Part 8

The funds now rose again, but when, after hours of anxious expectation, it was discovered that the news, on which many bargains had been made, was false, there was, of course, wailing and gnashing of teeth. A committee was appointed by the Stock Exchange to track out the conspiracy, as on the two days before stocks to the amount of L826,000 had been purchased by persons implicated. One of the gang had, for a blind, called on Lord Cochrane, and Cochrane-Johnstone, a relation of his, had purchased Consols for him, that he might unconsciously benefit by the fraud. The Tories, eager to destroy a political enemy, concentrated all their rage on him, and he was tried, fined L1,000, and sentenced to stand for one hour in the pillory; but this latter part of the sentence was not carried out, as Sir Francis Burdett had declared that if it was done he would stand beside his friend on the scaffold of shame. Cochrane was further stripped of his knighthood, and his escutcheon kicked down the steps of St. George's Chapel at Windsor. But in his old age his innocence and the injustice done to him were recognised, and his coronet restored to him unsoiled. But could this atone for all the wrong inflicted, and all the misery endured? Those who wish to know all the details of this remarkable fraud will find them in the two volumes of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1814. The first volume gives a full account of the evidence produced at the trial.

*X.*

*WITS AND BEAUX OF OLD LONDON SOCIETY.*

A mere beau, a 'man of dress,' as our dictionaries define him, is a pitiful object--a walking and talking doll, painted and bedizened, and as imbecile-looking as a wax figure. The man who chooses to go in for being a beau should, if he does not wish to be thoroughly contemptible, possess, besides physical beauty, a stock of brains, elegant manners, ready wit, and moral courage. The gentleman who at the seaside dresses altogether in white must have a personally distinguished appearance not to be taken for his own _chef de cuisine_. Beaux are rather out of fashion just now--mashers and fops replace them. In the last century they were more plentiful. Perhaps the then prevailing popinjay style of dress, with its embroidered and many-coloured coats and waistcoats, gaudy breeches, wigs and swords, lent itself more readily to the assumption of the character than does our more subdued costume. In those days the aspirants to the title of beau were termed bucks, gallants, macaronis; and one of their distinguishing features, as the plays and portraits of those days abundantly demonstrate, was their having small legs with slender calves--possibly to show they were not footmen in disguise. And, as a rule, in those days the valet had more brains than his master.

Beaux have always been a fruitful and pleasant theme for the satirist's pen. The _Spectator_, in No. 275, describes the dissection of a beau's head, which is found to contain no brain, but in the usual place for one, smelling strongly of essences and orange-flower water, a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors. Further, a lot of ribbons, laces, and embroidery, billets-doux, love-letters, snuff, fictions, vows, oaths, and a spongy substance, known as nonsense. A muscle, not often discovered in dissections, was found, the _os cribriforme_, which draws the nose upwards when by that motion it intends to express contempt. The ogling muscles were very much worn with use. The individual to whom this head had belonged had passed for a man for about thirty years, and died in the flower of his youth by the blow of a fire-shovel, he having been surprised by an eminent citizen as he was paying some attentions to his wife. This analysis of a beau's head, or character, was written in 1712. In 1757 an essayist described him thus in doggerel:

'Would you a modern beau commence, Shake off that foe to pleasure, sense. Scorn real, unaffected worth, Despise the virtuous, good and brave, To ev'ry passion be a slave.... Be it your passion, joy and fame To play at ev'ry modish game.... Harangue on fashion, point and lace.... Affect to know each reigning belle That throngs the playhouse or the Mall. Though swearing you detest a fool, Be versed in Folly's ample school.... These rites observed, each foppish elf May view an emblem of himself.'

