239—to Lord Holland

June 25, 1812.

My Dear Lord,—I must appear very ungrateful, and have, indeed, been very negligent, but till last night I was not apprised of Lady Holland's restoration, and I shall call to-morrow to have the satisfaction, I trust, of hearing that she is well.—I hope that neither politics nor gout have assailed your Lordship since I last saw you, and that you also are "as well as could be expected."

The other night, at a ball, I was presented by order to our gracious Regent, who honoured me with some conversation, and professed a predilection for poetry 1 .—I confess it was a most unexpected honour, and I thought of poor Brummell's 2 adventure, with some apprehension of a similar blunder. I havenow great hope, in the event of Mr. Pye's 3 decease, of "warbling truth at court," like Mr. Mallet 4 of indifferent memory.—Consider, one hundred marks a year! besides the wine and the disgrace; but then remorse would make me drown myself in my own butt before the year's end, or the finishing of my first dithyrambic.—So that, after all, I shall not meditate our laureate's death by pen or poison.

Will you present my best respects to Lady Holland? and believe me, hers and yours very sincerely.

Byron.

Footnote 1:

  The ball was given in June, 1812, at Miss Johnson's (see Memoir of John Murray, vol. i. p. 212). In the words "predilection for poetry" Byron probably refers to the phrase in the Regent's letter to the Duke of York (February 13, 1812): "I have no predilections to indulge, no resentments to gratify." Moore, in the Twopenny Post-bag, twice fastens on the phrase. In "The Insurrection of the Papers", a dream suggested by Lord Castlereagh's speech— "It would be impossible for His Royal Highness to disengage his person from the accumulating pile of papers that encompassed it"—he writes:

And again, in the "Parody of a Celebrated Letter":

Footnote 2:

  The grandfather of Beau Brummell, who was in business in Bury Street, St. James's, also let lodgings. One of his lodgers, Charles Jenkinson, afterwards Earl of Liverpool, obtained for his landlord's son, William Brummell, a clerkship in the Treasury. The Treasury clerk became so useful to Lord North that he obtained several lucrative offices; and, dying in 1794, left £65,000 in the hands of trustees for division among his three children. The youngest of these was George Bryan Brummell (1788-1840), the celebrated Beau.

George Brummell went from Eton to Oriel College, Oxford, where his undergraduate career is traced in "Trebeck," a character in Lister's Granby (1826). From Oxford Brummell entered the Tenth Hussars, a favourite regiment of the Prince of Wales. Well-built and well-mannered, possessed of admirable tact, witty and original in conversation, inexhaustible in good temper and good stories, a master of impudence and banter, the new cornet made himself so agreeable to the prince that, at the latter's marriage, Brummell attended him, both at St. James's and to Windsor, as "a kind of chevalier d'honneur." In 1798 Brummell left the army with the rank of captain. A year later he came of age, and settled at 4, Chesterfield Street, Mayfair.

On his intimacy with the Prince Regent, Brummell founded the extraordinary position which he achieved in society. Fashion was in those days a power; and he was its dictator—the oracle, both for men and women, of taste, manners, and dress. His ascendency rested in some degree on solid foundations. He was not a mere fop, but conspicuous for the quiet neatness of his dress—for "a certain exquisite propriety," as Byron described it to Leigh Hunt—and, at a time when the opposite was common, for the scrupulous cleanliness of his person and his linen. An excellent dancer, clever at vers de société, an agreeable singer, a talented artist, a judge of china, buhl, and other objects of virtù, a collector of snuff-boxes, a connoisseur in canes, he had gifts which might have raised him above the Bond Street flaneur, or the idler at Watier's Club. Well-read in a desultory fashion, he wrote verses which were not without merit in their class. The following are the first and last stanzas of The Butterfly's Funeral, a poem which was suggested by Mrs. Dorset's Peacock at Home and Roscoe's Butterfly's Ball:—

In the days of his prosperity (1799-1816), Brummell knew everybody to whose acquaintance he condescended. His Album, in which he collected 226 pieces of poetry, many by himself, others by celebrities of the day, is a curious proof of his popularity. It contains contributions from such persons as the Duchess of Devonshire, Erskine, Lord John Townshend, Sheridan, General Fitzpatrick, William Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne) and his brother George, and Byron. Lady Hester Stanhope (Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 280-283) knew him well. She describes him "riding in Bond Street, with his bridle between his fore-finger and thumb, as if he held a pinch of snuff;" gives many instances of his audacious effrontery, and yet concludes that "the man was no fool," and that she "should like to see him again."

