The Austrian livery however had disappeared after the break with the Duchess. The Beau’s den is probably more correct in its details. “The chamber looked like a place in the other world, set apart for the ghosts of departed furniture. The hangings were wan and colourless; the chairs and sofas were most spiritually unsubstantial; the mirrors reflected all things in a sepulchral sea-green; even a huge picture of Mr. Fielding himself, placed over the chimney-piece, seemed like the apparition of a portrait, so dim, watery, and indistinct had it been rendered by neglect and damp. On a huge, tomb-like table in the middle of the room lay two pencilled profiles of Mr. Fielding, a pair of ruffles, a very little muff, an immense broadsword, a Wycherly comb, a jack-boot, and an old plumed hat; to these were added, a cracked pomatum pot, containing ink, and a scrap of paper, ornamented with sundry paintings of hearts and torches. Upon the ground lay a box of patches, a periwig, and two or three well-thumbed books of songs.” The Beau himself, half bully, half fribble, a poet, a fop, a fighter, a beauty, is described as wearing an old morning dressing-gown of once gorgeous material; a little velvet cap with tarnished gold tassel, military boots, and with a coarse and florid complexion as the remains of a beauty, the expression of which “had settled into a broad, hardy, farcical mixture of effrontery, humour, and conceit.”
But all his effrontery could not keep him afloat, and he finally disappeared altogether from the “world;” and so little was known of his end that men disputed of his burial-place, as of another Atala, and it was quite undetermined whether he died in Hampshire or in Holland. The estimation, however, in which he was held is amply demonstrated in the annexed epitaph by a friend:—
“If Fielding is dead,
And rests under this stone,
Then he is not alive,
You may bet two to one.
But if he’s alive,
And does not lie here,
Let him live till he’s hang’d,