbeam hedges, yet answer to the prolix description thereof given in the Prince’s published letters, as well as to the concise, if little majestic, line of Delille, who says of it in his ‘Jardins,’

“Belveil, tout à la fois magnifique et champêtre.”

Here, in 1734, the Prince first saw the light; and the soldiers of his father’s regiment ‘de Ligne,’ loved to carry the infant son of their prince-colonel in their arms. The lengthened life of this once celebrated dandy, author, diplomatist, and soldier, made him the contemporary of men of many generations. The man who once fraternally embraced our own Wellington, Prince of Waterloo, had sat on the knee of the famous Prince Eugene, and had looked upon the matured greatness of Marlborough. Thus he was contemporary with men who had been born under the son of James I., and with others now living under Queen Victoria, whom God preserve!

After, as a boy, carrying the colours of his father’s regiment with honour, he entered the dragoons of Ligne, and won distinction at the point of his sword. He was practically a noble soldier, and he slaughtered as courteously as Bayard. His day was not the day of carpet-knights, for Europe was then given to settle all her quarrels in the field; and when cabinets cooled, warriors looked to their corslets. Theoretically, the Prince does not shine. Nobody reads his ‘Commentaries on the Art of War;’ and I have no doubt that the martial portion of his departed spirit is sorely vexed, at seeing his own highly-prized instructions for infantry manœuvres less cared for by posterity than the old Greek’s dissertation upon the forming of the phalanx.

For more than half a century he lived in camps, and was daily familiar with every dread circumstance of war. He bore himself bravely at the bloody siege of fatal Ismael, and was among the most active at that taking of Belgrade, which Storace put so pleasantly to music for the delight of our fathers. In the fields of death, whereon, with varied fortune, the Great Frederick and the crafty Maria Theresa fought out their envenomed quarrels, there he was ever present, the finest, the foremost, and the fiercest in the fray. And most of all, on that famous day at Maxen, when the Austrian Daun caught Frederick’s general, Finck, in the defiles, and took bloody advantage of the opportunity,—on that day of untold horrors, courage and murder reigned supreme. Ere night came on, the Black Eagle of Brandenburg had yielded to his double-necked cousin from the Danube. Every Prussian who survived the fight, surrendered. The _matériel_ for a hundred such fields passed into the hands of the Austrians, and the museums of Vienna still hold the countless trophies of that day.

It was a day on which compensation was taken for the adverse fields of Stringau, Reichemberg, and Johr; for the defeats at Pirna, Rosbach, and Lissa. The women of Berlin were rendered widows and childless, while the flaunting dames of Vienna shouted “_Hoch!_” and declared that their victorious lovers at Maxen had surpassed all the glories connected with old triumphs at Kolin, Gabel, and Zittau; at Liegnitz, Schweidnitz, and Hochkirchen.

Maria Theresa dubbed the young Prince knight of that order of chivalry which bore her name,—an Order into which no aspirant could find admittance unless he had achieved some conquest which he had no positive order to undertake. She further honoured him by despatching him to France with the news of the great victory; and there he became the intimate friend of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the cavalier of the basely brilliant Du Barry, and the cynosure of all the hooped ladies and red-heeled gallants who killed Time on the verdant lawns of the Trianon or in the gilded saloons of Versailles. He became at once the King of Fashion, as he _was_ the favourite of a dozen kings. Two Louises named him “friend;” and he sat, a gallant servitor, at the feet of Marie Antoinette. The great Frederick showed his affection for him by bestowing on him that very bad pen with which the King wrote very bad poetry, and the Prince still worse. The great Catherine he served in many acceptable offices. She loved the man and his humour. Once, when accompanying the imperial mother of All the Russias in a progress through her southern dominions, they skirted, in a yacht, the coast of Old Tauris. On passing the promontory of Iphigenia, the Empress made present of it to the Prince, who thereon, accoutred as he was, leaped overboard, and, with sword drawn, swam ashore, to take formal possession of the territorial gift. He was indeed a sort of cousin to the living heads of kingly houses; and, at one time, was looked upon as the probable occupant of the uneasy throne of Poland. Like many a kingly contemporary, he might for a long time have thanked Heaven that he was without a crown. But he was equal to the difficulties consequent upon a light purse. On one occasion he wished to proceed from Paris to Brussels; but, prince as he was, he lacked the means. Hearing that the Duke d’Aremberg was about to travel that way, he presented himself at the post-house as his courier, rode the journey through in that character, and so got to his destination—_gratis_.

