BEAU NASH.
“N’achetez pas vos principes chez ce Gentis homo, homme de la nation.”—De Bonald.
The gaudiest flies spring from the most unsavoury of cradles, and Beau Nash was born in ill-odoured Swansea. He used to say, he “could not help it.” Like Liston, it had been his own intention to be born in Shropshire; but he and the grotesque comedian possessed not the privilege of the embryo saint, whose prayers procured his birth in the locality and at the period which best suited himself. Accordingly, Richard Nash was born at Swansea in the stirring year 1674. His very boyhood was brassy, as befitted so metallic a locality.
In after years, when Nash was at the most brilliant epoch of his butterfly period, and it had for some time been remarked that, much as the Beau talked of other people, he never mentioned his own father, the Duchess of Queensberry, in her Grace’s usual familiar style, asked the meek Richard if he were ashamed of his sire, that he never mentioned him. “Nay, madam,” said Nash, “if I never name him, it is because he has reason to be ashamed of me.” It was the only humble speech which Nash ever uttered, and it had truth for its foundation.
The sire of the gay Richard was a quiet individual, a partner in one of the Bristol glass-houses. He had more ambition than wisdom; and he commenced blowing his son into a gentleman by sending him to Jesus College, Oxford, at the age of sixteen. “I hope, Dick,” said the honest man, “you will distinguish yourself before you are a year older.” “Dad,” replied Dick, “I will astonish you within that period.” And he kept his word. Before a year had expired he had taken first-class honours in puppyism, had become the terror or temptation of half the women in Oxford, made an offer of marriage to a young lady as modest as himself; and had got expelled. He did astonish his father!
The good man, on recovering from his surprise, began to perceive that his first attempt at making Dick a gentleman had failed; but he was a determined individual, and had resolved to succeed. Accordingly he bought for young Master Hopeful an ensign’s commission. “Now, Dick,” said he, “the thing is done; you are ‘an officer and a gentleman’ by right of your commission.” Poor old citizen! he might as well have said that the zenith was also the nadir by power of astronomy.
I believe Nash entered the 46th. I am inclined to think so, from the circumstance that he seemed to have lost his memory as soon as he “joined.” He certainly forgot everything but what he had done well not to remember. He forgot to get up to parade; could never remember, when he did rise, the events of the preceding night; even what the chaplain had said to him, over the punch, had gone out of his memory, as it had from that of the reverend gentleman. He was oblivious of every point of duty, never recollected to pay his bills, and was in all things a consummate scamp. The colonel, who might have endured a young fellow who was a more unprincipled scamp than himself, could not tolerate one who was a greater wit. He made the ensign’s life miserable; and as the ensign had determined that his life should not be of that quality, he sold his commission, and, having spent the money, did his father the honour of returning home.
“Go to the devil!” said his sire; and Dick accordingly came up to town, and entered at the Temple. Having done this, he went to the gaming table. It was impossible for son to show more alacrity in setting out on the journey whither his father had sent him.
The ancient gentleman to whom his sire had consigned him must have been proud of his young friend. The latter was at dice one half the night, at balls and assemblies the other half; and he was in bed all day. His gains were devoted not to the comfort of his appetite or the nourishment of his intellect, but almost exclusively to dress. He eclipsed every beau of whatever rank: the women adored, the men hated him, but all acknowledged that a spirited young fellow, who had been expelled college, had found it convenient to withdraw from the army, who was a Templar “for the fun of the thing,” and who was all gold lace and gallantry, was worthy of being the leader of the “ton;” and for that matter they were perfectly right.
He was the conductor of the entertainments given by the Middle Temple to William the Third. The Monarch was so pleased with the Master of the Ceremonies that he offered to make him a knight. “That depends,” said the impudent beau, “upon what sort of a chevalier your Majesty would make of me. If it were a ‘poor knight of Windsor,’ I should be rich at once, and well content.” The King shook his head, and Nash lost the honour.
He made up for it by gaining them at whist; and he was so good-tempered a player that even his adversaries bore his triumphs without cursing him—much. The truth is, that he was a terrible rake; but he was not a dishonourable fellow, according to the then existing code of honour. The Templars entrusted him with some portion of their funds. His accounts were once ten pounds short of correctness, and he accounted for its deficit by saying, that he had heard a poor fellow say that ten pounds would make him happy, and he could not resist giving him that sum. The charity was something like that of Mrs. Haller, who gave away her master’s wine to the sick, and got a character for generosity thereby. However, the Templar auditors passed the accounts. The beau’s story was probably true, for he was quick to feel for others, and the readiest man at a lie of his own or any other period.
