Beau Brummell
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George Bryan Brummell (born June 7, 1778, London; died March 30, 1840, Caen, France), better known as Beau Brummell, was an arbiter of fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent. He led the trend for men to wear understated, but beautifully cut clothes, adorned with elaborately knotted neckwear. Brummell is credited with introducing and bringing to fashion the modern man's suit worn with necktie; the suit is now worn throughout the world for business and formal occasions. He claimed to take five hours to dress, and recommended that boots be polished with champagne. His style of dress came to be known as dandyism.
Brummell was an undergraduate student at Oriel College, Oxford in 1794. He embarked upon a military career, but abandoned it when he learned that his regiment had been ordered to Manchester.
A falling-out with the Prince of Wales was Brummell's downfall; his famous remark, "Alvanley, who's your fat friend?" (referring to Prince George, who had snubbed him shortly beforehand) probably didn't help. Brummell fled England in 1816 as the result of thousands of pounds of accumulated debts to tradesmen (his gambling debts, as "debts of honour," were always paid immediately). His last bet allegedly, was placed at Boodle's, two months after the Battle of Waterloo when he took a hundred to one chance against Lord Frederick Bentinck that Napoleon would once again be restored as Emperor of the French. His friends arranged for him to become British consul at Caen in France, but unfortunately the post was abolished; he died penniless and insane from syphilis in Caen in 1840.
A statue of Brummell stands on Jermyn Street in London.
[edit] The Beau in popular culture
Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote the essay On Dandyism and George Brummell. Beau Brummell's life was dramatised in an 1890 stage play by American playwright Clyde Fitch; in a 1924 movie with John Barrymore and Mary Astor; in a remake three decades later, Beau Brummell, with Stewart Granger replacing Barrymore in the title role, Elizabeth Taylor, and Peter Ustinov as the Prince Regent [1]; and in a 2006 BBC television drama, Beau Brummell: This Charming Man starring James Purefoy as Brummell, and first broadcast on BBC Four on June 19, 2006.
He became, behind only the Prince Regent and the Lady Patronesses of Almack's, the historical character most likely to appear in Regency Romances. He has been made the detective/hero of a series of period mysteries by 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).
He also 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.
Stephen Sondheim, in Gypsy (1959), used Brummell's name to create a stunning rhyme:
- Once my clothes were shabby.
- Tailors called me "cabbie."
- So I took a vow,
- Said, "This bum'll
- be Beau Brummell."
His name was adopted by the faux-British Invasion band the Beau Brummels who had top 40 hit records in 1965. He also is affectionately remembered by Little Orphan Annie in the Broadway musical Annie (1977), wherein she refers to his keen sense of fashion: "Your clothes may be Beau Brummelly, they stand out a mile ... you're never fully dressed without a smile". From singer-songwriter Billy Joel's "Glass Houses" album (1980), the listener is told in the hit "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" that "you could really be a Beau Brummell, baby, if you just give it half a chance". T. S. Eliot mentioned him in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (which Andrew Lloyd Webber later made into the hit Broadway musical Cats) in his poem about Bustopher Jones: "In the whole of St. James's the smartest of names / Is the name of this Brummell of cats."
Watchmaker LeCoultre made a watch named after him during the 1940's and 50's called the Beau Brummell. It is an extremely simple watch with no numbers and a small modern face.
[edit] Further reading
- Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules. Of Dandyism and of George Brummell. Translated by Douglas Ainslie. New York: PAJ Publications, 1988.
- Campbell, Kathleen. Beau Brummell. London: Hammond, 1948
- Heyer, Georgette. Regency Buck (novel)
- Jesse, Captain William. The Life of Beau Brummell. London: The Navarre Society Limited, 1927.
- Kelly, Ian. Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Dandy. Hodder & Stoughton, 2005
- Lewis, Melville. Beau Brummell: His Life and Letters. New York: Doran, 1925
- 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.
- Wharton, Grace and Philip. Wits and Beaux of Society. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1861.
[edit] External links
