by Lord Byron
The other night, at a ball, I was presented by order to our gracious Regent, who honoured me with some conversation, and professed a predilection for poetry. — I confess it was a most unexpected honour, and I thought of poor Brummell’s adventure, with some apprehension of a similar blunder. I have now great hope, in the event of Mr. Pye’s decease, of “warbling truth at court,” like Mr. Mallet of indifferent memory. — Consider, one hundred marks a year! besides the wine and the disgrace; but then remorse would make me drown myself in my own butt before the year’s end, or the finishing of my first dithyrambic. — So that, after all, I shall not meditate our laureate’s death by pen or poison.
Will you present my best respects to Lady Holland? and believe me, hers and yours very sincerely.
Byron.
“But, oh, the basest of defections!
His Letter about ‘predilections’ —
His own dear Letter, void of grace,
Now flew up in its parent’s face! “
And again, in the “Parody of a Celebrated Letter”:
“I am proud to declare I have no predilections,
My heart is a sieve, where some scatter’d affections
Are just danc’d about for a moment or two,
And the finer they are, the more sure to run through.”
George Brummell went from Eton to Oriel College, Oxford, where his undergraduate career is traced in “Trebeck,” a character in Lister’s Granby (1826). From Oxford Brummell entered the Tenth Hussars, a favourite regiment of the Prince of Wales. Well-built and well-mannered, possessed of admirable tact, witty and original in conversation, inexhaustible in good temper and good stories, a master of impudence and banter, the new cornet made himself so agreeable to the prince that, at the latter’s marriage, Brummell attended him, both at St. James’s and to Windsor, as “a kind of chevalier d’honneur.” In 1798 Brummell left the army with the rank of captain. A year later he came of age, and settled at 4, Chesterfield Street, Mayfair.
On his intimacy with the Prince Regent, Brummell founded the extraordinary position which he achieved in society. Fashion was in those days a power; and he was its dictator — the oracle, both for men and women, of taste, manners, and dress. His ascendency rested in some degree on solid foundations. He was not a mere fop, but conspicuous for the quiet neatness of his dress — for “a certain exquisite propriety,” as Byron described it to Leigh Hunt — and, at a time when the opposite was common, for the scrupulous cleanliness of his person and his linen. An excellent dancer, clever at vers de société, an agreeable singer, a talented artist, a judge of china, buhl, and other objects of virtù, a collector of snuff-boxes, a connoisseur in canes, he had gifts which might have raised him above the Bond Street flaneur, or the idler at Watier’s Club. Well-read in a desultory fashion, he wrote verses which were not without merit in their class. The following are the first and last stanzas of The Butterfly’s Funeral, a poem which was suggested by Mrs. Dorset’s Peacock at Home and Roscoe’s Butterfly’s Ball: —
“Oh ye! who so lately were blythsome and gay,
At the Butterfly’s banquet carousing away;
Your feasts and your revels of pleasure are fled,
For the soul of the banquet, the Butterfly’s dead!
...
And here shall the daisy and violet blow,
And the lily discover her bosom of snow;
While under the leaf, in the evenings of spring,
Still mourning his friend, shall the grasshopper sing.”
In the days of his prosperity (1799-1816), Brummell knew everybody to whose acquaintance he condescended. His Album, in which he collected 226 pieces of poetry, many by himself, others by celebrities of the day, is a curious proof of his popularity. It contains contributions from such persons as the Duchess of Devonshire, Erskine, Lord John Townshend, Sheridan, General Fitzpatrick, William Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne) and his brother George, and Byron. Lady Hester Stanhope (Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 280-283) knew him well. She describes him “riding in Bond Street, with his bridle between his fore-finger and thumb, as if he held a pinch of snuff;” gives many instances of his audacious effrontery, and yet concludes that “the man was no fool,” and that she “should like to see him again.”
The story that Brummell told the Prince Regent to ring the bell was denied by him. A more probable version of the story is given in Jesse’s Life of Beau Brummell (vol. i. p. 255),
“that one evening, when Brummell and Lord Moira were engaged in earnest conversation at Carlton House, the prince requested the former to ring the bell, and that he replied without reflection, ‘Your Royal Highness is close to it,’ upon which the prince rang the bell and ordered his friend’s carriage, but that Lord Moira’s intervention caused the unintentional liberty to be overlooked.”
The rupture between them is attributed by Jesse to Mrs. Fitzherbert’s influence. Whatever the cause, the prince cut his former friend. A short time afterwards, Brummell, walking with Lord Alvanley, met the prince leaning on the arm of Lord Moira. As the prince, who stopped to speak to Lord Alvanley, was moving on, Brummell said to his companion, “Alvanley, who’s your fat friend?” In the Twopenny Postbag Moore makes the Regent say, in the “Parody of a Celebrated Letter”:
“Neither have I resentments, or wish there should come ill
To mortal — except, now I think on it, Beau Brummell,
Who threatened last year, in a superfine passion,
To cut me, and bring the old king into fashion.”
Brummell’s position withstood the loss of the Regent’s friendship. He became one of the most frequent visitors to the Duke and Duchess of York, at Oatlands Park (Journal of T. Raikes, vol. i. p. 146); and his friendship with the duchess lasted till her death.
