Part 3

Lord Petersham was a Mæcenas among the tailors, and the inventor of an overcoat called after him. He was famous for his brown carriages, horses, and liveries, all of the same shade; and his devotion to this colour was popularly supposed to be due to the love he had borne a widow of the name. He never went out before six o’clock in the evening, and had many other eccentricities. Gronow has described a visit to his apartments: “The room into which we were ushered was more like a shop than a gentleman’s sitting-room. All around the wall were shelves, upon which were placed the canisters containing congou, pekoe, souchong, bohea, gunpowder, Russian, and many other teas, all the best of their kind; on the other side of the room were beautiful jars, with names in gilt letters of innumerable kinds of snuff, and all the necessary apparatus for moistening and mixing. Lord Petersham’s mixture is still well known to all tobacconists. Other shelves and many of the tables were covered with a great number of magnificent snuff-boxes; for Lord Petersham had perhaps the finest collection in England, and was supposed to have a fresh box for every day in the year. I heard him, on the occasion of a delightful old light-blue Sèvres box he was using being admired, say in his lisping way, ‘Yes, it is a nice summer box, but it would not do for winter wear.’” Queen Charlotte had made snuff-taking fashionable in England, but the habit began to die out with the Regency. George IV. carried a box, but he had no liking for it; and, conveying it with a grand air between his right thumb and forefinger, he was careful to drop it before it reached his nose. He gave up the custom of offering a pinch to his neighbours, and it was recognised as a breach of good manners to dip uninvited into a man’s box. When at the Pavilion the Bishop of Winchester committed such an infringement of etiquette, Brummell told a servant to throw the rest of the snuff into the fire. When Lord Petersham died, his snuff was sold by auction. It took three men three days to weigh it, and realised three thousand pounds.

Another eccentric was Lord Dudley and Ward, sometime Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who eventually lost his reason. His absence of mind was notorious, and he had a habit of talking aloud that frequently landed him in trouble. Dining at the house of a _gourmet_, under the impression he was at home, he apologised for the badness of the _entrées_, and begged the company to excuse them on account of the illness of his cook! Similarly, when he was paying a visit he imagined himself to be the entertainer, and when his hostess had exhausted her hints concerning the duration of his call, he murmured, “A very pretty woman. But she stays a devilish long time. I wish she’d go.” Still more amusing were his remarks in the carriage of a brother peer who had volunteered to drive him from the House of Lords to Dudley House: “A deuce of a bore! This tiresome man has taken me home, and will expect me to ask him to dinner. I suppose I must do so, but it is a horrid nuisance.” This was too much for his good-natured companion, who, as if to himself, droned in the same monotonous tones, “What a bore! This good-natured fellow Dudley will think himself obliged to invite me to dinner, and I shall be forced to go. I hope he won’t ask me, for he gives d----d bad dinners.” These stories recall another related of an absent-minded royal duke, who, when during the service the parson proposed the prayer for rain, said in a voice audible throughout the church, “Yes, by all means let us pray, but it won’t be any good. We sha’n’t get rain till the moon changes.”

After Brummell left England, it was to William, Lord Alvanley that all the witty sayings of the day were attributed. The son of the famous lawyer Sir Pepper Arden,[5] he began life in the Coldstream Guards, of which the colonel was the Duke of York. He achieved his earliest success as a wit at the expense of a brother officer, Gunter, a scion of the famous catering-house. Gunter’s horse was almost beyond the control of the rider, who explained that his horse was too hot to hold. “Ice him, Gunter; ice him,” cried Alvanley. Thrown into such company, it was not perhaps unnatural that Alvanley should be extravagant; but his carelessness in money matters was notorious. He never paid ready money for anything, and never knew the extent of his indebtedness. He had no sympathy with those who devoted some time and trouble to the management of their affairs, and expressed the utmost contempt for a friend who was so weak as to “muddle away his fortune paying tradesmen’s bills.” Though very wealthy, he soon became embarrassed in his circumstances. He persuaded Charles Greville, the author of the “Journals,” to put his affairs in order. The two men spent a day over accounts, and Greville found that the task he had undertaken would not be so difficult as he had been given to understand. His relief was not long-lived, however, for on the following morning he received a note from Alvanley saying he had quite forgotten a debt of fifty thousand pounds!

