Beau Brummell facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Beau Brummell
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Brummell, engraved from a miniature portrait
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George Bryan Brummell
7 June 1778 |
| Died | 30 March 1840 (aged 61) |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Eton College |
| Alma mater | Oriel College, Oxford |
George Bryan "Beau" Brummell (7 June 1778 – 30 March 1840) was an important figure in Regency England and, for many years, the arbiter of men's fashion. At one time, he was a close friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV, but after the two quarrelled and Brummell got into debt, he had to take refuge in France. Eventually, he died shabby and insane in Caen.
Brummell was remembered afterwards as the preeminent example of the dandy, and a whole literature was founded upon his manner and witty sayings, which have persisted until today. His name is still associated with style and good looks and has been given to a variety of modern products to suggest their high quality.
Contents
Life
Brummell was born in London, the younger son of Jane (née Richardson, daughter of the Keeper of the Lottery Office) and William Brummell (d. 1794), a confectioner in Bury Street, St. James's, later Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, Lord North. On his retirement from politics, William had bought Donnington Grove in Berkshire and served as High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1788.
The family had achieved middle class status, but William Brummell was ambitious for his son George to become a gentleman, and he was raised with that understanding. Brummell was educated at Eton College 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 fall out of favour. While an undergraduate at Oriel College in 1793, he competed for the Chancellor's Prize for Latin Verse, coming second to Edward Copleston, who later became provost of his college. He left the university after only a year at age sixteen.
Military career
In June 1794, Brummell joined the 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 Brummell had been promoted to lieutenant. His father had left him an inheritance of some £30,000. Ordinarily a considerable sum, it was inadequate for the expenses of an aspiring officer in the personal regiment of the Prince of Wales.
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. In 1797, 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. He became a noted figure in fashion and adopted a habit of dress that rejected overly ornate clothes in favour of understated but perfectly fitted and tailored bespoke garments. His daily dress was similar to that of other gentlemen in his time, based upon dark coats and full-length trousers (rather than knee breeches and stockings). Above all, Brummell favoured immaculate shirt linen and an elaborately knotted cravat. This mode of cravat-wearing has been described as Brummell's chief innovation.
Brummell took a house on Chesterfield Street in Mayfair and, for a time, managed to avoid the nightly gaming and other extravagances frequent 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", at a time when the average annual wage for a craftsman was £52. Additionally, he claimed that he took five hours a day to dress and recommended that boots be polished with champagne. This preoccupation with dress, coupled with a nonchalant display of wit, was referred to as dandyism.
Brummell put into practice the principles of harmony of shape and contrast of colours with such a pleasing result that men of superior rank sought his opinion on their own 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—the 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.
Downfall
A ball at Almack's, supposedly in 1815; the couple on the left are annotated as 'Beau Brummell in deep conversation with the Duchess of Rutland'.Brummell's wealthier friends influenced him; he began spending and gambling as though his fortune was as ample as theirs. He found it increasingly difficult to maintain his lifestyle as his spending continued over time, but his prominent position in society allowed him to float a line of credit.
In 1816, Brummell, owing thousands of pounds, fled to France to escape debtor's prison. 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 in 1830 through the influence of Lord Alvanley and the Duke of Beaufort. This provided him with a small annuity to fuel his new life in France; however, this lasted only two years because the Foreign Office acted on Brummell's recommendation to abolish the consulate. He had made it in the hope of being appointed to a more remunerative position elsewhere to regain some influence, but no new position was forthcoming, much to his detriment.
Rapidly running out of money and growing increasingly slovenly in his dress, his long-unpaid Calais creditors forced him into debtors' prison in 1835. Only through the charitable intervention of his friends in England was he able to secure his release later that year. In 1840, Brummell died at the age of 61, penniless at Le Bon Sauveur Asylum on the outskirts of Caen. He is buried at Cimetière Protestant, Caen, France.
In the arts
Artistic memorials
A very early portrait of Brummell, 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 painted a watercolour of Brummell at the elegant height of his dandyism and used it as the basis for a popular print in 1805. Two centuries later, it served as model for a 2002 statue of Brummell by Irena Sedlecká, erected in Jermyn Street. A plaque on the front of this statue is inscribed with his own words: "to be truly elegant, one should not be noticed." On the other side of Piccadilly, a blue plaque has marked Brummell's former home in Chesterfield Street since 1984, while in 2013, another plaque commemorated his name as a member of the hunting and dining club in Melton Mowbray.
Brummelliana
In literature, Brummell has been more extensively portrayed. Scarcely had he left England than he was satirised as the witty Bellair in the picaresque novel Six Weeks at Long's, by a Late Resident (1817), now ascribed to Eaton Stannard Barrett. A collection of the witticisms ascribed to him and of anecdotes about him followed under the title Brummelliana was republished many times in the following decades.
Literary portrayals
Brummell appears at length in The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, Written by Herself, (1825) as a former suitor of Harriette Wilson's friend Julia. Two more books were later dedicated to confirming Brummell as a cult figure. In England, there was Captain Jesse's two volume Life of George Brummell (1844), the first biography devoted to him. In France, there was the influential essay of Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly, "On Dandyism and George Brummell" (1845), which seeks to define the essence of dandyism through a study of his career and opinions.
Brummell's character also served as foundation for depiction of fictional dandies. Brummell appeared under his own name as a character in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1896 historical novel Rodney Stone.
Georgette Heyer, author of a number of Regency romance novels, included Brummell as a character in her 1935 novel Regency Buck.
A guarantee of style
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. In 1928, there were several Beau Brummel styles from the Illinois Watch Company and in 1948, LeCoultre marketed a Beau Brummel watch with a minimalist design and no numbers. In 2016, a men's skincare and shaving company launched using the name Beau Brummell for Men.
Various bands also adopted Brummell's name, beginning with Zack Whyte and His Chocolate Beau Brummels, a jazz-style dance band that toured between 1924 and 1935. During the 1960s, there were the rock bands such as The Beau Brummels from San Francisco and Beau Brummell Esquire and His Noble Men, the name used by South African born Michael Bush for his English group.
See also
In Spanish: Beau Brummell para niños
