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!”
THE PRINCE DE LIGNE.
“This chub-faced fop