Such, in his early days, was the gay gentleman who, at the last Congress of Vienna, bore still gaily the weight of eighty summers. His lean horses used to gallop through that city with his ancient carriage behind them, on which was inscribed the punning device—“Quo res cumque cadunt, stat _linea_ recta.” This vehicle was almost as large as his house. The latter was of the smallest dimensions; and in that small dwelling, he gave small dinners to small parties. The dishes served were in strict keeping with the size of the table, and he generally ate four-fifths of what they contained. This superbly-dressed Amphitryon actually expected that his guests would let their hunger be appeased on the supply he liberally poured forth of brilliant but unsubstantial wit.

According to Johnson, who says that quotation is the watchword of literary men, he was a literary man, for he had ever ready a magazine of citations adapted to all purposes. The variety was some warrant of wide reading; and the Prince was, at all events, not like Pozzo di Borgo, who made the same triad of quotations endure a three-months’ duty. At the side of the Prince’s little bed, in the very least of libraries, his little commonplace book, on an almost invisible desk, received the brief record of ideas that visited his gossamer brain. All around this room were strewn, in most admired disorder, a mountain of manuscripts, and a wilderness of works on love, philosophy, poetry, and war. Amidst this mass, the old Prince would leap about with the agility of a monkey. Fatigue he never acknowledged, and sleep he little cared for. He would sit up whole nights, half a week through, to read dry works on strategy; and then fall asleep over erotic songs, of which he commenced many, and finished few. Those that he did terminate have as little of the echo of nature as Watteau’s shepherdesses have of its aspect. One of the most innocent of his pursuits was to attend at the Opera, and applaud Frederic Venua’s pretty music to the pretty ballet of ‘Flore et Zéphyre.’

The once young leader of fashion would not lay down his sceptre when he grew old; and as an octogenarian he played, in the eyes of Vienna, an airier “ci-devant jeune homme” than was ever conceived or executed by the inimitable Potier. He could be a boy with the boys; and the old gentleman played heartily at soldiers with the little King of Rome, before that shadow of a monarch grew up to welcome those other favourites, one of whom especially was as fatal to him as the Fornarina to the gifted Raphael.

But the Prince loved to be with young men, and to be thought of by them; and did not love to be reminded either of old-age or of death. His little summer residence at the Kalemberg was the locality whence Sobieski departed to save Austria from the infidel, and to earn for it, what Austria has ever paid to her benefactors, eternal ingratitude. The spirit of the heroic no longer resided there at the period of which I am treating. The walls of the house were covered with the portraits of ladies whose hearts, or what they called such, had yielded to the assaults of De Ligne; and above the portal was inscribed this motto of mingled impiety, mendacity, and impudence:—

“Sans remords, sans regret, sans crainte, sans envie.”

The slippered soldier who, in his decrepitude, flung out his banner with this device upon it, belied at least a portion thereof. He caught cold, by keeping an assignation near the bastion, on one of the coldest nights of the Congress-winter, and while waiting vainly for the _innamorata_ who had fooled him. The consequent symptoms soon assumed a fatal aspect; and straightway “this god did shake,” and made his motto pointless, save against himself. His remorse might have been small, and doubtless no one envied a dying dandy; but the latter was himself no longer without fear or regret. He feared the slow approach of death; and his regret was not that life had been misspent, but that it had come to its limit. He aggravated his malady by defying it, and appearing at a ball. It was the last occasion on which he was seen in public, and it killed him. He took to his couch, and, in ignoble prostration, he bewailed that he could not die like Petronius Arbiter, that accomplished _roué_, base as man and great as consul, who played with death; now pricked a vein, and now bandaged it; now whipped a slave, and now freed one; now listened to gay music, now trilled a gay song; anon, cursed the whole world, and forthwith fell dead, like a dog in his uncleanness.

