“And Lady Cork, George,” said that vivacious lady, who was coming out, “does not pick gentlemen’s pockets of snuff-boxes.”
“No,” replied the young Yorkshire squire, “Lady Cork is only a voleuse de cœurs. In the meantime, I have the satisfaction of knowing that my gold box is gone to a Gonoff.”
“And that Gonoff,” said Townsend, with his familiar laugh, “is Hebrew for ‘thief.’”
Captain Jesse has limned Brummell at elaborate full length, and the gallant artist has done his spiriting very impartially, considering the Cruikshank sort of portraiture with which the beau once affected to represent the captain. “My dear Jesse,” said the dandy once to him,—“My dear Jesse, excuse me, but you look very much like a magpie!”
This impertinence was not met in a vindictive spirit. The biographer of Brummell describes him as a beau, but not a beau of the Sir Fopling Flutter or Fieldingschool, That is, he was not so nastily nice as the first, nor so irretrievably nasty as the second. The captain thinks that his beau would not have been guilty, like Charles James Fox, of wearing red-heeled shoes. I am not so sure of this. Fox was, like all democrats, proud of spirit, and he wore red heels, because these were the distinctive marks of nobility in the galleries of Versailles. Brummell was more original, and he would not have adopted the talons rouges, simply because they were the productions of the inventive genius of another. He had at first a taste that was not unimpeachable. There was too much variety about him. He dealt in contrasts, and he was given to jewellery. His example in the latter way was seized, not by the young aristocracy of England, so unlike their Elizabethan ancestors, who not only covered themselves with gold and jewellery, but took gold-dust, liquid pearls, and coral draughts for their medicine; Brummel’s example was not adopted by these, but it was by their men-cooks. These latter blazed in the pit of the Opera like the caballeros at a Chilian theatre when the chief magistrate retires to the back of his box; and flint, steel, allumettes, and cigars are all in a glow, or helping to produce it. I have heard abundant wonder expressed at the amount of jewellery and precious stones which were then worn by culinary artists who loved music and patronized the Opera. It was, however, all borrowed finery. The pins and brooches, the chains, the breloques, the virgin gold and the diamonds pure, were the property of Ude, who realized a good share of the thirty thousand pounds he bequeathed to his disconsolate widow, by letting the finery out nightly, at sums varying from two to five shillings!
Brummell, with his usually acute perception,—that is, acute in one direction,—saw that fame was to be achieved by simplicity; and, as Captain Jesse remarks, “scorning to share his fame with his tailor, he soon shunned all external peculiarity, and trusted alone to that ease and grace of manner which he possessed in a remarkable degree. His chief aim,” adds the biographer, “was to avoid anything marked: one of his aphorisms being, that the severest mortification a gentleman could incur, was to attract observation in the street by his outward appearance. He exercised the most correct taste in the selection of each article of apparel of a form and colour harmonious with all the rest, for the purpose of producing a perfectly elegant general effect; and no doubt he spent much time and pains in the attainment of his object.” This is no doubt true. Brummell put in practice, he hardly knew why, the principles of harmony and contrast of colours, long before Monsieur Chevreul wrote his theory and explanation of those principles.
He had quite as correct an eye with regard to harmony of shape as to that of colour. The highest in the land were not ashamed to seek a sort of professional opinion from this man as to the propriety of their costume. The Duke of Bedford once did this touching a coat. Brummell examined his Grace with the cool impertinence which was his Grace’s due. He turned him about, scanned him with scrutinizing, contemptuous eye, and then taking the lappel between his dainty finger and thumb, he exclaimed in a tone of pitying wonder, “Bedford! do you call this thing a coat?”
But he did not spare his own relations. He was one day standing in the bow-window at White’s, amid a knot of well-dressed admirers, when one of them remarked, “Brummell, your brother William is in town. Is he not coming here?” “Yes,” said Brummell, “in a day or two; but I have recommended him to walk the back streets till his new clothes come home.”
Brummell however may be excused if he became vain of his power. For a season he was undoubtedly the very King of Fashion, and a terrible despot he was; but he was flattered by kings, or by their representatives. The Prince of Wales passed long matutinal hours in Brummell’s dressing-room in Chesterfield-street, watching the progress of his friend’s toilet. The progress was occasionally so extended that the Prince would dismiss his equipage, invite himself to dinner, and the master and pupil, Arcades ambo, set to; and “fore gad, they made a night of it!”