The combination of wit and beau in one person has, nevertheless, occasionally been seen, and the ordinary, or numskulled, beau has shared in the reputation created by such a combination, just as all judges are assumed to be sober. But in the days when beaux flourished wit of a very attenuated kind tickled the fancy of the public, who haunted the taverns patronized by the so-called wits. Even the jokes which passed at the Mermaid between Shakspere, Ben Jonson, and other professed jesters must appear to modern readers who are not absurdly prepossessed in favour of all that savours of antiquity, as heavy, dull, and often far-fetched. To justify what may appear rank heresy, let me quote one of Tarleton's 'witty' sayings. Tarleton was Shakspere's friend and fellow-actor, _the_ low comedian of Queen Elizabeth's reign, who probably suggested to Shakspere some of his jesters and fools. Now, this is what is transmitted to us as a specimen of his wit: Tarleton, keeping an ordinary in Paternoster Row, would approve of mustard standing before his customers to have wit. 'How so?' inquired one. 'It is like a witty scold, meeting another scold, begins to scold first. So,' says he, 'the mustard, being licked up and knowing that you will bite it, begins to bite you first.' 'I'll try that,' says a gull, and the mustard so tickled him that his eyes watered. 'How now?' says Tarleton. 'Does my jest savour?' 'Ay,' says the gull, 'and bite too.' 'If you had had better wit,' says Tarleton, 'you would have bit first. So, then, conclude with me that dumb, unfeeling mustard has more wit than a talking, unfeeling fool, as you are.' And this was considered 'a rare conceit' in the days of Shakspere. We are rather more exacting now.

The beaux of the days we are speaking of were, indeed, poor specimens of humanity. They were a noisy, swaggering lot, as we learn from the author of 'Shakspere's England.' 'If a gallant,' he says, 'entered the ordinary ... he would find the room full of fashion-mongers ... courtiers, who came there for society and news; adventurers who have no home ... quarrelsome men paced about fretfully fingering their sword-hilts, and maintaining as sour a face as that Puritan moping in a corner, pent up by a group of young swaggerers, disputing over cards.... The soldiers bragged of nothing but of their employment in Ireland and in the Low Countries.... The mere dullard sat silent, playing with his glove, or discussing at what apothecary's the best tobacco was to be bought.'

But let us, in the career of an individual, Beau Fielding, famous in his day, show how beaux then acquired a reputation. Scotland Yard was so called from a palace which stood there, and was the residence of the Kings of Scotland on their annual visit to do homage for their kingdom to the Crown of England. On the union of the Scottish and English Crowns the palace was allowed to go to decay. Parts of it served as occasional residences for various persons, one of whom was Robert Fielding, who died there in the early part of the last century. This Fielding was generally known as Beau Fielding. The _Tatler_, in August, 1709 (Nos. 50 and 51), thus describes him: 'Ten _lustra_ and more are wholly passed since Orlando (R. Fielding) first appeared in the metropolis of this island, his descent noble, his wit humorous, his person charming. But to none of these advantages was his title so undoubted as that of his beauty. His complexion was fair, but his countenance manly; his stature of the tallest, his shape the most exact; and though in all his limbs he had a proportion as delicate as we see in the work of the most skilful statuaries, his body had a strength and firmness little inferior to the marble of which such images are formed. This made Orlando the universal flame of all the fair sex; innocent virgins sighed for him as Adonis, experienced widows as Hercules. Thus did this figure walk alone, the pattern and ornament of our species, but, of course, the envy of all who had the same passions, without his superior merit, and pretences to the favour of that enchanting creature, woman. However, the generous Orlando believed himself formed for the world, and not to be engrossed by any particular affection.... Woman was his mistress, and the whole sex his seraglio. His form was always irresistible; and if we consider that not one of five hundred can bear the least favour from a lady without being exalted above himself ... we cannot think it wonderful that Orlando's repeated conquests touched his brain. So it certainly did, and Orlando became an enthusiast in love.... He would still add to the advantages of his person that of a profession which the ladies always favour, and immediately commenced soldier.... Our hero seeks distant climes ... after many feats of arms ... Orlando returns home, full, but not loaded, with years.... The beauteous Villaria (Barbara, daughter and heiress of William Villiers, Lord Viscount Grandison, of the Kingdom of Ireland) ... became the object of his affection.... According to Milton,

'"The fair with conscious majesty approved."

