Chapter 14

Peace! there was not peace even in death, and the creditor pursued him even into the 'waste wide,'--even to the coffin. He was lying in state, when a gentleman in the deepest mourning called, it is said, at the house, and introducing himself as an old and much-attached friend of the deceased, begged to be allowed to look upon his face. The tears which rose in his eyes, the tremulousness of his quiet voice, the pallor of his mournful face, deceived the unsuspecting servant, who accompanied him to the chamber of death, removed the lid of the coffin, turned down the shrowd, and revealed features which had once been handsome, but long since rendered almost hideous by drinking. The stranger gazed with profound emotion, while he quietly drew from his pocket a bailiff's wand, and touching the corpse's face with it, suddenly altered his manner to one of considerable glee, and informed the servant that he had arrested the corpse in the king's name for a debt of £500. It was the morning of the funeral, which was to be attended by half the grandees of England, and in a few minutes the mourners began to arrive. But the corpse was the bailiff's property, till his claim was paid, and nought but the money would soften the iron capturer. Canning and Lord Sidmouth agreed to settle the matter, and over the coffin the debt was paid.

Poor corpse! was it worth £500--diseased, rotting as it was, and about to be given for nothing to mother earth? Was it worth the pomp of the splendid funeral and the grand hypocrisy of grief with which it was borne to Westminster Abbey? Was not rather the wretched old man, while he yet struggled on in life, worth this outlay, worth this show of sympathy? Folly; not folly only--but a lie! What recked the dead of the four noble pall-bearers--the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, and the Bishop of London? What good was it to him to be followed by two royal highnesses--the Dukes of York and Sussex--by two marquises, seven earls, three viscounts, five lords, a Canning, a lord mayor, and a whole regiment of honourables and right honourables, who now wore the livery of grief, when they had let him die in debt, in want, and in misery? Far more, if the dead could feel, must he have been grateful for the honester tears of those two untitled men, who had really befriended him to the last hour and never abandoned him, Mr. Rogers and Dr. Bain. But peace; let him pass with nodding plumes and well-dyed horses to the great Walhalla, and amid the dust of many a poet let the poet's dust find rest and honour, secure at last from the hand of the bailiff. There was but one nook unoccupied in Poet's Corner, and there they laid him. A simple marble was afforded by another friend without a title--Peter Moore.

To a life like Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice in so narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men who, not to be made out a whit better or worse than they are, demand a careful investigation of all their actions, or reported actions--a careful sifting of all the evidence for or against them, and a careful weeding of all the anecdotes told of them. This requires a separate biography. To give a general idea of the man, we must be content to give that which he inspired in a general acquaintance. Many of his 'mots,' and more of the stories about him, may have been invented for him, but they would scarcely have been fixed on Sheridan, if they had not fitted more or less his character: I have therefore given them. I might have given a hundred more, but I have let alone those anecdotes which did not seem to illustrate the character of the man. Many another good story is told of him, and we must content ourselves with one or two. Take one that is characteristic of his love of fun.

Sheridan is accosted by an elderly gentleman, who has forgotten the name of a street to which he wants to go, and who informs him precisely that it is an out-of-the-way name.

'Perhaps, sir, you mean John Street?' says Sherry, all innocence.

'No, an unusual name.'

'It can't be Charles Street?'

Impatience on the part of the old gentleman.

'King Street?' suggests the cruel wit.

'I tell you, sir, it is a street with a very odd name!'

'Bless me, is it Queen Street?'

Irritation on the part of the old gentleman.

'It must be Oxford Street?' cries Sheridan as if inspired.

'Sir, I repeat,' very testily, 'that it is a very odd name. Every one knows Oxford Street!'

Sheridan appears to be thinking.

'An odd name! Oh! ah! just so; Piccadilly, of course?'

Old gentleman bounces away in disgust.

'Well, sir,' Sheridan calls after him, 'I envy you your admirable memory!'

His wit was said to have been prepared, like his speeches, and he is even reported to have carried his book of _mots_ in his pocket, as a young lady of the middle class _might_, but seldom does, carry her book of etiquette into a party. But some of his wit was no doubt extempore.

When arrested for non-attendance to a call in the House, soon after the change of ministry, he exclaimed, 'How hard to be no sooner out of office than into custody!'

He was not an inveterate talker, like Macaulay, Sydney Smith, or Jeffrey: he seems rather to have aimed at a striking effect in all that he said. When found tripping he had a clever knack of getting out of the difficulty. In the Hastings speech he complimented Gibbon as a 'luminous' writer; questioned on this, he replied archly, 'I said _vo_-luminous.'

I cannot afford to be voluminous on Sheridan, and so I quit him.

