SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

BIOGRAPHY.

The Lire of George Brummell, Esq., commonly called Beau Brummell. By Cap-

• fain Jesse, Unattached. Author of " Notes of a Half-pay iu Search of Health."

, &c. lu two volumes Saunders and Otley. TaavEra. Beam and the Pyrenees : a Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre. By Louisa Stuart Costello, Author of " The Bocages and the Vines," " A Pilgrimage to Auvergne," &c. &c. With numerous Illustrations. In two volumes.. Bentley. Frers.N.

Courtensty of Walreddon ; a Romance of the West. By Mrs. Bray. Author of" Henry

- De Pomeroy," " The White Hoods," &c. &c. In three volumes Bentley.

CAPTAIN JESSE'S LIFE OF BRUMMELL. IT has been the fashion to sneer at Beau BRUMMELL (after his reverses); but he at least did what no other man could ever do— without birth, rank, fortune, or forerunning reputation of any kind, he established himself as the autocrat of fashion among the proud- est and most exclusive aristocracy in Europe. Other instances may be adduced of men with as little of high or solid merit filling a similar conspicuous position in the eyes of the great, but not from their own intrinsic qualities. ANTINOUS, and other celebrities of ancient times, were supported by the Imperial power, to whose vices they administered. The same may be said of CARR and the two VILLIERSES,—who, moreover, attained rank, wealth, and political influence. Beau BRUMMELL had no pretensions to Court favour, and for the longer period of his career he had for an enemy the most malignant "fine gentleman" that ever breathed; yet neither the power of Heir Apparent, Prince Regent, or leader of the ton, sufficed to shake him. He only succumbed to that pressure which changes dynasties, overwhelms states, and would have destroyed Cmsea had he not managed to destroy the republic—the pressure of a vacuum in the exchequer, the most irresistible of pressures excepting that of atmospheric air.

There is more in a man who could accomplish this than impu- dence and the tie of a cravat, or we should have a BRUMMELL every day in the week. That he had a power of face which sur- passed CIBBER or Foucifi, is clear ; that he dressed well—with "exquisite propriety," is recorded by BYRON ; and stories of the starched neckcloth are told in various forms, though we suspect none of them accurately. He had also great elegance of manner, 'with several social accomplishments : he was an amateur artist, had some knowledge of music with an agreeable voice, he could write vers de societe, and, it would appear, pilfer those of other writers, and told a story capitally. He had, moreover, a keen e3e for a weak point, and great tact in the mode of probing it so as to escape personal conseqnences however offensive he might be. In the exercise of this ficulty he was, like THEODORE HOOK, restrained by no sense of feeling, of gratitude, or of propriety ; so that the slaves of fashion were slaves to him. This would go far to account for his retention of power, but not for its acquisition. The art of Beau BaummELL's rise would seem to be an unknown art. As in most great geniuses, however, his peculiar faculty developed itself early. At sixteen he was a Cornet in the " Prince's Own "; and, if the dates of Mr. JESSE'S book are correct, he was at six-and-twenty sufficiently established on the throne of the world of fashion to defy the art and malice of the Prince, which were more "his own" than his regiment.

- Such a character and career were as well worth tracing as those of players, playwrights, demireps, or dullards, with which the town has been so often inundated. Two volumes may look too much for a beau ; but some of the mimes, we think, have extended to more ; and if HORACE thought it worth while to make the cha- racteristics of TIGELLIIIS a leading theme for two satires, Captain JESSE may justify the devotion of two volumes, in this age of print, to a greater than TIGELLIUS. The true objection to the length of Mr. JESSE'S book is that much of it is not necessary to BRUMMELL. There are sketches of preceding beaus which might have been spared; there are digressions upon any thing that turns up, which had been better away ; there are interminable extracts from BRUM- MRLL'S album, consisting of verses by the mob of gentlemen and ladies of his own time ; together with some commonplace epistles of BRUMMELL himself, and details of a screen and so forth, that only overlay.