“After all,” said the Prince, “I shall be better off than Petronius; and friends and dear ones will receive my last sigh. Not,” said poor fearful nature, speaking through the Prince,—“not that I am going to die just yet. There is no cause for fear. Let us banish sadness. I am living, and I _will_ live!” And then the moribund beau made puns, as if death could be delayed by playing upon words. Or he called up old souvenirs, and gossiped about the famous “fine eyes” of the Countess de Witt. “You should have seen her,” said the dying Prince; “her eyes were so bepraised that she at length never spoke of them but as her ‘fine eyes.’” Once the admirable Marie Antoinette expressed regret at her looking unwell, and asked from what she suffered. “May it please your Majesty,” answered the simple Countess, “I am suffering from cold _in my fine eyes!_”—and then the dying prater laughed, and they who stood around him smiled in melancholy accord.

At length, the arrow of the Inevitable Angel was poised, but the sinking Prince still formed projects for the future. He would see the Czar Alexander upon affairs of state; and many a gay day, he averred, should yet make glad the gardens of Belveil. His medical attendant, Malfati, came in for a share of observation; and the whole profession of which Malfati was a member was made subject for satire. “When he was with the great Catherine,” he remarked, “he could do more for himself than the doctors were then doing for him.” Malfati inquired, “In what way?” “Whenever I was well,” said the son of fashion, “I used to invite Ségur and Cobentzel to my quarters. I gave medicine to one, and bled the other; and thereupon I got well!” And as the sinking octogenarian laughed, Death steadied his javelin for the throw.

Malfati delicately hinted that age opposed greater difficulties now than before; and in gentle spirit, he essayed to prepare the Prince for the coming and irresistible change. But no! the Prince had work yet to do, and must live to do it. “I have no intention yet,” he said, “nor shall have for a long time to come, to make use of the epitaph written for me by my old friend, the Marquis de Bonney:—

“‘Ci gît le Prince de Ligne,
Il est tout de son long couché.
Jadis il a beaucoup _péché_,—
Mais ce n’etait pas à la ligne!’”

We may excuse Malfati for smiling at the refined wit of the once famous _jeu d’esprit_; but it did not restrain him from making the Prince aware of the danger of his position. The latter received the intelligence with disgust, ill-concealed under a few light words; and with the assurance that, like Adrian, he had verses to write to his soul, but that he had not time just then!

It was true; for Death, at that moment, laid upon him that hand which mortal may not resist. The Prince not only felt, but he beheld, the terrible and unconquerable aggressor. The hour was dull midnight when the old warrior and “macaroni” frantically fought his last battle, and succumbed ingloriously. He sprang from a recumbent into a sitting position, shrieked aloud, ordered the door to be closed; and as Death pressed upon him, he struggled and wrestled with the calm, strong phantom, as though a substantial foe was before him, who might be strangled by bodily effort. But it was fruitless, for the decree had gone forth, and doom had come. In the midst of cries for help, and writhing efforts to get free, the stroke was given, and the Prince fell dead. The day was the 13th of December, 1814. What was mortal of him was magnificently entombed, and the terms of his epitaph were more poetical than veracious. But, beneath it all,—brass, marble, and mendacity,—the dandy of two centuries was left to sleep as undisturbedly as the curses of unpaid tailors would allow him to do.

On the day of the Prince’s decease, a very fine gentleman indeed was sunning himself on the Steyne at Brighton. He was the cynosure of all observers, and his magnificent shadow glides this way. Do not mistake him for Romeo Coates. It is the famous Mr. Brummell. _Chapeau bas_ at that illustrious name!

