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Some Eccentrics
& a Woman

First Published in 1911

A VIEW from the Pump Room, Bath.

Some Eccentrics
& a Woman

By Lewis Melville

London

Martin Secker

Number Five John Street

Adelphi

NOTE

Of the eight papers printed here, “Some Eighteenth-Century Men About Town,” “A Forgotten Satirist: ‘Peter Pindar’,” “Sterne’s Eliza,” and “William Beckford, of Fonthill Abbey,” have appeared in the Fortnightly Review; “Charles James Fox” appeared in the Monthly Review, “Exquisites of the Regency” in Chambers’s Journal, and “The Demoniacs” in the American Bookman. To the editors of these periodicals I am indebted either for permission to reprint, or for their courtesy in having permitted me to reserve the right of publication in book form. “Philip, Duke of Wharton” is now printed for the first time.

Lewis Melville

Contents

List of Illustrations

Some Eighteenth-Century Men about Town

When his Royal Highness George, Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., freed himself from parental control, and, an ill-disciplined lad, launched himself upon the town, it is well known that he was intimate with Charles James Fox, whom probably he admired more because the King hated the statesman than for any other reason. Doubtless the Prince drank with Fox, and diced with him, and played cards with him, but from his later career it is obvious he can never have touched Fox on that great man’s intellectual side; and, after a time, the royal scapegrace, who would rather have reigned in hell than have served in heaven, sought companions to whom he need not in any way feel inferior. With this, possibly sub-conscious, desire, he gathered around him a number of men about town, notorious for their eccentricities and for the irregularity of their lives. With these George felt at home; but, though he was nominally their leader, there can be little doubt that he was greatly influenced by them at the most critical time of a young man’s life, to his father’s disgust and to the despair of the nation. Of these men the most remarkable were Sir John Lade, George Hanger (afterwards fourth Lord Coleraine of the second creation), and Sir Lumley Skeffington; and, by some chance, it happens that little has been written about them, perhaps because what has been recorded is for the most part hidden in old magazines and newspapers and the neglected memoirs of forgotten worthies. Yet, as showing the temper of the times, it may not be uninteresting to reconstruct their lives, and, as far as the material serves, show them in their habit as they lived.

Sir John Lade, the son of John Inskipp, who assumed the name of Lade, and in whose person the baronetcy that had been in the family was revived, was born in 1759, and at an early age plunged into the fast society of the metropolis with such vigour that he had earned a most unenviable reputation by the time he came of age, on which auspicious occasion, Dr Johnson, who knew him as the ward of Mr Thrale, greeted him savagely in the satirical verses which conclude:

“Wealth, my lad, was made to wander:

Let it wander at its will;

Call the jockey, call the pander,

Bid them come and take their fill.

When the bonnie blade carouses,

Pockets full and spirits high—

What are acres? what are houses?

Only dirt, or wet and dry.

Should the guardian friend or mother

Tell the woes of wilful waste,

Scorn their counsels, scorn their pother,

You can hang, or drown, at last.”

Sir John became one of the Prince of Wales’s cronies, and for a while had the management of his Royal Highness’s racing stable; but while it has been hinted of him, as of George Hanger, that during his tenure of that office he had some share in the transactions that resulted in Sam Chifney, the Prince’s jockey, being warned off the turf, it is but fair to state that there is no evidence in existence to justify the suspicion. Indeed, he seems to have been honest, except in incurring tradesmen’s debts that he could never hope to discharge; but this was a common practice in fashionable circles towards the end of the eighteenth century, and was held to throw no discredit on the man who did so—for was it not a practice sanctioned by the example of “The First Gentleman of Europe” himself?

Sir John’s ambition, apparently, was to imitate a groom in dress and language. It was his pleasure to take the coachman’s place, and drive the Prince’s “German Waggon,”[1] and six bay horses from the Pavilion at Brighton to the Lewes racecourse; and, in keeping with his pose, he was overheard on Egham racecourse to invite a friend to return to dinner in these terms:—“I can give you a trout spotted all over like a coach dog, a fillet of veal as white as alabaster, a ‘pantaloon’ cutlet, and plenty of pancakes as big as coach-wheels—so help me.”

Dr Johnson naturally took an interest in Sir John, and, when Lady Lade consulted him about the training of her son, “Endeavour, madam,” said he, “to procure him knowledge, for really ignorance to a rich man is like fat to a sick sheep, it only serves to call the rooks round him.” It is easier, however, to advocate the acquisition of knowledge than to inculcate it, and knowledge, except of horses, Sir John Lade never obtained in any degree. Indeed, his folly was placed on record by “Anthony Pasquin” in

An Epigrammatic Colloquy,
Occasioned by Sir John Lade’s Ingenious Method of Managing his Estates.

Said Hope to Wit, with eager looks,

And sorrow streaming eyes:

“In pity, Jester, tell me when,

Will Johnny Lade be—wise?”

“Thy sighs forego,” said Wit to Hope,

“And be no longer sad;

Tho’ other foplings grow to men,

He’ll always be—a Lad.”

Sir John Lade

When Sir John was little more than a boy, Johnson, half in earnest, proposed him as a fitting mate for the author of “Evelina,” so Mrs Thrale states; and, indeed, Miss Burney herself records a conversation in 1778 between that lady and the doctor. The inadvisability of the union, however, soon became apparent, and when Sir John, a little later, asked Johnson if he would advise him to marry, “I would advise no man to marry, sir,” replied the great man, “who is not likely to propagate understanding”; but the baronet, who doubtless thought this was an excellent joke, and as such intended, crowned his follies by espousing a woman of more than doubtful character. When Sir John met his future wife, she was a servant at a house of ill-fame in Broad Street, St Giles, and, rightly or wrongly, was credited with having been the mistress of Jack Rann, the highwayman, better known as “Sixteen-string Jack,” who deservedly ended his career on the gallows in 1774. Marriage did not apparently mend her manners or her morals, for, according to Huish—who, it must, however, be admitted, was an arrant scandalmonger—she was for some time the mistress of the Duke of York, and also acted as procuress for the Prince of Wales; while her command of bad language was so remarkable that the Prince used to say of any foul-mouthed man: “He speaks like Letty Lade.”

Like her husband, Lady Lade was a fine whip, and many stories are told of her prowess as a driver of a four-in-hand.

“More than one steed Letitia’s empire feels,

Who sits triumphant o’er the flying wheels;

And, as she guides them through th’ admiring throng,

With what an air she smacks the silken thong.

Graceful as John, she moderates the reins;

And whistles sweet her diuretic strains;

Sesostris-like, such charioteers as these

May drive six harness’d princes, if they please.”

Lady Lade offered to drive a coach against another tooled by a sister-whip eight miles over Newmarket Heath for five hundred guineas a side, but, when it came to the point, no one had sufficient confidence to take up the wager. There is, however, an account of another race in which she participated: “Lady Lade and Mrs Hodges are to have a curricle race at Newmarket, at the next Spring Meeting, and the horses are now in training. It is to be a five-mile course, and great sport is expected. The construction of the traces is to be on a plan similar to that of which Lord March, now Marquis of Queensberry, won his famous match against time. The odds, at present, are in favour of Lady Lade. She runs a grey mare, which is said to be the best horse in the Baronet’s stalls.”

Like the rest of his set, Sir John spent his patrimony and fell upon evil days, which ended, in 1814, in imprisonment for debt in the King’s Bench, being, as Creevey happily puts it, “reduced to beggary by having kept such good company.” Some arrangement was made with his creditors, and Sir John was released; whereupon Lord Anglesea went to the Prince of Wales, and insisted upon his giving Lade five hundred a year out of his Privy Purse—no easy task, one may imagine, for “Prinney” was not given to providing for his old friends. William IV. continued the annuity, but reduced it to three hundred pounds, and it was feared that at his death it would be discontinued. However, when the matter was put before Queen Victoria, she, hearing that Sir John was in his eightieth year, generously expressed the intention to pay the pension, which she put as a charge on her Privy Purse, for the rest of his life. Sir John was thus freed from anxiety, but he did not long enjoy her Majesty’s bounty, for he died on 10th February 1838, having outlived his wife by thirteen years.

A more interesting and a more intelligent man was George Hanger, who born in 1751, and, after attending a preparatory school, was sent to Eton and Göttingen, and was gazetted in January 1771, an ensign in the first regiment of Foot Guards. In the army he distinguished himself chiefly by his harum-scarum mode of living, and by his adventures, most of which were of too delicate a nature to bear repetition, though his quaint “Memoirs” throw a light upon the company he kept. He met a beautiful gipsy girl, styled by him “the lovely Ægyptea of Norwood,” who, according to his account, had an enchanting voice, a pretty taste for music, and played charmingly on the dulcimer. She won his heart with a song, the refrain of which ran:

“Tom Tinker’s my true love,

And I am his dear;

And all the world over,

His budget I’ll bear.”

He married her according to the rites of the tribe, introduced her to his brother officers, and bragged to them of her love and fidelity; but, alas! the song which enchanted him was based, not upon fiction, but upon fact, and after Hanger had lived in the tents with his inamorata for a couple of weeks, he awoke one morning to learn she had run off with a bandy-legged tinker.

For some years he remained in the Foot Guards, where he was very popular with his brother officers; but in 1776 he threw up his commission in anger at someone being promoted over his head, unjustly, as he thought. His early love of soldiering, however, was not yet abated, and he sought and obtained a captaincy in the Hessian Jäger corps, which had been hired by the British Government to go to America. He was delighted with his new uniform—a short, blue coat with gold frogs, and a very broad sword-belt—and, thus attired, swaggered about the town in great spirits, to the accompaniment of his friends’ laughter. During the siege of Charlestown he was aide-de-camp to Sir Henry Clinton; he was wounded in an action at Charlottetown in 1780, and two years later was appointed Major in Tarleton’s Light Dragoons, which regiment, however, was disbanded in 1783, when Hanger was given the brevet rank of Colonel, and placed on half pay.

At the close of the war Hanger left America for England, but his affairs were in such an unsettled state that he thought it advisable to go direct to Calais, where he remained until his friend, Richard Tattersall, could arrange his affairs. Hanger attributed his insolvency at this time to the fact that the lawyer to whom he had given a power of attorney having died, his estate was sold for the benefit of the mortgagee at half its value. This is probably true, but it is certainly only a half-truth, for his embarrassment was mainly caused by his extravagance when he was in the Foot Guards. He did not often play cards, but he was passionately fond of the turf, kept a stable at Newmarket, and bet heavily on all occasions, though it is said that on the whole he was a considerable winner, and it is recorded that he won no less than seven thousand pounds on the race between Shark and Leviathan. His pay in the Foot Guards of four shillings a day did not, of course, suffice even for his mess-bills, and he wasted much money on dissipation, and more on his clothes. “I was extremely extravagant in my dress,” he admitted. “For one winter’s dress-clothes only it cost me nine hundred pounds. I was always handsomely dressed at every birthday; but for one in particular I put myself to a very great expense, having two suits for that day. My morning vestments cost me near eighty pounds, and those for the ball above one hundred and eighty. It was a satin coat brodé en plain et sur les coutures, and the first satin coat that had ever made its appearance in this country. Shortly after, satin dress-clothes became common among well-dressed men.”[2]

On his return to England, Hanger stayed with Tattersall for a year, and then was engaged in the recruiting service of the Honourable East India Company at a salary which, with commission, never amounted to less than six hundred pounds a year; and he was also appointed, with a further three hundred pounds a year, an equerry to the Prince of Wales, with whom he was on very intimate terms.