BEAU BRUMMELL

Two popular Sciences.--'Buck Brummell' at Eton.--Investing his Capital.-- Young Cornet Brummell.--The Beau's Studio.--The Toilet.--'Creasing Down.'--Devotion to Dress.--A Great Gentleman.--Anecdotes of Brummell.-- 'Don't forget, Brum: Goose at Four!'--Offers of Intimacy resented.--Never in love.--Brummell out Hunting.--Anecdote of Sheridan and Brummell.--The Beau's Poetical Efforts.--The Value of a Crooked Sixpence.--The Breach with the Prince of Wales.--'Who's your Fat Friend?'--The Climax is reached.--The Black-mail of Calais.--George the Greater and George the Less.--An Extraordinary Step.--Down the Hill of Life.--A Miserable Old Age.--In the Hospice Du Bon Sauveur.--O Young Men of this Age, be warned!

It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high art has been applied, and with what success. It is the vice of high civilization to look for it and reverence it, where a ruder age would only laugh at its employment. Crime and cookery, especially, have been raised into sciences of late, and the professors of both received the amount of honour due to their acquirements. Who would be so naïve as to sneer at the author of 'The Art of Dining?' or who so ungentlemanly as not to pity the sorrows of a pious baronet, whose devotion to the noble art of appropriation was shamefully rewarded with accommodation gratis on board one of Her Majesty's transport-ships? The disciples of Ude have left us the literary results of their studies, and one at least, the graceful Alexis Soyer, is numbered among our public benefactors. We have little doubt that as the art, vulgarly called 'embezzlement,' becomes more and more fashionable, as it does every day, we shall have a work on the 'Art of Appropriation.' It is a pity that Brummell looked down upon literature: poor literature! it had a hard struggle to recover the slight, for we are convinced there is not a work more wanted than the 'Art of Dressing,' and 'George the Less' was almost the last professor of that elaborate science.

If the maxim, that 'whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well,' hold good, Beau Brummell must be regarded in the light of a great man. That dressing is worth doing at all, everybody but a Fiji Islander seems to admit, for everybody does it. If, then, a man succeeds in dressing better than anybody else, it follows that he is entitled to the most universal admiration.

But there was another object to which this great man condescended to apply the principles of high art--I mean affectation. How admirably he succeeded in this his life will show. But can we doubt that he is entitled to our greatest esteem and heartiest gratitude for the studies he pursued with unremitting patience in these two useful branches, when we find that a prince of the blood delighted to honour, and the richest, noblest, and most distinguished men of half a century ago were proud to know him? We are writing, then, of no common man, no mere beau, but of the greatest professor of two of the most popular sciences--Dress and Affectation. Let us speak with reverence of this wonderful genius.

George Brummell was 'a self-made man.' That is, all that nature, the tailors, stags, and padding had not made of him, he made for himself--his name, his fame, his fortune, and his friends--and all these were great. The author of 'Self-help' has most unaccountably omitted all mention of him, and most erroneously, for if there ever was a man who helped himself, and no one else, it was, 'very sincerely yours, George Brummell.'

The founder of the noble house of Brummell, the grandfather of our hero, was either a treasury porter, or a confectioner, or something else.[10] At any rate he let lodgings in Bury Street, and whether from the fact that his wife did not purloin her lodgers' tea and sugar, or from some other cause, he managed to ingratiate himself with one of them--who afterwards became Lord Liverpool--so thoroughly, that through his influence he obtained for his son the post of Private Secretary to Lord North. Nothing could have been more fortunate, except, perhaps, the son's next move, which was to take in marriage the daughter of Richardson, the owner of a well-known lottery-office. Between the lottery of office and the lottery of love, Brummell _père_ managed to make a very good fortune. At his death he left as much as £65,000 to be divided among his three children--Raikes says as much as £30,000 a-piece--so that the Beau, if not a fool, ought never to have been a pauper.

[10: Mr. Jesse says that the Beau's grandfather was a servant of Mr. Charles Monson, brother to the first Lord Monson.]

George Bryan Brummell, the second son of this worthy man, honoured by his birth the 7th of June, 1778. No anecdotes of his childhood are preserved, except that he once cried because he could not eat any more damson tart. In later years he would probably have thought damson tart 'very vulgar.' He first turns up at Eton at the age of twelve, and even there commences his distinguished career, and is known as 'Buck Brummell.' The boy showed himself decidedly father to the man here. Master George was not vulgar enough, nor so imprudent, it may be added, as to fight, row, or play cricket, but he distinguished himself by the introduction of a gold buckle in the white stock, by never being flogged, and by his ability in toasting cheese. We do not hear much of his classical attainments.

The very gentlemanly youth was in due time passed on to Oriel College, Oxford. Here he distinguished himself by a studied indifference to college discipline and an equal dislike to studies. He condescended to try for the Newdigate Prize poem, but his genius leaned far more to the turn of a coat-collar than that of a verse, and, unhappily for the British poets, their ranks were not to be dignified by the addition of this illustrious man. The Newdigate was given to another; and so, to punish Oxford, the competitor left it and poetry together, after having adorned the old quadrangle of Oriel for less than a year.