BEAU BRUMMELL.

“I scorn’d to crowd among the muddy throng
Of the rank multitude, whose thicken’d breath
(Like to condensed fogs) do choke that beauty
Which else would dwell in every kingdom’s cheek.
No: I still boldly stepp’d into kings’ courts,
For there to live is rare.”

DECKER’S _Fortunatus_.

The distinction of Nash was his impertinence; the characteristic of Orlando the Fair, his affectation. To make a third, Jove joined the other two; and George Bryan Brummell was, as the elder Mr. Weller says, “the consikence of the manœuvre.” Had he only possessed intellect rightly directed, and even an infinitesimal degree of principle, he might have achieved a better reputation. The Greek sage who declared that man needed but three things whereby to prosper,—first, impudence; second, impudence; third, impudence,—rather overrated his ἀυαδεια. It is true that a modest man runs great risk of being overwhelmed in this mortal “passage of the Beresina,” but he usually has principle to float him; whereas the knave who swims or struggles near him, be he never so impudent, ultimately exhibits an alacrity in sinking. It is in the immortal fitness of things that it should be so ordained.

I think Brummell must have been a descendant of the little tailor who is said by another tailor, Stow, to have whined himself to death for the love of Queen Elizabeth. I mean him of whom Lord Charles Cavendish wrote:—

“I would not willingly
Be pointed at in every company,
As was the little tailor that to death
Was hot in love with Queen Elizabeth.”

Brummell, like that audacious _schneider_, had a soul that was at once given to the “confectioning of costume,” and consorting with the great.

Brummell, like many a steward’s son, was partly the victim of his father’s ambition. His sire was smitten with more desire to see him a gentleman than an honest man. The lad was brought up with as much reference to his future condition of gentility, as Miss Killmansegge was with respect to her present and future prospects of Pactolian hue. Brummell was not a baby to suck a coral of less aristocratic value than that old mouthpiece of the unfortunate Monmouth which for years has given solace to the gums of the babies of Buccleuch. He was a lad who had an aversion for steel forks long before silver implements were familiar furniture at the tables of the middle classes, of which his father was a member; and scarcely was he a youth _ex ephebis_, and felt himself free from home restraints in gentle Henry’s shades at Eton, when he not only modernized the white cravat or stock which marks the Eton boy, but he put a gold buckle to it; and all the school “confessed the present god.”

The _condiscipuli_ of that time and place have as much realized Hood’s as Gray’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.’ The most rollicking tumbled into discretion, and became bishops; the most gentle were drafted into the army, and became blackguards. Some took to the stage, and some took portraits. A few achieved greatness; the majority have died away and are forgotten. “Blithe Carew was hung,” and Brummell “went up like a rocket and came down like the stick.”

Brummell was like Goldsmith. Do not smile: I do not mean that he had the great writer’s simplicity, industry, or goodness of heart. He was, nevertheless, like him in one respect. Poor Oliver, at Trinity College, Dublin, went in for honours, and failed. So Brummell, who, in 1793, was an undergraduate at Oxford, was a competitor for the Newdegate Prize, and lost it. From that hour he abhorred books and bookish men. He had condescended to exert himself so far as to faintly run for the laurel. When he saw it awarded to a better man, he declared that he would never run again, but walk over the course of the world and win his prizes without effort. He had already indicated the paths by which he meant to gain the honours dimly alluded to. His example at college had already abolished cotton stockings, and made dingy cravats vulgar. Even D.D.’s looked at the audacious innovator, and ceased to be, what the initials designated, “deucedly dirty.”

