On returning from a country mansion, of which he happened to disapprove, he defined it “An exceedingly good house for stopping a single night in.”
On the whole, the biographer has given a tolerable selection of Brummell’s hits, some of which, however, were so intolerably impertinent, that he must have either thoroughly “known his man,” or he must have smoothed down their severity by some remarkable tone of voice or pleasantry of visage. Without those palliations, it is not easy to comprehend his occasional rudeness even to friends. One day, standing and speaking at the carriage-door of a lady, she expressed her surprise at his throwing away his time on so quiet and unfashionable a person.—“My dear friend, don’t mention it: there is no one to see us.”
But his admiration for the sex must have often brought him close on the edge of serious inconvenience. Once, at the house of a nobleman, he requested a moment’s interview in the library, and then and there communicated the formidable intelligence, “that he must immediately leave the house—on that day.”
“Why, you intended to stay a month,” said his hospitable entertainer.
“True—but I must be gone—I feel I am in love with your countess.”
“Well, my dear sir, I can’t help that. I was in love with her myself twenty years ago,” said the good-humoured husband. “But is she in love with you?”
The Beau cast down his eyes, and, in all the modesty of impudence, said faintly, “I believe she is.”
“Oh! that alters the case. I shall send for your post-horses. Good morning.”
His life was flirtation, a matter which could not be indulged in matrimony, and he therefore never married. Yet once he went so far as to elope with a young person of rank from a ball: the pair were, however, immediately overtaken. The affair was, of course, the talk of the clubs. But Brummell had his own way of wearing the willow. “On the whole,” said he, “I consider I have reason to congratulate myself. I lately heard from her favourite maid that her ladyship had been seen—to drink beer!”
Some of the Beau’s letters at this period are given; but they are not fortunate specimens of his taste: even in writing to women they are quaint, affected, and approaching to that unpardonable crime, dulness. His letters written in his wane of life, and under the realities of suffering, are much more striking, contain some pathetic and even some powerful language, and show that fashion and his own follies had obscured a mind of natural talent, if not of original tenderness.