He was now a boy of seventeen, and a very fine boy, too. To judge from a portrait taken in later life, he was not strictly handsome; but he is described as tall, well built, and of a slight and graceful figure. Added to this, he had got from Eton and Oxford, if not much learning, many a well-born friend, and he was toady enough to cultivate those of better, and to dismiss those of less distinction. He was, through life, a celebrated 'cutter,' and Brummell's cut was as much admired--by all but the _cuttee_--as Brummel's coat. Then he had some £25,000 as capital and how could he best invest it? He consulted no stockbroker on this weighty point; he did not even buy a shilling book of advice such as we have seen advertised for those who do not know what to do with their money. The question was answered in a moment by the young worldling of sixteen: he would enter a crack regiment and invest his guineas in the thousand per cents. of fashionable life.

His namesake, the Regent, was now thirty-two, and had spent those years of his life in acquiring the honorary title of the 'first gentleman of Europe' by every act of folly, debauch, dissipation, and degradation which a prince can conveniently perpetrate. He was the hero of London society, which adored and backbit him alternately, and he was precisely the man whom the boy Brummell would worship. The Regent was colonel of a famous regiment of fops--the 10th Hussars. It was the most expensive, the most impertinent, the best-dressed, the worst-moralled regiment in the British army. Its officers, many of them titled, all more or less distinguished in the trying campaigns of London seasons, were the intimates of the Prince-Colonel. Brummell aspired to a cornetcy in this brilliant regiment, and obtained it; nor that alone; he secured, by his manners, o his dress, or his impudence, the favour and companionship-- friendship we cannot say--of the prince who commanded it.

By this step his reputation was made, and it was only necessary to keep it up. He had an immense fund of good nature, and, as long as his money lasted, of good spirits, too. Good sayings--that is, witty if not wise-- are recorded of him, and his friends pronounce him a charming companion. Introduced, therefore, into the highest circles in England, he could scarcely fail to succeed. Young Cornet Brummell became a great favourite with the fair.

His rise in the regiment was of course rapid: in three years he was at the head of a troop. The onerous duties of a military life, which vacillated between Brighton and London, and consisted chiefly in making oneself agreeable in the mess-room, were too much for our hero. He neglected parade, or arrived too late: it was such a bore to have to dress in a hurry. It is said that he knew the troop he commanded only by the peculiar nose of one of the men, and that when a transfer of men had once been made, rode up to the wrong troop, and supported his mistake by pointing to the nose in question. No fault, however, was found with the Regent's favourite, and Brummell might have risen to any rank if he could have supported the terrific labour of dressing for parade. Then, too, there came wars and rumours of wars, and our gallant captain shuddered at the vulgarity of shedding blood: the supply of smelling-salts would never have been liberal enough to keep him from fainting on the battle-field. It is said, too, that the regiment was ordered to Manchester. Could anything be more gross or more ill-bred? The idea of figuring before the wives and daughters of cotton-spinners was too fearful; and from one cause or another our brave young captain determined to retire, which he did in 1798.

It was now, therefore, that he commenced the profession of a beau, and as he is the Prince of Beaux, as his patron was the Beau of Princes, and as his fame has spread to France and Germany, if only as the inventor of the trouser; and as there is no man who on getting up in the morning does not put on his clothes with more or less reflection as to whether they are the right ones to put on, and as beaux have existed since the days of the emperor of beaux, Alexander the Macedonian, and will probably exist to all time, let us rejoice in the high honour of being permitted to describe how this illustrious genius clothed his poor flesh, and made the most of what God had given him--a body and legs.

The private life of Brummell would in itself serve as a book of manners and habits. The two were his profoundest study; but, alas! his impudence marred the former, and the latter can scarcely be imitated in the present day. Still as a great example he is yet invaluable, and must be described in all detail.

His morning toilette was a most elaborate affair. Never was Brummell guilty of _déshabille_. Like a true man of business, he devoted the best and earliest hours--and many of them too--to his profession, namely-- dressing. His dressing-room was a studio, in which he daily prepared that elaborate portrait of George Brummell which was to be exhibited for a few hours in the club-rooms and drawing-rooms of town, only to be taken to pieces again, and again made up for the evening. Charles I. delighted to resort of a morning to the studio of Vandyck, and to watch his favourite artist's progress. The Regent George was no less devoted to art, for we are assured by Mr. Raikes that he often visited his favourite beau in the morning to watch his toilet, and would sometimes stay so late that he would send his horses away, insisting on Brummell giving him a quiet dinner, 'which generally ended in a deep potation.'