The unsuccessful student was soon in possession of what he considered far better than “book learning,” a third of £65,000. It was no great inheritance for a cornet in the 10th Hussars. That illustrious regiment had not yet achieved that renown of folly and of shame for which Croly pilloried it nightly, to the delight of assembled thousands, in his ‘Pride shall have a Fall.’ It was however the aspiration and the terror of all young heroes who longed to be enrolled in the sacred cohort, and who dreaded the fabulous cost of the luxury. The officers, like their ancestors at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, wore their estates upon their backs,—some of them before they had inherited the paternal acres. If the gorgeous costume and its never-ending variations did not effect this consummation, the expenses of the mess, where the mild warriors banqueted like barbaric sovereigns, and the cost of the delicate amusements of those perfumed knights, rarely failed to accomplish it. At the head of all, glittering example of the “gentleman,” careful of carriage, courteous of speech, not ungenerous by impulse, but icy-cold of heart, was the Prince-Colonel, George, afterwards Fourth of the name. The Prince’s chief intimate was Lord James Murray, subsequently Lord Glenlyon; at whose house at Datchet, old Queen Charlotte “did _never_ counsel take, _but_ sometimes tea.”

The new cornet superseded the old friend. The latter was a mild, gentleman-like man, popular with everybody but his creditors, _quorum pars fui_; and I may add, that he is pleasantly and gratefully remembered by _one_ at least of them. Brummell however took the Regent by storm. There was no resisting him. The Prince was fascinated. Brummell might be absent from parade, neglect duties even more important, and laugh at all suggestion and reproach,—“our general’s friend was now the general.” He did precisely what he pleased, nothing that he ought; and in three years he was full captain, to the as full disgust of older officers, who enviously admired while they deeply cursed him.

Never probably was the Beau in such full-blown glory as at this period of his gold-lace, best jokes, and increasing sway. He was in the very height of his ecstatic enjoyment, luxuriating in the gentility of a “gentil Hussard,” and mastering his profession, not exactly after the fashion of Marlborough;—he was in the very paradisiacal state of aristocratic soldiership, when the regiment was ordered to Manchester. Brummell nearly fainted at the idea of such vulgarity, and he left the regiment in infinite disgust. The step gained for him an immense increase of reputation—among fools!

The world had not been to him hitherto as to our old friend, Pistol,—an oyster, which he with sword could open. He may be said to have failed, both by book and blade. He was now to really soar by other means. Now came the period when he evinced his disgust of vegetables by confessing that he had once eaten—a pea. Then was the funny time when his slavish hearers laughed at the joke wherein he wrapped an excuse for being hoarse, on the ground, that he had slept in a house with a damp stranger. It was not half so excellent a joke as that enunciated, unwittingly, by the poor old Irishwoman suffering from catarrh, and who accounted for the same by stating that she “slept last night in a field and forgot to shut the gate.” However, it was good enough for a man who really fancied that he manifested humour when he expressed unconsciousness of there being such a place as Bloomsbury-square; and we may add, that it was good enough for his hearers also.

It was at this period that he patronized the late George Lane Fox, of Bramham Park, Yorkshire; and the patronage cost the latter a superb gold box, set with diamonds,—a present, if I remember rightly,—for I have heard Mr. Fox tell the story as often as Diggory heard Mr. Hardcastle tell his one story, from the Czar Alexander. Mr. Fox and Brummell had been seriously engaged, for some hours, on matters of dress, after which they discussed the not less serious question of dinner. At the banquet, the first-named gentleman showed his golden and glittering gift to the select company, who were loud in their praise, and unbounded in their admiration. As the party were to adjourn to the Opera, to hear Ambrogetti and Camporese, Mr. Fox announced his intention of depositing his box, by the way, at his house in Albemarle-street. “The whole court,” said he, “will be at the Opera, and I may get robbed of my _souvenir_!” The company laughed at the _saillie_, and the wine span round.

After a _sederunt_ of some continuance, the select society departed for “the old house in the Haymarket.” Mr. Fox and Brummell rode together. The carriage stopped in Albemarle-street, according to directions given to the coachman; but what with the wine, and a new dispute touching the depth of cravats and the height of collars, the gentlemen had forgotten why they had ordered the driver to pull up; and after striving for some time, in vain, to remember, they grew tired of conjecturing, and sped away to hear “Fin ch’ han del Vino!”

