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BEAU BRUMMELL AND CLOTHES

_'A person, my dear, who will probably come and speak to
us; and if he enters into conversation, be careful to
give him a favourable impression of you, for,' and she
sunk her voice to a whisper, 'he is the celebrated Mr.
Brummell.'_--'Life of Beau Brummell,' Captain Jesse.

Those who care to make the melancholy pilgrimage may see, in the
Protestant Cemetery at Caen, the tomb of George Bryan Brummell. He
died, at the age of sixty-two, in 1840.

It is indeed a melancholy pilgrimage to view the tomb of that once
resplendent figure, to think, before the hideous grave, of the witty,
clever, foolish procession from Eton to Oriel College, Oxford; from
thence to a captaincy in the 10th Hussars, from No. 4 Chesterfield
Street to No. 13 Chapel Street, Park Lane; from Chapel Street a flight
to Calais; from Calais to Paris; and then, at last, to Caen, and the
bitter, bitter end, mumbling and mad, to die in the Bon Sauveur.

Place him beside the man who once pretended to be his friend, the man
of whom Thackeray spoke so truly: 'But a bow and a grin. I try and
take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat
with frogs and a fur coat, a star and a blue ribbon, a pocket
handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty-brown
wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth, and a huge black stock,
under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then nothing.'

Nothing! Thackeray is right; absolutely nothing remains of this King
George of ours but a sale list of his wardrobe, a wardrobe which
fetched L15,000 second-hand--a wardrobe that had been a man. He
invented a shoe-buckle 1 inch long and 5 inches broad. He wore a pink
silk coat with white cuffs. He had 5,000 steel beads on his hat. He
was a coward, a good-natured, contemptible voluptuary. Beside him, in
our eyes, walks for a time the elegant figure of Beau Brummell. I have
said that Brummell was the inventor of modern dress: it is true. He
was the Beau who raised the level of dress from the slovenly, dirty
linen, the greasy hair, the filthy neckcloth, the crumbled collar, to
a position, ever since held by Englishmen, of quiet, unobtrusive
cleanliness, decent linen, an abhorrence of striking forms of dress.

He made clean linen and washing daily a part of English life.

See him seated before his dressing-glass, a mahogany-framed sliding
cheval glass with brass arms on either sides for candles. By his s