[5] Sir Pepper Arden was a man of very violent temperament. One day, when he was haranguing a jury, a Frenchman who was paying a visit to the Law Courts asked who was the irascible advocate. His companion translated the name literally, “_Le Chevalier Poivre Ardent_.” “_Parbleu!_” replied the other, “_il est très bien nommé_.”

Alvanley was famous for his dinners, and indulged in the expensive taste of having an apricot tart on his table every day throughout the year. His dinners were generally acclaimed as the best in England; certainly he spared no expense in the endeavour to secure the blue ribbon of the table. Even Abraham Hayward commented on his extravagance. “He had his _suprême de volaille_ made of the oysters, or _les sots, les-laissent_ of fowls, instead of the fillet from the breast,” he noted in “The Art of Dining,” “so that it took a score of birds to complete a moderate dish.” It was Alvanley who organised a wonderful freak dinner at White’s Club, at which the inventor of the most costly dish should dine at the cost of the others; and he won easily. His contribution to the feast was a _fricassée_ made of the _noix_, or small pieces at each side of the back, taken from thirteen different kinds of birds, among them being a hundred snipe, forty woodcocks, twenty pheasants--in all some three hundred birds. The cost of this dish exceeded one hundred pounds.

As he was beloved by his friends and vastly popular, society was enraged when O’Connell in the House of Commons spoke of him as “a bloated buffoon.” A challenge was sent at once, but the Liberator refused to go out. He had been on the ground once, had killed his man, and had vowed never to fight another duel. Alvanley would not forgive the insult, however, and threatened to thrash the aggressor; whereupon Morgan O’Connell met him in place of his father, when several shots were exchanged without result. “What a clumsy fellow O’Connell must be, to miss such a fat fellow as I!” said Alvanley calmly. “He ought to practise at a haystack to get his hand in.” Driven back to London, he gave the hackney-coachman a sovereign. “It’s a great deal,” said the man gratefully, “for having taken your lordship to Wimbledon.” “No, my good fellow,” the peer laughed; “I give it you, not for taking me, but for bringing me back.”

Beyond all question the greatest dandy of his day was George Bryan Brummell, generally called Beau Brummell. This famous personage dominated all his rivals, and even the Prince of Wales accepted him at least as an equal. It is not known with any certainty how his acquaintance began with the heir-apparent. Brummell’s aunt, Mrs Searle, who had a little cottage with stables for cows at the entrance, opposite Clarges Street, of the Green Park, in which she had been installed by George III., related that it was one day when the Prince of Wales, accompanied by the beautiful Marchioness of Salisbury, stopped to see the cows milked that he first met her nephew, was attracted by him, and, hearing he was intended for the army, offered him a commission in his own regiment. Gronow gives another story, which on the face of it is more probable. Brummell made many friends among the scions of good family while he was at Eton, where he seems to have been regarded as an Admirable Crichton: “the best scholar, the best boatman, the best cricketer.” He was invited to a ball at Devonshire House, became a great favourite, and was asked everywhere. The Prince sent for him, and, pleased by his manner and appearance, gave him a commission. In his seventeenth year he was gazetted to a cornetcy in the Tenth Light Dragoons. He resigned soon after because the regiment was ordered to Manchester![6]

[6] At a grand review at Brighton he was thrown from his horse and broke his classical Roman nose.