Fortune having now supplied Orlando with necessaries for his high taste of gallantry and pleasure, his equipage and economy had something in them more sumptuous and gallant than could be conceived in our degenerate age, therefore ... all the Britons under the age of sixteen ... followed his chariot with shouts and acclamations.... I remember I saw him one day stop, and call the youths about him, to whom he spoke as follows: "Good youngsters, go to school, and do not lose your time in following my wheels. I am loath to hurt you, because I know not but you are all my own offspring.... Why, you young dogs, did you never see a man before?" "Never such a one as you, noble General," replied a truant from Westminster. "Sirrah, I believe thee; there is a crown for thee. Drive on, coachman." ... Fortune being now propitious to the gay Orlando, he dressed, he spoke, he moved as a man might be supposed to do in a nation of pigmies ... he sometimes rode in an open tumbril, of less size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his limbs, and the grandeur of his personage, to the greater advantage.... In all these glorious excesses did ... Orlando live ... until an unlucky accident brought to his remembrance that ... he was married before he courted the nuptials of Villaria. Several fatal memorandums were produced to revive the memory of this accident, and the unhappy lover was for ever banished her presence, to whom he owed the support of his first renown and gallantry.... Orlando, therefore, now rages in a garret.' The Barbara Villiers mentioned by the _Tatler_ was identical with Lady Castlemaine, Duchess of Cleveland, whose scandalous history is notorious. She was sixty-five years old when she fell in love with Fielding and married him. The 'unlucky accident' of the _Tatler_ was the fact that a few weeks before Fielding had been taken in by an adventuress, one Mary Wadsworth, whom, taking her for a rich widow, he had married. On his second--bigamous--marriage, the first wife revealed the fact to Lady Castlemaine, who, having been shamefully treated by Fielding, was glad to get rid of him. The first marriage was proved in a court of law, and sentence passed on Fielding to be burnt in the hand. By interest in certain quarters he was spared this ignominious punishment; but he was left destitute, and died forgotten and forsaken.

The _Tatler_ gave Fielding a noble descent, and he, in fact, claimed descent from the Hapsburgs; and on the strength of his name ventured to have the arms of Lord Denbigh emblazoned on his coach, and to drive about the ring in Hyde Park. At the sight of the immaculate coat-of-arms on the plebeian chariot, 'all the blood of the Hapsburgs' flew to the head of Basil, fourth Earl of Denbigh. In a high state of fury, he at once procured a house-painter, and ordered him to daub the coat-of-arms completely over, in broad daylight, and before all the company in the ring. The beau tamely submitted to the insult.

Fielding had several competitors in the beau-ship; contemporary with him were Beau Edgeworth and Beau Wilson. Of the former but little is on record; the latter's career was cut short at an early date, for when he was not much beyond his twentieth year he was killed in a duel between him and John Law, afterwards so famous as the originator of the Mississippi scheme. The duel took place on the site of the present Bloomsbury Square. A mushroom growth of beaux arose about the year 1770, some of whom having travelled in Italy, and introduced macaroni as a new dish, they came to be designated by that name. They dressed in the most ridiculous fashion, wearing their hair in a very high foretop, with long side-curls, and an enormous chignon behind. Their clothes were tight-fitting, while silk stockings in all weathers were _de rigueur_. This folly was of but short duration.

In the first half of the eighteenth century flourished Beau Nash--a great contrast in manners, character, social position, and conduct to Beau Fielding; but as his life was passed at Bath he cannot be reckoned among London beaux. Yet we mention him, as in his earlier years he was slightly connected with the Metropolis, by the fact that he was entered for the Temple, though he never followed the law as a profession.

