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.