Brummell threw himself heart and soul into the social life of the metropolis, and soon his reputation extended far and wide, until no party was complete without him, and his presence was regarded as the hall-mark of fashion. He was the very man for the part he had set himself. Tall, well made, with a good figure, he affected an old-world air of courtesy, picked up probably from the French refugees, as he had never been out of England until he left it for good. His affectation of _vieille cour_ showed itself in the use of powder, which distinguished him in the days when the custom was dying out among civilians. His grandfather was a tradesman, and let lodgings in Bury Street, St James’s. His father, by the influence of a lodger, was presented to a clerkship in the Treasury, became private secretary to Lord North, made money by speculation, settled down at Donnington, and became High Sheriff of Berkshire, where he was visited by Fox and Sheridan. Though of no rank, Brummell lived with the highest in the land on terms of equality. His acquaintance was sought, his intimacy desired; and, so far from requiring a patron, it was he who patronised. His influence was unbounded, his fascination undeniable, his indifference to public opinion reckless. He was good-natured and rarely out of humour; neither a drunkard nor a profligate. He had bright and amusing conversation, some wit, and a considerable power of _persiflage_, which, while it enabled him to laugh some people out of bad habits, only too frequently was exerted to laugh others out of good principles.

He revived the taste for dress. “Clean linen, and plenty of it” was an important item of his creed. His great triumph was in connection with the cravat. Before he came into his own they were worn without stiffening of any kind; as soon as he ascended his throne he had them starched![7] A revolution would not have attracted more attention. Thereafter his sway was undisputed, and his word law in all matters of fashion. The Prince of Wales used to call on him in the morning at his house in Chesterfield Street, and, deeply engrossed in the discussion of costume, would frequently remain to dinner. “Brummell was always studiously and remarkably well dressed, never _outré_; and, though considerable time and attention were devoted to his toilet, it never, when once accomplished, seemed to occupy his attention,” said one who knew him well. “His manners were easy, polished, and gentleman-like, and regulated by that same good taste which he displayed in most things. No one was a more keen observer of vulgarity in others, or more _piquant_ in his criticisms, or more despotic as an _arbiter elegantarium_; he could decide the fate of a young man just launched into the world with a single word.”[8]

[7] A visitor to Brummell met the great man’s valet on the stair having on his arm a number of crumpled ties. In answer to an inquiring look, the latter explained, “They are our failures.”

[8] The Duke of Bedford asked his opinion of a new coat; Brummell looked at it carefully in front and, telling him to turn round, at the back. Then he asked earnestly, “Bedford, do you call this thing a coat?”

The tastes of the Prince of Wales verged on the florid, but Brummell’s efforts tended to simplicity of costume. Under Brummell the dandy’s dress consisted of a blue coat with brass buttons, leather breeches, and top-boots; with, of course, the deep, stiff white cravat which prevented you from seeing your boots while standing. Gronow relates that while he was in Paris after Waterloo trousers and shoes were worn by young men, only old fogies favouring knee-breeches. On his return to England in 1816, receiving from Lady Hertford an invitation to Manchester House “to have the honour of meeting the Prince Regent,” he went dressed _à la Française_--white neckcloth, waistcoat, black trousers, shoes and silk stockings. He made his bow, and almost immediately afterwards Horace Seymour came to him: “The great man is very much surprised that you should have ventured to appear in his presence without knee-breeches. He considers it as a want of proper respect for him.” Gronow went away in high dudgeon. A month later the Prince adopted the dress he had censured!

All the world watched Brummell to imitate him. He made the fortune of his tailor, Weston, of Old Bond Street, and of his other tradesmen. The most noteworthy of these was Hoby, the St James’s Street bootmaker, an impertinent and independent man who employed his leisure as a Methodist preacher. Many good stories are told of him. It was he who said to the Duke of Kent, when the latter informed him of the issue of the great battle at Vittoria, “If Lord Wellington had had any other bootmaker than myself he would never have had his great and constant successes, for my boots and my prayers bring him out of all his difficulties.” When Horace Churchill entered his shop and complained in no moderate words of a pair of boots, vowing he would never employ him again, Hoby quickly turned the tables. “John, close the shutters,” he cried to an assistant, affecting a woebegone look. “It is all over with us. I must shut up shop. Ensign Churchill withdraws his custom from me.” Sir John Shelley once showed him a pair of top-boots that had split in several places. “How did that happen, Sir John?” “Why, in walking to my stable,” the customer explained. “Walking to your stable!” Hoby exclaimed, not troubling to suppress a sneer. “I made the boots for riding, not walking.”[9]

[9] Hoby died worth one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. He was the first man in London to drive a Tilbury.

