BEAU BRUMMELL.

It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high art has been applied, and with what success. It is the vice of high civilization to look for it and reverence it, where a ruder age would only laugh at its employment. Crime and cookery, especially, have been raised into sciences of late, and the professors of both received the amount of honor due to their acquirements. Who would be so naïve as to sneer at the author of "The Art of Dining?" or who so ungentlemanly as not to pity the sorrows of a pious baronet, whose devotion to the noble art of appropriation was shamefully rewarded with accommodation gratis on board one of Her Majesty's transport-ships? The disciples of Ude have left us the literary results of their studies, and one at least, the graceful Alexis Soyer, is numbered among our public benefactors. We have little doubt that as the art, vulgarly called "embezzlement,” becomes more and more fashionable, as it does every day, we shall have a work on the "Art of Appropriation." It is a pity that Brummell looked down upon literature: poor literature! it had a hard struggle to recover the slight, for we are convinced there is not a work more wanted than the "Art of Dressing," and "George the Less" was almost the last professor of that elaborate science.

If the maxim, that "whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well," hold good, Beau Brummell must be regarded in the light of a great man. That dressing is worth doing at all, every body but a Fiji Islander seems to admit, for every body does it. If, then, a man succeeds in dressing better than any body else, it follows that he is entitled to the most universal admiration.

But there was another object to which this great man condescended to apply the principles of high art-I mean affectation. How admirably he succeeded in this his life will show. But can we doubt that he is entitled to our greatest esteem and heartiest gratitude for the studies he pursued with unremitting patience in these two useful branches, when we find that a prince of the blood delighted to honor, and the richest, noblest, and most distinguished men of half a century ago were proud to know him? We are writing, then, of no common man, no mere beau, but of the greatest professor of two of the

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most popular sciences-Dress and Affectation. Let us speak with reverence of this wonderful genius.

George Brummell was a self-made man." That is, all that nature, the tailors, stags, and padding had not made of him, he made for himself-his name, his fame, his fortune, and his friends-and all these were great. The author of "Self-help" has most unaccountably omitted all mention of him, and most erroneously, for if there ever was a man who helped himself, and no one else, it was "very sincerely yours, George Brummell."

The founder of the noble house of Brummell, the grandfather of our hero, was either a treasury porter, or a confectioner, or something else.* At any rate he let lodgings in Bury Street, and whether from the fact that his wife did not purloin her lodgers' tea and sugar, or from some other cause, he managed to ingratiate himself with one of them-who afterward became Lord Liverpool-so thoroughly, that through his influence he obtained for his son the post of Private Secretary to Lord North. Nothing could have been more fortunate, except, perhaps, the son's next move, which was to take in marriage the daughter of Richardson, the owner of a well-known lottery-office. Between the lottery of office and the lottery of love, Brummell père managed to make a very good fortune. At his death he left as much as £65,000 to be divided among his three children-Raikes says as much as £30,000 apieceso that the Beau, if not a fool, ought never to have been a pauper.

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George Bryan Brummell, the second son of this worthy, honored by his birth the 7th of June, 1778. No anecdotes of his childhood are preserved, except that he once cried because he could not eat any more damson tart. In later years he would probably have thought damson tart "very vulgar." He first turns up at Eton at the age of twelve, and even there commences his distinguished career, and is known as Buck Brummell.' The boy showed himself decidedly father to the man here. Master George was not vulgar enough, nor so imprudent, it may be added, as to fight, row, or play cricket, but he distinguished himself by the introduction of a gold buckle in the white stock, by never being flogged, and by his ability in toasting cheese. We do not hear much of his classical attainments.

The very gentlemanly youth was in due time passed on to Oriel College, Oxford. Here he distinguished himself by a

*Mr. Jesse says that the Beau's grandfather was a servant of Mr. Charles Monson, brother to the first Lord Monson.

INVESTING HIS CAPITAL.

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studied indifference to college discipline and an equal dislike to studies. He condescended to try for the Newdigate Prize poem, but his genius leaned far more to the turn of a coatcollar than that of a verse, and, unhappily for the British poets, their ranks were not to be dignified by the addition of this illustrious man. The Newdigate was given to another; and so, to punish Oxford, the competitor left it and poetry together, after having adorned the old quadrangle of Oriel for less than a year.

He was now a boy of seventeen, and a very fine boy, too. To judge from a portrait taken in later life, he was not strictly handsome; but he is described as tall, well built, and of a slight and graceful figure. Added to this, he had got from Eton and Oxford, if not much learning, many a well-born friend, and he was toady enough to cultivate those of better and dismiss those of less distinction. He was through life a celebrated 66 cutter," and Brummell's cut was as much admired -by all but the cuttee-as Brummell's coat. Then he had some £25,000 as capital, and how could he best invest it? He consulted no stock-broker on this weighty point; he did not even buy a shilling book of advice that we have seen advertised for those who don't know what to do with their money. The question was answered in a moment by the young worldling of sixteen: he would enter a crack regiment and invest his guineas in the thousand per cents. of fashionable life.

