George Bryan "Beau" Brummell was an iconic figure in Regency England, the arbiter of
men's fashion, and a friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV. He established
the mode of dress for men that rejected overly ornate fashions for one of understated, but
perfectly fitted and tailored bespoke garments. This look was based on dark coats, full-length
trousers rather than knee breeches and stockings, and above all immaculate shirt linen and an
elaborately knotted cravat. Beau Brummell is credited with introducing,
and establishing as fashion, the modern men's suit, worn with a necktie. He claimed he took
five hours a day to dress, and recommended that boots be polished with champagne. His
style of dress is often referred to as dandyism.
Biography Brummell was born in London, the younger son
of William Brummell, a politician, of Donnington Grove in Berkshire. The family was middle
class, but the elder Brummell was ambitious for his son to become a gentleman, and young
George was raised with that understanding. Brummell was educated at Eton and made his
precocious mark on fashion when he not only modernised the white stock, or cravat, that
was the mark of the Eton boy, but added a gold buckle to it.
He progressed to Oxford University, where, by his own example, he made cotton stockings
and dingy cravats a thing of the past. While an undergraduate at Oriel College in 1793,
he competed for the Chancellor's Prize for Latin Verse, coming second to Edward Copleston,
who was later to become provost of his college. He left the university after only a year at
the age of sixteen. Military career
In June 1794 Brummell joined the illustrious Tenth Royal Hussars as a cornet, the lowest
rank of commissioned officer, and soon after had his nose broken by a kick from a horse.
His father died in 1795, by which time George had been promoted to lieutenant. His father
had left an inheritance of £65,000, of which Brummell was entitled to a third. Ordinarily
a considerable sum, it was inadequate for the expenses of an aspiring officer in the
personal regiment of the Prince of Wales. The officers, many of whom were heirs to noble
titles and lands, "wore their estates upon their backs – some of them before they had
inherited the paternal acres." Officers in any military regiment were required to provide
their own mounts and uniforms and to pay mess bills, but the 10th in particular had elaborate,
nearly endless variations of uniform; also, their mess expenses were unusually high as
the regiment did not stint itself on banquets or entertainment.
For such a junior officer, Brummell took the regiment by storm, fascinating the prince,
'the first gentleman of England', by the force of his personality. He was allowed to miss
parade, shirk his duties and, in essence, do just as he pleased. Within three years,
by 1796, he was made a captain, to the envy and disgust of older officers who felt that
"our general’s friend was now the general." When his regiment was sent from London to
Manchester he immediately resigned his commission, citing the city's poor reputation, undistinguished
ambience and want of culture and civility. In London society
Although he was now a civilian, Brummell's friendship with, and influence over, the Prince
continued. His simple yet elegant and understated manner of dress, coupled with his natural
wit, gained him entry to the Prince's society. The life and the daily routine of most aristocratic
men of the time included making one's toilette and shopping in the morning; riding in Hyde
Park or making the round of gentlemen’s clubs in the afternoon; followed by the theatre,
gambling at Almack's or a private party, or visiting the brothels in the evening. Brummell
took a house on Chesterfield Street in Mayfair and for a time managed to avoid the nightly
gaming and other extravagances fashionable in such elevated circles. Where he refused
to economise was on his dress: when asked how much it would cost to keep a single man
in clothes, he was said to have replied: "Why, with tolerable economy, I think it might be
done with £800." That amount is approximately £103,000 in 2012 currency; the average wage
for a craftsman at that time was £1 a week. Brummell put into practice the principles
of harmony of shape and contrast of colors with such a pleasing result that men of superior
rank sought his opinion on their dress.
The Duke of Bedford once did this touching a coat. Brummell examined his Grace with the
cool impertinence which was his Grace’s due. He turned him about, scanned him with
scrutinizing, contemptuous eye, and then taking the lapel between his dainty finger and thumb,
he exclaimed in a tone of pitying wonder, “Bedford do you call this thing a coat?”
His personal habits, such as a fastidious attention to cleaning his teeth, shaving,
and daily bathing exerted an influence on the ton, upper echelons of polite society,
who began to do likewise. Enthralled, the Prince would spend hours in Brummell's dressing
room, witnessing the progress of his friend's lengthy morning toilette.
