BEAU BRUMMELL.
WE are seldom more deceived than when we try to compare our own generation either for good or for evil with one of those that have gone before it. The necessary conditions of a just comparison are absent. It is impossible to be thoroughly informed ; it is equally impossible to be thoroughly impartial. Our self-censure and our self-praise are alike apt to be exaggerated and unfair. Still, there are matters upon which we may be permitted, with the reserve that they concern manners rather than morality, to congratulate ourselves. We may claim a distinct improvement, for instance, in the common- sense at least of society that the creature which our fathers or grandfathers called a "bean" is extinct. We say that it is extinct; though we are perfectly well aware that species closely resembling it exist, as, indeed, they have always existed. Alcibiades was a "beau," with his curled and perfumed locks, his gorgeous tunics, his shield inlaid with ivory and gold. But then he was a distinguished citizen. Some at least of his extravagances—the seven chariots, for instance, which he ran simultaneously in the Olympic course—were a national dis- tinction. He was an effective orator, and, to say the least, a capable General. Had he been a mere fop, he certainly would net have been a success. And the " beau" of to-day, or even of the days which only the oldest among flacon remember, has, and always has had, to be something more than a fop if his notoriety was to be of any use to him. Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Lytton in their youth, and even somewhat beyond their youth, were fops ; but it would be safe to say that their eccen- tricities and extravagances, their stays, their gorgeous vests, their padded coats, and many-coloured overcoats, would have won bat a passing stare from their own generation, and been utterly forgotten by the next, but that they were the surface oddities of men who had won, or were likely to win, distinction in politics or literatnre. And the " bean " of to-day, whom we recognise under the name of the " msthete," must- have some- thing to show beyond his-sunflowers or lilies; and the delicately assorted tints of his garments. Ile must be either artist or poet; for the ruder or severer taste of the new democracy seems to discourage personal display in its leaders, and regards askance, if it does not condemn, a flower in the buttonhole of a statesman. Ills art, it is true, may be feeble, and- his verse indifferent, or worse ; but he must have at least the claim. It will not be enough to parade a person, however gifted by nature, however tastefully or brilliantly adorned by art. But Beau Brummell, whose curious life by the late Captain Jesse has just been republished in an edition of appropriate costliness,* was nothing but a beau ; and Brummell was the most perfect specimen, if he was the last of his kind. The best- known of his predecessors, Been Nash, had. performed other functions besides that of being ornamental. We may not be inclined to assign a very high rank among human occupations to the calling of a master of ceremonies. Yet it has—or at least had—its utility. Nash gave the air of fashion, and there. fore of prosperity, to the Aseembly-room. and Pump-room of Bath. The city regarded hinr, and not without reason, as its second founder, and paid him appropriate honours in life and death. In the species, as finally and fully developed in Brummell, the organ of utility; so to speak, has disappeared ; we see the fop, and nothing else ; but we see him becoming, to the shame of his generation, on the mere strength of his foppery, a power in society. The history of his success seems almost incredible as we read it; we look, but we look in vain, for personal qualities which may help us to account for it, and we are forced to attribute it to the stupendous and exceptional folly of the times in which he flourished. His birth was not dis- tinguished, for though his father was a successful placeman, his grandfather had been a confectioner, and had let lodgings in Bond Street. He was not rich, for his fortune never amounted to more than £30,000, and was soon impaired by extravagance- and play; his literary ability was not more than hundreds of his contemporaries possessed, and. did not reach beyond writing indifferent vers de socioa Still he set himself the task of con- quering the social world of-his day, and this task he accom- plished. His biographer is careful to defend him from the charge of being a dandy ; and if a dandy means an extravagant dresser, he is successful in his defence. Extravagantly dressed means ill-dressed; and the age, with all its follies, was not so foolish as to elect-an ill-dressed man as the dictator of its social con- veyances. Brummell, says Captain Jesse, "determined to be the best-dressed man in London.;" and after getting rid of the natural weakness, which- at first- beset him, of changing his- dress too frequently, he attained his object. This made him the intimate friend of princes, the arbiter elegantiarum whose mere greeting was a passport into the most exclusive society, and had, therefore, a value beyond money. "You. owe ma five hundred pounds," said a man who sought the entrge into the circle of fashion to the Beau, when his career was drawing to a. close.—" I have paid you," said Brummell. "Paid me!" said the man,." when.F"— " When P" answered Brummell. "Why, when I was. standing at the window at White's, and said as you passed,—`Ah, how do you, Jemmy ?' " Wit, of course, is one. of the conditions of_ social success, and Bramwell had some sort of claim to it. Yet, unless even more than usual of its spirit has evaporated, his wit is barely distinguishable from impudence. This quality rose in him almost to the height of an inspiration, and produced, if nothing else, at least that sense of incongruity which is one of the necessary conditions of effective humour. Here is a story which has the merit of being less hackneyed. than most that are told about him. An ex-officer in the Army, who had had the misfortune to have his nose shot or sabred off in the Peninsula, was told that. Brummell had reported of him that, he had never held a commission, but was nothing more than a retired. hatter. He called upon the Bean and demanded satisfaction. Brummell promptly and energetically denied. that he had, ever spread the disparaging rumour. Bat when the Captain was about to take his leave, gratified with his success, Brammell followed him to the door, and again affirmed that the report was false, giving, however, this reason,—" Now that I think of it, I never in my life dealt with a hatter without a nose." The social .supremacy' so strangely won- was not upset by any return of society to common-sense. Brummell quarrelled with his Royal patron, but seemed little the worse for the- exclusion from, the Prince's circle, and, indeed, was thought to have come off. rather the better in the quarrel whieh followed the old. intimacy. The Bean ruined himself at the gaming-table, at which sums not less than his modest patrimony- were nightly lost and won with a publicity which would entitle us. to be severe upon our ancestors, if we could ignore our own Stock. Exchange. Brum:nen had no Parliament to pay his debts, and was obliged to escape them by a hasty flight to the Continent. The story of his latter years exhibits a moral which has no need to be pointed. The friends of his prosperity were not • The Life of George Brummell, Esq., commonly called Beau Rrummell. By Captain Jesse. Revised and Annotated Edition. 2 vols. London: John C. Ninamo. 1226.
nnkind,—ungrateful would scarcely be the word, for he had done nothing which could call for gratitude. Liberal presents were sent to him ; and if his fall had taught him the commonest lesson of prudence, he might have ended his days in comfort. But he had learnt little or nothing. As time went on some of his old acquaintances died, and some became indifferent or weary of incessant demands. The poor creature sank into more and more humiliating depths ofpoverty. The man whose ward- robe had been the admiration and envy of Loudon was reduced to a-single pair of trousers, and looked decent only in winter, when he could cover the deficiencies of his wardrobe with a cloak. The Nemesis of foppery was upon him. The old fastidiousness gave place to a neglect which made him repulsive to his neighbours, and the man who had made a favour of his very greeting was banished to his own chamber, lest he should offend the guests of a third-rate inn. It is plea- sant to find that a little ray of light cheered up the last scene of all. He was removed to the hospital of the Bon Sauveur, an institution for the treatment of the imbecile which was managed by an uncloistered sisterhood. There, in the room which Bourrienne had occupied before him, he spent the last eighteen months of his life. "I never was so comfortable in all my life," he said to an old acquaintance ; "I have all I wish to eat, and such a large fire." And there he died, with a prayer—almost the first, we are told, which he is known to have uttered—upon his lips. One of the silliest, if not of the most noxious, phases of human folly may be said to have reached in him its most characteristic development.
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