[16] Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax. Lord Halifax was born in 1661, and died in 1715. He was called 'Mouse Montagu.'
[17] See Burke's 'Peerage.'
[18] The Duchess of Marlborough received £10,000 by Mr. Congreve's will.
BEAU NASH.
The King of Bath.—Nash at Oxford.—'My Boy Dick.'—Offers of Knighthood.—Doing Penance at York.—Days of Folly.—A very Romantic Story.—Sickness and Civilization.—Nash descends upon Bath.—Nash's Chef-d'œuvre.—The Ball.—Improvements in the Pump-room, &c.—A Public Benefactor.—Life at Bath in Nash's time.—A Compact with the Duke of Beaufort.—Gaming at Bath.—Anecdotes of Nash.—'Miss Sylvia.'—A Generous Act.—Nash's Sun setting.—A Panegyric.—Nash's Funeral.—His Characteristics.
There is nothing new under the sun, said Walpole, by way of a very original remark. 'No,' whispered George Selwyn, 'nor under the grandson, either.'
Mankind, as a body, has proved its silliness in a thousand ways, but in none, perhaps, so ludicrously as in its respect for a man's coat. He is not always a fool that knows the value of dress; and some of the wisest and greatest of men have been dandies of the first water. King Solomon was one, and Alexander the Great was another; but there never was a more despotic monarch, nor one more humbly obeyed by his subjects, than the King of Bath, and he won his dominions by the cut of his coat. But as Hercules was killed by a dress-shirt, so the beaux of the modern world have generally ruined themselves by their wardrobes, and brought remorse to their hearts, or contempt from the very people who once worshipped them. The husband of Mrs. Damer, who appeared in a new suit twice a-day, and whose wardrobe sold for £15,000, blew his brains out at a coffee-house. Beau Fielding, Beau Nash, and Beau Brummell all expiated their contemptible vanity in obscure old age of want and misery. As the world is full of folly, the history of a fool is as good a mirror to hold up to it as another; but in the case of Beau Nash the only question is, whether he or his subjects were the greater fools. So now for a picture of as much folly as could well be crammed into that hot basin in the Somersetshire hills, of which more anon.
It is a hard thing for a man not to have had a father—harder still, like poor Savage, to have one whom he cannot get hold of; but perhaps it is hardest of all, when you have a father, and that parent a very respectable man, to be told that you never had one. This was Nash's case, and his father was so little known, and so seldom mentioned, that the splendid Beau was thought almost to have dropped from the clouds, ready dressed and powdered. He dropped in reality from anything but a heavenly place—the shipping town of Swansea: so that Wales can claim the honour of having produced the finest beau of his age.
Old Nash was, perhaps, a better gentleman than his son; but with far less pretension. He was a partner in a glass-manufactory. The Beau, in after-years, often got rallied on the inferiority of his origin, and the least obnoxious answer he ever made was to Sarah of Marlborough, as rude a creature as himself, who told him he was ashamed of his parentage. 'No, madam,' replied the King of Bath, 'I seldom mention my father, in company, not because I have any reason to be ashamed of him, but because he has some reason to be ashamed of me.' Nash, though a fop and a fool, was not a bad-hearted man, as we shall see. And if there were no other redeeming point in his character, it is a great deal to say for him, that in an age of toadyism, he treated rank in the same manner as he did the want of it, and did his best to remove the odious distinctions which pride would have kept up in his dominions. In fact, King Nash may be thanked for having, by his energy in this respect, introduced into society the first elements of that middle class which is found alone in England.