They had been perhaps an hour in the house, when Brummell, in the very middle of “Il mio tesoro,” came to the end of a dissertation on pantaloons. The gentlemen with thin legs, and no calves to them, were great patrons of what had not hitherto been admitted into the category of “dress,”—namely, trousers. Conservatives and Irish gentlemen advocated pantaloons. Brummell had given his judgement with the sententious elaboration of Dr. Chalmers on a question of Erastianism; and to refresh himself after the fatigue of the process, he begged of Fox to furnish him with a “_prise de tabac!_”

The request for a pinch of snuff reminded the then heir of Bramham Park of the fact, that it was his much-prized box which he had designed to leave in Albemarle-street. He proceeded however to perform the required act of hospitality; but on putting his hand to his pocket he found the latter empty, and the box gone. In two minutes he was in the passage below, recounting his loss to Leadbitter and Townsend, and asking from them what hope existed of his recovering the abstracted property. When they learned that an hour had elapsed since it had been stolen, Leadbitter gave the opinion of himself and brother that the loss was irreparable.

“By this time,” said Townsend, “it’s in the melting-pot of Slack Sam, the Jew _Gonoff_.”

“What’s a _Gonoff_?” asked Mr. Fox.

“Oh!” said Townsend, with an air of learning and superiority, “_Gonoff_ is Hebrew for a ‘thief.’ Did you pass any suspicious character on going upstairs?”

“I passed nobody but Lady Cork,” said Mr. Fox.

“And Lady Cork, George,” said that vivacious lady, who was coming out, “does not pick gentlemen’s pockets of snuff-boxes.”

“No,” replied the young Yorkshire squire, “Lady Cork is only a _voleuse de cœurs_. In the meantime, I have the satisfaction of knowing that my gold box is gone to a _Gonoff_.”

“And that _Gonoff_,” said Townsend, with his familiar laugh, “is Hebrew for ‘thief.’”

* * * * *

Captain Jesse has limned Brummell at elaborate full length, and the gallant artist has done his spiriting very impartially, considering the Cruikshank sort of portraiture with which the beau once affected to represent the captain. “My dear Jesse,” said the dandy once to him,—“My dear Jesse, excuse me, but you look very much like a magpie!”

This impertinence was not met in a vindictive spirit. The biographer of Brummell describes him as a _beau_, but not a beau of the Sir Fopling Flutter or Fieldingschool, That is, he was not so nastily nice as the first, nor so irretrievably nasty as the second. The captain thinks that _his_ beau would not have been guilty, like Charles James Fox, of wearing red-heeled shoes. I am not so sure of this. Fox was, like all democrats, proud of spirit, and he wore red heels, because these were the distinctive marks of nobility in the galleries of Versailles. Brummell was more original, and he would not have adopted the _talons rouges_, simply because they were the productions of the inventive genius of another. He had at first a taste that was not unimpeachable. There was too much _variety_ about him. He dealt in contrasts, and he was given to jewellery. His example in the latter way was seized, not by the young aristocracy of England, so unlike their Elizabethan ancestors, who not only covered themselves with gold and jewellery, but took gold-dust, liquid pearls, and coral draughts for their medicine; Brummel’s example was not adopted by these, but it was by their men-cooks. These latter blazed in the pit of the Opera like the caballeros at a Chilian theatre when the chief magistrate retires to the back of his box; and flint, steel, _allumettes_, and cigars are all in a glow, or helping to produce it. I have heard abundant wonder expressed at the amount of jewellery and precious stones which were then worn by culinary artists who loved music and patronized the Opera. It was, however, all borrowed finery. The pins and brooches, the chains, the breloques, the virgin gold and the diamonds pure, were the property of Ude, who realized a good share of the thirty thousand pounds he bequeathed to his disconsolate widow, by letting the finery out nightly, at sums varying from two to five shillings!

