180

ANECDOTE OF SHERIDAN AND BRUMMELL.

I wish they would remove it to the West End, for re-all-y it is quite a bore to go to such a place; more particularly as one cannot be seen in one's own equipage beyond Somerset House,' etc. etc. etc. in the Brummellian style.

Nay, my good fellow,' was the answer to this peroration, 'travelling from the East? impossible !'

'Why, my dear boy, why?'

'Because the wise men came from the East.'

'So then, sa-ar-you think me a fool?'

By no means; I know you to be one,' quoth Sherry, and turned away. It is due to both the parties to this anecdote to state that it is quite apocryphal, and rests on the slenderest authority. However, whether fool or not, Brummell has one certain, though small, claim upon certain small readers. Were you born in a modern generation, when scraps of poetry were forbidden in your nursery, and no other pabulum was offered to your infant stomach, but the rather dull biographies of rather dull, though very upright, men?-if so, I pity you. Old airs of a jaunty jig-like kind are still haunting the echoes of my brain. Among them is

"The butterfly was a gentleman,
Which nobody can refute:
He left his lady-love at home,

And roamed in a velvet suit.'

I remember often to have ruminated over this character of an innocent, and, I believe, calumniated, insect. He was a gentleman, and the consequences thereof were twofold: he abandoned the young woman who had trusted her affections to him, and attired his person in a complete costume of the best Lyons silk-velvet, not the proctor's velvet, which Theodore felt with thumb and finger, impudently asking, how much a yard?' I secretly resolved to do the same as Mr. Butterfly when I came of age. But the said Mr. Butterfly had a varied and somewhat awful history, all of which was narrated

THE BEAU'S POETICAL EFFORTS.

181

in various ditties chanted by my nurse. I could not quite join in her vivid assertion that she would

be a butterfly, Born in a bower, Christened in a tea-pot,

And dead in an hour.'

Etat. four, life is dear, and the idea of that early demise was far from welcome to me. I privily agreed that I would not be a butterfly. But there was no end to the history of this very inconstant insect in our nursery lore. We didn't care a drop of honey for Dr. Watts's 'Busy Bee;' we infinitely preferred the account-not in the Morning Post'-of the 'Butterfly's Ball' and the Grasshopper's Feast;' and few, perhaps, have ever given children more pleasures of imagination than William Roscoe, its author. There were some amongst us, however, who were already being weaned to a knowledge of life's mysterious changes, and we sought the third volume of the romance of the flitting gaudy thing in a little poem called, 'The Butterfly's Funeral.'

Little dreamed we, when in our pretty little song-books we saw the initial B.' at the bottom of these verses, that a real human butterfly had written them, and that they conveyed a solemn prognostication of a fate that was not his. Little we dreamed, as we lisped out the verses, that the 'gentleman who roamed in a' not velvet but plum-coloured suit,' according to Lady Hester Stanhope, was the illustrious George Brummell. The Beau wrote these trashy little rhymes-pretty in their way-and, since I was once a child, and learnt them off by heart, I will not cast a stone at them. Brummell indulged in such trifling poetizing, but never went further. It is a pity he did not write his memoirs; they would have added a valuable page to the history of 'Vanity Fair.'

Brummell's London glory lasted from 1798 to 1816. His chief club was Watier's. It was a superb assemblage of

182

THE VALUE OF A CROOKED SIXPENCE.

gamesters and fops-knaves and fools; and it is difficult to say which element predominated. For a time Brummell was monarch there; but his day of reckoning came at last. Byron and Moore, Sir Henry Mildmay and Mr. Pierrepoint, were among the numbers. Play ran high there, and Brummell once won nearly as much as his squandered patrimony, 26,000l. Of course he not only lost it again, but much more -indeed his whole capital. It was after some heavy loss that he was walking home through Berkeley Street with Mr. Raikes, when he saw something glittering in the gutter, picked it up, and found it to be a crooked sixpence. Like all small-minded men, he had a great fund of superstition, and he wore the talisman of good luck for some time. For two years, we are told, after this finding of treasure-trove, success attended him in play-macao, the very pith of hazard, was the chief game at Watier's-and he attributed it all to the sixpence. At last he lost it, and luck turned against him. So goes the story. It is probably much more easily accountable. Few men played honestly in those days without losing to the dishonest, and we have no reason to charge the Beau with mal-practice. However this may be, his losses at play first brought about his ruin. The Jews were, of course, resorted to; and if Brummell did not, like Charles Fox, keep a Jerusalem Chamber, it was only because the sum total of his fortune was pretty well known to the money-lenders.