It is but a step from boots to blacking, an article to which the dandies devoted much attention. Lieutenant-Colonel Kelly, of the First Foot Guards, was famous for his well-varnished boots. After his death, which occurred in a fire owing to his efforts to save his favourite boots, all the men about town were anxious to secure the services of his valet, who alone knew the secret of the blacking. Brummell found the man and asked his wages. The Colonel had given him a hundred and fifty pounds a year, but now he required two hundred. “Well, if you will make it guineas,” said the Beau, “_I_ shall be happy to attend upon _you_!” Lord Petersham spent a great deal of time in making a particular kind of blacking which he believed would eventually supersede all others, and Brummell declared, “My blacking ruins me; it is made with the finest champagne.” But Brummell must not be taken too seriously. He was a master _poseur_, and many of his critics have fallen into the error of taking him literally. Thus it has apparently never occurred to his biographers to think he was joking when, in reply to a lady who inquired what allowance she should make her son who was about to enter the world, he assured her that, _with economy_, her son could dress on eight hundred a year. They merely comment upon his terribly extravagant ideas. Again, when the Beau, speaking of a boy, said with apparent earnestness, “Really, I did my best for the young man; I once gave him my arm all the way from White’s to Watier’s”--about a hundred yards--they discuss his enormous conceit!

There are several accounts of the cause of the rupture of the intimacy between Brummell and the Prince. It is certain, however, that the story of “Wales, ring the bell,” has no foundation. “I was on such intimate terms with the Prince that if we had been alone I could have asked him without offence to ring the bell,” Brummell said; “but with a third person in the room I should never have done so. I knew the Regent too well.” The story was true in so far as the order, “Wales, ring the bell,” was given at the royal supper-table by a lad who had taken too much to drink. The Prince did ring the bell, and when the servants came, told them, good-humouredly enough, to “put that drunken boy to bed.” One authority says the quarrel arose because Brummell spoke sarcastically of Mrs Fitzherbert, another because he spoke in her favour when the Prince was bestowing his smiles in another quarter. The Beau believed it was because of remarks concerning both Mrs Fitzherbert and the Prince. There is no doubt Brummell did allow himself considerable licence of speech, and having a ready wit, was not inclined to forego its use.

A curious tale was told by General Sir Arthur Upton to Gronow. It seems that the first estrangement did not last long. Brummell played whist at White’s Club one night, and won from George Harley Drummond[10] the sum of twenty thousand pounds. The Duke of York told the Prince of the incident, and the Beau was again invited to Carlton House. “At the commencement of the dinner matters went off smoothly; but Brummell, in his joy at finding himself with his old friend, became excited, and drank too much wine. His Royal Highness--who wanted to avenge himself for an insult he had received at Lady Cholmondeley’s ball, when the Beau, looking towards the Prince, said to Lady Worcester, ‘Who is your fat friend?’--had invited him to dinner merely out of a desire for revenge. The Prince, therefore, pretended to be affronted with Brummell’s hilarity, and said to his brother, the Duke of York, who was present, ‘I think we had better order Mr Brummell’s carriage before he gets drunk’; whereupon he rang the bell, and Brummell left the royal presence.” As Sir Arthur was present at the dinner, there can be no doubt as to the facts; and, knowing the character of the royal host as we do, there is no reason to doubt that he invited a guest to insult him. That is quite of a piece with his conduct on other occasions; but it seems certain that the motive that spurred the Prince on to revenge was not that attributed to him. Of all the versions of the “Who’s your fat friend?” episode, that given by the General is the least likely. Inaccurate, too, is Raikes when he tells of Brummell asking the famous question of Jack Lee in St James’s Street, after the latter had been seen speaking to the Prince.

