The Reign of Beau Brummell

309 Pages·1940·13.521 MB·English

by  Willard Connely

Wll,I,1\RD CONN ELY
By Willard Connely
SIR RICHARD STEELE
BRAWNY WYCHERLEY
BEAU BRUMMbLL, AGED 27, AT TllE-HEIGHT OF Hrs REIGN IN LONDON
by Robert Dighton
(Reproduced for the first time by kind permission of Sir Kenneth Clark)
THE REIGN OF
~EAU ~RUMMELL
BY
WILLARD CONNELY
:J
THE GREYSTONE PRESS
NEW YORK
1940
COPYRIGHT BY THE GREYSTONE PRESS, INC,
1940
PUBLISHED
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE WILLIAM BYRD PRESS, INC.
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
To
Virginia McKay
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE lX
PART I
CHAPTER
.
l THE FAMILY 3
2 ETONIANS 15
3 ORIEL COLLEGE 30
.
4 THE SOLDIER 38
5 CHESTERFIELD STREET 47
.
6 THE ALBUM 64
.
7 THE REGENT 79
.
8
THE FINAL BREAK 97
.
9 FLIGHT u4
PART II
131
IO LELEUX ET LEVEUX
II THE KING 149
Vll
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
12
RETURN AND RETREAT 160
13 CAEN VIA PARIS 182
.
14 THE END OF THE CONSULATE 200
15 THE STRICKEN MAN 215
.
16 A BEAU IN PRISON 235
17 THE LAST RECEPTION 250
18 BON SAUVEUR 271
.
READING FOR THE REIGN OF BEAU BRUMMELL 283
INDEX 289
PREFACE
MY in Beau Brummell as a character dates from
INTEREST
just twenty-five years ago, at which time I was fortunate
enough to see that excellent character-actor, the late Arnold
Daly, perform the part in the play by Clyde Fitch. Daly
"lived" Brummell. Off stage and on, he was almost as orig
inal, as eccentric, as conceited, as irresponsible, and as mag
netic as Brummell himself. When Daly in the play said
"No gentleman is busy. Insects and City people are busy"
-when he read that line, it was Brummell who was talk
ing, and the audience were back in Regency days. Fitch
wrote Beau Brummell for Richard Mansfield, the foremost
American actor at the turn of the last century, an actor
whose versatility Daly could not encompass. Yet from
snuff-box to walking-stick, from white cravat to glistening
boots, from pitch of the voice to the grace in his hands,
Daly was no mean inheritor of the part which Mansfield
created. I saw Mansfield only once. He acted Dr. /ekJll and
Mr. Hyde; in dreams the green light on Hyde revisits me
still. But to have seen Daly as the Beau was to make an
everlasting possession of the whole play.
IX
THE REIGN OF BEAU BRUMMELL
The frontispiece, of which Sir Kenneth Clark is unable
to trace the provenance, may call for a word of reservation.
Doubt has been cast upon every portrait of Beau Brummell
which exists. Owing to the removal of the collection of
prints from the British Museum for the duration of the
present war, it was not possible to search through their
water-colours by Dighton for positive identification of this
one. But the intimately detailed description which we have
of Brummell from those who knew him seems to fit it. In
this picture the pose, the slightly starched elegance of the
white cravat which Brummell himself invented, the high
forehead, the grey eyes "full of oddity," the very expressive
eyebrows and mouth, above all, the broken nose which the
Beau as a soldier sustained by a fall from his horse ( about
eight years before 1805, the date given by Dighton in the
lower right corner), may upon the whole be considered
too individual to assign to any other character of the period.
With regard to my title, "The Reign of Beau Brummell,"
I would submit that the life of this man, from his boyhood
at Eton to his last days in Caen, was signalized by a kind
of sovereignty in character. In his own fashion he ruled
London, even after his quarrel with the Prince. Nor did
misfortune in exile subdue this regnant personality. He
was called the "King of Calais." At Caen, he still held his
levees, and though penniless, he maintained almost to the
end his sway over the drawing-rooms there both French
and English.
The biography of received standard, having now out
grown the abusive epithet "modern," is the study of a per
x