Nash never frittered away his money in paying his debts. “Doing that vulgar sort of thing,” said he, “never procures you a friend; lending money does!” and he was ready to lend to the great when the dice favoured him. The young gentleman’s maxim was quite worthy of one whose “indignant parient” had constituted him a ward of the devil.
His relaxations from town and Temple studies further showed the respect he had for his eminent guardian. During a country excursion he stood in a blanket at the door of York Minster. He professed to be doing penance for his sins, and the clergy cut jokes with him as they passed. He performed this pretty trick for a poor wager of half-a-dozen guineas, and he performed a worse for a bet more trifling; he rode stark-naked through a quiet and astonished village,—an achievement in which he was subsequently imitated by the father of Louis Philippe. But these were little foibles the most readily forgiven by the ladies: how could they be angry with a fine gentleman, whose gallantry was so great that when he sat next one at table he made love to her then and there, and swore with the most liberal parade of oaths that he never drank any wine but such as had been “first strained through his mistress’s smock!”
And then the pretty process was gone through, amid a world of wild talk that would nowadays somewhat ruffle even the Vestas of Cremorne; but the fair creatures of William’s age declared him to be “a dear, delicate,” and some Lady Bettys added, in their grapy enthusiasm, “a d—d gallant fellow.” His friend Satan must have chuckled at the word.
It is quite possible that after some one of these orgies, he was, by way of a good practical joke, carried off, by a captain as drunk as himself, on board a ship to the Mediterranean. It is quite certain that he disappeared for a considerable period; and when he turned up again, he not only told the tale of his abduction, but averred that he had been in a naval battle, and had received a ball in the leg. He was one night repeating the oft-told tale in the Bath rooms, when a countess boldly expressed her disbelief of the alleged fact. Nash imprecated upon her the disease which very fine people who quarrelled used to fling at one another, and then said, as he put up his leg on her lap, “The ball is there, Madam; and if you will, you may feel it!”
Such was the Beau in the Bath rooms; but at that period, the women went thither in aprons, the squires in top-boots, with pipes in their mouths. The longer they kept them there the better, for they were no sooner out than forth flowed a torrent of filthiness. But all Bath, from the days of the farewell to it of the Romans, down to a later period than this of which I am speaking, was a mere cloaca; and they who resorted thither were too often as dirty as the place. Its unsavouriness elicited some very stringent remarks from Queen Elizabeth, and a contribution from the royal purse for constructing a common sewer.
It is the custom to look upon Nash as the first of the dynasty of the Bath Masters of the Ceremonies. The true founder of that highly august dynasty however was the Duke of Beaufort himself. For the invalids who resorted to the healing springs, there were but two houses fitted for the reception of a “respectable,” that is, a moneyed class of visitors; namely, the Abbey House and Westgate House. It was not till long after that there was either a ball-room, or any place of public amusement in the city. Sometimes a convivial party of invalids, or their friends, got up a dance on the open bowling-green. But such inconveniences attended this, that the Duke of Beaufort gave up the town-hall for both the dancers and gamblers. His Grace placed the conduct of the amusements under the superintendence of Captain Webster; and that gentleman having respectably inaugurated them, the sceptre of Master was made over to Nash.
The passion for play was long the ruling passion here, among the sick, as well as among the sound. The passion is well illustrated in the epigram, written when subscription books were opened for providing for the expenses of Church service, and for opening a new card-room:—
“The books were open’d t’other day,
At all the shops, for Church and Play.
The Church got six; Hoyle sixty-seven:
How great the chance for Hell ’gainst Heaven!”
Nash’s great enemy he found in the doctors. They disliked him for helping to cure invalids too quickly, by the general cheerfulness and gaiety which he essayed to establish in the city. They moreover bore him little love for his abolition of the sword, a general and not too deadly use of which was wont to procure for them endless patients, and continual profit.
The profession pursued its vocation at Bath at this period with little delicacy. The carriages of invalids, and the public stage-coach, which reached the city on the third day after its departure from town, were assailed at the outskirts by hosts of “touters,” who were engaged by the physicians to publish their respective merits (they now do that for themselves, thus saving expense), and to carry off as many patients as they could respectively secure. For these the doctors paid the touters a percentage; and as the touters were, in most cases, the husbands of the nurses, all parties played into each other’s hands.