Brummell, with his usually acute perception,—that is, acute in one direction,—saw that fame was to be achieved by simplicity; and, as Captain Jesse remarks, “scorning to share his fame with his tailor, he soon shunned all external peculiarity, and trusted alone to that ease and grace of manner which he possessed in a remarkable degree. His chief aim,” adds the biographer, “was to avoid anything marked: one of his aphorisms being, that the severest mortification a gentleman could incur, was to attract observation in the street by his outward appearance. He exercised the most correct taste in the selection of each article of apparel of a form and colour harmonious with all the rest, for the purpose of producing a perfectly elegant general effect; and no doubt he spent much time and pains in the attainment of his object.” This is no doubt true. Brummell put in practice, he hardly knew why, the principles of harmony and contrast of colours, long before Monsieur Chevreul wrote his theory and explanation of those principles.

He had quite as correct an eye with regard to harmony of shape as to that of colour. The highest in the land were not ashamed to seek a sort of professional opinion from this man as to the propriety of their costume. The Duke of Bedford once did this touching a coat. Brummell examined his Grace with the cool impertinence which was his Grace’s due. He turned him about, scanned him with scrutinizing, contemptuous eye, and then taking the lappel between his dainty finger and thumb, he exclaimed in a tone of pitying wonder, “Bedford! do you call this thing a coat?”

But he did not spare his own relations. He was one day standing in the bow-window at White’s, amid a knot of well-dressed admirers, when one of them remarked, “Brummell, your brother William is in town. Is he not coming here?” “Yes,” said Brummell, “in a day or two; but I have recommended him to walk the back streets till his new clothes come home.”

Brummell however may be excused if he became vain of his power. For a season he was undoubtedly the very King of Fashion, and a terrible despot he was; but he was flattered by kings, or by their representatives. The Prince of Wales passed long matutinal hours in Brummell’s dressing-room in Chesterfield-street, watching the progress of his friend’s toilet. The progress was occasionally so extended that the Prince would dismiss his equipage, invite himself to dinner, and the master and pupil, _Arcades ambo_, set to; and “fore gad, they made a night of it!”

Never had tailor two such patrons as these two. The young lord, who numbered among what the “Clerical Tap-Tub”—as the clergy call a certain “religious” print, famous for its nasty advertisements—styles “perverts,” was nothing to these illustrious two. When the young lord of whom I speak was at Oxford, and got, as young lords sometimes _will_, into difficulties,—on the overhauling of his wardrobe, it was found that he had ordered, in seven months, upwards of three hundred and seventy waistcoats! The youthful aristocrat however was a follower of the two Georges, only “longo intervallo.” George Brummell’s wardrobe, indeed, dwindled down to the suit in which he died; but the wardrobe of the other George sold, after his death, for upwards of fifteen thousand pounds. How many a poor man might have been warmed beneath the cloth the Sovereign never used! The original cost of the wardrobe would not have surprised Alexander, but we do not live in the days of the Macedonian; and in the era of high-priced bread, England was half-appalled at the thought that a hundred thousand pounds had scarcely purchased what was sold for fifteen. Among it all was a celebrated cloak, the sable lining of which alone had originally cost eight hundred pounds. Lord Chesterfield, as little nice about wearing a cheap cast-off garment as one of his own lacqueys, procured this mantle for little more than a fourth of the original price of the lining.

Brummell never recovered the effects of the wager which he won by telling “Wales” to “ring the bell,” and which order, although obeyed, was followed by another for “Mr. Brummell’s carriage.” He struggled indeed long, and not unsuccessfully, to retain his place among dandies and wits; but his _prestige_ gradually failed, play went against him, liabilities increased, and creditors were clamorous. He put a bold face on his ugly position, and was never more brilliant or at his ease than the last night he appeared at the Opera,—one Saturday night, when, with the Sunday before him, he had determined to fly leisurely to the Continent, and leave his creditors to regret their confidence in him.