There are, no doubt, many fabulous myths floating about concerning this illustrious man; and his biographer, Captain Jesse, seems anxious to defend him from the absurd stories of French writers, who asserted that he employed two glovers to covers his hands, to one of whom were intrusted the thumbs, to the other the fingers and hand, and three barbers to dress his hair, while his boots were polished with champagne, his cravats designed by a celebrated portrait painter, and so forth. These may be pleasant inventions, but Captain Jesse's own account of his toilet, even when the Beau was broken, and living in elegant poverty abroad, is quite absurd enough to render excusable the ingenious exaggerations of the foreign writer.

The _batterie de toilette_, we are told, was of silver, and included a spitting-dish, for its owner said 'he could not spit into clay.' Napoleon shaved himself, but Brummell was not quite great enough to do that, just as my Lord So-and-so walks to church on Sunday, while his neighbour, the Birmingham millionaire, can only arrive there in a chariot and pair.

His ablutions took no less than two whole hours! What knowledge might have been gained, what good done in the time he devoted to rubbing his lovely person with a hair-glove! Cleanliness was, in fact, Brummell's religion; perhaps because it is generally set down as 'next to godliness,' a proximity with which the Beau was quite satisfied, for he never attempted to pass on to that next stage. Poor fool, he might rub every particle of moisture off the skin of his body--he might be clean as a kitten--but he could not and did not purify his mind with all this friction; and the man who would have fainted to see a black speck upon his shirt, was not at all shocked at the indecent conversation in which he and his companions occasionally indulged.

The body cleansed, the face had next to be brought up as near perfection as nature would allow. With a small looking-glass in one hand, and tweezers in the other, he carefully removed the tiniest hairs that he could discover on his cheeks or chin, enduring the pain like a martyr.

Then came the shirt, which was in his palmy days changed three times a day, and then in due course the great business of the cravat. Captain Jesse's minute account of the process of tying this can surely be relied on, and presents one of the most ludicrous pictures of folly and vanity that can be imagined. Had Brummell never lived, and a novelist or play-writer described the toilet which Captain Jesse affirms to have been his daily achievement, he would have had the critics about him with the now common phrase--'This book is a tissue, not only of improbabilities, but of actual impossibilities.' The collar, then, was so large, that in its natural condition it rose high above the wearer's head, and some ingenuity was required to reduce it by delicate folds to exactly that height which the Beau judged to be correct. Then came the all-majestic white neck-tie, a foot in breadth. It is not to be supposed that Brummell had the neck of a swan or a camel--far from it. The worthy fool had now to undergo, with admirable patience, the mysterious process known to our papas as 'creasing down.' The head was thrown back, as if ready for a dentist; the stiff white tie applied to the throat, and gradually wrinkled into half its actual breadth by the slow downward movement of the chin. When all was done, we can imagine that comfort was sacrificed to elegance, as it was then considered, and that the sudden appearance of Venus herself could not have induced the deluded individual to turn his head in a hurry.

It is scarcely profitable to follow this lesser deity into all the details of his self-adornment. It must suffice to say that he affected an extreme neatness and simplicity of dress, every item of which was studied and discussed for many an hour. In the mornings he was still guilty of hessians and pantaloons, or 'tops' and buckskins, with a blue coat and buff waistcoat. The costume is not so ancient, but that one may tumble now and then on a country squire who glories in it and denounces us juveniles as 'bears' for want of a similar precision. Poor Brummell, he cordially hated the country squires, and would have wanted rouge for a week if he could have dreamed that his pet attire would, some fifty years later, be represented only by one of that class which he was so anxious to exclude from Watier's.

But it was in the evening that he displayed his happy invention of the trouser, or rather its introduction from Germany. This article he wore very tight to the leg, and buttoned over the ankle, exactly as we see it in old prints of 'the fashion.' Then came the wig, and on that the hat. It is a vain and thankless task to defend Brummell from the charge of being a dandy. If one proof of his devotion to dress were wanted, it would be the fact that this hat, once stuck jauntily on one side of the wig, was never removed in the street even to salute a lady--so that, inasmuch as he sacrificed his manners to his appearance, he may be fairly set down as a fop.

The perfect artist could not be expected to be charitable to the less successful. Dukes and princes consulted him on the make of their coats, and discussed tailors with him with as much solemnity as divines might dispute on a mystery of religion. Brummell did not spare them. 'Bedford,' said he, to the duke of that name, fingering a new garment which his grace had submitted to his inspection, 'do you call this _thing_ a coat?' Again, meeting a noble acquaintance who wore shoes in the morning, he stopped and asked him what he had got upon his feet. 'Oh! shoes are they,' quoth he, with a well bred sneer, 'I thought they were slippers.' He was even ashamed of his own brother, and when the latter came to town, begged him to keep to the back streets till his new clothes were sent home. Well might his friend the Regent say, that he was 'a mere tailor's dummy to hang clothes upon.'