"Then came the change-the check, the fall:

Pain rises up-old pleasures pall.

There is one remedy for all.'

This remedy was the crossing of the Channel, a crossing swept by beggars, who levy a heavy toll on those who pass over it.

The decline of the Beau was rapid, but not without its éclat. A breach with his royal patron led the way. It is presumed that every reader of these volumes has heard the famous

THE BREACH WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES. 183

story of Wales, ring the bell!' but not all may know its particulars.

A deep impenetrable mystery hangs over this story. Perhaps some German of the twenty-first century-some future Gifford, or who not-will put his wits to work to solve the riddle. In very sooth il ne vaut pas la chandelle. A quarrel did take place between George the Prince and George the Less, but of its causes no living mortal is cognizant we can only give the received versions. It appears, then, that dining with H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, Master Brummell asked him to ring the bell. Considering the intimacy between them, and that the Regent often sacrificed his dignity to his amusement, there was nothing extraordinary in this. But it is added that the Prince did ring the bell in question -unhappy bell to jar so between two such illustrious friends! -and when the servant came, ordered Mr. Brummell's carriage!' Another version palms off the impertinence on a drunken midshipman, who, being related to the Comptroller of the Household, had been invited to dinner by the Regent. Another yet states that Brummell, being asked to ring the said bell, replied, 'Your Royal Highness is close to it.' No one knows the truth of the legend, any more than whether Homer was a man or a myth. It surely does not matter. The friends quarrelled, and perhaps it was time they should do so, for they had never improved one another's morals; but it is only fair to the Beau to add that he always denied the whole affair, and that he himself gave as the cause of the quarrel his own sarcasms on the Prince's increasing corpulency, and his resemblance to Mrs. Fitzherbert's porter, 'Big Ben.' Certainly some praise is due to the Beau for the sang froid with which he appeared to treat the matter, though in reality dreadfully cut up about it. He lounged about, made amusing remarks on his late friend and patron, swore he would cut' him, and in short behaved with his usual aplomb. The Wales, ring the bell,' was sufficient.

184

'WHO'S YOUR FAT FRIEND?'

proof of his impudence, but Who's your fat friend?' was really good.

It is well known, in all probability, that George IV. contemplated with as much disgust and horror the increasing rotundity of his 'presence' as ever a maiden lady of a certain age did her first grey hair. Soon after the bell affair, the royal beau met his former friend in St. James's Street, and resolved to cut him. This was attacking Brummell with his own pet weapon, but not with success. Each antagonist was leaning on the arm of a friend. Jack Lee,' who was thus supporting the Beau, was intimate with the Prince, who, to make the cut the more marked, stopped and talked to him without taking the slightest notice of Brummell. After a time both parties moved on, and then came the moment of triumph and revenge. It was sublime! Turning round half way, so that his words could not fail to be heard by the retreating Regent, the Beau asked of his companion in his usual drawl, Well, Jack, who's your fat friend?' The coolness, presumption, and impertinence of the question perhaps made it the best thing the Beau ever said, and from that time the Prince took care not to risk another encounter with him.*

Brummell was scotched rather than killed by the Prince's indifference. He at once resolved to patronize his brother, the Duke of York, and found in him a truer friend. The duchess, who had a particular fondness for dogs, of which she is said to have kept no fewer, at one time, than a hundred, added the puppy Brummell to the list, and treated him with a kindness in which little condescension was mixed. But neither impudence nor the blood-royal can keep a man out of debt, especially when he plays. The Beau got deeper and deeper into the difficulty, and at last some mysterious

* Another version, given by Captain Jesse, represents this to have taken place at a ball given at the Argyle Rooms in July, 1813, by Lord Alvanley, Sir Henry Mildmay, Mr. Pierrepoint, and Mr. Brummell.