The next few years were the happiest of his life, but misfortune soon overcame him. His employment under the East India Company came to an abrupt end owing to a dispute between the Board of Control and the Company, relative to the building of a barrack in this country to receive the East India recruits prior to embarkation, which ended in a change of the whole system of recruiting, when Hanger’s services were no longer required. This was bad enough, but worse was to come, for when he had served as equerry for four years, the Prince of Wales’s embarrassed affairs were arranged by Parliament, which, making the essential economies, dismissed Hanger.

When this happened, having no means whatever with which to meet some comparatively trifling debts, he surrendered to the Court of King’s Bench, and was imprisoned within the Rules from June 1798 until April in the following year, when the successful issue of a lawsuit enabled him to compound with his creditors. “Twice have I begun the world anew; I trust the present century will be more favourable to me than the past,” he wrote in his “Memoirs”; and it is much to his credit that instead of whining and sponging on his friends, having only a capital of forty pounds, he started in the business—he called it the profession—of coal-merchant.

According to Cyrus Redding, who used to meet him at the house of Dr Wolcot (“Peter Pindar”), Hanger had fallen out of favour with the Prince by administering a severe reproof to that personage and to the Duke of York for their use of abominable language, and was no longer invited to Carlton House. This, however, does not ring true, for Hanger’s language was none of the choicest, and if there was any disagreement, this can scarcely have been the cause. Indeed, if at this time there was a quarrel, it must soon have been made up; and undoubtedly the twain were on friendly terms long after, for when Hanger was dealing in coal, the Prince, riding on horseback, stopped and made friendly inquiry: “Well, George, how go coals now?” to which Hanger, who had a pretty wit, replied with a twinkle, “Black as ever, please your Royal Highness.” Certainly Hanger felt no grievance concerning the alleged quarrel, for in his “Memoirs” he spoke in high terms of the heir-apparent in a passage that deserves to be read, as one of the few sincere tributes ever paid to the merits of that deservedly much-abused person.

Whether through the influence of the Prince of Wales or another, Hanger was in 1806 appointed captain commissary of the Royal Artillery Drivers, from which he was allowed to retire on full pay two years later, a proceeding which drew some observations from the Commissioners of Military Inquiry in their seventeenth report, to which Hanger published an answer. As the years passed, however, the free manners and the coarse outspokenness of the Colonel jarred on the Prince, and slowly the men drifted more and more apart, after which the former moved in less distinguished and probably less vicious company.

The first Lord Coleraine had long since been dead; Hanger’s eldest brother, the second Baron, had followed his father to the grave, and the title was now enjoyed by his second brother, William, popularly known as “Blue” Hanger, from the colour of the clothes he wore in his youth. Charles Marsh declared him to be “perhaps the best-dressed man of his age,” which is an ambitious claim for any person in the days when clothes were more regarded in fashionable society than anything else in the world; but that there was some ground for the statement cannot be doubted, since “Tom” Raikes reiterates it. “He was a beau of the first water, always beautifully powdered, in a light green coat, with a rose in his buttonhole. He had not much wit or talent, but affected the vieille cour and the manners of the French Court; he had lived a good deal in Paris before the Revolution, and used always to say that the English were a very good nation, but they positively knew not how to make anything but a kitchen poker. I remember many years ago, the Duchess of York made a party to go by water to Richmond, in which Coleraine was included. We all met at a given hour at Whitehall Stairs, and found the Admiralty barge, with the Royal Standard, ready to receive us, but by some miscalculation of the tide, it was not possible to embark for near half-an-hour, and one of the watermen said to the Duchess, ‘Your Royal Highness must wait for the tide.’ Upon which Coleraine, with a very profound bow, remarked, ‘If I had been the tide I should have waited for your Royal Highness.’ Nothing could have been more stupid, but there was something in the manner in which it was said that made everyone burst out laughing.” “Blue” Hanger, it will be seen, was as remarkable for his politeness as for his satire!

Heavy losses at the card-table forced William Hanger to go abroad to avoid his creditors, and he remained in France until the death of his elder brother in 1794, when, able to settle his affairs, he returned, completely transformed in manners and appearance into a Frenchman. Thereby hangs the story that, shortly after he arrived in England, he went to Drury Lane, when, next to him in the dress circle sat a stranger wearing top-boots. This would have been regarded as a gross breach of etiquette in France, and Lord Coleraine was not inclined to brook this affront to the company because he was in England.

“I beg, sir, you will make no apology,” he said, with an innocent and reassuring air.

His neighbour stared in blank amazement. “Apology, sir! Apology for what?” he demanded angrily.

“Why,” said “Blue,” pointing to the offending boots, “that you did not bring your horse with you into the box.”

“Perhaps it is lucky for you I did not bring my horsewhip,” retorted the other, in a fine frenzy of passion; “but I have a remedy at hand, and I will pull your nose for your impertinence.” Whereupon he threw himself upon Lord Coleraine, only to be dragged away by persons sitting on the other side of him.

Cards were exchanged between the combatants, and a duel seemed imminent. “Blue” went at once to his brother to beg his assistance. “I acknowledge I was the first aggressor,” he said, in anything but a humble frame of mind; “but it was too bad to threaten to pull my nose. What had I better do?” To which the unfeeling Colonel made reply, “Soap it well, and then it will easily slip through his fingers!”

This characteristic advice George Hanger was never weary of repeating, and he insisted that when anyone wished to calumniate another gentleman, he ought to be careful to take the precaution to soap his nose first. “Since I have taken upon myself the charge of my own sacred person,” he said, returning to the subject in his “Memoirs,” “I never have been pulled by the nose, or been compelled to soap it. Many gentlemen of distinguished rank in this country are indebted to the protecting qualities of soap for the present enjoyment of their noses, it being as difficult to hold a soaped nose between the fingers as it is for a countryman, at a country wake, to catch a pig turned out with his tail soaped and shaved for the amusement of the spectators.”

“Blue” Hanger died on 11th December 1814, when the title and estates devolved upon the Colonel, who, however, could never be persuaded to change his name. “Plain George Hanger, sir, if you please,” he would say to those who addressed him in the more formal manner. It has generally been supposed that this was merely another of the peer’s many eccentricities, but there was a kindly reason for it. “Among the few nobility already named,” wrote Westmacott in the long-forgotten “Fitzalleyne of Berkeley,” “more than one raised modest birth and merit to their own rank; one made a marriage of reparation; nay, even the lord rat-catcher,[3] life-writer (and it was his own), and vendor of the black article of trade, was faithful to his engagements where the law bound him not; and one of his reasons for forbidding his servants to address him as ‘My Lord’ was that she might bear his name as Mrs Hanger.”

Hanger, now in the possession of a competence, made little change in his manner of living, and though death did not claim him until 31st March 1824, at the age of seventy-three, he never again went into general society. At the time of his succession to the peerage he was residing, and during the last years of his life he continued to reside, at Somers Town, whence he would occasionally wander, shillelagh in hand, to the “Sol Arms,” in Tottenham Court Road, to smoke a pipe. This has been so often repeated, to the exclusion of almost any other particulars of his life, that the comparatively few people who have heard of Hanger think of him as a public-house loafer; but this was far from being the case, for if he went sometimes to the “Sol Arms” he would also go to Dr Wolcot to converse with the veteran satirist, or to Nollekens, the sculptor; or he would ride on his grey pony so far as Budd & Calkin’s, the booksellers in Pall Mall, where, leaving his horse in charge of a boy—for he never took a groom with him—he would sit on the counter, talking with the shopkeepers and their customers.

Nor was Hanger illiterate, as were so many of the associates of his early years, and he wrote very readable letters; but his intelligence does not rest only on his correspondence, for he was an industrious writer on military subjects. Reference has already been made to his autobiography, which appeared in 1801 under the title of “The Life, Adventures, and Opinions of Colonel George Hanger”; but though it was stated on the title-page that the volumes were “Written by Himself,” it has since transpired that they were compiled from his papers and suggestions by William Combe, the author of “The Tours of Dr Syntax.” It is an unpleasant work, and deals frankly with subjects tacitly avoided by present-day writers; but it is not without value, for it contains, besides excellent descriptions of debtors’ prisons and the rogueries of attorneys at the end of the eighteenth century, common-sense views on social subjects—views much in advance of the general opinions of the day—and a frank avowal of hatred of hypocrisy. This last quality induced Hanger maliciously to relate a story of a dissenter who kept a huxter’s shop, where a great variety of articles were sold, and was heard to say to his shopman, “John, have you watered the rum?” “Yes.” “Have you sanded the brown sugar?” “Yes.” “Have you wetted the tobacco?” “Yes.” “Then come in to prayers.” The “Memoirs” will perhaps best be remembered for Hanger’s famous prophecy that “one of these days the northern and southern Powers [of the United States] will fight as vigorously against each other as they have both united to do against the British.”

It is, however, not as a soldier, a pamphleteer, or a seer that Hanger has come down to posterity; and while some may recall that in 1772 he distinguished himself by being one of the gentlemen who, with drawn swords, forced a passage for the entry of Mrs Baddeley into the Pantheon, and eight and thirty years later rode on his grey palfrey in the procession formed in honour of the release of Sir Francis Burdett, it is for his eccentricities and his humour that he is remembered. Nollekens has related how one day he overheard Lord Coleraine inquire of the old apple-woman at the corner of Portland Road, evidently an old acquaintance, who was packing up her fruit, “What are you about, mother?” “Why, my Lord, I am going home to tea.” “Oh! don’t baulk trade. Leave your things on the table as they are; I will mind shop till you return”; and the peer seated himself in the old woman’s wooden chair, and waited until the meal was over, when he solemnly handed her his takings, threepence halfpenny.

Although Cyrus Redding declared that Hanger was well known in his day for an original humour which spared neither friend nor foe, and although Hanger could sneer at those who accepted the invitations to dinner that Pitt was in the habit of sending to refractory members of his party—“The rat-trap is set again,” he would say when he heard of such dinner-parties: “is the bait plaice or paper?”—there were many who found themselves in a position to praise Hanger’s generosity. We have it on the authority of Westmacott—and there can be no surer tribute than this, since Westmacott would far rather have said a cruel than a kind thing—that Hanger never forgot a friend or ignored an acquaintance because he had fallen upon evil days. When an out-at-elbows baronet came to see him, Hanger received him heartily, insisted upon his remaining as his guest for some time, and, summoning his servants, addressed them characteristically: “Behold this man, ye varlets! Never mind me while he is here; neglect me if ye will, but look upon him as your master; obey him in all things; the house, the grounds, the game, the gardens, all are at his command; let his will be done; make him but welcome, and I care not for the rest.” For his kind heart much may be forgiven Hanger; and who could be angry with a man who possessed so keen a sense of humour as is revealed in this story? Late one night he went into his bedroom at an inn, and found it occupied. The opening of the door awoke an irate Irishman, the occupier, who inquired in no measured terms: “What the devil do you want here, sir? I shall have satisfaction for the affront. My name is Johnson.” Aroused by the clamour, a wizen-faced woman by Johnson’s side raised her head from the pillow. “Mrs Johnson, I presume?” said Hanger dryly, bowing to the lady.

Sir Lumley St George Skeffington had at least more claim to distinction than most of his brother fops, though it was their habit to sneer at him, especially after Byron had given them the cue. Born on 23rd March 1771, Lumley was educated at Henry Newcome’s school at Hackney, where he showed some taste for composition and poetry, and took part in the dramatic performances for which that institution had been noted for above a century. On one occasion there he delivered an epilogue written by George Keate, the subject of which was the folly of vanity; but the lad did not take the lesson to heart, for so soon as he was his own master he set up as a leader of fashion. At an early age he began to be talked about, and such notoriety was the open sesame to Carlton House. The Prince of Wales condescended to discuss costume with the young man, who, thus encouraged, was spurred to fresh efforts, and acquired fame as the inventor of a new colour, known during his lifetime as Skeffington brown. Indeed, Skeffington, who was vain of his personal appearance—though, it must be confessed, without much reason—dressed in the most foppish manner; and as an example may be given a description of his costume at the Court held in honour of the King’s birthday in 1794: “A brown spotted silk coat and breeches, with a white silk waistcoat richly embroidered with silver, stones, and shades of silk; the design was large baskets of silver and stones, filled with bouquets of roses, jonquilles, etc., the ensemble producing a beautiful and splendid effect.”

