that we are ordered to Manchester. Now, you must be aware how disagreeable this is to me! I really could not go think, your Royal Highness-Manchester! Besides, you would not be there. I have, therefore, determined, with your Royal Highness' permission, to sell out." The flattery was well-timed, and secured the Prince's acqui escence. A year afterwards Brummel came into possession of his fortune, which had accumulated, during his minority, to thirty thousand pounds. He then took a house in May Fair, 4, Chesterfield-street, in which street George Selwyn resided some forty years previously. Brummel soon became famed for the excellence of his dinners, and the Prince was more than once his guest. Brummel subsequently removed to 22, South-street. He was not a mere coxcomb, but already a man of great shrewdness and observation, and strong satirical spirit. Madame de Stael is said to have stood in awe of him, and considered her having failed to please him as her greatest misfortune; whilst she placed the Prince of Wales having neglected to call upon her, only as a secondary cause of lamentation. However, Brummel is best known by his excess of affectation, which often resembled humour. An acquaintance, in a morning call, having recently been travelling in the north of England, persisted in cross-questioning Brummel about the Lakes-which did he like best? Tired at length of affected raptures, Brummel turned to his valet, who chanced to be in the room- "Robinson ?" 66 Sir?" "Which of the Lakes do I admire ?" "Windermere, sir," replied the valet, who understood his master's humour. "Ah! yes, Windermere," repeated Brummel; SO it is,-Windermere.' 66 The intimacy between Brummel and the Prince lasted some years; the quarrel which led to the estrangement is variously related: some said it was owing to Brummel desiring the Prince to ring the bell, an assertion which the Beau stoutly denied. Moore sings: "Neither have I resentments, nor wish there should come ill To cut me, and bring the old King into fashion.' Others said the offence arose from the friend's ridicule of the favourite mistress Fitzherbert. Brummel protested that it was he who had cut the Prince, in public, in the following manner :— Riding one day with a friend, who happened to be otherwise regarded, and encountering the Prince, who spoke to the friend, without noticing Brummel, he affected the air of one who waits aloof while a stranger is present; and then, when the great man was moving off, said to his companion, loud enough for the other to hear, "Eh! who is our fat friend?" 66 Although the loss of his royal friend estranged many from Brummel, they generally suffered for their time-serving. A notable instance of this occurred to a lady of fashion, named Thompson, residing near Grosvenor-square, and who had a formidable rival in a Mrs. Johnson of Finsbury-square. The West-end lady gave a ball, at which the Prince had consented to be present, Brummel of course not being invited. Great, then, was the lady's surprise when, at the moment she expected the Prince's arrival, in walked the unasked and obnoxious Beau Brummel. The lady indignantly walked forth from the circle of her friends, and informed Brummel that he had not been invited. "Not invited, madam, not invited ?" said the unwelcome visitor, in his blandest tones; surely there must be some mistake;" and, leisurely feeling in all his pockets to spin out the time, and give a better chance for the Prince's arrival, while the hostess was in agony, he at length drew forth a card, which he presented to her. At a glance she saw it was that of her East-end rival, and, returning it hastily, she exclaimed, "That card, sir, is a Mrs. Johnson's; my name is Thompson." "Is it, indeed ?" replied Brummel, affecting much surprise. "Dear me, how unfortunate! really, Mrs. John-Thompson, I mean, I am very sorry for this mistake; but, you know, Johnson and Thompson, Thompson and Johnson, are so much the same kind of thing. Mrs. Thompson, I wish you a very good evening." And, making one of his most elaborate bows, he retired, slowly and mincingly, amidst the illsuppressed laughter of all present, except the hostess herself, who was bursting with indignation, and totally at a loss to reply to such matchless effrontery. Here are a few more of Brummel's affectations, first collected in the Literary Pocket-book. Having taken it into his head, at one time, to eat no vegetables, and being asked by a lady if he had never eaten any in his life, hẻ said, "Yes, madam, I once ate a pea." Being met limping in Bond-street, and asked what was the matter, he said he had hurt his leg, and "the worst of it was, it was his favourite leg." Somebody inquiring where he was going to dine the next day, was told that he really did not know; they put me in my coach, and take me somewhere." 66 He pronounced of a fashionable tailor that he made a good coat, an exceedingly good coat-all but the collar; nobody could achieve a good collar but his tailor. Having borrowed some money of a City beau, whom he patronized in return, he was one day asked to repay it, upon which he thus complained to a friend, "Do you know what has happened?" "No." "Why, do you know, there's that fellow Tomkins, who lent me five hundred pounds; he has had the face to ask me for it; and yet I had called the dog Tom, and let myself dine with him." "You have a cold, Mr. Brummel," observed one of a sympathising group. "Why, do you know," said he, "that on the Brightonroad, the other day, my infidel valet put me into a room with a damp stranger." Being asked if he like port, he said, with an air of difficult recollection, "Port? port ?-oh, port!