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