Though elated at being recognised as a beau, Skeffington did not desert his first love, and he mixed much in theatrical society, and became on intimate terms with many of the leading actors, including Joseph Munden, John Kemble, Mrs Siddons, and T. P. Cooke. He was an inveterate “first-nighter,” and would flit from theatre to theatre during the evening; but he was not content to be a hanger-on to the fringe of the dramatic profession, and desired to be a prominent member of the coterie. He had abandoned any idea of following up his youthful successes as an actor, but he had so early as 1792, at the age of one and twenty, made his bow as an author, with a prologue to James Plumptre’s comedy, The Coventry Act, performed at the latter’s private theatre at Norwich.

Spurred by the praise bestowed upon this trifle, he penned complimentary verses to pretty actresses; but after a time he aspired to greater distinction, and endeavoured to secure literary laurels by the composition of several plays. His Word of Honour, a comedy in five acts, was produced at Covent Garden Theatre in 1802, and in the following year his High Road to Marriage was staged at Drury Lane; but neither of these had any sort of success, and it was not until The Sleeping Beauty was performed at Drury Lane, in December 1805, that the author could look upon his efforts with any pride.

To judge from a contemporary account, The Sleeping Beauty, with music by Addison, was an agreeable, albeit an over-rated, entertainment of the nature of an extravaganza. “Mr Skeffington,” we are told, “has not confined himself to the track of probability; but, giving the rein to his imagination, has boldly ventured into the boundless region of necromancy and fairy adventure. The valorous days of Chivalry are brought to our recollection, and the tales which warmed the breasts of youth with martial ardour are again rendered agreeable to the mind that is not so fastidious as to turn with fancied superiority from the pleasing delusion. The ladies in particular would be accused of ingratitude were they to look coldly upon the Muse of Mr Skeffington, who had put into the mouths of his two enamoured knights speeches and panegyrics upon the sex, which would not discredit the effusions of Oroondates, or any other hero of romance.”

The book of the play was never printed, but the song, duets, and choruses of this “grand legendary melodrama” were published, and so it is possible to form some opinion of the merits of this production of the author, who is described by a writer in The Gentleman’s Magazine as “the celebrated Mr Skeffington ... a gentleman of classic genius, [who] it is well known figures high in the most fashionable circles.” It is to be feared that Skeffington’s fame as a man of fashion threw a glamour upon this critic, for to modern eyes the “classic genius” is nowhere in evidence, although the verses certainly do not compare unfavourably with the drivel offered by the so-called lyric writers whose effusions figure in the musical comedies of to-day.

Unexpectedly, however, The Sleeping Beauty achieved immortality, though not an immortality of the pleasantest kind, for the piece attracted the attention of Byron, who pilloried it in his “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers”:

“In grim array though Lewis’ spectres rise,

Still Skeffington and Goose[4] divide the prize:

And sure great Skeffington must claim our praise,

For skirtless coats and skeletons of plays,

Renown’d alike; whose genius ne’er confines

Her flight to garnish Greenwood’s gay designs;

Nor sleeps with ‘sleeping beauties,’ but anon

In five facetious acts come thundering on,

While poor John Bull, bewilder’d with the scene,

Stares, wond’ring what the devil it can mean;

But as some hands applaud—a venal few—

Rather than sleep, John Bull applauds it too.”

For years before this satire appeared Skeffington was a personage in society, and if his plays secured him undying notoriety at the hands of the satirist, his costume was to produce the same result by the attention drawn to it by Gillray, who represented him, in 1799, as “Half Natural,” in a Jean de Bry coat, all sleeves and padding, and in the following year in a second caricature as dancing, below which is the legend: “So Skiffy skipt on, with his wonted grace.” In these days, indeed, his appearance offered a very distinct mark for the caricaturist. Imagine a tall, spare man, with large features, sharp, sallow face, and dark curly hair and whiskers, arrayed in the glory of a dark blue coat with gilt buttons, yellow waistcoat, with cord inexpressibles, large bunches of white ribbons at the knees, and short top-boots! But in latter years Skeffington went even further, for he distinguished himself by wearing a vieux-rose satin suit, and a wig, and rouging his cheeks and blacking his eyebrows and eyelashes, until he looked like a French doll; while the air in his vicinity was made noxious by the strong perfumes with which he drenched himself. Horace Smith summed him up as “an admirable specimen of the florid Gothic,” and Moore lampooned him in Letter VIII. of The Twopenny Post Bag, from “Colonel Th-m-s to Sk-ff-ngt-n, Esq.”:

“Come to our fête, and bring with thee

Thy newest best embroidery,

Come to our fête, and show again

That pea-green coat, thou pink of men,

Which charmed all eyes that last surveyed it;

When Brummell’s self enquired: ‘Who made it?’

Oh! come (if haply ’tis thy week

For looking pale) with paly cheek;

Though more we love thy roseate days,

When the rich rouge pot pours its blaze

Full o’er thy face, and amply spread,

Tips even thy whisker-tops with red—

Like the last tints of dying day

That o’er some darkling grove delay.

Put all thy wardrobe’s glories on,

And yield in frogs and fringe to none

But the great Regent’s self alone.”

Skeffington’s success with The Sleeping Beauty occurred at the time when he was most prominent in society. “I have had a long and very pleasant walk to-day with Mr Ilingworth in Kensington Gardens, and saw all the extreme crowd there about three o’clock, and between that and four,” Lord Kenyon wrote to his wife on 1st June 1806. “The most conspicuous figure was Mr Skeffington, with Miss Duncan leaning on his arm. He is so great an author that all which is done is thought correct, and not open to scandal. To be sure, they looked rather a comical pair, she with only a cap on, and he with his curious whiskers and sharp, sallow face.”

Gradually, however, as time changed, Skeffington was left behind in the race, and was no longer regarded as a leader of fashion, and at the same time he was not fortunate enough to win further success as a dramatist, for his Mysterious Bride in 1808, his Bombastes Furioso played at the Haymarket in 1810, and his Lose no Time, performed three years later at Drury Lane, were each and all dire failures.

In January 1815 Sir William Skeffington died, and Lumley succeeded to the baronetcy. Sir William, however, had embarrassed his estates, and Lumley, to save his father from distress, had generously consented to cut the entail, and so had deprived himself of a considerable fortune. The comparatively small amount of money that now came to him had been forestalled, and he was compelled to seek refuge for several years within the rules of the King’s Bench Prison. Eventually, though he failed in the attempt to regain an interest in the estates of his maternal family, the Hubbards, at Rotherhithe, he came into possession of an estate worth about eight hundred pounds a year; but when he came again upon the town his old friends showed a marked disposition to avoid him; and when one day Alvanley was asked who was that solitary, magnificently attired person, “It is a second edition of The Sleeping Beauty,” he replied wittily; “bound in calf, richly gilt, and illustrated by many cuts.”

Skeffington now resided quietly in Southwark, where he still entertained members of the theatrical profession, but no longer the leaders of the calling, only the members of the adjacent Surrey Theatre. Henry Vizetelly met him towards the end of his life, and described him as “a quiet, courteous, aristocratic-looking old gentleman, an ancient fop who affected the fashions of a past generation, and wore false hair and rouged his cheeks,” who had, he might have added, a large fund of histoires divertissants with which to regale his visitors.

He outlived all his brother dandies, but to the end would wander in the fashionable streets, recalling the glories of his early manhood, attracting attention in his long-waisted coat, the skirts of which descended to his heels, but recognised by none of the generation that had succeeded his own. In other circles, however, he found listeners interested in his stories of the palmy days of Carlton House, when he was one of the leaders of fashion in society and prominent in the coulisses. He died, unmarried, in his eightieth year, and attributed his long life to the fact that he did not stir out of doors in the cold, damp winter months, but moved from room to room so as never to remain in vitiated air.

In conclusion it must be pointed out that Skeffington’s popularity was largely contributed to by his good humour and vivacity, and by the fact that in an age when wit spared nobody he was never known to say an unkind word of anyone; nor was the reason for this, as was said of another beau, that he never spoke of anyone but himself. “As to his manners, the suffrages of the most polished circles of this kingdom have pronounced him one of the best bred men of the present times, blending at once the decorum of what is called the vieille cour with the careless gracefulness of the modern school; he seems to do everything by chance, but it is such a chance as study could not improve,” so ran a character sketch of the dandy in The Monthly Review for 1806. “In short, whenever he trifles it is with elegance, and whenever occasion calls for energy he is warm, spirited, animated.” He had, however, his share of the nonchalance affected by the fashionable folk of his day, and the story is told that when, on a visit to a gentleman in Leicester, he was disturbed in the night with the information that the adjoining house was in flames, his sole comment was that this was “a great bore”; and when with difficulty he had been induced to move quickly enough to escape into the street, there, standing in his nightdress, bareheaded and with his hair in papers, he called out, “What are these horrid creatures about with so much filthy water, that I cannot step without wetting my slippers?”

Some Exquisites of the Regency

When Almack’s Club, composed of all the travelled young men who wore long curls and spying-glasses, was in 1778 absorbed by Brooks’s, the day of the Macaronis was past. Then, as Wraxall records, Charles James Fox and his friends, who might be said to lead the Town, affecting a style of neglect about their persons and manifesting a contempt of all the usages hitherto established, first threw a sort of discredit on dress. “Fox lodged in St James’s Street, and as soon as he rose, which was very late, had a levée of his followers and of the members of the gambling club at Brooks’s—all his disciples,” Walpole wrote. “His bristly black person, and shagged breast quite open and rarely purified by any ablutions, was wrapped in a foul linen nightgown, and his bushy hair dishevelled. In these cynic weeds, and with epicurean good humour, did he dictate his politics, and in this school did the heir of the Crown attend his lessons and imbibe them.”

The young Prince of Wales might study statecraft under Fox; but in the matter of dress he fell in line with the new race of beaux, bucks, or, to use a word that came into general use at this time, dandies. The most famous of the latter were Lord Petersham, Lord Foley, Lord Hertford (immortalised by Thackeray in “Vanity Fair” as the Marquis of Steyne, and by Disraeli in “Coningsby” as Lord Monmouth), the Duke of Argyll, Lord Worcester, Henry Pierrepoint, Henry de Ros, Colonel Dawson Darner, Daniel Mackinnon, Lord Dudley and Ward, Hervey Ashton, Gronow the memoirist, Sir Lumley Skeffington, and Brummell.

These exquisites were disinclined to yield the palm even to an heir-apparent with limitless resources. The Prince of Wales, however, contrived to hold his own. At his first appearance in society he created a sensation. He wore a new shoe-buckle! This was his own invention, and differed from all previous articles of the same kind, insomuch as it was an inch long and five inches broad, reaching almost to the ground on either side of the foot! This was good for an introduction to the polite world, but it was not until he attended his first Court ball that he did himself full justice. Then his magnificence was such that the arbiters of fashion were compelled reluctantly to admit that a powerful rival had come upon the scene. A contemporary was so powerfully impressed by the splendour of the Prince’s costume that he placed on record a description: “His coat was pink silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat white silk, embroidered with various coloured foil, and adorned with a profusion of French paste; and his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand in number, with a button and loop of the same metal, and cocked in a new military style.”

