ide
is George IV., recovering from his drunken bout of last night. The
Beau's glass reflects his clean-complexioned face, his grey eyes, his
light brown hair, and sandy whiskers. A servant produces a shirt with
a 12-inch collar fixed to it, assists the Beau into it, arranges it,
and stands aside. The collar nearly hides the Beau's face. Now, with
his hand protected with a discarded shirt, he folds his collar down to
the required height. Now he takes his white stock and folds it
carefully round the collar; the stock is a foot high and slightly
starched. A supreme moment of artistic decision, and the stock and
collar take their perfect creases. In an hour or so he will be ready
to partake of a light meal with the royal gentleman. He will stand up
and survey himself in his morning dress, his regular, quiet suit. A
blue coat, light breeches fitting the leg well, a light waistcoat over
a waistcoat of some other colour, never a startling contrast, Hessian
boots, or top-boots and buckskins. There was nothing very peculiar
about his clothes except, as Lord Byron said, 'an exquisite
propriety.' His evening dress was a blue coat, white waistcoat, black
trousers buttoned at the ankle--these were of his own invention, and
one may say it was the wearing of them that made trousers more popular
than knee-breeches--striped silk stockings, and a white stock.

He was a man of perfect taste--of fastidious taste. On his tables lay
books of all kinds in fine covers. Who would suspect it? but the
Prince is leaning an arm on a copy of Ellis's 'Early English Metrical
Romances.' The Beau is a rhymer, an elegant verse-maker. Here we see
the paper-presser of Napoleon--I am flitting for the moment over some
years, and see him in his room in Calais--here we notice his passion
for buhl, his Sevres china painted with Court beauties.

In his house in Chapel Street he saw daily portraits of Nelson and
Pitt and George III. upon his walls. This is no Beau as we understand
the term, for we make it a word of contempt, a nickname for a feeble
fellow in magnificent garments. Rather this is the room of an educated
gentleman of 'exquisite propriety.'

He played high, as did most gentlemen; he was superstitious, as are
many of the best of men. That lucky sixpence with the hole in it that
you gave to a cabman, Beau Brummell, was that loss the commencement of
your downward career?

There are hundreds of anecdotes of Brummell which, despite those of
the 'Geor