. Still, the volumes are amusing ; and the life of BRUMMELL could not have fallen into better hands. A clearer arrangement, a more regular narrative, a closer style, might be attained ; and we do not expect from a collector any very searching estimate of the authen- ticity of the gossip he receives. But who save Captain JESSE would have had patience and perseverance to gather the materials ? His own personal reminiscences are easy enough told ; the floating stories of the clubs and coteries, with the printed sketches or caricatures of his hero, are not difficult to collect ; a pilgrimage to Calais and Caen might have been undertaken by the zealous bookmaker: but Cap- tain JESSE does not show like a mere literary lover of gossip picking up what he finds—he is like a so dier going out-to gain " intelli- gence." BRUMMELL was born in 1778, and educated at Eton; so thither went the Captain. The lady who supplied the Etonians at the close of the last century with apples and cakes is living in the Alms-houses, but the old soul's mind and memory have failed her : it is therefore unknown whether the " child was father to the man" in the matter of good things and getting them on credit. Our author, however, has hunted out a correspondent to whom Baum- MELL was fag, and'who speaks highly of his general character and conduct, but *epos to consider that his first excellence was in toasting cheese: "It also appears that in his school-days he was remarkable for the neatness and style of his dress, so as to have acquired the sobriquet of " Buck Baumatm.r..,"—which was perhaps better than "Beau." It would seem that the future hero of the world of fashion never suffered corporal degradation. Dining once in 'a strange party, an elderly Nimrod happened to mention that he was • at Eton towards the close of the last century : Captain JESSE, on the watch, immediately queries, " Do you recollect Brummell there?" " I knew him well, Sir," replied the old squire : " he was never . flogged ; and a man, Sir, is not worth a d—n who was never flogged through the school." But Captain JESSE, in obedience to the rule of the philosophical poet, not only adds the morn but the evening to the day of his hero.* His landlord and his laundress at Calais are put to the question. He hunted up the valet of his meridian splendour and first decline, in a cafe at Boulogne. From him he probably learned the modes operandi of putting on the neckcloth, which he describes at length. The same authority should have taught Captain JESSE to doubt the hacknied story of " our failures," which he elsewhere relates : the cravats were folded by the laundress, and only inspected by the Beau ; and the valet em- phatically declares that his master " never failed in the tie." Not content with the commoner sources at his last resting-place, Caen, our author penetrates to the prison where he was confined for debt, and to the lunatic asylum where he died ; and visits the congenial- minded tailor, who groaned in spirit over the coat out at elbows, and the tattered trousers that disfigured the dandy's cloudy setting. "J'avais honte," said the indignant artist to the inquiring bio- grapher, "de voir un homme si célèbre et distingue, et qui s'etait tree une place dans l'histoire, dans un etat si malheureux." He could not afford to give clothes, but he mended BaumatzLes only suit con more, whilst the Beau lay in bed.

It is said that in the cotton-districts a person with a grandfather is a person of family. BRUMMELL had a grandfather, but his original status is matter of dispute ; some affirming that he was a porter to the Treasury, others that he was in Lord BUTE'S house- hold, and others, again, that he was a confectioner. Captain Assn cannot settle the question, but he has discovered that he was " in business in Bury Street, St. James's," where JENKINSON, the first Lord LIVERPOOL, took lodgings at his house, attracted by the per- fect penmanship of Beau BRUMMELL'S father in " Lodgings to let." This introduction led to protection and patronage—amanuensis, a clerkship in the Treasury, private secretary to Lord NORTH, and thence to a good marriage and a good many sinecures ; so that " Lodgings to let " eventually " cut up " to the tune of nearly 70,0001. This he divided equally among his three children, and Beau BRUMMELE'S share had increased on the attainment of his majority to 30,0002.—some say 40,0001. We have seen he was at Eton ; thence he went to Oxford : at sixteen he was a Cornet, and at eighteen a Captain ; but the Army was too great a tie, and he left it at twenty. With the Funds yielding five per cent, he might probably have continued to keep his head above water for his lifetime, had " Pru- dence been present." But, like the Prince and all of his set, he seems to have had no notion of the value of money ; and though he spent little on other people, he expended a good deal on himself. A small but exquisite bachelor's house, a man-cook, a stud, and so forth, could scarcely be kept up on 1,5001. or 2,0001. a year. Then he had taste in articles of virtu, especially porcelain ; he had an unri- valled collection of snuffboxes ; and he gambled, without capital sufficient to stand a run of ill-luck. His personal habits were very expensive; so much so that his reply to the lady who asked what her son could appear well for, might not be so very extrava- gant : " Why, with strict economy, it might be done for 800/. a year." His capital melted, his debts accumulated; and, after a reign of more than twenty years, the ruined Beau " bolted" for Calais—according to our author, on the 16th May 1816.

In this town of passage he lived till 1830, maintained in luxury by the large contributions of his fashionable friends : a fact which speaks much in favour of BRUMMELL, for with no class of people is " out of sight out of mind" more truly to be predicated, espe- cially when memory is to make an inroad on the pocket. In 1830, the Whigs appointed him to the Consulship at Caen, with a salary of' 4001. a year ; but as 3201. was put aside for the payment of his Calais debts, without which arrangement he could not have de- parted, he gained a loss, as his friends thought he was provided for. Debts, of course, ran up at Caen; and when Lord PALMER- srox abolished the Consulship, the Beau was arrested and thrown into prison. A subscription among his surviving fashionable friends arranged his affairs; and from the same source an allowance of 1201. was raised for him. The secret of this influence is not dis- coverable in these volumes ; but it is a fact that every one with whom he came in continual contact, down even to the prisoners in gaol, retained favourable and friendly impressions of Beau BRUMMELL.