George, Prince of Wales

The laurels won in early youth he retained all the days of his life. Expense was no object to him, and, indeed, it must be confessed he spent money in many worse ways than on his clothes. Batchelor, his valet, who entered his service after the death of the Duke of York, said that a plain coat, from its repeated alterations and the consequent journeys from London to Windsor to Davison the tailor, would often cost three hundred pounds before it met with his approbation! George had a mania for hoarding, and at his death all the coats, vests, breeches, boots, and other articles of attire which had graced his person during half-a-century were found in his wardrobe. It is said he carried the catalogue in his head, and could call for any costume he had ever worn. His executors, Lord Gifford and Sir William Knighton, discovered in the pockets of his coats, besides innumerable women’s love letters, locks of hair, and other trifles of his usually discreditable amours, no less than five hundred pocket-books, each containing small forgotten sums of money, amounting in all to ten thousand pounds! His clothes sold for fifteen thousand pounds; they cost probably ten times that amount.

Lord Petersham was a Mæcenas among the tailors, and the inventor of an overcoat called after him. He was famous for his brown carriages, horses, and liveries, all of the same shade; and his devotion to this colour was popularly supposed to be due to the love he had borne a widow of the name. He never went out before six o’clock in the evening, and had many other eccentricities. Gronow has described a visit to his apartments: “The room into which we were ushered was more like a shop than a gentleman’s sitting-room. All around the wall were shelves, upon which were placed the canisters containing congou, pekoe, souchong, bohea, gunpowder, Russian, and many other teas, all the best of their kind; on the other side of the room were beautiful jars, with names in gilt letters of innumerable kinds of snuff, and all the necessary apparatus for moistening and mixing. Lord Petersham’s mixture is still well known to all tobacconists. Other shelves and many of the tables were covered with a great number of magnificent snuff-boxes; for Lord Petersham had perhaps the finest collection in England, and was supposed to have a fresh box for every day in the year. I heard him, on the occasion of a delightful old light-blue Sèvres box he was using being admired, say in his lisping way, ‘Yes, it is a nice summer box, but it would not do for winter wear.’ ” Queen Charlotte had made snuff-taking fashionable in England, but the habit began to die out with the Regency. George IV. carried a box, but he had no liking for it; and, conveying it with a grand air between his right thumb and forefinger, he was careful to drop it before it reached his nose. He gave up the custom of offering a pinch to his neighbours, and it was recognised as a breach of good manners to dip uninvited into a man’s box. When at the Pavilion the Bishop of Winchester committed such an infringement of etiquette, Brummell told a servant to throw the rest of the snuff into the fire. When Lord Petersham died, his snuff was sold by auction. It took three men three days to weigh it, and realised three thousand pounds.

Another eccentric was Lord Dudley and Ward, sometime Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who eventually lost his reason. His absence of mind was notorious, and he had a habit of talking aloud that frequently landed him in trouble. Dining at the house of a gourmet, under the impression he was at home, he apologised for the badness of the entrées, and begged the company to excuse them on account of the illness of his cook! Similarly, when he was paying a visit he imagined himself to be the entertainer, and when his hostess had exhausted her hints concerning the duration of his call, he murmured, “A very pretty woman. But she stays a devilish long time. I wish she’d go.” Still more amusing were his remarks in the carriage of a brother peer who had volunteered to drive him from the House of Lords to Dudley House: “A deuce of a bore! This tiresome man has taken me home, and will expect me to ask him to dinner. I suppose I must do so, but it is a horrid nuisance.” This was too much for his good-natured companion, who, as if to himself, droned in the same monotonous tones, “What a bore! This good-natured fellow Dudley will think himself obliged to invite me to dinner, and I shall be forced to go. I hope he won’t ask me, for he gives d——d bad dinners.” These stories recall another related of an absent-minded royal duke, who, when during the service the parson proposed the prayer for rain, said in a voice audible throughout the church, “Yes, by all means let us pray, but it won’t be any good. We sha’n’t get rain till the moon changes.”

After Brummell left England, it was to William, Lord Alvanley that all the witty sayings of the day were attributed. The son of the famous lawyer Sir Pepper Arden,[5] he began life in the Coldstream Guards, of which the colonel was the Duke of York. He achieved his earliest success as a wit at the expense of a brother officer, Gunter, a scion of the famous catering-house. Gunter’s horse was almost beyond the control of the rider, who explained that his horse was too hot to hold. “Ice him, Gunter; ice him,” cried Alvanley. Thrown into such company, it was not perhaps unnatural that Alvanley should be extravagant; but his carelessness in money matters was notorious. He never paid ready money for anything, and never knew the extent of his indebtedness. He had no sympathy with those who devoted some time and trouble to the management of their affairs, and expressed the utmost contempt for a friend who was so weak as to “muddle away his fortune paying tradesmen’s bills.” Though very wealthy, he soon became embarrassed in his circumstances. He persuaded Charles Greville, the author of the “Journals,” to put his affairs in order. The two men spent a day over accounts, and Greville found that the task he had undertaken would not be so difficult as he had been given to understand. His relief was not long-lived, however, for on the following morning he received a note from Alvanley saying he had quite forgotten a debt of fifty thousand pounds!

Alvanley was famous for his dinners, and indulged in the expensive taste of having an apricot tart on his table every day throughout the year. His dinners were generally acclaimed as the best in England; certainly he spared no expense in the endeavour to secure the blue ribbon of the table. Even Abraham Hayward commented on his extravagance. “He had his suprême de volaille made of the oysters, or les sots, les-laissent of fowls, instead of the fillet from the breast,” he noted in “The Art of Dining,” “so that it took a score of birds to complete a moderate dish.” It was Alvanley who organised a wonderful freak dinner at White’s Club, at which the inventor of the most costly dish should dine at the cost of the others; and he won easily. His contribution to the feast was a fricassée made of the noix, or small pieces at each side of the back, taken from thirteen different kinds of birds, among them being a hundred snipe, forty woodcocks, twenty pheasants—in all some three hundred birds. The cost of this dish exceeded one hundred pounds.

As he was beloved by his friends and vastly popular, society was enraged when O’Connell in the House of Commons spoke of him as “a bloated buffoon.” A challenge was sent at once, but the Liberator refused to go out. He had been on the ground once, had killed his man, and had vowed never to fight another duel. Alvanley would not forgive the insult, however, and threatened to thrash the aggressor; whereupon Morgan O’Connell met him in place of his father, when several shots were exchanged without result. “What a clumsy fellow O’Connell must be, to miss such a fat fellow as I!” said Alvanley calmly. “He ought to practise at a haystack to get his hand in.” Driven back to London, he gave the hackney-coachman a sovereign. “It’s a great deal,” said the man gratefully, “for having taken your lordship to Wimbledon.” “No, my good fellow,” the peer laughed; “I give it you, not for taking me, but for bringing me back.”

Beyond all question the greatest dandy of his day was George Bryan Brummell, generally called Beau Brummell. This famous personage dominated all his rivals, and even the Prince of Wales accepted him at least as an equal. It is not known with any certainty how his acquaintance began with the heir-apparent. Brummell’s aunt, Mrs Searle, who had a little cottage with stables for cows at the entrance, opposite Clarges Street, of the Green Park, in which she had been installed by George III., related that it was one day when the Prince of Wales, accompanied by the beautiful Marchioness of Salisbury, stopped to see the cows milked that he first met her nephew, was attracted by him, and, hearing he was intended for the army, offered him a commission in his own regiment. Gronow gives another story, which on the face of it is more probable. Brummell made many friends among the scions of good family while he was at Eton, where he seems to have been regarded as an Admirable Crichton: “the best scholar, the best boatman, the best cricketer.” He was invited to a ball at Devonshire House, became a great favourite, and was asked everywhere. The Prince sent for him, and, pleased by his manner and appearance, gave him a commission. In his seventeenth year he was gazetted to a cornetcy in the Tenth Light Dragoons. He resigned soon after because the regiment was ordered to Manchester![6]

Brummell threw himself heart and soul into the social life of the metropolis, and soon his reputation extended far and wide, until no party was complete without him, and his presence was regarded as the hall-mark of fashion. He was the very man for the part he had set himself. Tall, well made, with a good figure, he affected an old-world air of courtesy, picked up probably from the French refugees, as he had never been out of England until he left it for good. His affectation of vieille cour showed itself in the use of powder, which distinguished him in the days when the custom was dying out among civilians. His grandfather was a tradesman, and let lodgings in Bury Street, St James’s. His father, by the influence of a lodger, was presented to a clerkship in the Treasury, became private secretary to Lord North, made money by speculation, settled down at Donnington, and became High Sheriff of Berkshire, where he was visited by Fox and Sheridan. Though of no rank, Brummell lived with the highest in the land on terms of equality. His acquaintance was sought, his intimacy desired; and, so far from requiring a patron, it was he who patronised. His influence was unbounded, his fascination undeniable, his indifference to public opinion reckless. He was good-natured and rarely out of humour; neither a drunkard nor a profligate. He had bright and amusing conversation, some wit, and a considerable power of persiflage, which, while it enabled him to laugh some people out of bad habits, only too frequently was exerted to laugh others out of good principles.

He revived the taste for dress. “Clean linen, and plenty of it” was an important item of his creed. His great triumph was in connection with the cravat. Before he came into his own they were worn without stiffening of any kind; as soon as he ascended his throne he had them starched![7] A revolution would not have attracted more attention. Thereafter his sway was undisputed, and his word law in all matters of fashion. The Prince of Wales used to call on him in the morning at his house in Chesterfield Street, and, deeply engrossed in the discussion of costume, would frequently remain to dinner. “Brummell was always studiously and remarkably well dressed, never outré; and, though considerable time and attention were devoted to his toilet, it never, when once accomplished, seemed to occupy his attention,” said one who knew him well. “His manners were easy, polished, and gentleman-like, and regulated by that same good taste which he displayed in most things. No one was a more keen observer of vulgarity in others, or more piquant in his criticisms, or more despotic as an arbiter elegantarium; he could decide the fate of a young man just launched into the world with a single word.”[8]

The tastes of the Prince of Wales verged on the florid, but Brummell’s efforts tended to simplicity of costume. Under Brummell the dandy’s dress consisted of a blue coat with brass buttons, leather breeches, and top-boots; with, of course, the deep, stiff white cravat which prevented you from seeing your boots while standing. Gronow relates that while he was in Paris after Waterloo trousers and shoes were worn by young men, only old fogies favouring knee-breeches. On his return to England in 1816, receiving from Lady Hertford an invitation to Manchester House “to have the honour of meeting the Prince Regent,” he went dressed à la Française—white neckcloth, waistcoat, black trousers, shoes and silk stockings. He made his bow, and almost immediately afterwards Horace Seymour came to him: “The great man is very much surprised that you should have ventured to appear in his presence without knee-breeches. He considers it as a want of proper respect for him.” Gronow went away in high dudgeon. A month later the Prince adopted the dress he had censured!