Unfortunately, Brummell's wealthy friends had a less than satisfactory influence on
him; he began spending and gambling as though his fortune were as ample as theirs. Such
liberal outlay began to deplete his capital rapidly, and he found it increasingly difficult
to maintain his lifestyle, although his prominent position in society still allowed him to float
a line of credit. This changed on July 1813, at a masquerade ball at Watier's private club,
when Brummell, who was one of the hosts, openly antagonised the Prince Regent, thereby forcing
society to choose between them. Brummell, Lord Alvanley, Henry Mildmay and
Henry Pierrepoint were considered the prime movers of Watier's, dubbed "the Dandy Club"
by Byron. The four were joint hosts of the ball, at which the Prince Regent greeted Alvanley
and Pierrepoint but then "cut" Brummell and Mildmay by staring them in the face without
speaking to them. This provoked Brummell's famous remark, "Alvanley, who's your fat friend?"
The incident marked the final breach in a rift between the Brummell and the Regent that
had opened in 1811, when the Prince became Regent and began abandoning all his old Whig
friends. Ordinarily, the loss of royal favour to a favourite meant social doom, but Brummell
ran as much on the approval and friendship of other leaders of fashionable circles. He
became the anomaly of a favourite flourishing without a patron, still influencing fashion
and courted by a large segment of society. Later life
In 1816 Brummell fled to France to escape debtor's prison, owing thousands of pounds.
Usually Brummell's gambling obligations, as "debts of honour", were always paid immediately.
The one exception to this was the final wager, dated March 1815 in White's betting book,
which was marked "not paid, 20th January, 1816".
He lived the remainder of his life in French exile, spending ten years in Calais without
an official passport before acquiring an appointment to the consulate at Caen through the influence
of Lord Alvanley and the Marquess of Worcester, only in the reign of William IV. This provided
him with a small annuity. This appointment lasted two years, until the Foreign Office
took Brummell's recommendation to abolish the consulate at Caen. Brummell had made it
in the hope of being appointed to a more remunerative position elsewhere, but no new position was
forthcoming. Brummell rapidly ran out of money and was forced into debtors' prison by his
long unpaid Calais creditors; only through the charitable intervention of his friends
in England was he able to secure release. Brummell died penniless and insane from syphilis
at Le Bon Sauveur Asylum on the outskirts of Caen in 1840.
Cricket While at Eton, Brummell is said to have once
terrified a master by asserting that he thought cricket "foolish". He did, however, play a
single first-class match for pre-county club Hampshire in 1807 against an early England
side. Brummell made scores of 23 and 3 on that occasion, leaving him with a career batting
average of 13.00. Artistic and literary portrayal
A very early portrait of George, along with his elder brother William, occurs in the Joshua
Reynolds painting of the curly-headed Brummell children, dating from 1781 and now in the
Kenwood House collection. The caricaturist Richard Dighton was later to paint a watercolour
of Brummell at the elegant height of his dandyism and use it as the basis for a popular print
in 1805. Two centuries on it served again as model for the 2002 statue of Brummell by
Irena Sedlecká erected in Jermyn Street. An earlier American work of art bearing Brummell's
name is in the grounds of Augusta College, Georgia. Created by Roger Finch, it is an
abstract sculpture of black-painted welded steel dating from 1985.
In literature, Brummell left a more extensive mark. Scarcely had he left England than a
collection of witticisms ascribed to him and of anecdotes about him appeared under the
title "Brummelliana" and was republished many times in the following decades. This began
with the notorious story of his enquiring the identity of his companion's 'fat friend'.
William Hazlitt borrowed the same title of "Brummelliana" for an unsympathetic essay
published in 1828, referring to some of these stories and repeating others uncollected there.
Dandyism also came under attack in George Robert Wythen Baxter's satirical essay "Kiddyism",
published in humorous journals from 1832 onwards, which culminates in a set of satirical aphorisms
purporting to be yet more "Brummelliana". Further fictitous aphorisms were published
in France by Honoré de Balzac in the course of a series of articles published under the
title Traité de la vie élégante. These sayings were supposed to have arisen during
an interview with Brummell in Bologna, rather than Calais, and epitomise his view of 'the
elegant life'. In the following decade two more books were dedicated to confirming Brummell
as a cult figure. In England there was Captain Jesse's two volume Life of George Brummell,
the first biography devoted to him. In France there was the influential essay of Barbey
d’Aurevilly, Du dandysme et de George Brummell, which seeks to define the essence of dandyism
through a study of his career and opinions. In the course of his essay, Barbey d’Aurevilly
deprecates English attempts to portray Brummell in fiction. "Within Brummell's lifetime two
well-known authors took up their pen – sharpened to exquisite points and dipped in musk-scented
Chinese ink – to cast on blue-tinted paper with silver borders a few facile lines where
one catches a glimpse of Brummell." He was referring to two liminal examples of the fashionable
or silver fork novel of which more than a thousand were to be written over the next
two decades. The first such depiction is through the character Trebeck in Thomas Henry Lister’s
Granby, who abandons dandyism when he discovers a waistcoat of his devising worn by ‘a natty
apprentice’. In Bulwer Lytton's 1828 novel Pelham, the hero of the title portrays a dandy
who, at one point, passes through Calais and meets the inspiration of his way of life in
the character of Mr. Russelton. The latter is modeled on Brummell and to him are attributed
such stories from the Brummell apocrypha as his once needing three tailors to contribute
to the making of his gloves and the sartorial insult, "Do you call this a coat?"