His close of life realized the most deplorable pictures of those satirists who have warned mankind against the prayer for multi- tude of days. Poverty, disease, idiotcy, and a paralysis of the bowels which reduced him at last to a shocking state of filthy help-. lessness, Captain JESSE pursues through their minute details, with a result at once mournful and mirthful. After some time of what we agree with our author in thinking gross mismanagement of his income, he was removed from the hotel to the Bon Sauveur, a religious asylum for the insane. Here he died, on the 30th March 1840; his last-act exhibiting, whether consciously or accidentally, all his former sense of propriety : he turned his face to the wall, • " Alas ! not dazzled by their noontide ray, Compute the morn fwd evening to the day."

so as to be bidden from the attendants on the other side, and in that position expired.

Though BRUMMELL had the reputation of a wit, be exhibited very little real wit. Like THEODORE BOOR, and perhaps most other reputed wits of society, his mind was of the buffo cast, re- deemed from buffoonery only by reserve and causticity. What Jowesore says of Tom BROWN is not far from the truth respecting the class we speak of: "the whole animation [and point] of these compositions arises from a profusion of ludicrous and affected comparison,"—in other words, from exaggeration so great as to Startle. Such was BRUMMELL'S reply to the beggar who solicited charity " if only a halfpenny": " My good fellow, I have heard of the coin, but I never had one—there's a shilling for you." When asked during a bad summer if he had ever seen such a one, he re- plied, " Yes, last winter,"—which is of the same character. Some- times the mere impudence of the deed or word produces the same effect of surprise. Once, at a party, he asked an acquaintance, with a great air of curiosity, who that ugly man near the chimney-piece might be ? " Why, surely, my good fellow, you know him—that is the master of the house." " No," replied the unmoved Cornet ; "how should I? I was never invited." He does not appear to have been good at retort ; perhaps he had prudence enough to avoid the risk of having to make one. But the following approaches to repartee. A doctor's wife at Caen tried hard to get him to her house: walking one afternoon with a friend, they passed through an archway under the lady's balcony, in which she was: leaning over, she accosted the Beau, earnestly requesting him to walk up and take tea: " Madam," said he to the medico's wife, in his calmest and most disdainful manner, " you take physic, you take a walk, you take a liberty, but you drink tea." Disagreeable, personal, painful truths, such as only unflinching impudence could utter, pro- duce their effects by the same means of surprise. The " fat friend" was of this kind. So was the last witticism; for we hardly think, with Mr. JESSE, that it was any proof of absence of mind.

" One evening, absorbed in the contemplation of a blazing fire at the house of a friend, and sitting next to two ladies who were carrying on a desultory conversation near him, he heard the lady of the mansion gently chide her com- panion for having left her daughter by the sea-side alone: upon which he broke Silence by audibly observing to himself, ' There is no necessity for being alarmed ; she is too plain for anybody to dream of running off with her.' " BRUMMELL, however, in common with great satirists, had the faculty of intuitively seeing the sore place : he also disregarded the forms of things in comparison with the pith, though he affected to estimate them by a whimsical standard of his own.

There are other points in his Meridian splendour, as well as in his decline and fall, which we should like to have touched upon : the care and time he spent upon his toilet, with its moral of natural taste matured by labour ; and the sad story of his decline—bow be sponged upon casual travellers at the table d'hôte for his wine, in return for the honour of his company and anecdotes—how he apparently struggled against fortune in public, with its effects upon mind and health in private. But we have only space left for a few anecdotes, relating to the " first gentleman of the age,"— who is exhibited throughout as a very paltry fellow. The follow- ing are furnished by a voluntary correspondent who addressed Cap- tam JESSE in consequence of the advertisement of his work ; and who seems, like other of the Beau's friends, to have entertained a strong regard for him.

THE TALE OF THE SNUFFBOX.