All the world watched Brummell to imitate him. He made the fortune of his tailor, Weston, of Old Bond Street, and of his other tradesmen. The most noteworthy of these was Hoby, the St James’s Street bootmaker, an impertinent and independent man who employed his leisure as a Methodist preacher. Many good stories are told of him. It was he who said to the Duke of Kent, when the latter informed him of the issue of the great battle at Vittoria, “If Lord Wellington had had any other bootmaker than myself he would never have had his great and constant successes, for my boots and my prayers bring him out of all his difficulties.” When Horace Churchill entered his shop and complained in no moderate words of a pair of boots, vowing he would never employ him again, Hoby quickly turned the tables. “John, close the shutters,” he cried to an assistant, affecting a woebegone look. “It is all over with us. I must shut up shop. Ensign Churchill withdraws his custom from me.” Sir John Shelley once showed him a pair of top-boots that had split in several places. “How did that happen, Sir John?” “Why, in walking to my stable,” the customer explained. “Walking to your stable!” Hoby exclaimed, not troubling to suppress a sneer. “I made the boots for riding, not walking.”[9]

It is but a step from boots to blacking, an article to which the dandies devoted much attention. Lieutenant-Colonel Kelly, of the First Foot Guards, was famous for his well-varnished boots. After his death, which occurred in a fire owing to his efforts to save his favourite boots, all the men about town were anxious to secure the services of his valet, who alone knew the secret of the blacking. Brummell found the man and asked his wages. The Colonel had given him a hundred and fifty pounds a year, but now he required two hundred. “Well, if you will make it guineas,” said the Beau, “I shall be happy to attend upon you!” Lord Petersham spent a great deal of time in making a particular kind of blacking which he believed would eventually supersede all others, and Brummell declared, “My blacking ruins me; it is made with the finest champagne.” But Brummell must not be taken too seriously. He was a master poseur, and many of his critics have fallen into the error of taking him literally. Thus it has apparently never occurred to his biographers to think he was joking when, in reply to a lady who inquired what allowance she should make her son who was about to enter the world, he assured her that, with economy, her son could dress on eight hundred a year. They merely comment upon his terribly extravagant ideas. Again, when the Beau, speaking of a boy, said with apparent earnestness, “Really, I did my best for the young man; I once gave him my arm all the way from White’s to Watier’s”—about a hundred yards—they discuss his enormous conceit!

There are several accounts of the cause of the rupture of the intimacy between Brummell and the Prince. It is certain, however, that the story of “Wales, ring the bell,” has no foundation. “I was on such intimate terms with the Prince that if we had been alone I could have asked him without offence to ring the bell,” Brummell said; “but with a third person in the room I should never have done so. I knew the Regent too well.” The story was true in so far as the order, “Wales, ring the bell,” was given at the royal supper-table by a lad who had taken too much to drink. The Prince did ring the bell, and when the servants came, told them, good-humouredly enough, to “put that drunken boy to bed.” One authority says the quarrel arose because Brummell spoke sarcastically of Mrs Fitzherbert, another because he spoke in her favour when the Prince was bestowing his smiles in another quarter. The Beau believed it was because of remarks concerning both Mrs Fitzherbert and the Prince. There is no doubt Brummell did allow himself considerable licence of speech, and having a ready wit, was not inclined to forego its use.

A curious tale was told by General Sir Arthur Upton to Gronow. It seems that the first estrangement did not last long. Brummell played whist at White’s Club one night, and won from George Harley Drummond[10] the sum of twenty thousand pounds. The Duke of York told the Prince of the incident, and the Beau was again invited to Carlton House. “At the commencement of the dinner matters went off smoothly; but Brummell, in his joy at finding himself with his old friend, became excited, and drank too much wine. His Royal Highness—who wanted to avenge himself for an insult he had received at Lady Cholmondeley’s ball, when the Beau, looking towards the Prince, said to Lady Worcester, ‘Who is your fat friend?’—had invited him to dinner merely out of a desire for revenge. The Prince, therefore, pretended to be affronted with Brummell’s hilarity, and said to his brother, the Duke of York, who was present, ‘I think we had better order Mr Brummell’s carriage before he gets drunk’; whereupon he rang the bell, and Brummell left the royal presence.” As Sir Arthur was present at the dinner, there can be no doubt as to the facts; and, knowing the character of the royal host as we do, there is no reason to doubt that he invited a guest to insult him. That is quite of a piece with his conduct on other occasions; but it seems certain that the motive that spurred the Prince on to revenge was not that attributed to him. Of all the versions of the “Who’s your fat friend?” episode, that given by the General is the least likely. Inaccurate, too, is Raikes when he tells of Brummell asking the famous question of Jack Lee in St James’s Street, after the latter had been seen speaking to the Prince.

The true story is the following: A dandies’ ball was to be given by Lord Alvanley, Sir Henry Mildmay, Henry Pierrepoint and Brummell to celebrate a great run of luck at hazard. The question of inviting the Prince was mooted, but it was negatived because all felt sure it would be declined, since he was not on friendly terms with Brummell. The Prince, however, sent an intimation that he desired to be present, and of course a formal invitation was despatched. The four hosts assembled at the door to do honour to their royal guest, who shook hands with three of them, but looked Brummell full in the face and passed on without any sign of recognition. Then it was, before the Prince was out of hearing, that Brummell turned to his neighbour and asked with apparent nonchalance, “Alvanley, who’s your fat friend?”

After this there was war to the death, and Brummell, who was a good fighter, did not miss any opportunity to wound his powerful antagonist. He was passing down Pall Mall when the Regent’s carriage drew up at a picture gallery. The sentries saluted, and, keeping his back to the carriage, Brummell took the salute as if to himself. The Prince could not hide his anger from the bystanders, for he looked upon any slight to his dignity as rather worse than high treason. The foes met again later on in the waiting-room at the opera. An eye-witness has described the rencontre: “The Prince of Wales, who always came out rather before the performance concluded, was waiting for his carriage. Presently Brummell came out, talking eagerly to some friends, and, not seeing the Prince or his party, he took up a position near the checktaker’s bar. As the crowd flowed out, Brummell was gradually pressed backwards, until he was all but driven against the Regent, who distinctly saw him, but of course would not move. In order to stop him, therefore, and prevent actual collision, one of the Prince’s suite tapped him on the back, when Brummell immediately turned sharply round, and saw there was not much more than a foot between his nose and the Prince of Wales’s. I watched him with intense curiosity, and observed that his countenance did not change in the slightest degree, nor did his head move; they looked straight into each other’s eyes, the Prince evidently amazed and annoyed. Brummell, however, did not quail, or show the least embarrassment. He receded quite quietly, and backed slowly step by step till the crowd closed between them, never once taking his eyes off those of the Prince.” Moore, in the Twopenny Post Bag, commemorated the quarrel in his parody of the letter from the Prince of Wales to the Duke of York, in which he says:

“I indulge in no hatred, and wish there may come ill

To no mortal, except, now I think on’t, Beau Brummell,

Who declared t’other day, in a superfine passion,

He’d cut me and bring the old King into fashion.”

Brummell contrived to hold his own until he took to card-playing. His patrimony of thirty thousand pounds was insufficient to justify him in entering the lists with his companions. It was the case of the earthenware pot and the iron pots. At first he was unsuccessful, and as he was not then addicted to games of chance, his depression was very great. Walking home from a club with Tom Raikes, he was lamenting his bad fortune, when he saw something bright in the roadway. He stooped and picked up a crooked sixpence. “This,” he said to his companion with great cheerfulness, “is the harbinger of good luck.” He drilled a hole in it and fastened it to his watch-chain. The talisman worked, and he won thirty thousand pounds in the next two years.

Fortune deserted him; but he did not lose even a third of his winnings, and Raikes, in his “Memoirs,” remarks that he was never more surprised than when in 1816, one morning, Brummell confided to him that his situation had become so desperate that he must fly the country that night, and by stealth. He had lived above his income, had got into debt, and then had fallen into the hands of the notorious usurers, Howard and Gibbs. Other money-lenders may have had claims upon him; for when it was said to Alvanley that if Brummell had remained in London something might have been done for him by his friends, the witty peer made a bon mot: “He has done quite right to be off; it was Solomon’s judgment.”[11]

He went no farther than Calais. “Here I am restant for the present, and God knows solitary enough is my existence; of that, however, I should not complain, for I can always employ resources within myself, was there not a worm that will not sleep, called conscience, which all my endeavours to distract, all the strength of coffee, with which I constantly fumigate my unhappy brains, and all the native gaiety of the fellow who brings it to me, cannot lull to indifference beyond the moment; but I will not trouble you upon that subject.” He wrote to Tom Raikes on 22nd May 1816, soon after his arrival: “You would be surprised to find the sudden change and transfiguration which one week has accomplished in my life and propriâ personâ. I am punctually off the pillow at half-past seven in the morning. My first object—melancholy, indeed, it may be in its nature—is to walk to the pier-head, and take my distant look at England. This you may call weakness; but I am not yet sufficiently master of those feelings which may be called indigenous to resist the impulse. The rest of my day is filled up with strolling an hour or two round the ramparts of this dismal town, in reading, and the study of that language which must hereafter be my own, for never more shall I set foot in my own country. I dine at five, and my evening has as yet been occupied in writing letters. The English I have seen here—and many of them known to me—I have cautiously avoided; and with the exception of Sir W. Bellingham and Lord Blessington, who have departed, I have not exchanged a word. Prince Esterhazy was here yesterday, and came into my room unexpectedly without my knowing he was here. He had the good nature to convey several letters for me upon his return to London. So much for my life hitherto on this side of the water.”

At first he put up at the famous Dessein’s, but soon he went into apartments at the house of M. Leleux. His friends came to the rescue—Alvanley, Worcester, Sefton, no doubt Raikes too, and others—and sent him a good round sum of money. But his habits had grown upon him, and he could not live economically. If he saw buhl or marqueterie or Sèvres china that he liked he bought it; and he could not accustom himself to the penny-wise economies of life. He would not give way to despair, and, naturally high-spirited, he fought bravely against depression. He wished to be appointed consul at Calais, and his friends’ influence would have secured him the position, but no vacancy occurred.

He had a gleam of hope on hearing of the accession to the throne of his old companion. “He is at length King,” he wrote; “will his past resentments still attach themselves to his Crown? An indulgent amnesty of former peccadilloes should be the primary grace influencing newly throned sovereignty; at least towards those who were once distinguished by his more intimate protection. From my experience, however, of the personage in question, I must doubt any favourable relaxation of those stubborn prejudices which have, during so many years, operated to the total exclusion of one of his élèves from the royal notice: that unfortunate—I need not particularise. You ask me how I am going on at Calais. Miserably! I am exposed every hour to all the turmoil and jeopardy that attended my latter days in England. I bear up as well as I can; and when the mercy and patience of my claimants are exhausted I shall submit without resistance to bread and water and straw. I cannot decamp a second time.”[12]

The new King made no sign. But soon came the news that he was going abroad, and would stay a night at Calais. The pulse of the exiled dandy must have beat quickly. It was the time for forgiveness; and, after all, his offence had not been very rank. If there were generosity in the heart of the monarch, surely, surely he would hold out the right hand of fellowship to the vanquished foe. The meeting came about unexpectedly. Brummell went for a walk out of the town in the opposite direction to that on which the King would enter it. On his return he tried to get across the street, but the crowd was so great that he remained perforce on the opposite side. The King’s carriage passed close to him. “Good God, Brummell!” George cried in a loud voice. Then Brummell, who was hat in hand at the time, crossed the road, pale as death, and entered his room.

George dined in the evening at Dessein’s, and Brummell sent his valet to make the punch, giving him to take over a bottle of rare old maraschino, the King’s favourite liqueur. The next morning all the suite called except Bloomfield, and each man tried to persuade him to ask for an audience. Brummell signed his name in the visitors’ book. His pride would let him do no more. He had taken the first steps; would the King send for him? George left without a word. Afterwards he actually boasted he had been to Calais without seeing Brummell! So the men went their ways, never to meet again. The King had won. He had seen his old friend, his old foe—which you will—his old comrade, beaten, bankrupt, humbled, and he had passed him by. The King had won, yet perhaps for once it was better to be the vanquished than to win at such a price. Perhaps in the last years of his life George thought once more of Brummell, as himself half blind, half mad, utterly friendless, he went down to the grave unwept and unhonoured.

