Beau Brummell, born as George Bryan Brummell (7 June 1778 – 30 March 1840 (aged 61)), was the arbiter of men's fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent, the future King George IV. He established the mode of men wearing understated, but fitted, tailored clothes including dark suits and full-length trousers, adorned with an elaborately knotted cravat.[1]
Beau Brummell is credited with introducing and establishing as fashion the modern man's suit, worn with a tie.[2] He claimed he took five hours to dress, and recommended that boots be polished with champagne.[3] His style of dress is often referred to as dandyism.[4]
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Brummell was born in London, the son of William Brummell, of Donnington Grove in Berkshire. He was fair complexioned, and had "a high nose, which was broken down by a kick from a horse soon after he went into the Tenth Dragoons".[5]
His father died in 1794, leaving him an inheritance of more than £20,000. He was educated at Eton and at Oriel College, and later joined the Tenth Light Dragoons.
It was during this time he came to the attention of George, Prince of Wales. Through the influence of the Prince, Brummell had been promoted to captain by 1796. When his regiment was sent from London to Manchester he resigned his commission because of Manchester's poor reputation and atmosphere and the lack of culture and civility exercised by the general populace.[6]
Brummell took a house on Chesterfield Street in Mayfair, and for a time avoided extravagance and gaming: for example, he kept horses but no carriages. He was included in Prince George's circle, where he made an impression with his elegant, understated manner of dress and clever remarks. His fastidious attention to cleaning his teeth, shaving, and bathing daily became popular. When asked how much it would cost to keep a single man in clothes, he was alleged to have replied: "Why, with tolerable economy, I think it might be done with £800."[7] (The average wage for a craftsman was £1 a week.)[8] Such liberal spending rapidly began to take a toll on his capital.
He was influenced by his wealthy friends as well. He began spending and gambling as though his fortune were as great as theirs. This was not a problem while he could still float credit. Brummell, Lord Alvanley, Henry Mildmay and Henry Pierrepoint were considered the prime movers of Watier's, dubbed "the Dandy Club" by Byron. They were also the four hosts of the masquerade ball in July 1813 at which the Prince Regent greeted Alvanley and Pierrepoint, but then "cut" Brummell and Mildmay by snubbing them, staring them in the face but not speaking to them.[9] This provoked Brummell's famous remark, "Alvanley, who's your fat friend?". This finalized the long-developed rift between them, dated by Campbell to 1811, the year the Prince became Regent and began abandoning all his old Whig friends. Normally, the loss of royal favour to a favourite was doom, but Brummell ran as much on the approval and friendship of other rulers of the several fashion circles. He became the anomaly of a favourite flourishing without a patron, still in charge of fashion and courted by large segments of society.[10]
However, his debt spiralled out of control, and he tried to recover by devices that only dug the hole deeper.[11] In 1816, he fled to France to escape debtor's prison – he owed thousands of pounds. Usually, Brummell's gambling debts, as "debts of honour", were always paid immediately. The one exception to this was the final wager recorded for him in White's betting book. Recorded March, 1815, the debt was marked "not paid, 20th January, 1816".[12]
He lived the remainder of his life in France, acquiring an appointment to the consulate at Caen due to the influence of Lord Alvanley and the Marquess of Worcester, only in the reign of William IV. This provided him with a small annuity. He died penniless and insane from strokes in Caen in 1840.
A statue of Brummell by Irena Sedlecka was erected on London's Jermyn Street in 2002.[13]
Brummell played a single first-class match for pre-county club Hampshire in 1807 against an early England side. Brummell made scores of 23 and 3 in the match to leave him with a career batting average of 13.00.[14]
Brummell appears as a character in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1896 historical novel Rodney Stone. In the novel, the title character's uncle, Charles Tregellis, is the center of the London fashion world, until Brummell ultimately supplants him. Tregellis' subsequent death from mortification serves as a deus ex machina in that it resolves Rodney Stone's family poverty, as his rich uncle bequeaths a sum to his sister.[15]
Brummell's life was dramatised in an 1890 stage play in four acts by American playwright Clyde Fitch and starred Richard Mansfield. This in turn was adapted for the 1924 silent movie with John Barrymore and Mary Astor.[16] 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.[17]
Earlier movies included a 10-minute film by the Vitagraph Company of America (1913), based on a Booth Tarkington story, and the 1913 Beau Brummel and his Bride, a short comedy made by the Edison Company. Brummel's life was also made the subject of a 1931 three-act operetta by Reynaldo Hahn, later broadcast by Radio-Lille (1963). In 1937 there was a radio drama on Lux Radio Theater with Robert Montgomery as Brummell and Gene Lockhart as the Prince. A further film, Beau Brummell, was made in 1954 with Stewart Granger playing the title role and Elizabeth Taylor as Lady Patricia Belham.[18] There were also two television dramas: the sixty-minute So war Herr Brummell (Süddeutscher Rundfunk, 1967) and the UK Beau Brummell: This Charming Man (2006) starring James Purefoy as Brummell.[19]
Georgette Heyer, author of a number of Regency romance novels, included Brummell as a character in her 1935 novel Regency Buck. He is also a minor character in T. Coraghessan Boyle's 1982 novel, "Water Music". More recently, Brummell is the detective-hero of a series of period mysteries by Californian novelist Rosemary Stevens, including Death on a Silver Tray (2000), The Tainted Snuff Box (2001), The Bloodied Cravat (2002), and Murder in the Pleasure Gardens (2003). These are written as if related by their hero.[20]
Brummell's name was adopted by the faux-British Invasion band The Beau Brummels who recorded during the 1960s.[21] At the same period Brummell's name was also used by South African born Michael Bush for his English rock group, Beau Brummell Esquire and His Noble Men,[22] who released at least one single (Columbia DB 7447) in 1965.[23]
Finally, two unrelated products were named after the dandy. The Beau Brummel rhododendron was hybridized in 1934 by Lionel de Rothschild and is still available. Flowering in late June, it has red, waxy flowers with darker speckling.[24] Then during the 1940s and 1950s watchmaker LeCoultre marketed a watch of that name. It had a minimalist design with no numbers and a small modern face.[25]