[10] Drummond was a partner in the great banking-house of that name, and the episode caused his retirement from the firm. This was the only occasion on which he had played whist at White’s Club.

The true story is the following: A dandies’ ball was to be given by Lord Alvanley, Sir Henry Mildmay, Henry Pierrepoint and Brummell to celebrate a great run of luck at hazard. The question of inviting the Prince was mooted, but it was negatived because all felt sure it would be declined, since he was not on friendly terms with Brummell. The Prince, however, sent an intimation that he desired to be present, and of course a formal invitation was despatched. The four hosts assembled at the door to do honour to their royal guest, who shook hands with three of them, but looked Brummell full in the face and passed on without any sign of recognition. Then it was, before the Prince was out of hearing, that Brummell turned to his neighbour and asked with apparent nonchalance, “Alvanley, who’s your fat friend?”

After this there was war to the death, and Brummell, who was a good fighter, did not miss any opportunity to wound his powerful antagonist. He was passing down Pall Mall when the Regent’s carriage drew up at a picture gallery. The sentries saluted, and, keeping his back to the carriage, Brummell took the salute as if to himself. The Prince could not hide his anger from the bystanders, for he looked upon any slight to his dignity as rather worse than high treason. The foes met again later on in the waiting-room at the opera. An eye-witness has described the _rencontre_: “The Prince of Wales, who always came out rather before the performance concluded, was waiting for his carriage. Presently Brummell came out, talking eagerly to some friends, and, not seeing the Prince or his party, he took up a position near the checktaker’s bar. As the crowd flowed out, Brummell was gradually pressed backwards, until he was all but driven against the Regent, who distinctly saw him, but of course would not move. In order to stop him, therefore, and prevent actual collision, one of the Prince’s suite tapped him on the back, when Brummell immediately turned sharply round, and saw there was not much more than a foot between his nose and the Prince of Wales’s. I watched him with intense curiosity, and observed that his countenance did not change in the slightest degree, nor did his head move; they looked straight into each other’s eyes, the Prince evidently amazed and annoyed. Brummell, however, did not quail, or show the least embarrassment. He receded quite quietly, and backed slowly step by step till the crowd closed between them, never once taking his eyes off those of the Prince.” Moore, in the _Twopenny Post Bag_, commemorated the quarrel in his parody of the letter from the Prince of Wales to the Duke of York, in which he says:

“I indulge in no hatred, and wish there may come ill To no mortal, except, now I think on’t, Beau Brummell, Who declared t’other day, in a superfine passion, He’d cut me and bring the old King into fashion.”

Brummell contrived to hold his own until he took to card-playing. His patrimony of thirty thousand pounds was insufficient to justify him in entering the lists with his companions. It was the case of the earthenware pot and the iron pots. At first he was unsuccessful, and as he was not then addicted to games of chance, his depression was very great. Walking home from a club with Tom Raikes, he was lamenting his bad fortune, when he saw something bright in the roadway. He stooped and picked up a crooked sixpence. “This,” he said to his companion with great cheerfulness, “is the harbinger of good luck.” He drilled a hole in it and fastened it to his watch-chain. The talisman worked, and he won thirty thousand pounds in the next two years.

Fortune deserted him; but he did not lose even a third of his winnings, and Raikes, in his “Memoirs,” remarks that he was never more surprised than when in 1816, one morning, Brummell confided to him that his situation had become so desperate that he must fly the country that night, and by stealth. He had lived above his income, had got into debt, and then had fallen into the hands of the notorious usurers, Howard and Gibbs. Other money-lenders may have had claims upon him; for when it was said to Alvanley that if Brummell had remained in London something might have been done for him by his friends, the witty peer made a _bon mot_: “He has done quite right to be off; it was Solomon’s judgment.”[11]

[11] Solomon was a well-known money-lender.