Others were more generous than the King. The Duke of Wellington invited two successive Ministers for Foreign Affairs to do something for the exile. Both hesitated on the ground that his Majesty might disapprove, whereupon Wellington went to Windsor and spoke to the King, “who had made objections, abusing Brummell—said he was a damned fellow and had behaved very ill to him (the old story—moi, moi, moi); but after having let him run his tether, he had at last extracted his consent.” Still, nothing was done until after Charles Greville was at Calais in 1830: “There I had a long conversation with Brummell about his consulship, and was moved by his account of his own distresses to write to the Duke of Wellington and ask him to do what he could for him. I found him in his old lodging, dressing—some pretty pieces of old furniture in the room, an entire toilet of silver, and a large green macaw perched on the back of a tattered silk chair with faded gilding—full of gaiety, impudence, and misery.”

The consulate at Caen, to which a salary of four hundred a year was attached, was secured for him. Brummell arranged that part of his income should be set aside to pay his debts (which amounted to about a thousand pounds), and his creditors allowed him to leave Calais. He had not long been installed when he wrote a formal letter to Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, stating that the place was a sinecure and the duties so trifling that he should recommend its abolition. It has never been made clear why he took this remarkable step. Was it in the hope of being appointed to a better position? Was it in the desire to evade the payment of his debts? Was it honesty? Whatever the cause, his action recoiled on himself. Lord Palmerston was regretfully compelled to take the consul at his word, and the place was reduced.

Brummell continued to live at Caen; but, being without resources, he sank deeper into debt, and in 1835 his creditors put him into prison. For the last time his friends came to his assistance. William IV. subscribed a hundred pounds. Palmerston gave twice that amount from the public purse. Enough was obtained to secure his liberation and to settle upon him an annuity of one hundred and twenty pounds. Soon he sank into a state of imbecility, and he ended his days in the asylum Bon Sauveur. He died on 30th March 1840.

A moral can easily be drawn from the story of this unfortunate man, and many writers have dwelt upon the lesson it furnishes. Yet there were many worse than he in the circle of which he was the arbiter. He lived his life: he paid the price. Let him rest in peace.

With the departure from England of Brummell the cult of the dandy began to decline. Count D’Orsay the Magnificent, however, galvanised it into fashion for a while. “He is a grand creature,” Gronow described him; “beautiful as the Apollo Belvedere in his outward form; full of health, life, spirits, wit, and gaiety; radiant and joyous; the admired of all admirers.”

He had an amusing naïveté in speaking of his personal advantages. “You know, my dear friend, I am not on a par with my antagonist,” he said to his second on the eve of a duel. “He is a very ugly man, and if I wound him in the face he won’t look much the worse for it; but on my side it ought to be agreed that he shall not aim higher than my chest, for if my face should be spoiled ce serait vraiment dommage.”

The dandies of a later day were but poor things—pinchbeck. Captain Gronow, in his youth a beau of no mean order, pours contempt upon their pretensions in no measured terms. “How unspeakably odious—with a few brilliant exceptions, such as Alvanley and others—were the dandies of forty years ago [1822]! They were generally middle-aged, some even elderly, men, had large appetites and weak digestions, gambled freely, and had no luck. They hated everybody and abused everybody, and would sit together in White’s bay window or the pit-boxes at the opera weaving tremendous crammers. They swore a good deal, never laughed, had their own particular slang, looked hazy after dinner, and had most of them been patronised at one time or other by Brummell and the Prince Regent.... They gloried in their shame, and believed in nothing good or noble or elevated. Thank Heaven, that miserable race of used-up dandies has long been extinct! May England never look upon their like again!”

The prayer may well be echoed. The bad influence of the dandies can scarcely be over-estimated; and the effect upon their own class of society was terrible. Their morals were contemptible, and they were without principle. Prodigality was their creed, gambling their religion. The list of those who died beggared is not much longer than the list of those who died by their own hands. They indulged in no manly exercises, and devoted their days to their personal decoration and to the card-table. Extravagance of all kinds was fashionable. Clothes, canes, snuff-boxes, must be expensive to be worthy of such distinguished folk, whose sole aim it was to outvie each other. A guinea was the least that could be given to the butler when dining out; but this was an improvement upon the day when Pope, finding it cost him five guineas in tips whenever he dined with the Duke of Montagu, informed that nobleman he could not dine with him in future unless he sent him an order for the tribute-money.

There was Wellesley Pole, who, after the opera, gave magnificent dinners at his home at Wanstead, where rare dishes were served and the greatest luxury obtained. He married Miss Tylney Pole, who brought him fifty thousand a year; and he died a beggar. There was “Golden Ball” Hughes, with forty thousand a year, who, when the excitements of the gaming-room were not to be had, would play battledore and shuttlecock through the whole night, backing himself for immense sums. He married a beautiful Spanish danseuse, Mercandotti, who appeared in London in 1822. Whereupon Ainsworth made an epigram:

“The fair damsel is gone, and no wonder at all

That, bred to the dance, she is gone to a Ball.”

The honeymoon was spent at Oatlands, purchased from the Duke of York. It was thought to be a foolish investment; but when Hughes fell upon evil days he was able to sell the estate for a large sum, as the new railway skirted it, and speculative builders were anxious to acquire the land, and so some of his old prosperity returned. There was Lord Fife, an intimate friend of the Regent’s, who spent forty thousand pounds on Mademoiselle Noblet the dancer. A chapter would not suffice for an account of the vicious and foolish habits of these men.

The clubs were then a far more important feature in social life than they are to-day. They were accessible only to those who were in society, which in those days was exclusive, and consisted of a comparatively small body in which everyone knew everyone else, if not personally, at least by name. There were then no clubs for professional men save those of the first rank, or for merchants, or for the hoi polloi.

In more or less direct rivalry with the clubs were some of the hotels, and men such as Wellington, Nelson, Collingwood and Sir John Moore used them as a meeting-place—at the beginning of the eighteenth century about fifteen in number, not including, of course, the large coaching inns, coffee, eating, and the à la mode beef houses, most of which had beds for customers. First and foremost of these, kept by a French chef, Jacquiers, who had served Louis XVIII. and Lord Darnley, was the Clarendon, built upon a portion of the gardens of Clarendon House, between Bond Street and Albemarle Street, in each of which the hotel had a frontage. This was the only place in England where a French dinner was served that was worthy of mention in the same breath with those obtainable in Paris at the Maison Doré or Rocher de Cancalle’s. The prices were very high. Dinner cost three or four pounds a head, and a bottle of claret or champagne was not obtainable under a guinea. A suite of apartments was reserved for banquets, and it was in these that the famous dinner, ordered by Count D’Orsay, was given to Lord Chesterfield when he resigned the office of Master of the Buckhounds. Covers were laid for thirty, and the bill, exclusive of wine, came to one hundred and eighty guineas.

Limmer’s was another well-known hotel, the resort of the sporting world and of rich country squires. It was gloomy and ill-kept, but renowned for its plain English cooking and world-famous for gin-punch. The clergy went to Ibbetson’s, naval men to Fladong’s in Oxford Street, and army officers and men about town to Stephen’s in Bond Street. Most of these hostelries had their regular frequenters, and strangers were not, as a rule, encouraged to use them as a house of call.

Clubs were few in number. There was “The Club” of Johnson; the Cocoa-Tree, which arose out of the Tory Chocolate House of Anne’s reign; the Royal Naval Club, a favourite haunt of the Duke of Clarence; and the Eccentrics, which numbered among its members such well-known men as Fox, Sheridan, Lord Petersham, Brougham, Lord Melbourne, and Theodore Hook. Graham’s was second rate; nor was Arthur’s in the first flight. When Arthur died, his son-in-law, Mackreth, became the proprietor. He prospered, became a member of Parliament in 1774, and was afterwards knighted. His name is preserved in a very good epigram:

“When Mackreth served in Arthur’s crew,

He said to Rumbold, ‘Black my shoe’;

To which he answered, ‘Ay, Bob.’

But when return’d from India’s land,

And grown too proud to brook command,

He sternly answered, ‘Nay, Bob.’”[13]

An institution of a somewhat different class was the Beefsteak Society, which flourished so long ago as the early years of the eighteenth century. The Prince of Wales became a member in 1785, when the number of the Steaks was increased from twenty-four to twenty-five in order to admit him; and subsequently the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex were elected. The bill of fare was restricted to beefsteaks, and the beverages to port wine and punch; but the cuisine on at least one occasion left something to be desired, for when, in 1830, the English Opera House was burnt down, Greville remarked in his diary: “I trust the paraphernalia of the Beefsteak Club perished with the rest, for the enmity I bear that society for the dinner they gave me last year.” Charles Morris was the bard of the Beefsteak Society, and he has come down to posterity on the strength of four lines:

“In town let me live then, in town let me die,

For in truth I can’t relish the country, not I.

If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,

Oh, give me the sweet, shady side of Pall Mall!”

In spite of his prayer, he spent the last years of his life in the rural retreat of Brockham, in Surrey, in a little place presented to him by his fellow-Steak, the Duke of Norfolk. He lived to the great age of ninety-two, and was so hale and hearty and cheerful that, not long before his death, Curran said to him, “Die when you will, Charles, you will die in your youth.”

Lumley S^t. George Skeffington Esq^r.

The greatest club of its day was Almack’s, at 5 Pall Mall, founded in 1740 by Macall, a Scotsman. This institution was nicknamed the “Macaroni Club,” owing to the fashion of its members; and Gibbon remarked that “the style of living, though somewhat expensive, is exceedingly pleasant, and notwithstanding the rage of play, I have found more entertainment and rational society here than in any other club to which I belong.” The high play, which was the bane of half the English aristocracy, ruined many members. The club fell upon evil days, and was absorbed by Brooks’s.

White’s and Brooks’s took the place of Almack’s. The former, established in 1698 as “White’s Chocolate-House,” five doors from the bottom of the west side of St James’s Street, became a club in 1755, when it moved to No. 38, on the opposite side of the street. It was owned successively by Arthur Mackreth, John Martindale, and in 1812 by Raggett, whose son eventually inherited it. Brooks’s was founded by a wine merchant and money-lender of the name, who has been described by Tickell in verses addressed to Sheridan, when Charles James Fox was to give a supper at his rooms near the club:

“Derby shall send, if not his plate, his cooks;

And know, I’ve bought the best champagne from Brooks,

From liberal Brooks, whose speculative skill

Is hasty credit and a distant bill;

Who, nursed in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade,

Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid.”

Both clubs, although more or less instituted for the purpose of gambling, were at first political. White’s, however, soon took down the Tory flag and received members without reference to their political opinions. Brooks’s, on the other hand, remained true to its Whig traditions; and it was to counterbalance the influence of this institution—the “Reform” of that time—that the Carlton Club was organised by Lord Clanwilliam and others. These, with Boodles’, were the great resorts of the dandies; and the bay window at White’s, when Brummell was the lion, was one of the sights of the town. The Prince of Wales was a member of Brooks’s; but when his boon companions Tarleton and Jack Payne were blackballed he withdrew, and on his own account founded a new club, of which the manager was Weltzie, his house-steward.

Watier’s, the great macao gambling-house, was founded in 1807; but play was very high, and it lasted only for twelve years. According to Gronow it came into existence in a somewhat curious way. When some members of White’s and Brooks’s were dining at Carlton House, the Prince of Wales asked what sort of dinners were served at these institutions. One of the guests complained: “The eternal joints and beefsteaks, the boiled fowl with oyster sauce, and an apple-tart. This is what we have, sir, at our clubs, and very monotonous fare it is.” The Prince sent for Watier, his chef, and asked if he would take a house and organise a club-dinner. Watier was willing. The scheme was carried out, and the club was famed for its exquisite cuisine.

