Brummell now, since the sword was drawn, resolved to throw away the sheath, and his hits were keen and “damaging,” as those things are now termed. In this style he said to little Colonel M’Mahon, the Prince’s secretary—“I made him, and I shall unmake him.”
The “fat friend” hit was more pungent in reality than in its usual form. The Prince, walking down St James’s Street with Lord Moira, and seeing Brummell approaching arm-in-arm with a man of rank, determined to show the openness of the quarrel, stopped and spoke to the noble lord with an apparent unconsciousness of ever having seen the Beau before. The moment he was turning away, Brummell asked, in his most distinct voice, “Pray, who is your fat friend?” Nothing could be more dexterously impudent; for it repaid the Prince’s pretended want of recognition precisely in his own coin, and besides stung him in the very spot where he was known to be most thin-skinned.
It is sufficiently remarkable, that the alienation of the Prince from Brummell scarcely affected his popularity with the patrician world, or his reception by the Duke and Duchess of York. He was a frequent guest at Oatlands, and seems to have amused the duke by his pleasantry, and cultivated the taste of the duchess by writing her epigrams, and making her presents of little dogs. The Duke of York, though not much gifted with the faculty of making jests, greatly enjoyed them in others. He was a good-humoured, easy-mannered man, wholly without affectation of any kind; well-intentioned, with some sagacity—mingled, however, with a good deal of that abruptness which belonged to all the Brunswicks; and though unfortunate in his domestic conduct, a matter on which it would do no service to the reader to enlarge, yet a brave soldier, and a zealous and most useful commander-in-chief at the Horse Guards. He, too, could say good things now and then. One day at Oatlands, as he was mounting his horse to ride to town, seeing a poor woman driven from the door, he asked the servant what she was. “A beggar, your royal highness: nothing but a soldier’s wife.”—“Nothing but a soldier’s wife! And pray, sir, what is your mistress?” Of course, the poor woman was called back and relieved.
Still Brummell continued in high life, and was one of the four who gave the memorable fête at the Argyll Rooms in July 1813, in consequence of having won a considerable sum at hazard. The other three were, Sir Henry Mildmay, Pierrepoint, and Lord Alvanley. The difficulty was, whether or not to invite the Prince, who had quarrelled with Mildmay as well as with Brummell. In this solemn affair Pierrepoint sounded the Prince, and ascertained that he would accept the invitation if it were proposed to him. When the Prince arrived, and was of course received by the four givers of the fête, he shook hands with Alvanley and Pierrepoint, but took no notice whatever of the others. Brummell was indignant, and, at the close of the night, would not attend the Prince to his carriage. This was observed, and the Prince’s remark on it next day was—“Had Brummell taken the cut I gave him last night good-humouredly, I should have renewed my intimacy with him.” How that was to be done, however, without lying down to be kicked, it would be difficult to discover. Brummell however, on this occasion, was undoubtedly as much in the right as the Prince was in the wrong.
Brummell, in conformity to the habits of the time, and the proprieties of his caste, was of course a gambler, and of course was rapidly ruined; but we have no knowledge that he went through the whole career, and turned swindler. One night he was playing with Combe, who united the three characters of a lover of play, a brewer, and an alderman. It was at Brookes’s, and in the year of his mayoralty. “Come, Mash Tub, what do you set?” said the Beau. “Twenty-five guineas,” was the answer. The Beau won, and won the same sum twelve times running. Then, putting the cash in his pocket, said with a low bow, “Thank you, alderman; for this, I’ll always patronize your porter.”—“Very well, sir,” said Combe dryly, “I only wish every other blackguard in London would do the same.”
At this time play ran high at the clubs. A baronet now living was said to have lost at Watier’s L.10,000 at one sitting, at ecarté. In 1814, Brummell lost not only all his winnings, but “an unfortunate L.10,000,” as he expressed it, the last that he had at his bankers. Brummell was now ruined; and, to prevent the possibility of his recovery at any future period, he raised money at ruinous interest, and finally made his escape to Calais. Still, when every thing else forsook him, his odd way of telling his own story remained. “He said,” observed one of his friends at Caen, when talking about his altered circumstances, “that, up to a particular period of his life, every thing prospered with him, and that he attributed this good luck to the possession of a silver sixpence with a hole in it, which somebody had given him some years before, with an injunction to take good care of it, as every thing would go well with him so long as he kept it, and everything the contrary if he happened to lose it.” And so it turned out; for having at length, in an evil hour, given it by mistake to a hackney coachman, a complete reverse of his affairs took place, and one misfortune followed another until he was obliged to fly. On his being asked why he did not advertise a reward for it, he answered—“I did; and twenty people came with sixpences with holes in them for the reward, but not my sixpence.” “And you never heard any more of it?” “No,” he replied; “no doubt that rascal Rothschild, or some of that set, have got hold of it.” But the Beau’s retreat from London was still to be characteristic. As it had become expedient that he must make his escape without eclat, on the day of his intended retreat he dined coolly at his club, and finished his London performances by sending from the table a note to his friend Scrope Davies, couched in the following prompt and expressive form:—
“My Dear Scrope,—Lend me two hundred pounds: the banks are shut, and all my money is in the 3 per cents. It shall be repaid to-morrow morning.—Yours, George Brummell.”
The answer was equally prompt and expressive—
“My Dear George,—It is very unfortunate, but all my money is in the 3 per cents.—Yours, S. Davies.”
Such is the story;