Ah! A jumped-up pantry boy
Who never knew his place
He said “return the ring”
He knows so much about these things
He knows so much about these things
The Smiths, This Charming Man
Whatever happened to Beau Brummell? After its golden period during the first decade of the nineteenth century, the most important of the original dandies lost the favor of the regent who, upon attaining nominal power over the kingdom began to distance himself from his old friends in the Whig party who opposed an absolute monarchy. He quickly fell into disgrace:
Empires had risen and fallen while he experimented with the crease of a neck-cloth and criticised the cut of a coat. Now the battle of Waterloo had been fought and peace had come. The battle left him untouched; it was the peace that undid him. For some time past he had been winning and losing at the gaming-tables… Now, with the armies disbanded, there was let loose upon London a horde of rough, ill-mannered men who had been fighting all those years and were determined to enjoy themselves. They flooded the gaming-houses. They played very high. Brummell was forced into competition. He lost and won and vowed never to play again, and then he did play again. At last his remaining ten thousand pounds was gone. He borrowed until he could borrow no more.1
By the spring of 1816, hounded by his creditors, Brummell left England forever and settled in Calais, where he lived for a decade. When asked about his choice of address, unimaginable in better times, he said “he thought it hard if a gentleman could not pass his time agreeably between London and Paris.” For a few years his contacts and influence allowed him to perform as British consul in Caen, but he was never able to recover his original dignity and status. He died in the asylum of Le Bon Sauveur in 1840, completely mad and destitute.
- Virginia Woolf, Beau Brummell. ↩︎
Leave a Reply