Another and more circumstantial account of the founding of the club is given by Raikes. He says it was originally instituted as a harmonic meeting by the Maddochs, Calverts and Lord Headfort, who took a house in Piccadilly, at the corner of Bolton Street, and engaged Watier as master of the revels. “This destination of the club was soon changed. The dinners were so recherché and so much talked of in town that all the young men of fashion and fortune became members of it. The catches and glees were then superseded by cards and dice; the most luxurious dinners were furnished at any price, as the deep play at night rendered all charges a matter of indifference. Macao was the constant game, and thousands passed from one to another with as much facility as marbles.”

The Duke of York was a member of Watier’s, and so too was Byron, who christened it “The Dandy Club.”

Another member was Robert Bligh, whose eccentricities were already verging upon insanity. One night, at the macao-table, Brummell was losing heavily, and in an affected tone of tragedy he called to a waiter to bring him a pistol. Thereupon Bligh, who was his vis-à-vis, produced from his coat pockets a pair of loaded pistols, and laying them on the table, said, “Mr Brummell, if you are really desirous to put a period to your existence, I am extremely happy to offer you the means without troubling the waiter.” The feelings of the members may be imagined when the knowledge was forced upon them that in their midst was a madman who carried loaded firearms.

Brummell, Raikes has recorded, was the supreme dictator at Watier’s, “the club’s perpetual president.” At the height of his prosperity, one night when he entered, the macao-table was full. Sheridan was there trying his luck with a few pounds he could ill spare, for he had fallen upon evil days. Brummell, whose good luck was notorious at this time, offered to take Sheridan’s seat and go shares in his deal. He added two hundred pounds in counters to the ten pounds in front of him, took the cards, dealt, and in a quarter of an hour had won fifteen hundred pounds. Then he left the table and divided his gains with Sheridan. “Go home, Sheridan,” he said quietly; “go home and give your wife and brats a supper, and never play again.” It is good to be able to record a generous act, delicately done, of a much-abused man.

Of Brummell’s witty insolence mention has already been made, but the laugh was once at least against him. He was at the card-table playing with Combe the brewer, an Alderman who had passed the chair. “Come, Mashtub,” he said, being the caster, “what do you set?” “Twenty-five guineas.” “Well, then, have at the mare’s pony” (twenty-five guineas). The game progressed, and Brummell won twelve times in succession. “Thank you, Alderman,” he said; “for the future I shall never drink any porter but yours.” “I wish, sir,” retorted Combe, “that every other blackguard in London would say the same.”

Everybody played cards in those days. Even at the quiet Court of “Farmer” George the tables were set out in the Queen’s drawing-rooms. Ladies gambled with as much zest as their husbands and brothers, and at the end of the eighteenth century several held gaming-tables. “Faro goes on as briskly as ever; those who have not fortune enough of their own to live on have recourse to this profitable game in order to raise contributions on their friends,” wrote Anthony Storer to Lord Auckland in 1791. “The ladies are all embarked in banks. Mrs Strutt, Lady Archer, Mrs Hobart, Lady Elizabeth Luttrell (sister of the Duchess of Cumberland), are avowed bankers; others, I suppose, are secretly concerned.” Information was laid against Lady Archer and Lady Buckinghamshire, who were convicted and fined; and Lord Kenyon, delivering judgment in another case, actually declared that if any titled ladies were found guilty of the offence before him they should stand in the pillory. No one was bold enough to test the sincerity of the threat. As The Morning Post put it in its issue for 15th January 1800: “Society has reason to rejoice in the complete downfall of the Faro Dames who were so long the disgrace of human nature. Their die is cast, and their odd tricks avail no longer. The game is up, and very few of them have cut with honours.”

Play was taken very seriously, for the stakes were always heavy, and conversation was resented. Sir Philip Francis came to Brooks’s wearing for the first time the ribbon of the Order of the Bath, for which Fox had recommended him. “So this is the way they have rewarded you at last,” remarked Roger Wilbraham, coming up to the whist-table. “They have given you a little bit of red ribbon for your services, Sir Philip, have they? A pretty bit of red ribbon to hang about your neck; and that satisfies you, does it? Now, I wonder what I shall have. What do you think they will give me, Sir Philip?” “A halter, I trust and hope!” roared the infuriated player.

It was at Almack’s, and later at White’s, Brooks’s, Weltzie’s and Watier’s, that the heaviest play prevailed. It is no exaggeration to say that during the long sittings at macao, hazard and faro many tens of thousands changed hands. Nelson won three hundred pounds at a gaming-table when he was seventeen; but he was so horrified when he reflected if he had lost he could not have paid that he never played again. Pitt gambled, and George Selwyn, and Fox, who was always unlucky.

“At Almack’s, of pigeons I’m told there are flocks,

But it’s thought the completest is one Mr Fox.

If he touches a card, if he rattles a box,

Away fly the guineas of this Mr Fox.”

Fox lost two hundred thousand pounds in a night. Once he played for twenty-two hours and lost five hundred pounds an hour. It was he who said that the greatest pleasure in life, after winning, was losing. His bad luck was notorious, and Walpole wondered what he would do when he had sold the estates of all his friends. How Fox contrived to make a great reputation as a statesman, considering his mode of life, is truly remarkable. It was noticed that he did not shine in the debate on the Thirty-Nine Articles (6th February 1772). Walpole thought it could not be wondered at. “He had sat up playing at hazard at Almack’s from Tuesday evening, the 4th, till five in the afternoon of Wednesday, 5th. An hour before, he had recovered twelve thousand pounds that he had lost, and by dinner, which was at five o’clock, he had ended losing eleven thousand pounds. On the Thursday he spoke in the above debate, went to dinner at half-past eleven at night, from there to White’s, where he drank till seven the next morning; thence to Almack’s, where he won six thousand pounds, and between three and four in the afternoon he set out for Newmarket. His brother Stephen lost ten thousand pounds two nights after, and Charles eleven thousand pounds more on the 13th, so that in three nights the two brothers, the eldest not twenty-five, lost thirty-two thousand pounds.” One night when Fox had been terribly unlucky, Topham Beauclerk followed him to his rooms to offer consolation, expecting to find him perhaps stretched on the floor bewailing his losses, perhaps plunged into moody despair. He was surprised to find him reading Herodotus. “What would you have me do?” he asked his astonished visitor. “I have lost my last shilling.”

“But, hark! the voice of battle shouts from far,

The Jews and Macaronis are at war

The Jews prevail, and thund’ring from the stocks,

They seize, they bind, they circumcise Charles Fox.”

They were good losers in those days, and it was a very necessary quality for the majority to possess, since all played and most lost. Lord Carlisle (who complained of cette lassitude de tout et de moi-même, qu’on appelle ennui), General Fitzpatrick, “Old Q.,” Lord Hertford, Lord Sefton, the Duke of York, and many others squandered vast sums in this amusement. There were not a great many winners. The Duke of Portland was one; and his and Canning’s father-in-law, General Scott, won two hundred thousand pounds. It was said the success of the latter was due not only to his knowledge of the game of whist, but also to his notorious sobriety. General Fitzpatrick and Lord Robert Spencer lost all their money at Brooks’s; but, the members not objecting, with borrowed capital they kept a faro bank. The bank won, and with his share of one hundred thousand pounds Lord Robert bought the estate of Woolbidding, in Sussex. He had learnt his lesson, and he never played again. There were few who had the sense to make or the strength to keep such a resolution. Mrs Delany, however, tells of a Mr Thynne “who has won this year so considerably that he has paid off all his debts, bought a house and furnished it, disposed of all his horses, hounds, etc., and struck his name out of all the expensive subscriptions.” A fortunate man, too, was Colonel Aubrey, who had the reputation of being the best whist and piquet player of his day. He made two fortunes in India and lost them both, and made a third at play from a five-pound note which he borrowed.

Another celebrated faro bank at Brooks’s was that kept by Lord Cholmondeley, Mr Thompson of Grosvenor Square, Tom Stepney, and a fourth. It ruined half the town; and a Mr Paul, who had come home with a fortune from India, punting against the bank, lost ninety thousand pounds in one night, and at once went Eastward Ho! to make another. Lord Cholmondeley and Mr Thompson realised between three and four hundred thousand pounds apiece; but Stepney so frequently played against his partners that what he won on one side he lost on the other, with the result that his gains were inconsiderable.

Foreigners were made honorary members of the clubs. The Duke of Orleans (“Vile Égalité,” Lady Sarah Bunbury wrote him down) carried off vast sums. During the visit of the Allied Sovereigns, Blücher, an inveterate gambler, lost twenty thousand pounds. Count Montrond, on the other hand, was a winner. “Who the deuce is this Montrond?” the Duke of York asked Upton. “They say, sir, that he is the most agreeable scoundrel and the greatest reprobate in France.” “Is he, by Jove?” cried the Duke. “Then let us ask him to dinner immediately.” Montrond was a witty fellow, and one of his bon mots has been handed down. The Bailli de Ferretti was always dressed in knee-breeches, with a cocked hat and a Court sword, the slender proportions of which resembled those of his legs. “Do tell me, my dear Bailli,” said Montrond one day, “have you got three legs or three swords?”

Englishmen were not backward in playing abroad, and they assembled in great numbers at the Salon des Étrangers in Paris during the stay of the army of occupation after Waterloo. Gronow gives a long list of habitués: Henry Baring, Tom Sowerby, Henry Broadwood, Bob Arnold, Steer, Colonel Sowerby, were the most reckless plungers. Lord Thanet, who had an income of fifty thousand pounds, lost every penny he had at the salon. He would not stop playing when the public tables closed, and used to invite those present to remain and play hazard or écarté. One night he lost a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. His friends told him he had most probably been cheated. “Then,” he said with great coolness, “I consider myself lucky not to have lost twice as much.”

Prominent among gamblers, and as such deserving of special mention, was William Douglas, Earl of March and Ruglen, afterwards fourth and last Duke of Queensberry.[14] Even making liberal allowance for the spirit of the age and for the state of morality in the days when he was young, he was one of the worst men of his generation; and his rank and wealth made his vices only more notorious. He was the “Degenerate Douglas” of Wordsworth’s muse, and Burns damned him in verse for all time:

“How shall I sing Drumlanrig’s Grace,

Discarded remnant of a race

Once great in martial story?

His forebears’ virtues all contrasted,

The very name of Douglas blasted—

His that inverted glory.

Hate, envy, oft the Douglas bore;

But he has superadded more,

And sunk them in contempt.

Follies and crimes have stained the name;

But, Queensberry, thine the virgin claim—

From aught that’s good exempt.”

He was appointed to the Household of George III.; but when the King’s malady declared itself in 1788, he, in common with many other courtiers, veered round to the side of the Prince of Wales. George recovered, and the Duke was dismissed. His profligacy was a byword, and he pursued pleasure to the end of his days. He built a palace at Richmond, where many orgies took place. But he tired of that residence, as he wearied of most people and most things. “What is there to make so much of in the Thames? I am quite tired of it. There it goes, flow, flow, flow, always the same.” At the end of his days he sat on the balcony of a ground-floor room of his Piccadilly mansion, and ogled the passers-by, while a footman held a parasol over his head, and another was ready to follow and find out the residence of any pretty girl that passed. Yet “Old Q.” had wit in plenty, loved music, and was not without appreciation of letters and art. One of his greatest friends was George Selwyn; and, while both accredited themselves with the paternity, neither knew which was the father of Maria Fagniani. This young lady became Selwyn’s ward and the inheritrix of the greater part of his fortune, while the Duke left her his residence in Piccadilly, a villa at Richmond, and a hundred and fifty thousand pounds; and her husband, Lord Yarmouth, afterwards third Marquis of Hertford, as the Duke’s residuary legatee, came into about two hundred thousand pounds.