Brummell had a collection chosen with his singular sagacity and good taste ;

and Liz: cf :Lem had bee. seen and admired by the Prince, who said, " Brummell, this box must be mine : go to Gray's, and order any box you like in lieu of it." Brummell begged that it might be one with his Royal Highness's miniature; and the Prince, pleased and flattered at the suggestion, gave his assent to the request. Accordingly, the box was ordered, and Brummell took great pains with the pattern and form, as well as with the miniature and the diamonds round it. When some progress had been made, the portrait was shown to the Prince; who was charmed with it, suggested slight improvements and altera- tions, and took the liveliest interest in the work as it proceeded. All in fact was on the point of being concluded when the scene at Claremont took place. [Where this writer describes the quarrel as originating, through the Prince preventio BRUMMELL from joining a party, on the plea of Mrs. FITZHERBERT disliking him.] A day or two after this, Brummell thought he might as well go to Gray's and inquire about the box : he did so, and was told that special directions had been sent by the Prince of Vales that the box was not to be delivered : it never was, nor was the one returned for which it was to have been an equivalent. It was this, I believe, more than any thing besides, which in- duced Brummell to bear himself with such unbending hostility towards the Prince of Wales. He felt that he had treated him unworthily, and from this moment be indulged himself by saying the bitterest things. When pressed by poverty, however, and, as I suppose, somewhat broken in spirit, he at a later period recalled the Prince's attention to the subject of the snuffbox. Colonel Cooke, (who was at Eton called " Cricketer Cooke," afterwards known as "Aangaroo Cooke,") when passing through Calais, saw Brummell; who told him the story, and requested that he would inform the Prince Regent that the promised box had never been given, and that he was now constrained to recall the circumstance to his recollection. The Regent's reply was—" Well, Master Jiang, as for the box it is all nonsense ; but 1 suppose the poor devil wants a hundred guineas, and be shall have them "; and it was in this un- gracious manner that the money was sent, received, and acknowledged.

Mr. JESSE adds, in a note- " I have heard Brummell speak of this affair of the snuffbox, but never beard him say that he received the hundred guineas!'

THE MEETING OF THE RIVALS.

Brummell, before he sunk under the pressure of poverty, always withstood the Prince of Wales, like a man whose feelings had been injured. Well do I

remember an instance of this, one night after the opera. I was standing near the stove of the lower waiting-room, talking to several persons, of whom one is now alive. The Prince of Wales, who always came out rather before the per- formance concluded, was also standing there, and waiting for his carriage, which used to drive up what was then Market Lane, now the Opera Arcade. Pre- sently, Brummell came out, talking eagerly to some friends; and, not seeing the Prince or his party, be took up a position near the check-taker'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 who 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 that there was not much more than a foot be- tween his nose and the Prince of Wales's. I watched him with intense curi- osity, and observed that his countenance did not change in the slightest degree, nor did his bead 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. It is impossible to describe the impression made by this scene on the bystanders : there was in his manner nothing insolent, nothing offen- sive ; by retiring with his face to the Regent he recognized his rank ; but be offered no apology for his inadvertence, (as a mere stranger would have done,) no recognition as an acquaintance : as man to man, his bearing was adverse and uncompromising.

THE RIGHT READING OF " THE FAT FRIEND."

Lord Alvanley, Brummell, Henry Pierrepoint, and Sir Harry Mildmay, gave at the Hanover Square Rooms a fdte, which was called the Dandies' Ball. Alvanley was a friend of the Duke of York's; Harry Mildmay young, and had never been introduced to the Prince; Pierrepoint knew him slightly; and Brummell was at daggers-drawing with his Royal Highness. No invitation, therefore, was sent to the Prince : but the ball excited much interest and ex- pectation ; and, to the surprise of the Amphitryons, a communication was re- ceived from his Royal Highness intimating his wish to be present. Nothing, therefore, was lett but to send him an invitation; which was done in due form, and in the names of the four spirited givers of the ball. The next question was, how they were to receive their guest ; which, after some discussion, was arranged thus: when the approach of the Prince was announced, each of the fuur gentlemen took, in due form, a candle in his hand. Pierrepoint, as know- ing the Prince, stood nearest the door, with his wax-light, and Mildmay, as being young and void of offence, opposite; Alvanley, with Brummell opposite, stood immediately within the other two. The Prince at length arrived; and, as was expected, spoke civilly and with recognition to Pierrepoint, and then turned and spoke a few words to Mildmay ; advancing, he addressed several sentences to Alvanley ; and then turned towards Brummell, looked at him, but as if he did not know who he was or why he was there, and without bestowing upon him the slightest symptom of recognition. It was then, at the very in- stant he passed on, that Brummell, seizing with infinite fun and readiness the notion that they were unknown to each other, said across to his friend, and aloud, for the purpose of being heard, " Alvanley, who's your fat friend?' Those who were in front and saw the Prince's face, say that he was cut to the quick by the aptness of the satire.

This version carries better internal evidence than any other ; for it was neat, appropriate, and telling,—points which BRUMMELL ever regarded. The fact of the ball is well known ; it was given by the four after a great run of luck : it is also known that the Prince intimated a wish to be present, and is said to have cut BRUMMELL when he got there. The story would otherwise be in ; for what an idea does it give of "the finest gentleman in Europe"—a ci-decant jeune Prince fishing for an invitation to a ball, and insulting one of his entertainers the moment he arrived!