“And so, as I grew ev’ry day worse and worse,
The doctor advised me to send for a nurse;
And the nurse was so willing my health to restore,
She begg’d me to send for a few doctors more.”
As the vivacity which Nash put into the place very much injured the latter gentlemen, one, more angry than the rest, threatened to “throw a toad into the spring,” by writing against the waters. “Fling away!” cried Nash; “we’ll charm him out again by an additional band of music!” And he dealt another blow at them, by decreeing that, in future, the balls should commence at six, and terminate at eleven, instead of lasting, as heretofore, till daybreak.
His code of laws for these balls was the code of a terrible despot, and I can hardly account for the ready obedience which was paid to it. His force of impudence and blaze of dress, with some superiority of mind, perhaps awed the sensual and stupid peers, peeresses, squires, and dames. One of the articles of the code was to the effect, that “very young, and also the ‘elder ladies,’ be content with the second benches at the balls, the one not yet having arrived at, the other being past, perfection.” The rule was obeyed!
Precisely at six the magnificent fellow gave the signal, and the couple present highest in rank, advanced submissively, and walked a minuet. After every couple had gone through the same solemnity, the splendid “Master” gave the word for country-dances. How the ladies and gentlemen went at it in those days, may be seen from what took place when the dial showed eleven o’clock. The jewelled finger of Nash was then raised in the air, the music ceased, and, “Now,” said he, “let the ladies sit down to cool, before they go to their chairs!” On one occasion the Princess Amelia begged for another dance after eleven had struck. Nash shook all the powder out of his hair in mute horror at the bare idea of such a solecism.
The Duchess of Queensberry was also once daring enough to infringe his rules by appearing in the rooms in a laced apron. He tore it off, and threw it among the servants; and to the richest squire of the county, who presumed to appear, contrary to Nash’s own decree, in boots, he exclaimed, “Holloa, Hog’s Norton, haven’t you forgot to bring your horse?” The squire talked of swords. “No, no,” replied Nash, “I have put an end to duels; and thereby, Squire, I have prevented people from doing what they have no mind to.”
This sort of coarseness was refinement in Elizabethan days. I may cite in proof thereof, that when the valiant Welsh commander, Sir Roger Williams, knelt to Queen Elizabeth, in his rough untanned leather boots, to present a petition she was determined not to grant, she only remarked, “Williams, how your boots stink!” “Tut, Madam!” answered the Welshman, “it is my suit, and not my boots, that stink!” So did she affect to annoy Cecil, by wearing his portrait for a day tied to her shoe. On another occasion she admitted to her presence a whole bevy of country-cousins named Brown. They were of the kindred of Anne Boleyn; but when Elizabeth saw them in their queer old-fashioned dresses, she fairly frightened them by her coarse remarks, from ever coming to court again. Perhaps hence is derived the popular saying, in which allusion is made to “astonishing the Browns.” It is an Elizabethan phrase!
In the recess, Nash used to cross the country to Tunbridge. His equipage was a flaming carriage, drawn by six greys; with outriders all embroidery, and French horns all brass and bluster. He wore a white hat, of which he was the introducer; and he did so, he said, that, it being the only one of the sort, his hat might never be stolen.
In his dress he combined the fashions of two centuries; and, thanks to his luck at play, he lived as grandly as half-a-dozen kings. But none knew better than he the folly of gambling. He once lost a considerable sum to an Oxford lad who had just come into a large fortune. “Boy,” said he, “take my advice. You are a young Crœsus; play no more.” Nash himself would not play with him, but the millionnaire collegian found men less scrupulous; and the prodigal, ere he had attained his twenty-fifth year, could, like the gentleman in Shakspeare, “Thank Heaven that he was not worth a ducat.”
Nash was the same sort of Mentor to the gambling Duke of Bedford; and the Duke entered with the Beau into a gambling compact, whereby he bound himself to put restraint upon his spirit of gambling. Nash gave him £100, to receive £1000 whenever the Duke lost the latter sum at one sitting. Nash came upon his Grace a month after, just as he had lost £8000, and was about to throw for £3000 more. Nash reminded him of the compact. The Duke paid the forfeit, threw his main, and lost. Perhaps the Beau expected some such profitable result of his little investment.