“Old Q.” was a dangerous man at the card-table. The turf had no mysteries for him. He was ever ready to bet, and he preferred to bet on something that was very nearly a certainty. He was full of resource, and his success was due at least as much to his cleverness as to his luck. His was the day of wagers, and at White’s a betting-book was laid upon a table for all bets made in the building to be inserted. His name frequently occurs therein:

“June 1751.—Lord March wagers Captain Richard Vernon fifty guineas to twenty that Mr St Leger is married before him.” The bet requires the explanatory note that “him” stands for Captain Vernon.

“March 1784.—The Duke of Queensberry bets Mr Grenville ten guineas to five that Mr Fox does not stand a poll for Westminster if the Parliament should be dissolved within a month from the date hereof. N.B.—If a coalition takes place between Mr Pitt and Mr Fox this bet is to be off.” It is to be noticed that the Duke was not convinced of the sincerity of politicians.

The Duke bet Sir John Lade a thousand guineas as to which could produce a man to eat the most at one sitting. The Duke could not be present at the contest, but he received the result from a representative. “I have not time to state particulars, but merely to acquaint your Grace that your man beat his antagonist by a pig and an apple-pie.” What must they have eaten!

White’s betting-book is full of quaint wagers. “Lord Northington bets Mr C. Fox, June 4, 1774, that he (Mr. C. F.) is not called to the Bar before this day four years.” On 11th March 1775 is an interesting entry: “Lord Bolingbroke gives a guinea to Mr Charles Fox, and is to receive a thousand from him whenever the debt of this country amounts to one hundred and seventy-one millions. Mr Fox is not to pay the thousand pounds till he is one of his Majesty’s Cabinet.” The following is dated 7th April 1792: “Mr Sheridan bets Lord Lauderdale and Lord Thanet twenty-five guineas each that Parliament will not consent to any more lotteries after the present one voted to be drawn in February next.” Lotteries were then a regular source of revenue to the State, the average profit being about three hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year, besides many brokers’ annual licences at fifty pounds. Private lotteries were forbidden by law, and required a special Act of Parliament to enable them to be drawn. The result was that the only two private lotteries were the Pigot Diamond in 1800 and Boydell’s pictures five years later. Lotteries were first drawn at Guildhall and later at the Coopers’ Hall, and the tickets were taken from the wheels by Bluecoat boys. The last public lottery took place in October 1826, and so Mr Sheridan lost his bet.

On 8th May 1809, “Mr G. Talbot bet Lord Charles Manners ten guineas that the Duke of Queensberry is not alive this day two years.” Another entry records that “Mr C. H. Bouverie bets Mr Blackford that the Duke of Queensberry outlives the Duke of Grafton.” “Lord Mountford bets Sir John Bland twenty guineas that Nash outlives Cibber.” But the bet was cancelled, because before either Nash or Cibber died the two wagerers committed suicide!

Apparently no subject was thought unfit for a bet. Wagers were made as to which of two married ladies would first give birth to a live child, and as to which of two men would marry first. They bet with equal heartiness on the duration of a Ministry or the life of a Minister, on a horse, or a dog, or a prize-fight, or a cock-fight. Walpole tells the story of a simple parson entering White’s on the morning of a severe earthquake, and hearing bets laid whether the shock was caused by an earthquake or the blowing up of powder mills, went away in horror, protesting that they were such an impious set that he believed if the Last Trump were to sound they would bet puppet-show against Judgment!

All other English clubs where gaming took place fade into insignificance before Crockford’s. Crockford was originally a fishmonger at the old Bulkshop next door to Temple Bar Without, and later a “leg” at Newmarket. He became part-proprietor of a gambling-house, and with his partner, at a twenty-four hours’ sitting, he won a hundred thousand pounds from five punters, including Lord Thanet, Lord Granville and Ball Hughes. He then built the famous palace in St James’s Street opposite to White’s.

“No one can describe the splendour and excitement of the early days of Crockford’s,” Gronow relates. “A supper of the most exquisite kind, prepared by the famous Ude, and accompanied by the best wines in the world, together with every luxury of the season, was provided gratis. The members of the club included all the celebrities of England, from the Duke of Wellington to the youngest ensign of the Guards; and at the gay and festive board, which was constantly replenished from midnight till early dawn, the most brilliant sallies of wit, the most agreeable conversation, the most interesting anecdotes, interspersed with grave political discussions and acute logical reasoning on every conceivable subject, proceeded from the soldiers, scholars, statesmen, poets, and men of pleasure, who, when the House was ‘up’ and balls and parties at an end, delighted to finish their evenings with a little supper and a good deal of hazard at old Crockey’s. The tone of the club was excellent. A most gentleman-like feeling prevailed, and none of the rudeness, familiarity, and ill-breeding which disgrace some of the minor clubs of the present day would have been tolerated for a moment.”

The whole establishment was organised on a scale of wonderful magnificence; and to keep it select, the election of members was controlled by a committee. Talleyrand, Pozzo di Borgo, General Alava, Esterhazy, and other ambassadors belonged to it; the Duke of Wellington, Lord Raglan, Lord Anglesea, Sir Hussey Vivian, Disraeli, Bulwer, Croker, Horace Twiss, and, as a matter of course, Lord Alvanley and Count D’Orsay. Though many members never touched a card, Crockford with his hazard bank won a sum estimated at between one million two hundred thousand and two million pounds, or, as a contemporary put it very neatly, “the whole of the ready money of the then existing generation.” He died worth seven hundred thousand pounds, after having sustained heavy losses in mining and other speculations. The retirement of Crockford marks an epoch, for after that date the craze for gambling on a vast scale slowly but surely died out. By this time, however, it had done as much harm to the aristocracy as the South Sea Bubble did to the general public.

A Forgotten Satirist: “Peter Pindar”

The amusing banter of Mr E. V. Lucas and Mr C. L. Graves, and the delightful parody of Mr Owen Seaman, are the nearest approach that England can now show to the satirical productions for which it was once famous. Indeed, we are becoming an amiable race, developing, or at least feigning, the milk of human kindness to such an extent that even modern caricature can scarcely be distinguished from portraiture, and only Mr Max Beerbohm flings the tomahawk of pictorial satire. A study of the lampoons and the vigorous personal onslaughts in prose and verse of the Georgian days, however, gives us pause for reflection whether we refrain from such practices because of our improved manners or increasing effeminacy: though, perhaps, it may be attributed largely to the signed review which makes it difficult, in these days of numerous literary associations, for a sociable or a nervous scholar to gibbet his erring brethren with an acerbity once general. Certain it is that current criticism is for the most part the art of saying pleasant things graciously, while our excursions into the personal element are usually headed “Appreciations.” Whatever the cause, it is a sad thought for militant spirits that a wave of politeness has engulfed the heretofore blunt, outspoken John Bull, that typical figure, of which—it is pathetic to note in these days of unsuppressed emotion—we are still so proud.

The most casual incursion into Georgian history reveals a great mass of almost forgotten satirical productions, all of it trenchant, most of it coarse and not a little scurrilous, indeed, but much of it readable and amusing. There were scores of virile pamphleteers in the pay of Ministers and Oppositions, as well as a number of independent writers of lampoons on all sorts and conditions of men and things. The best of the latter class was Charles Churchill, the famous author of “The Rosciad” and of those terrible onslaughts on Hogarth and Sandwich, on Martin and other small fry. His mantle was in due course assumed by Wolcot, who, though scarcely remembered to-day, was a man of considerable talent and extensive knowledge, and, though of course without the genius of his predecessor, was widely read, enjoyed a vast popularity, and undoubtedly influenced a great body of people.

John Wolcot, the son of a country surgeon, was born in May 1738. He was educated at various schools of no great repute, and in the early twenties paid a lengthy visit to France, for the inhabitants of which land he conceived the insular prejudice usual in his day:

“I never will put Merit on the rack:

No; yet, I own, I hate the shrugging dogs.

I’ve lived among them, eat their frogs,

And vomited them up, thank God, again.”

He studied medicine in London until 1764, when he went as assistant to his uncle, John Wolcot of Fowey, taking a Scotch Degree of Doctor of Medicine three years later, immediately after which, his distant connection, Sir William Trelawny, going to Jamaica as Governor, he accompanied him as physician. In that island he saw little or no prospect of securing a paying practice, and paid a flying visit to England in 1769 to take holy orders. On his return to Jamaica he found that the lucrative living for which he had been destined, had, contrary to expectation, not been vacated, whereupon, after holding a minor clerical post for a few months, he reverted to his old profession, and obtained the post of physician-general to the troops. Sir William Trelawny died at Spanish Town in 1772, and Wolcot again came to England, where he established himself as a doctor at Truro, but, after disputes with his medical confrères and the Corporation, removed in 1779 to Helstone and then to Exeter.

Wolcot abandoned the practice of medicine in 1781, when he came to London, urged to this step partly by the desire to advance the prospects of his protégé, Opie, the painter, and partly by the desire to establish himself there as a man of letters. The last project was not so mad as it may have appeared to his country neighbours, for under the pseudonym of “Peter Pindar” he had already obtained some success with the publication of a “Poetical Epistle to Reviewers” in 1778, in which he declared:

“In Sonnet, Ode, and Legendary Tale,

Soon will the press my tuneful Works display.”

He fulfilled this promise, and in 1782 issued “Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians for 1782,” by “Peter Pindar, Esq., a distant relative of the Poet of Thebes and Laureat to the Academy,” which were at once so successful, that in quick succession came from his fertile pen, “More Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians for 1783,” “Lyric Odes for 1785,” and, in 1786, “Farewell Odes to Academicians.” These vigorous verses attracted much attention, for the critic was outspoken in his dislikes, and lashed with the utmost contempt “George’s idol,” West, and other fashionable artists; though he showed his discrimination by praising the works of Gainsborough, Reynolds (“Of whose fine art I own myself a lover”), and of the unfairly neglected Richard Wilson (“By Britain left in poverty to pine”):

“But honest Wilson, never mind;

Immortal praises thou shalt find,

And for a dinner have no cause to fear.

Thou start’st at my prophetic rhymes:

Don’t be impatient for those times;

Wait till thou hast been dead a hundred year.”

It was not because Wolcot had exhausted this vein (for he returned to it again and again, even in 1808 having “One more Peep at the Royal Academy”) that he looked for another theme, but that he discovered, so long as he wrote on art and artists, let him be never so humorous, he would have to be content with praise alone for his reward. No man cared less for money than he, but he certainly thought the labourer worthy of his hire, and, since he depended for his livelihood on his pen, it behoved him to select a subject that would appeal to a larger public. To the exceeding joy of his own and subsequent generations, he decided to exercise his humour at the expense of the King and Queen, with an occasional playful blow at a Minister.

No satirist could ask for better subjects for his wit than George III. and Queen Charlotte. The slow-witted monarch and his parsimonious consort offered every conceivable temptation to Wolcot’s nimble humour, and he was not slow to take advantage of this rare chance. Of course, he was not the first in the field, but he was head and shoulders over his rivals in talent and wit, and, if he did not silence, at least he succeeded in eclipsing them. He was especially fortunate in having accurate information concerning the internal economy of the royal palaces, and, though he took a poet’s licence to embroider the facts, there was always some foundation for his lampoons. Thus, when the King found a noxious insect in his plate at dinner and gave orders that everyone in the kitchens, from chef to scullion, should be shaved, “Peter Pindar” wrote a “heroi-comic poem,” “The Lousiad,” in which he gave a version of the story. “I had this (incident),” he wrote to a friend, “from the cooks themselves, with whom I dined several times at Buckingham House and Windsor, immediately after the ‘shave’ took place.”

“ ‘Some spirit whispers that to Cooks I owe

The precious Visitor that crawls below;

Yes, yes, the whispering Spirit tells me true,

And soon that vengeance all the locks pursue.

Cooks, Scourers, Scullions, too, with Tails of Pig,

Shall lose their coxcomb Curls and wear a Wig.’