Beau Brummell was one of the iconic figures of the Regency period, perhaps more culturally significant than the man for whom the era is named, the Prince Regent himself. Beau Brummell, after all, taught men how to dress, almost single-handedly changing the entire look of the male wardrobe in a revolution called “The Great Masculine Renunciation”, a revolution that still has a direct effect on modern culture every time a man wears a power suit. Brummell’s affect is still present some two hundred years later. His epicurean manner is repeatedly referenced in any number of today’s top designer’s collections. (Dolce & Gabbana, Fall 2006) (St. Augustine Academy, Spring 2008) It would be easy to dismiss Brummell as just a man of sophisticated taste, but in fact, we have many things to be indebted to Brummell for, like his fastidious attention to cleaning his teeth, Brummell brushed them everyday, which was unheard of. He shaved himself every day, an activity that at that time no one did at home, men went to barbers infrequently. He bathed daily in hot water, which was an extravagance, at the time peopled douched themselves with cologne and perfume to disguise their rank body odor. Brummell tweezed his eyebrows and shaped them; he grew his sideburns in long and curled them back. Brummell came into fashion as a sort of perfect storm, at a time when people were reevaluating masculinity, and manners. Brummell introduced sound hygiene into daily living. On characterizing Brummell "Others dress to live, he lives to dress."Thomas Carlyle Keep in mind that between 1790 and 1840, it was men rather than the women who dominated the cosmetic scene, rouging their cheeks and lips, powdering their faces and hair, and painting hearts on their cheeks. This was a time of unprecedented effeminacy in men's dress. Beau Brummell was setting new English standards of personal hygiene as stringent as those of the early days of the Roman Empire were. Brummell did not anoint himself. He was clean-shaven, bathed and wore his hair au natural, coiffed but simply so. After two centuries of such hectic cosmetic dying, brewing and painting, ladies needed a rest. Regency women, content with fewer and fewer cosmetics aids were beginning to attract attention to other parts of their bodies by wearing dresses ever more daringly flimsy and revealing, inadvertently bringing on an increase in bronchitis and pneumonia, made worse by the popular habit of wetting dresses so that it would cling more revealingly to the body. Ladies relied more and more on clothing and natural aids, such as flowers, to beautify themselves; they used cosmetics only sparingly. Also, France had dominated fashion for some time, especially with Louis XIV, and his successors. After the French Revolution, and especially the Napoleonic Wars anything French became suspect in England, and this especially included men's clothing, and to a lesser degree women's fashions. As a result, English men's fashions became increasingly important in the early 19th century. It was precisely at this time that Brummell was in his ascendancy as a fashion arbiter in England. His influence on men's fashions was quite important. He stressed the cut of the garment and the quality of the fabric rather than fancy trim, which had been very important. He discouraged not only all the fancy trim, but also the bright colors that were popular in the late 18th century. Brummell once cut a colleague to the quick, accosted the preening acquaintance with the words, "Do you call this thing a coat?"
A typical Regency outfit for daywear was a jacket cut away in front, but with tails at the back. There is no waist seam, a feature present in Victorian coats. The open area around the hip has a distinctive curve pulling slightly around the waist. Even more notably, the sleeves are particularly long and seated high on the shoulder. There are virtually no shoulder pads. Normally jackets had fabric-covered buttons. An exception was blue jackets with often had brass metal buttons perhaps because of an association with military styles.
Lord Byron is said to have declared that of the two men he admired most were “Beau Brummell and Napoleon Bonaparte, he would rather have been the dandy than the emperor.”
Brummell's overriding philosophy was “the maximum of luxury in the service of minimal ostentation”.
Thomas Carlyle, in his “Sartor Resartus”, to satirize the dandy as "Inspired with cloth, a poet of cloth."
”The collar, which was always fixed to his shirt, was so large that, before being folded down, it completely hid his head and face, and the white neck cloth was at least a foot in height. The first coup d'archet was made with the shirt collar, which he folded down to its proper size; and Brummell then standing before the glass, with his chin poked up to the ceiling, by the gentle and gradual declension of his jaw, creased the cravat to reasonable dimensions, the form of each succeeding crease being perfected with the shirt which he had just discarded."
The spectacle of this self-sculpture drew an envious, admiring audience; they were watching the painful birth of Brummell's most lasting and mysterious invention: the nineteenth-century necktie.