He may not however have deserved this remark; for Nash could be most romantically generous. Thus, Lord Townsend lost to him a sum which he could not conveniently pay; the Beau forgave the debt, some £20,000, on condition that the Peer should give him £5000 whenever asked to do so. Nash never troubled Lord Townsend further; but, after the Lord’s decease, when the Beau had fallen into adversity, he applied to the Peer’s representatives, exhibited his vouchers, and was paid his claim. This is honourable to both parties.
The Peers and the Parliament generally were a singularly inconsistent set of people at this time. They passed a law which suppressed gambling everywhere, except in the royal palace, under a penalty of £50; and they no sooner passed this law than they hurried to many places, and to Bath especially, to break it. Nash said he was King of Bath, and that playing in his palace was not infringing the ordinances; but the Parliament was too much even for him in the long run, and, by the ultimate suppression of all “tables,” in whatsoever locality, they deprived the Beau of much of his power to put gold lace on his coat, and guineas in his pocket.
Still he was the despot of the rooms; and again I say, that the secret of his power almost defies conjecture. He was indeed a splendid decker of his person; but that person was clumsy, large, and awkward. His features were harsh. It is to be remembered however, that he not only had fine clothes, but a stupendous gift of “flattering;” and he had, besides, more wit than most of the ladies he cajoled. “Richard,” said a modest young creature to him one day (and it is painful to think that she might have been our grandmother;—that is, yours, reader, or mine): “Richard, you have a tongue that would debauch a nunnery!”
He assumed an airy sort of “indifference” in his method of gallantry, and the ladies found this deliciously provoking. It set the fashion; and it became the characteristic of the Georgian beaux. It was a contrast, much welcomed, after the smartness and pertness of the beaux of the reign of Queen Anne; and it was preferable to the slimy solemnity of the beaux of the age of King Charles. And Dick, be it said for him, always kept hold of a rag of dignity, whereby to help himself; and when he found that he could not be a seducer, he became a champion. He loved to rescue damsels from the suit of adventurers, and he did save many. He chastised scandal; would not tolerate it even in the elder ladies who sat on his sacred benches. The King of Bath made a royal monopoly of the article, as the King of France did of tobacco. He had capital opportunity of indulging in his favourite dish, when he used to consult with the old Duchess of Marlborough upon the fashion of her liveries.
Like Florian, who used to hunt out distressed subjects for his patron, the Duc de Penthièvre, to relieve, he took a praiseworthy delight in discovering worth in adversity, and then compelling the wealthy to do something to lighten that adversity. It is perfectly true that, having gained £200 at picquet, and hearing a bystander remark, “How happy that sum would make me!” Nash threw him the money, saying, “There, then, go and be happy!”
Among the poor patients at the springs, the Beau once discovered a poor curate, named Cullender. He had a wife, of course six children, and naturally only thirty pounds a year. Nash donned his best suit, polished up the persuasive end of his irresistible tongue, went to a “patron” who had a living to give, and did not leave him till he had given it to Dr. Cullender. It was worth £160 per annum. “There, Doctor,” said Nash, “I’ve brought you half Potosi.” “By G—d!” said the divine, “so you have!” Such was patronage, pity, and piety, in the days of Beau Nash.
It is not to be supposed that so general a wooer escaped altogether heart-free. He had a heart; as good a one (as was said in Fontenelle’s case) as could be made out of brains; and he once proposed marriage to the lady of his transitory affections. The lady pleaded her devotion to another lover, and even asked for Nash’s mediation with her father to consent to the marriage. The honest fellow consented, and went through infinite trouble before he succeeded. He himself joined the hands of the affianced pair, and gave them his blessing. Six months afterwards, the lady eloped with her footman!
Nash ought not to have been disgusted with human nature, for ladies occasionally were given, in his time, to the observance of this little fashion; but it did disgust Nash. He turned misogynist, and gave himself more to philanthropy in its restricted sense. He hated women, he said, but still had charity for men; and accordingly he was foremost in founding the Bath Hospital, and alone in raising obelisks to rheumatic princes,—obelisks for which Pope furnished very inferior superscriptions.
Chesterfield exhibited a “statuary wit” which Pope despised, when the statue of Nash was placed, a full length, between the busts of Newton and Pope himself. The epigram is well known, but it is worth repeating:—
“This statue placed the busts between,
Adds to the satire strength;
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length.”