We have to come down to comparatively recent times to encounter a beau of some note; that beau was known as Beau George Brummel. He was born in 1777, and sent to Eton, where he enjoyed the credit of being the best scholar, the best oarsman, and the best cricketer of his day. His father was Under-Secretary to Lord North, and left each of his children some L30,000. At Eton he made many aristocratic friends, and thus obtained the entree to Devonshire House, where the beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, held her court, and where she introduced Brummell to the Prince Regent, who gave him a commission in the 10th Hussars. But the army, with its restraints, did not suit the beau; he left it, and then resided in Chesterfield Street, where the Prince, finding in him a kindred spirit of vanity and frivolity, used to visit him in the morning to see him make his toilet, and to learn the art of tying his neckerchief fashionably. And frequently the Prince would stay all day to enjoy his friend's intellectual discourse, stopping to take a chop or steak with him, and not returning home till the next morning, half-seas over. The beau spent his time chiefly at Brighton and at Carlton House, and regularly established himself as a leader of fashion, his horses and carriages, his dogs, walking-sticks and snuff-boxes, but especially his clothes, becoming patterns to all the empty-headed noodles who required guidance in such matters. But such show could not be supported on the income derived from his patrimony; Brummell therefore went in heavily for gambling, with varying luck. Once at Brooks's he played with Alderman Combe, nicknamed 'Mash-tub,' Lord Mayor and brewer. The dice-box circulated. 'Come, Mash-tub,' said the beau, who was the caster, 'what do you set?' 'Twenty-five guineas,' said the Alderman. The beau won, and eleven more similar ventures. As he pocketed the money, he said: 'Thank you, Alderman; henceforth I shall drink no porter but yours.' 'I wish, sir,' replied Combe, 'that every other blackguard in London would say the same.' At the Watier Club, established at the instigation of the Prince of Wales, Brummell suffered heavy losses, so that ever after he was in constant pecuniary difficulties, though Fortune smiled on him at times. Indulging in all the superstitious tendencies of gamblers, he at one time attributed his luck to the finding of a crooked sixpence in the kennel, as he was walking with Mr. Raikes, who tells the story, through Berkeley Square. He had a hole bored in the coin, and attached it to his watch-chain. As for the succeeding two years he had great luck at the table and on the turf, he attributed it to the lucky sixpence. He is supposed to have made nearly L30,000 during that time.

A coolness between the Prince and the beau arose after a few years; various reasons are assigned for it. He was, for instance, said to have taken the part of Mrs. Fitzherbert, who had been privately married to the Prince Regent at Carlton House; he is reported to have asked Lady Cholmondeley, in the hearing of the Prince, and pointing to him, 'Who is your fat friend?' Though it is also reported that this question was put to Jack Lee, as he was walking up St. James's Street, arm-in-arm with the Prince, a few days after the beau had quarrelled with the latter. But this blew over, and Brummell was again invited to Carlton House, where he took too much wine. The Prince said to his brother, the Duke of York: 'I think we had better order Mr. Brummell's carriage before he gets quite drunk.' Another version of the second rupture is that Brummell took the liberty of saying to the Prince: 'George, ring the bell.' The Prince rang it, and told the servant who answered it: 'Mr. Brummell's carriage.' This Brummell always denied; however, he was a second time forbidden Carlton House. For a few years he was a hanger-on at Oatlands, the seat of the Duke of York, then, having lost large sums at play, he was obliged to fly the country, and having lived for some years in obscurity at Calais, he obtained the post of British Consul at Caen--for which his previous career, of course, eminently fitted him! He died in that town in poor circumstances in 1840.

Let us conclude this short account of the poor moth, basking in the royal sunshine for awhile, with one or two anecdotes. One day a youthful beau approached Brummell, and said: 'Permit me to ask you where you get your blacking?' 'Ah,' said the beau, 'my blacking positively ruins me. I will tell you in confidence--it is made with the finest champagne!' He was once at a party in Portman Square. On the cloth being removed, the snuff-boxes made their appearance; Brummell's was particularly admired; it was handed round, and a gentleman, finding it somewhat difficult to open, incautiously applied a desert-knife to the lid. Brummell was on thorns, and at last could contain himself no longer, and addressing the host, he said, loud enough to be heard by the company: 'Will you be good enough to tell your friend that my snuff-box is not an oyster?'