The story that Brummell told the Prince Regent to ring the bell was denied by him. A more probable version of the story is given in Jesse's Life of Beau Brummell (vol. i. p. 255), "that one evening, when Brummell and Lord Moira were engaged in earnest conversation at Carlton House, the prince requested the former to ring the bell, and that he replied without reflection, 'Your Royal Highness is close to it,' upon which the prince rang the bell and ordered his friend's carriage, but that Lord Moira's intervention caused the unintentional liberty to be overlooked."

The rupture between them is attributed by Jesse to Mrs. Fitzherbert's influence. Whatever the cause, the prince cut his former friend. A short time afterwards, Brummell, walking with Lord Alvanley, met the prince leaning on the arm of Lord Moira. As the prince, who stopped to speak to Lord Alvanley, was moving on, Brummell said to his companion, "Alvanley, who's your fat friend?" In the Twopenny Postbag Moore makes the Regent say, in the "Parody of a Celebrated Letter":

Brummell's position withstood the loss of the Regent's friendship. He became one of the most frequent visitors to the Duke and Duchess of York, at Oatlands Park (Journal of T. Raikes, vol. i. p. 146); and his friendship with the duchess lasted till her death.

He was ruined by gambling at Watier's Club, of which he was perpetual president. This club, which was in Piccadilly, at the corner of Bolton Street, was originally founded, in 1807, by Lord Headfort, John Madocks, and other young men, for musical gatherings. But glees and snatches soon gave way to superlative dinners and gambling at macao. Byron, Moore, and William Spencer belonged to Watier's—the only men of letters admitted within its precincts. From 1814 to 1816 Brummell lost heavily; he could obtain no further supplies, and was completely ruined. In his distress he wrote to Scrope Davies, in May, 1816:

"My Dear Scrope,—Lend me two hundred pounds; the banks are shut, and all my money is in the three per cents. It shall be repaid to-morrow morning.
Yours,
George Brummell.

The reply illustrates Byron's remark that

"Scrope Davies is a wit, and a man of the world, and feels as much as such a character can do."

"My Dear George,—'Tis very unfortunate, but all my money is in the three per cents.

Yours,
S. Davies.

On May 17, "obliged," says Byron (Detached Thoughts), "by that affair of poor Meyler, who thence acquired the name of 'Dick the Dandykiller'—(it was about money and debt and all that)—to retire to France,"

Brummell took flight to Dover, and crossed to Calais. Watier's Club died a natural death, in 1819, from the ruin of most of its members.

Amongst Brummell's effects at Chesterfield Street was a screen which he was making for the Duchess of York. The sixth panel was occupied by Byron and Napoleon, placed opposite each other; the former, surrounded with flowers, had a wasp in his throat (Jesse's Life, vol. i. p. 361). At Calais Brummell bought a French grammar to study the language. When Scrope Davies was asked, says Byron (Detached Thoughts), "what progress Brummell had made in French, he responded 'that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the Elements.' I have put this pun into Beppo, which is 'a fair exchange and no robbery;' for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners (as he owned himself) by repeating occasionally as his own some of the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in the morning."

Brummell died, in 1840, at Caen, after making acquaintance with the inside of the debtor's prison in that town—imbecile, and in the asylum of the Bon Sauveur. He is buried in the Protestant cemetery of Caen. France has raised a more lasting monument to his fame in Barbey d'Aurevilly's Du Dandysme et de Georges Brummell (1845).

Footnote 3:

  Henry James Pye (1745-1813) was, from 1790 to his death, poet laureate, in which post he succeeded Thomas Warton, and was followed by Southey. Mathias, in the Pursuits of Literature (Dialogue ii. lines 69, 70), says:

and again (ibid., lines 79, 80):

His birthday odes were so full of "vocal groves and feathered choirs," that George Steevens broke out with the lines:

"When the pie was opened," etc.

Pye's magnum opus was Alfred (1801), an epic poem in six books.

Footnote 4:

 David Mallet, or Malloch (1705-1765), is best known for his ballad of William and Margaret, his unsubstantiated claim to the authorship of Rule, Britannia, and his edition of Bolingbroke's works. He was appointed, in 1742, under-secretary to Frederick, Prince of Wales.