This is neat, and also original. The idea was applied by the Paris wits in an epigram on the group in Paris which represented the equestrian figure of Louis XV. on a pedestal, the angles of the upper slab of which were supported by bronze caryatides, representing Faith, Temperance, Prudence, and Justice. The cardinal virtues thus placed gave good point to the epigram, which said:—
“Oh, la belle statue! le beau piédestal!
Les Vertus sont à pied, le Vice est à cheval!”
As long as Nash exhibited splendour in his outward man, the public homage never failed him. Literary musicians, literary cooks, and biographical highwaymen dedicated their works to him. Was he sick? the entire army of poetasters invoked the Muse to give him ease. For all of which they looked for their respective guineas.
He had too another set of worshipers, who used to congregate about him at his favourite tavern, to listen to his favourite stories,—few and not well told,—to which they had listened till they could themselves have narrated them backwards. He recounted them ever à propos des bottes, and he was the hero of every one of them. Therein he shows as outdoing Fortunatus and all his servants. He was the swiftest runner, the most expert swimmer, the best swordsman, and—“Upon my soul, it’s true! D—n me! hem! egad!”
He really had more wit than his stories would authorize us to suppose. Witness his suggestion at a county-town ball. The county ladies refused to dance in the same set with the town ladies. The rich tradesmen were indignant at the slight put upon their spouses, but the suggestive wit of Nash saved them. They made it known that if the county ladies and squires would not dance with the town wives and traders, the latter would refuse all further credit, and would call in their debts. The proud party immediately yielded, and a grand country-dance of reconciliation followed to the tune of ‘Money Musk.’
Still, despite his wit and his dazzling dress, Nash was naturally coarse. Fancy a modern master of the ceremonies saying aloud to a lady somewhat misshapen, and who, in reply to a question from him, had stated that she had come to Bath straight from London,—fancy such a dignitary exclaiming, “You may have come ‘straight’ from London, Madam, but you have got d—nably warped by the way!” The squires were bigger brutes than he, and so did not kick him; nay, they only laughed when this glittering potentate used to ask the ladies who declined to dance, “If by chance they had bandy legs, and were afraid of showing them?”
The truth is, he feared nobody. He had refused knighthood at the hands of King William; and he did the same at the hands of Queen Anne. “I will have none of it, most gracious Madam,” said Nash, as if he were refusing to grant a favour; “but there is Sir William Read, the mountebank, whom your Majesty has knighted,—I shall be very happy to call him ‘brother.’” The Queen smiled, and passed on.
This species of rudeness, which came over him in his later days, helped to empty the rooms. He no longer could boast of seventeen duchesses and countesses standing up in his first country-dance. He sometimes too got vexatiously repulsed, as in the case of a young lady whom he met in the Grove, leading a spaniel, and whom he asked if she knew the name of Tobit’s dog. “I know it well enough,” said the lady; “his name is Nash, and a very impudent dog he is.”
And at length came the “end of an auld sang;” old-age, and with it infirmity and distress. He could still talk of not following prescriptions, because he had thrown them out of window; but the clergy at length took possession of the Beau, and so belaboured him with pamphlets, visits, exhortations to repentance, and menaces of the devil, that Nash, who, like Gallio, had cared for none of these things, became fairly bewildered, and feared death more than ever he had done. He was an awful coward in presence of that especial antagonist of beaux; but his cowardice of course was not respected, and he died in abject terror of dying.
The year was that of 1761, and his age was then hard upon the patriarchal one of ninety years. He had few of the patriarchal virtues; but Bath, to whose corporation he bequeathed a “fifty pounds,” which I very much wish they may have got, honoured him with a public funeral, with more circumstantial pomp about it than if he had been an incarnation of all virtue, patriarchal, princely, and of every other degree. The multitude gazed weepingly, as though another dead Tasso were passing by to cold obstruction, and had left them a legacy of intellectual worth. The poor wretch had little to leave, save some gaillard books, and some women’s toys and trinkets,—the relics of his beauhood, and the testimonies of his past power. As for the poets, they spoke of the defunct dandy as the “constellation of a heavenly sphere;” and he had epitaphs enough to make the very earth lie heavy upon the breast of Beau Nash.
And now, good reader, having sojourned with two exclusively English beaux, like Fielding and Nash, we will, if you please, to Vienna, and tarry awhile with a sparkling beau of European reputation. “Place pour le Prince de Ligne!”