He was ruined by gambling at Watier’s Club, of which he was perpetual president. This club, which was in Piccadilly, at the corner of Bolton Street, was originally founded, in 1807, by Lord Headfort, John Madocks, and other young men, for musical gatherings. But glees and snatches soon gave way to superlative dinners and gambling at macao. Byron, Moore, and William Spencer belonged to Watier’s — the only men of letters admitted within its precincts. From 1814 to 1816 Brummell lost heavily; he could obtain no further supplies, and was completely ruined. In his distress he wrote to Scrope Davies, in May, 1816:
“My Dear Scrope, — Lend me two hundred pounds; the banks are shut, and all my money is in the three per cents. It shall be repaid to-morrow morning.
Yours,
George Brummell.
The reply illustrates Byron’s remark that
“Scrope Davies is a wit, and a man of the world, and feels as much as such a character can do.”
“My Dear George, — ’Tis very unfortunate, but all my money is in the three per cents.
Yours,
S. Davies.
On May 17,
“obliged,” says Byron (Detached Thoughts), “by that affair of poor Meyler, who thence acquired the name of ‘Dick the Dandykiller’ — (it was about money and debt and all that) — to retire to France,”
Brummell took flight to Dover, and crossed to Calais. Watier’s Club died a natural death, in 1819, from the ruin of most of its members.
Amongst Brummell’s effects at Chesterfield Street was a screen which he was making for the Duchess of York. The sixth panel was occupied by Byron and Napoleon, placed opposite each other; the former, surrounded with flowers, had a wasp in his throat (Jesse’s Life, vol. i. p. 361). At Calais Brummell bought a French grammar to study the language. When Scrope Davies was asked, says Byron (Detached Thoughts),
“what progress Brummell had made in French, he responded ‘that Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the Elements.’ I have put this pun into Beppo, which is ‘a fair exchange and no robbery;’ for Scrope made his fortune at several dinners (as he owned himself) by repeating occasionally as his own some of the buffooneries with which I had en
countered him in the morning.”
Brummell died, in 1840, at Caen, after making acquaintance with the inside of the debtor’s prison in that town — imbecile, and in the asylum of the Bon Sauveur. He is buried in the Protestant cemetery of Caen. France has raised a more lasting monument to his fame in Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Du Dandysme et de Georges Brummell (1845).
“With Spartan Pye lull England to repose,
Or frighten children with Lenora’s woes;”
and again (ibid., lines 79, 80):
“Why should I faint when all with patience hear,
And laureat Pye sings more than twice a year?”
His birthday odes were so full of “vocal groves and feathered choirs,” that George Steevens broke out with the lines:
“When the pie was opened,” etc.
Pye’s magnum opus was Alfred (1801), an epic poem in six books.
240 — to Professor Clarke
St. James’s Street, June 26, 1812.
Will you accept my very sincere congratulations on your second volume, wherein I have retraced some of my old paths, adorned by you so beautifully, that they afford me double delight? The part which pleases me best, after all, is the preface, because it tells me you have not yet closed labours, to yourself not unprofitable, nor without gratification, for what is so pleasing as to give pleasure? I have sent my copy to Sir Sidney Smith, who will derive much gratification from your anecdotes of Djezzar, his “energetic old man.” I doat upon the Druses; but who the deuce are they with their Pantheism? I shall never be easy till I ask them the question. How much you have traversed! I must resume my seven leagued boots and journey to Palestine, which your description mortifies me not to have seen more than ever. I still sigh for the Ægean. Shall not you always love its bluest of all waves, and brightest of all skies? You have awakened all the gipsy in me. I long to be restless again, and wandering; see what mischief you do, you won’t allow gentlemen to settle quietly at home. I will not wish you success and fame, for you have both, but all the happiness which even these cannot always give.
“a little, square, pale, flat-faced, good-natured-looking, fussy man, with very intelligent eyes, yet great credulity of countenance, and still greater benevolence.”
Byron met Clarke at Cambridge in November, 1811, discussed Greece with him, and was relieved to find that he knew “no Romaic.” Clarke was an indefatigable traveller, and, as he was a botanist, mineralogist, antiquary, and numismatist, he made good use of his opportunities. The marbles, including the Eleusinian Ceres, which he brought home, are in the Fitzwilliam Museum. His mineralogical collections were purchased, after his death, by the University of Cambridge; and his coins by Payne Knight. His Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa appeared at intervals, from 1810 to 1823, in six quarto volumes. The following letter was written by Clarke to Byron, after the appearance of Childe Harold:
“Trumpington, Wednesday morning.
Dear Lord Byron, — From the eagerness which I felt to make known my opinions of your poem before others had expressed any upon the subject, I waited upon you to deliver my hasty, although hearty, commendation. If it be worthy your acceptance, take it once more, in a more deliberate form! Upon my arrival in town I found that Mathias entirely coincided with me. ‘Surely,’ said I to him, ‘Lord Byron, at this time of life, cannot have experienced such keen anguish as those exquisite allusions to what older men may have felt seem to denote!’ This was his answer: ‘I fear he has — he could not else have written such a poem.’ This morning I read the second canto with all the attention it so highly merits, in the peace and stillness of my study; and I am ready to confess I was never so much affected by any poem, passionately fond of poetry as I have been from my earliest youth….