Brummell’s spirit survives, however, in the pages of “Neckclothitania” AKA "One of the Cloth", published in 1818. Here, the author is first exercised by the distressing democratization of modern costume: "It can hardly be imagined how political events should, even in the remotest way, influence or affect the thermometer of fashion, but it is nevertheless perfectly true that both the American and French revolutions have totally changed it." Where formerly the expense of finery ensured that one could tell a person of class on sight, from a pretender, the new simplicity of dress confounded such judgments, and contemporary fashions seem to embody the notion of equality, which seemed abhorrent to the old guard. Still, there are niceties of attire by which one can always spot the true gentleman, chief among them, the style of his cravat.
“Once tied, the necktie should never be altered in the hope of improving its appearance; if it is ill-tied, one must start again with a fresh cravat. What the wearer is after is a curious mean between skill and pure chance. The tying of a cravat involves the rigorous removal of human agency from the final appearance of the fabric: the knot is intentional, but the folds are entirely fortuitous.”
Brummell became famous for being famous, he was the model for Lord Byron's “Don Juan”, Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy, in “Sense and Sensibility” and, even in faraway Russia, and he was inspiration for Pushkin's “Eugene Onegin”. Brummell knew everybody, as the saying goes, but nobody knew him because he was that paradox: the emotionally aloof social butterfly who liked dogs better than people.
His present biographer, Ian Kelly, says that Brummell was "a fractured personality, rebuilt in masquerade in the mirror of other people's expectations of him." This could apply to any of today's neurotic celebrities, but Brummell differed from them in a most refreshing way: he never came to believe his own propaganda. Rather, he saw through his host of acolytes and sycophants, and dismissed them with genial contempt.
Lord Byron is reported to have said, that there was nothing exceptional about Brummell’s dress save “a certain exquisite propriety”.
Like many relationships familiarity breeds contempt. Like a jilted lover, Prinny and Beau had a kind of falling out. Reportedly, Prinny warned Beau about Lord Bryon (a bi-sexual) and invited Brummell to escort Lady Julia to bed. Brummell declined the counsel. Prinny took this blandishment personally and began to sever ties with Brummell.
Brummell, Lord Alvanley, Henry Mildmay and Henry Pierrepoint were considered the prime movers of “Watier's”, dubbed "the Dandy Club” where the phrase “Dandyism” come from. 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. This provoked Brummell's infamous remark, "Alvanley, who's your fat friend?” This finalized the long-developed rift between them. This was also just around the time that the Prince in an effort to gain more political control began abandoning all his old Whig friends, which included Brummell. Normally, the loss of royal favor to a protégé was instantaneous doom, but Brummell relied on the approval and friendship of other aristocrats.Brummell became tan anomaly, remaining a favorite flourishing without a patron, still in charge of fashion, and courted by large segments of society.
Brummell was so elusive that posterity has never even been sure of his sexual orientation. Ian Kelly Brummell’s most staunch biographer disagrees with historians who claim he was gay or bisexual. The jury may still out. Clearly Brummell’s relationship with the Prince and Lord Byron are sexually charged, to some degree, if not acted upon. Clearly Brummell’s words and behavior suggest a kind of gay male sensibility. There is a kind of effeminacy. The sudden quarrels that flared up between him and the Prince had a quality of bitchiness that suggests a tendril or two of subconscious homoeroticism, but it is generally agreed that the Prince was straight to a fault. Brummell was close to the bisexual Lord Byron, but Lord Byron was also ten years older, and Byron liked late-adolescent pageboys, (he made Lady Caroline Lamb dress as one). Brummell never married, and as far as is known, never fathered any illegitimate children as men of his class routinely did, but he died of syphilis, so if he was not gay, he presumably caught it from a woman. Who? Where does an emotionally unavailable heterosexual, turn to when he wants sex? To prostitutes, obviously, but clearly Brummell was a lady killer, he certainly had affairs with the upper-class courtesans of the day, as well as adventurous older women like Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and an ancestress of the late Princess Diana.. Many of Brummell’s letters were burned or destroyed after his death but those that do survive certainly intricate an awful lot of feminine intimacy. It is suggested that Brummell probably resented sex because, like the perfectly groomed female fashion plate, he hated to get messed up. He could only let loose with women who did not matter, prostitutes.
