Brummel, whose career is one of the most extraordinary on record, must have exercised, during the period of his social reign, many qualities of conduct which rank among the highest endowments of our race. For an obscure individual, without fortune or rank, to have conceived the idea of placing himself at the head of society in a country the most thoroughly aristocratic in Europe, relying too upon no other weapon than well-directed insolence; for the same individual to have triumphed splendidly over the highest and the mightiest—to have maintained a contest with royalty itself, and to have come off victorious even in that struggle—for such an one no ordinary faculties must have been demanded. Of the sayings of Brummel which have been preserved, it is difficult to distinguish whether they contain real wit, or are only so sublimely and so absurdly impudent that they look like witty.
We add here a few anecdotes of Brummel, which will serve to show, better than any precepts, the style of conduct which a man of fashion may pursue.
When Brummel was at the height of his power, he was once, in the company of some gentlemen, speaking of the Prince of Wales as a very good sort of man, who behaved himself very decently, considering circumstances; some one present offered a wager that he would not dare to give a direction to this very good sort of man. Brummel looked astonished at the remark, and declined accepting a wager upon such point. They happened to be dining with the regent the next day, and after being pretty well fortified. with wine, Brummel interrupted a remark of the prince’s, by exclaiming very mildly and naturally, “Wales, ring the bell!” His royal highness immediately obeyed the command, and when the servant entered, said to him, with the utmost coolness and firmness, “Show Mr. Brummel to his carriage.” The dandy was not in the least dejected by his expulsion; but meeting the prince regent, walking with a gentleman, the next day in the street, he did not bow to him, but stopping the other, drew him aside and said, in a loud whisper, “Who is that FAT FRIEND of ours?” It must be remembered that the object of this sarcasm was at that time exceedingly annoyed by his increasing corpulency; so manifestly so, that Sheridan remarked, that “though the regent professed himself a Whig, he believed that in his heart he was no friend to new measures.”
Shortly after this occurrence at Carlton-House, Brummel remarked to one of his friends, that “he had half a mind to cut the young one, and bring old George into fashion.”
In describing a short visit which he had paid to a nobleman in the country, he said, that he had only carried with him a night-cap and a silver basin to spit in, “Because, you know, it is utterly impossible to spit in clay.”
Brummel was once present at a party to which he had not been invited. After he had been some time in the room, the gentleman of the house, willing to mortify him, went up to him and said that he believed that there must be some mistake, as he did not recollect having had the honour of sending him an invitation. “What is the name?” said the other very drawlingly, at the same time affecting to feel in his waistcoat pocket for a card. “Johnson,” replied the gentleman. “Jauhnson?” said Brummel, “oh! I remember now that the name was Thaunson (Thompson); and Jauhnson and Thaunson, Thaunson and Jauhnson, you know, are so much the same kind of thing.”
Brummel was once asked how much a year he thought would be required to keep a single man in clothes. “Why, with tolerable economy,” said he, “I think it might be done for £800.”
He once went down to a gentleman’s house in the country, without having been asked to do so. He was given to understand, the next morning, that his absence would be more agreeable, and he took his departure. Some one having heard of his discomfiture, asked him how he liked the accommodations there. He replied coolly, that “it was a very decent house to spend a single night in.”
We have mentioned that this dreaded arbiter of modes had threatened that he would put the prince regent out of fashion. Alas! for the peace of the British monarch, this was not an idle boast. His dangerous rival resolved in the unfathomable recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to commence and to carry on a war whose terror and grandeur should astound society, to administer to audacious royalty a lesson which should never be forgotten, and finally to retire, when retire he must, with mementos of his tremendous power around him, and with the mightiest of the earth at his feet. Inventive and deliberate were the counsels which he meditated; sublime and resolute was the conduct he adopted. He decided, with an originality of genius to which the conqueror of Marengo might have vailed, that the neck of the foe was the point at which the first fatal shaft of his excommunicating ire should be hurled. With rapid and decisive energy he concentrated all his powers for instantaneous action. He retired for a day to the seclusion of solitude, to summon and to spur the energies of the most self-reliant mind in Europe, as the lion draws back to gather courage for the leap. As, like the lion, he drew back; so, like the lion, did he spring forward upon his prey. At a ball given by the Duchess of Devonshire, when the whole assembly were conversing upon his supposed disgrace, and insulting by their malevolence one whom they had disgusted by their adulation, Brummel suddenly stood in the midst of them. Could it be indeed Brummel? Could it be mortal who thus appeared with such an encincture of radiant glory about his neck? Every eye was upon him, fixed in stupid admiration; every tongue, as it slowly recovered from its speechless paralysis, faltered forth “what a cravat!” What a cravat indeed! Hundreds that had, a moment before, exulted in unwonted freedom, bowed before it with the homage of servile adoration. What a cravat! There it stood; there was no doubting its entity, no believing it an illusion. There it stood, smooth and stiff, yet light and almost transparent; delicate as the music of Ariel, yet firm as the spirit of Regulus; bending with the grace of Apollo’s locks, yet erect with the majesty of the Olympian Jove: without a wrinkle, without an indentation. What a cravat! The regent “saw and shook;” and uttering a faint gurgle from beneath the wadded bag which surrounded his royal thorax, he was heard to whisper with dismay, “D—n him! what a cravat!” The triumph was complete.
It is stated, upon what authority we know not, that his royal highness, after passing a sleepless night in vain conjectures, despatched at an early hour, one of his privy-counsellors to Brummel, offering carte blanche if he would disclose the secret of that mysterious cravat. But the “atrox animus Catonis” disdained the bribe. He preferred being supplicated, to being bought, by kings. “Go,” said he to the messenger, with the spirit of Marius mantling in his veins, “Go, and tell your master that you have seen his master.”