-oh, ay; what, the hot intoxicating liquor so much drunk by the lower orders ?" A beggar petitioned him for charity, "even if it was only a farthing." "Fellow," said Brummel, softening the disdain of the appellation in the gentleness of his tone, "I don't know the coin." Having thought himself invited to somebody's country-seat, and being given to understand, after one night's lodging, that he was error, he told an unconscious friend in town, who asked him what sort of place it was, "that it was an exceedingly good place for stopping one night in." in Speaking lightly of a man, and wishing to convey his maximum of contemptuous feeling, he said, "He is a fellow, now, that would send his plate up twice for soup.' It was his opinion, that port, not porter, should be taken with cheese. "A gentleman," said he, "never malts with his cheese; he always ports." Yet this is counter to his estimate of port. It being supposed that he once failed in a matrimonial speculation, somebody condoled with him; upon which he smiled, with an air of better knowledge on that point, and said, with a sort of indifferent feel of his neckcloth, "Why, sir, the truth is, I had great reluctance in cutting the connexion, but what could I do? (here he looked deploring and conclusive). Sir, I discovered that the wretch positively ate cabbage." When he went visiting, he is reported to have taken with him costly and elaborate dressing apparatus, including a silver basin; "for," said he, "it is impossible to spit in clay." On reference being made to him as to what sum would be sufficient to meet the annual expenditure for clothes, he said that, "with a moderate degree of prudence and economy, 1 thought it might be managed for eight hundred a year." "For He told a friend that he was reforming his way of life. instance," said he, "I sup early, I take a-a-little lobster, an apricot-puff, or so, and some burnt-champagne, about twelve; and my man gets me to bed by three." Brummel maintained his supremacy in the fashionable world several years after he had been cast off by the Prince. But, in the end the Beau was ruined by gaming, and he was compelled to quit England, and take up his abode at Calais. It has been said, ludicrously enough, that Brummel and Bonaparte fell together. The Moscow of the former, according to his own account, was a crooked sixpence, to the possession of which his good fortune was attached, but which he unfortunately lost. Nevertheless, Brummel had not lost his friends: he subsisted long at Calais chiefly upon their bounty. He obtained the appointment of English Consul at Caen, where, however, he soon became deeply involved in debt: in the hope of getting a more lucrative situation, he addressed his former friend, Lord Palmerston, then in office, stating the consulate at Caen to be useless: his lordship thanked him for the information, but forgot to provide him with any other situation. He was again thrown upon the charity of his friends; but paralysis more than once attacked him; he was flung into prison at Caen by his French creditors, and confined there upwards of two months. On his release, he fell into idiotcy; he was placed by friends in the hospital of the Bon Sauveur, in a room that had once been occupied by the celebrated Bourrienne. Here he died, March 30, 1840-a deplorable instance of wasted fortune and reckless folly, reminding us, that beaux, like princes, find but few real friends. HOBY, THE BOOTMAKER. Hoby, of St. James's-street, was not only the greatest and most fashionable bootmaker, but a Methodist preacher at Islington. He was said to employ three hundred workmen; and was privileged to say all sorts of things to his customers, whom he sometimes annoyed with his humour. Horace Churchill, an ensign in the Guards, one day entered Hoby's shop in a great passion, saying that his boots were so ill-made that he should never employ Hoby for the future. Hoby gravely called to his shopman, "John, close the shutters. is all over with us. I must shut up shop. Ensign Churchill with draws his custom from me." It The Hoby was bootmaker to the Duke of Kent. Calling on his Royal Highness to try on some boots, the news arrived of Lord Wellington's great victory over the French army at Vittoria. Duke was kind enough to mention the glorious news to Hoby, who coolly said: "If Lord Wellington had had any other bootmaker than myself, he would never have had his great and constant suc cesses; for my boots and prayers bring his lordship out of all his difficulties." He was bootmaker to the Duke of Wellington from his boyhood, and received innumerable orders in the Duke's handwriting, both from the Peninsula and France, which he always religiously preserved. On one occasion the late Sir John Shelley came into Hoby's shop, to complain that his top-boots had split in several places. Hoby quietly said "How did that happen, Sir John ?" Why, in walking to my stables." "Walking to your stables ?" said Hoby, with a sneer; I made the boots for riding, not walking."--Captain Gro 66 now's Reminiscences. AN ULTIMATUM. A luckless undergraduate of Cambridge being examined for his degree, and failing in every subject upon which he was tried, complained that he had not been questioned upon the things which he knew. Upon which the examining master tore off about an inch of paper, and pushing it towards him, desired him to write upon that all he knew.--The Doctor. SCOTTISH CONVIVIALITY. "It is hardly possible," says Lord Cockburn, "to realize the scenes which took place in society fifty years back. In many houses, when a party dined, the ladies going away was the signal for the commencement of a system of compulsory conviviality. No one was allowed to shirk. No daylight, no heeltaps,' was the wretched jargon in which were expressed the propriety and the duty of seeing that the glass, when filled, must be emptied and drained. The supper which came after the early Scotch dinner had a peculiar tendency to foster these toping customs. The master of the feast said, -Let there be tumblers, and there were tumblers in more senses than one, the guests at these symposia frequently disappearing beneath the table. It was not a custom merely, but involved a different moral view and theory of social life. The duty of hospitality was so misinterpreted that, in one case which he mentions, a London merchant, of formal manners and temperate habits, was pursued from the table of his host to his bedroom, and bottles and glasses were brought to his bedside, when, losing all patience, the wretched victim gasped out in his indignation, Sir, your hospitality borders upon brutality.' Of this deep-rooted character, Dean Ramsay relates the following illustration, communicated to him as coming from Mr. Mackenzie, the well-known author of the "Man of Feeling." Mackenzie had been involved in a regular drinking-party, and was keeping as free |