When asked what prompted him to break off a serious engagement Brummell replied, “What could I do my dear fellow but cut the connection; I discovered that Lady Mary actually ate cabbage!” Beau Brummell
Brummell’s daily routine and by extension, the daily routine of most aristocratic men of the time, began in the morning with Brummell’s toilet, and then off to London for shopping, places to be seen and socialize. In the afternoon he went to Hyde Park and the gentlemen’s clubs, and evenings were spent at the Theatre, Almack’s, and the brothels or gambling. Brummell was without an occupation, without a title and without adequate funds to maintain this life style. Unfortunately, Brummell was influenced by his wealthy friends as well. He began spending and gambling as though his fortune was as great as theirs.This was not a problem while he could still float credit. That was unfortunately no longer true. The good times began to come to an end.
Brummell because of his life style rapidly depleted his funds. When his money ran out, in part from reckless gambling, he lost his high-placed friends. However, his spiraling debt spun out of control. Brummell was a compulsive gambler, also a virtual guarantee of impotency or a low sex drive. Brummell would bet on anything, even the progress of George III's insanity. Brummell tried to recover by devices that only dug the hole deeper. In 1816, he fled to France to escape debtor's prison from the demands for payment in full of thousands of pounds sterling owed. 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".
Here his timing was impeccable. Fleeing to France a few years earlier when the Napoleonic Wars were raging would have been more difficult, but true to course he struggled with debts in France as well. Brummell lived the remainder of his life in France, acquiring an appointment to the Consulate at Caen, due to the influence of Lord Alvaney and the Marquess of Worcester. This provided him with a small annuity. He spent a time in a French debtor's prison until rescued by friends, but something had seriously changed in Brummell’s character. By this time, he was no longer interested in clothes. He was know slovenly and always dirty, despite the fact that he had once been so meticulous about personal cleanliness. Was it depression? Melancholia?
Through the auspices of British Consul in Calais he was taken in by the Asylum du Bon Sauveur, a mendicant hospital in Caen, for the insane in 1837. It is only today that we realize it was the advanced stages of Syphilis. An ailment Brummell must have self-diagnosed years earlier, and likely accounts for his ambiguous sexual orientation and abrupt withdrawal from his betrothal to Lady Jane. Large tumors formed on his scrotum. He became incontinent, and fouled his room so often that the staff, unable to bear touching him, hosed him down from a distance. And at the end, the brain itself shrank away from the insides of the skull and granulated. He died a pauper in Caen in 1840 left lying on a soiled straw mattress, his mind and body ravaged by syphilis, his linen changed once a month.
At the end, Brummell himself communed with the ghosts of his former finery. Penniless and in the final, maddening, stages of advanced syphilis, he imagined that he was entertaining friends from his former life, but they were mere shadows. When the money finally ran out, he acknowledged the seriousness of his predicament by resorting to that hateful accessory, a black cravat. In her account of Brummell's last days, Virginia Woolf wrote, "Now that the pressure was removed, the odds and ends, so trifling separately, so brilliant in combination, which had made up the being of the Beau, fell asunder and revealed what lay beneath."
The perfect cravat, says the author of “Neckclothitania” well aware that the myriad knots he describes are only so many ways to dress a phantom, is so rigid that it does not need to touch the neck to stay in place. The body of the dandy may as well not be there.
Medical records at the asylum where Brummell spent his last year show that Brummell suffered and died indeed from syphilis. Brummell’s disease explains many things: his loss of hair in his late thirties previously attributed to his use of a heating wand to curl his hair; his large chemist bill, previously attributed to his fondness for cold cream; and his drooling, exacerbated by his medicine rather than purely brought about by a stroke. Indeed, Brummell’s lasting contribution to hygiene, his famously elaborate bathing regimen, where he thoroughly scrubbed his entire body, as a necessity to erase his syphilitic cankers and rashes, not simply as a cosmetic.
The syphilis attacked his muscles, causing stroke-like spasms that pulled his mouth permanently open; when he spooned up his soup it spilled back out again, until the manager of his little French hotel told him he was disgusting the other patrons and asked him not to use the dining room. His spinal nerves gave way, causing a stumbling, zigzag walk that people assumed was drunkenness. All his mucous membranes became ulcerated and his tongue swelled up and turned black.
History has been kind to Brummell, the end of his is seldom explored or acknowledge. What is recalled is the bright and beautiful gentleman, the charming gentleman.
