'"The fair with conscious majesty approved."

Fortune having now supplied Orlando with necessaries for his high taste of gallantry and pleasure, his equipage and economy had something in them more sumptuous and gallant than could be conceived in our degenerate age, therefore ... all the Britons under the age of sixteen ... followed his chariot with shouts and acclamations.... I remember I saw him one day stop, and call the youths about him, to whom he spoke as follows: "Good youngsters, go to school, and do not lose your time in following my wheels. I am loath to hurt you, because I know not but you are all my own offspring.... Why, you young dogs, did you never see a man before?" "Never such a one as you, noble General," replied a truant from Westminster. "Sirrah, I believe thee; there is a crown for thee. Drive on, coachman." ... Fortune being now propitious to the gay Orlando, he dressed, he spoke, he moved as a man might be supposed to do in a nation of pigmies ... he sometimes rode in an open tumbril, of less size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his limbs, and the grandeur of his personage, to the greater advantage.... In all these glorious excesses did ... Orlando live ... until an unlucky accident brought to his remembrance that ... he was married before he courted the nuptials of Villaria. Several fatal memorandums were produced to revive the memory of this accident, and the unhappy lover was for ever banished her presence, to whom he owed the support of his first renown and gallantry.... Orlando, therefore, now rages in a garret.' The Barbara Villiers mentioned by the Tatler was identical with Lady Castlemaine, Duchess of Cleveland, whose scandalous history is notorious. She was sixty-five years old when she fell in love with Fielding and married him. The 'unlucky accident' of the Tatler was the fact that a few weeks before Fielding had been taken in by an adventuress, one Mary Wadsworth, whom, taking her for a rich widow, he had married. On his second—bigamous—marriage, the first wife revealed the fact to Lady Castlemaine, who, having been shamefully treated by Fielding, was glad to get rid of him. The first marriage was proved in a court of law, and sentence passed on Fielding to be burnt in the hand. By interest in certain quarters he was spared this ignominious punishment; but he was left destitute, and died forgotten and forsaken.

The Tatler gave Fielding a noble descent, and he, in fact, claimed descent from the Hapsburgs; and on the strength of his name ventured to have the arms of Lord Denbigh emblazoned on his coach, and to drive about the ring in Hyde Park. At the sight of the immaculate coat-of-arms on the plebeian chariot, 'all the blood of the Hapsburgs' flew to the head of Basil, fourth Earl of Denbigh. In a high state of fury, he at once procured a house-painter, and ordered him to daub the coat-of-arms completely over, in broad daylight, and before all the company in the ring. The beau tamely submitted to the insult.

Fielding had several competitors in the beau-ship; contemporary with him were Beau Edgeworth and Beau Wilson. Of the former but little is on record; the latter's career was cut short at an early date, for when he was not much beyond his twentieth year he was killed in a duel between him and John Law, afterwards so famous as the originator of the Mississippi scheme. The duel took place on the site of the present Bloomsbury Square. A mushroom growth of beaux arose about the year 1770, some of whom having travelled in Italy, and introduced macaroni as a new dish, they came to be designated by that name. They dressed in the most ridiculous fashion, wearing their hair in a very high foretop, with long side-curls, and an enormous chignon behind. Their clothes were tight-fitting, while silk stockings in all weathers were de rigueur. This folly was of but short duration.

In the first half of the eighteenth century flourished Beau Nash—a great contrast in manners, character, social position, and conduct to Beau Fielding; but as his life was passed at Bath he cannot be reckoned among London beaux. Yet we mention him, as in his earlier years he was slightly connected with the Metropolis, by the fact that he was entered for the Temple, though he never followed the law as a profession.