England has had no regular beau since the time of Brummell, though occasionally some crack-brained individual has attempted to wear his mantle. Such a one was Ferdinand Geramb, a tight-laced German General and Baron, who in the second decade of this century strutted about the parks, conspicuous for his ringlets, his superb moustaches, and immense spurs. It was asserted that he was a German Jew, who, having married the widow of a Hungarian Baron, assumed her late husband's title. His fiery moustaches were closely imitated by many illustrious personages, and gold spurs several inches long became the fashion--one fool makes many. It is to him the British army is indebted for the introduction of hussar uniforms. Having to leave England under the Alien Act, he went to Hamburg, where he set himself to writing against the Emperor Napoleon, who shut him up in the Castle of Vincennes. There, in terrible fear of being shot, he made a vow that should he regain his liberty he would renounce the devil and his works, and join the Trappist community. He was released at the Restoration, and at once entered a Trappist monastery, under the name of Brother Joseph, and in course of time became Abbot and Procurator-General of the Order. No more fighting of duels now, no more keeping the bailiffs who wanted to seize him for debt at bay for twelve days in an English country house which he had fortified; he submitted to the severest rules of the Order, and in 1831 made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and died at Rome in 1848.

*XI.*

*LONDON SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES.*

In the year 1765 a Frenchman, who did not give his name, visited London, and afterwards published in Paris an account of his visit.

'I reached London,' he says, 'towards the close of the day ... and at last, quite by chance, I found myself settled in an apartment in the house of the _Cruisinier Royal_ in Leicester Fields. This neighbourhood is filled with small houses, which are mostly let to foreigners.' On the following day he walked down Holborn and the Strand to St. Paul's, then crossed London Bridge, and returned to his hotel by walking through Southwark and Lambeth to Westminster, 'a district full of mean houses and meaner taverns.' The localities named have not greatly altered their character since then. In another place our traveller says: 'Even from the bridges it is impossible to get a view of the river, as the parapets are ten feet high.... The reason given for all this is the inclination which the English, and the Londoners especially, have for suicide. It is true that above and below the town the banks are unprotected, and offer an excellent opportunity to those who really wish to drown themselves; but the distance is great, and, besides, those who wish to leave the world in this manner prefer doing so before the eyes of the public. The parapets, however, of the new bridge [Blackfriars] which is being built will be but of an ordinary height.' Suicidal tendencies must indeed have greatly declined, since the most recently erected bridges, the new Westminster and Blackfriars, have particularly low parapets.

Of the streets our author says: 'They are paved in such a manner that it is barely possible to ride or walk on them in safety, and they are always extremely dirty.... The finest streets ... would be impassable were it not that on each side ... footways are made from four to five feet wide, and for communication from one to the other across the street there are smaller footways elevated above the general surface of the roadway, and formed of large stones selected for the purpose.... In the finest part of the Strand, near St. Clement's Church, I noticed, during the whole of my stay in London, that the middle of the street was constantly covered with liquid stinking mud, three or four inches deep.... The walkers are bespattered from head to foot.... The natives, however, brave all these disagreeables, wrapped up in long blue coats, like dressing-gowns, wearing brown stockings and perukes, rough, red and frizzled.'

Well, we cannot find much fault with this description, unflattering as it is, for in the last century London certainly was one of the most hideous towns to live in, and its inhabitants the most uncouth, repulsive set of 'guys'! Concerning Oxford Street our author makes a false prognostic: 'The shops of Oxford Street will disappear as the houses are sought after for private dwellings by the rich. Soon will the great city extend itself to Marylebone, which is not more than a quarter of a league distant. At present it is a village, principally of taverns, inhabited by French refugees.'

Our traveller sees but four houses in London which will bear comparison with the great hotels in Paris. To the inconvenience of mud, he says, must be added that of smoke, which, mingled with a perpetual fog, covers London as a pall. We, to our sorrow, know this to be true even now.