Brummell was to appear under his own name as a character in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1896
historical novel Rodney Stone. In this, the title character's uncle, Charles Tregellis,
is the center of the London fashion world, until Brummell ultimately supplants him. Tregellis's
subsequent death from mortification serves as a deus ex machina in that it resolves Rodney
Stone's family poverty. In the United States, Brummell's life was
dramatised in an 1890 stage play in four acts by Clyde Fitch with Richard Mansfield as the
'Beau'. This in turn was adapted for the Beau Brummel movie with John Barrymore and Mary
Astor. Another play about him, authored by Bertram P Matthews, is only remembered because
it had incidental music written for it by Edward Elgar. It was staged at the Theatre
Royal, Birmingham in November 1928, with Elgar himself conducting the orchestra on its first
night. Only the minuet from this is now performed. Brummell's later years were the setting for
Ron Hutchinson's 2001 two-handed play The Beau, which following a UK national tour played
for one month at Theatre Royal Haymarket, starring Peter Bowles as Brummell.
Earlier movies included a 10-minute film by the Vitagraph Company of America, based on
a Booth Tarkington story, and the 1913 Beau Brummell and his Bride, a short comedy made
by the Edison Company. Brummell's life was also made the subject of a 1931 three-act
operetta by Reynaldo Hahn, later broadcast by Radio-Lille. In 1937 there was a radio
drama on Lux Radio Theater with Robert Montgomery as Brummell. A further film, Beau Brummell,
was made in 1954 with Stewart Granger playing the title role and Elizabeth Taylor as Lady
Patricia Belham. There were also two television dramas: the sixty-minute So war Herr Brummell
and the UK Beau Brummell: This Charming Man.
Georgette Heyer, author of a number of Regency romance novels, included Brummell as a character
in her 1935 novel Regency Buck. He is also referred to, or figures as a minor character,
in the work of later writers of this genre. More recently, Brummell was made the detective-hero
of a series of period mysteries by Californian novelist Rosemary Stevens, starting with Death
on a Silver Tray in 2000. These are written as if related by their hero. Yet another American
reinterpretation of his character appears in Cecilia Ryan's homoerotic novella The Sartorialist.
In popular culture Brummell's name became associated with style
and good looks and was therefore borrowed for a variety of products or alluded to in
songs and poetry. One example was the paint colour Beau Brummel Brown, used exclusively
on the 1931 Oldsmobile. In 1934 a rhododendron hybridised by Lionel de Rothschild was named
after the dandy. Then during the 1940s and 1950s watchmaker LeCoultre marketed a Beau
Brummel watch with a minimalist design and no numbers.
T. S. Eliot's poem about "Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town" refers to him as the "Brummell
of Cats", an allusion taken up in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, the 1981 musical based on Eliot's
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Another reference appears in the 1977 musical Annie
in the song "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile": "Your clothes may be Beau Brummelly,
they stand out a mile." Around that time too other allusions to Brummell appeared in pop
and rock lyrics, but the name had already been adopted by rock bands in the 1960s: the
faux-British Invasion band The Beau Brummels and Beau Brummell Esquire and His Noble Men,
the name used by South African born Michael Bush for his English rock group.
Further reading Jesse, Captain William. The Life of Beau Brummell.
Published in two volumes Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules. Of Dandyism and
of George Brummell, 1845 Wharton, Grace and Philip. Wits and Beaux
of Society. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1861
Lewis, Melville. Beau Brummell: His Life and Letters. New York: Doran, 1925
Campbell, Kathleen. Beau Brummell. London: Hammond, 1948
Moers, Ellen. The Dandy: Brummell to Beerbohm. London: Secker and Warburg, 1960
Nicolay, Claire. Origins and Reception of Regency Dandyism: Brummell to Baudelaire.
Ph.D. diss., Loyola U of Chicago, 1998 Kelly, Ian. Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Dandy.
Hodder & Stoughton, 2005 Notes
External links "Brummel, George Bryan". The American Cyclopædia.
1879.