“The eighth stanza, ‘Yet if as holiest men,’ etc., has never been surpassed. In the twenty-third, the sentiment is at variance with Dryden:
‘Strange cozenage! none would live past years again.’
And it is perhaps an instance wherein, for the first time, I found not within my own breast an echo to your thought, for I would not ‘be once more a boy;’ but the generality of men will agree with you, and wish to tread life’s path again.
In the twelfth stanza of the same canto, you might really add a very curious note to these lines:
‘Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
Yet felt some portion of their mother’s pains,’
by stating this fact: When the last of the Metopes was taken from the Parthenon, and, in moving it, a great part of the superstructure with one of the triglyphs, was thrown down by the work men whom Lord Elgin employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took his pipe out of his mouth, dropped a tear, and, in a supplicating tone of voice, said to Lusieri — I was present at the time.
Once more I thank you for the gratification you have afforded me.
Believe me, ever yours most truly,
E. D. Clarke.”
241 — To Walter Scott
St. James’s Street, July 6, 1812.
Sir, — I have just been honoured with your letter. — I feel sorry that you should have thought it worth while to notice the “evil works of my nonage,” as the thing is suppressed voluntarily, and your explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The Satire was written when I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying my wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale assertions. I cannot sufficiently thank you for your praise; and now, waving myself, let me talk to you of the Prince Regent. He ordered me to be presented to him at a ball; and after some sayings peculiarly pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your immortalities: he preferred you to every bard past and present, and asked which of your works pleased me most. It was a difficult question. I answered, I thought the Lay. He said his own opinion was nearly similar. In speaking of the others, I told him that I thought you more particularly the poet of Princes, as they never appeared more fascinating than in Marmion and the Lady of the Lake. He was pleased to coincide, and to dwell on the description of your Jameses as no less royal than poetical. He spoke alternately of Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both; so that (with the exception of the Turks and your humble servant) you were in very good company. I defy Murray to have exaggerated his Royal Highness’s opinion of your powers, nor can I pretend to enumerate all he said on the subject; but it may give you pleasure to hear that it was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe it, and with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as confined to manners, certainly superior to those of any living gentleman.
This interview was accidental. I never went to the levée; for having seen the courts of Mussulman and Catholic sovereigns, my curiosity was sufficiently allayed; and my politics being as perverse as my rhymes, I had, in fact, “no business there.” To be thus praised by your Sovereign must be gratifying to you; and if that gratification is not alloyed by the communication being made through me, the bearer of it will consider himself very fortunately and sincerely,
Your obliged and obedient servant,
Byron.
P.S. — Excuse this scrawl, scratched in a great hurry, and just after a journey.
“But the Prince’s great delight,” says Murray, “was Walter Scott, whose name and writings he dwelt upon and recurred to incessantly. He preferred him far beyond any other poet of the time, repeated several passages with fervour, and criticized them faithfully…. Lord Byron called upon me, merely to let off the raptures of the Prince respecting you, thinking, as he said, that if I were likely to have occasion to write to you, it might not be ungrateful for you to hear of his praises.”
Scott’s answer (July 2) enclosed the following letter from himself to Byron:
“Edinburgh, July 3d, 1812.
“My Lord, — I am uncertain if I ought
to profit by the apology which is afforded me, by a very obliging communication from our acquaintance, John Murray, of Fleet Street, to give your Lordship the present trouble. But my intrusion concerns a large debt of gratitude due to your Lordship, and a much less important one of explanation, which I think I owe to myself, as I dislike standing low in the opinion of any person whose talents rank so highly in my own, as your Lordship’s most deservedly do.
“The first count, as our technical language expresses it, relates to the high pleasure I have received from the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold, and from its precursors; the former, with all its classical associations, some of which are lost on so poor a scholar as I am, possesses the additional charm of vivid and animated description, mingled with original sentiment; but besides this debt, which I owe your Lordship in common with the rest of the reading public, I have to acknowledge my particular thanks for your having distinguished by praise, in the work which your Lordship rather dedicated in general to satire, some of my own literary attempts. And this leads me to put your Lordship right in the circumstances respecting the sale of Marmion, which had reached you in a distorted and misrepresented form, and which, perhaps, I have some reason to complain, were given to the public without more particular inquiry. The poem, my Lord, was not written upon contract for a sum of money — though it is too true that it was sold and published in a very unfinished state (which I have since regretted), to enable me to extricate myself from some engagements which fell suddenly upon me by the unexpected misfortunes of a very near relation. So that, to quote statute and precedent, I really come under the case cited by Juvenal, though not quite in the extremity of the classic author:
‘Esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven.’
And so much for a mistake, into which your Lordship might easily fall, especially as I generally find it the easiest way of stopping sentimental compliments on the beauty, etc., of certain poetry, and the delights which the author must have taken in the composition, by assigning the readiest reason that will cut the discourse short, upon a subject where one must appear either conceited or affectedly rude and cynical.