His namesake, the Regent, was now thirty-two, and had spent those years of his life in acquiring the honorary title of the "first gentleman of Europe," by every act of folly, debauch, dissipation, and degradation which a prince can conveniently perpetrate. He was the hero of London society, which adored and backbit him alternately, and he was precisely the man whom the boy Brummell would worship. The Regent was colonel of a famous regiment of fops-the 10th Hussars. It was the most expensive, the most impertinent, the best-dressed, the worst-moraled regiment in the British army. Its officers, many of them titled, all more or less distinguished in the trying campaigns of London seasons, were the intimates of the Prince Colonel. Brummell aspired to a cornetcy in this brilliant regiment, and obtained it; nor that alone; he secured, by his manners, or his dress, or his impudence, the favor and companionship-friendship we can not say-of the prince who commanded it.

By this step his reputation was made, and it was only necessary to keep it up. He had an immense fund of good-nature, and, as long as his money lasted, of good spirits, too. Good sayings-that is, witty if not wise-are recorded of him, and

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his friends pronounce him a charming companion. Introduced, therefore, into the highest circles in England, he could scarcely fail to succeed. Young Cornet Brummell became a great fa vorite with the fair.

His rise in the regiment was of course rapid: in three years he was at the head of a troop. The onerous duties of a military life, which vacillated between Brighton and London, and consisted chiefly in making one's self agreeable in the messroom, were too much for our hero. He neglected parade, or arrived too late: it was such a bore to have to dress in a hurry. It is said that he knew the troop he commanded only by the peculiar nose of one of the men, and that when a transfer of men had once been made, rode up to the wrong troop, and supported his mistake by pointing to the nose in question. No fault, however, was found with the Regent's favorite, and Brummell might have risen to any rank if he could have supported the terrific labor of dressing for parade. Then, too, there came wars and rumors of wars, and our gallant captain shuddered at the vulgarity of shedding blood: the supply of smelling-salts would never have been liberal enough to keep him from fainting on the battle-field. It is said, too, that the regiment was ordered to Manchester. Could any thing be more gross or more ill-bred? The idea of figuring before the wives and daughters of cotton-spinners was too fearful; and from one cause or another our brave young captain determined to retire, which he did in 1798.

It was now, therefore, that he commenced the profession of a beau, and as he is the Prince of Beaux, as his patron was the Beau of Princes, and as his fame has spread to France and Germany, if only as the inventor of the trowser; and as there is no man who on getting up in the morning does not put on his clothes with more or less reflection as to whether they are the right ones to put on, and as beaux have existed since the days of the emperor of beaux, Alexander the Macedonian, and will probably exist to all time, let us rejoice in the high honor of being permitted to describe how this illustrious genius clothed his poor flesh, and made the most of what God had given him-a body and legs.

The private life of Brummell would in itself serve as a book of manners and habits. The two were his profoundest study; but, alas! his impudence marred the former, and the latter can scarcely be imitated in the present day. Still as a great example he is yet invaluable, and must be described in all detail.

His morning toilet was a most elaborate affair. Never was Brummell guilty of déshabille. Like a true man of busi

ness, he devoted the best and earliest hours-and many of them too-to his profession, namely-dressing. His dressingroom was a studio, in which he daily compared that elaborate portrait of George Brummell which was to be exhibited for a few hours in the club-rooms and drawing-rooms of town, only to be taken to pieces again, and again made up for the evening. Charles I. delighted to resort of a morning to the studio of Vandyck, and watch his favorite artist's progress. The Regent George was no less devoted to art, for we are assured by Mr. Raikes that he often visited his favorite beau in the morning to watch his toilet, and would sometimes stay so late that he would send his horses away, insisting on Brummell giving him a quiet dinner, "which generally ended in a deep potation."

There are, no doubt, many fabulous myths floating about concerning this illustrious man; and his biographer, Captain Jesse, seems anxious to defend him from the absurd stories of French writers, who asserted that he employed two glovers to cover his hands, to one of whom were intrusted the thumbs, to the other the fingers and hand, and three barbers to dress his hair, while his boots were polished with champagne, his cravats designed by a celebrated portrait painter, and so forth. These may be pleasant inventions, but Captain Jesse's own account of his toilet, even when the Beau was broken, and living in elegant poverty abroad, is quite absurd enough to render excusable the ingenious exaggerations of the foreign writer.

The batterie de toilette, we are told, was of silver, and included a spitting-dish, for its owner said "he could not spit into clay." Napoleon shaved himself, but Brummell was not quite great enough to do that, just as my Lord So-and-So walks to church on Sunday, while his neighbor, the Manchester millionaire, can only arrive there in a chariot and pair.

His ablutions took no less than two whole hours! What knowledge might have been gained, what good done in the time he devoted to rubbing his lovely person with a hair glove! Cleanliness was, in fact, Brummell's religion; perhaps because it is generally set down as "next to godliness," a proximity with which the Beau was quite satisfied, for he never attempted to pass on to that next stage. Poor fool, he might rub every particle of moisture off the skin of his body-he might be clean as a kitten-but he could not and did not purify his mind with all this friction; and the man who would have fainted to see a black speck upon his shirt, was not at all shocked at the indecent conversation in which he and his companions occasionally indulged.

R