We have to come down to comparatively recent times to encounter a beau of some note; that beau was known as Beau George Brummel. He was born in 1777, and sent to Eton, where he enjoyed the credit of being the best scholar, the best oarsman, and the best cricketer of his day. His father was Under-Secretary to Lord North, and left each of his children some £30,000. At Eton he made many aristocratic friends, and thus obtained the entrée to Devonshire House, where the beautiful Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, held her court, and where she introduced Brummell to the Prince Regent, who gave him a commission in the 10th Hussars. But the army, with its restraints, did not suit the beau; he left it, and then resided in Chesterfield Street, where the Prince, finding in him a kindred spirit of vanity and frivolity, used to visit him in the morning to see him make his toilet, and to learn the art of tying his neckerchief fashionably. And frequently the Prince would stay all day to enjoy his friend's intellectual discourse, stopping to take a chop or steak with him, and not returning home till the next morning, half-seas over. The beau spent his time chiefly at Brighton and at Carlton House, and regularly established himself as a leader of fashion, his horses and carriages, his dogs, walking-sticks and snuff-boxes, but especially his clothes, becoming patterns to all the empty-headed noodles who required guidance in such matters. But such show could not be supported on the income derived from his patrimony; Brummell therefore went in heavily for gambling, with varying luck. Once at Brooks's he played with Alderman Combe, nicknamed 'Mash-tub,' Lord Mayor and brewer. The dice-box circulated. 'Come, Mash-tub,' said the beau, who was the caster, 'what do you set?' 'Twenty-five guineas,' said the Alderman. The beau won, and eleven more similar ventures. As he pocketed the money, he said: 'Thank you, Alderman; henceforth I shall drink no porter but yours.' 'I wish, sir,' replied Combe, 'that every other blackguard in London would say the same.' At the Watier Club, established at the instigation of the Prince of Wales, Brummell suffered heavy losses, so that ever after he was in constant pecuniary difficulties, though Fortune smiled on him at times. Indulging in all the superstitious tendencies of gamblers, he at one time attributed his luck to the finding of a crooked sixpence in the kennel, as he was walking with Mr. Raikes, who tells the story, through Berkeley Square. He had a hole bored in the coin, and attached it to his watch-chain. As for the succeeding two years he had great luck at the table and on the turf, he attributed it to the lucky sixpence. He is supposed to have made nearly £30,000 during that time.

A coolness between the Prince and the beau arose after a few years; various reasons are assigned for it. He was, for instance, said to have taken the part of Mrs. Fitzherbert, who had been privately married to the Prince Regent at Carlton House; he is reported to have asked Lady Cholmondeley, in the hearing of the Prince, and pointing to him, 'Who is your fat friend?' Though it is also reported that this question was put to Jack Lee, as he was walking up St. James's Street, arm-in-arm with the Prince, a few days after the beau had quarrelled with the latter. But this blew over, and Brummell was again invited to Carlton House, where he took too much wine. The Prince said to his brother, the Duke of York: 'I think we had better order Mr. Brummell's carriage before he gets quite drunk.' Another version of the second rupture is that Brummell took the liberty of saying to the Prince: 'George, ring the bell.' The Prince rang it, and told the servant who answered it: 'Mr. Brummell's carriage.' This Brummell always denied; however, he was a second time forbidden Carlton House. For a few years he was a hanger-on at Oatlands, the seat of the Duke of York, then, having lost large sums at play, he was obliged to fly the country, and having lived for some years in obscurity at Calais, he obtained the post of British Consul at Caen—for which his previous career, of course, eminently fitted him! He died in that town in poor circumstances in 1840.

Let us conclude this short account of the poor moth, basking in the royal sunshine for awhile, with one or two anecdotes. One day a youthful beau approached Brummell, and said: 'Permit me to ask you where you get your blacking?' 'Ah,' said the beau, 'my blacking positively ruins me. I will tell you in confidence—it is made with the finest champagne!' He was once at a party in Portman Square. On the cloth being removed, the snuff-boxes made their appearance; Brummell's was particularly admired; it was handed round, and a gentleman, finding it somewhat difficult to open, incautiously applied a desert-knife to the lid. Brummell was on thorns, and at last could contain himself no longer, and addressing the host, he said, loud enough to be heard by the company: 'Will you be good enough to tell your friend that my snuff-box is not an oyster?'

England has had no regular beau since the time of Brummell, though occasionally some crack-brained individual has attempted to wear his mantle. Such a one was Ferdinand Geramb, a tight-laced German General and Baron, who in the second decade of this century strutted about the parks, conspicuous for his ringlets, his superb moustaches, and immense spurs. It was asserted that he was a German Jew, who, having married the widow of a Hungarian Baron, assumed her late husband's title. His fiery moustaches were closely imitated by many illustrious personages, and gold spurs several inches long became the fashion—one fool makes many. It is to him the British army is indebted for the introduction of hussar uniforms. Having to leave England under the Alien Act, he went to Hamburg, where he set himself to writing against the Emperor Napoleon, who shut him up in the Castle of Vincennes. There, in terrible fear of being shot, he made a vow that should he regain his liberty he would renounce the devil and his works, and join the Trappist community. He was released at the Restoration, and at once entered a Trappist monastery, under the name of Brother Joseph, and in course of time became Abbot and Procurator-General of the Order. No more fighting of duels now, no more keeping the bailiffs who wanted to seize him for debt at bay for twelve days in an English country house which he had fortified; he submitted to the severest rules of the Order, and in 1831 made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and died at Rome in 1848.

XI.