Chapter XVII: Act III (12)

He was eloquent that night with an anecdote having reference to Weston, the famous tailor of Bond-street. “That fellow Weston,” said Brummell, “is an inimitable fellow,—a little defective perhaps in his ‘linings,’ but irreproachable for principle and button-holes. He came to London, Sir, without a shilling; and he counts more realized thousands than our fat friend does ‘frogs’ on his Brandenburg. He is not only rich, but brave; not only brave, but courteous; and not alone courteous, but candid. The other day he was coming up from some d—d place on the coast, by that thing, the—the—stage-coach.” (It was Brummell’s boast,—not a true one, as it was with the last Marquis of Bath, who died full of years,—that he had never ridden by a “public” conveyance of any kind, whether by sea or land.) But to resume: “There were two women in the coach,” said Brummell, “two deucedly pretty women, and an over-dressed fellow, who was of course an ass; and who was so over-civil to the prettier of the two, that the persecuted creature appealed to quiet little Weston for protection. Weston, Sir, talked to the fellow with an _aplomb_ that would have done honour to either of my friends the Lord Primate or the Lord Chancellor. The brute,—not the tailor, but the ‘gentleman,’—was deaf to remonstrance, and ruder than ever. Thereupon, Weston, without losing his self-possession, stopped the coach, dragged the astonished fellow out, explained to the outside passengers the state of the case, and found his challenge to fight received with acclamations by everybody but his designated opponent. He compelled his unwilling adversary, however, to stand upon the defensive, and a most terrible thrashing he gave him. But his _coup de grâce_, Sir,” said Brummell, “was the most finished thing I ever heard of. Weston, Sir, picked him up from the ground, held him at arm’s length, and in a cruel loud voice exclaimed to him, ‘Now, Sir, it may be a pleasure to you and to your friends, to know that you have not only been well licked, but you have been licked by a tailor! ’

“From this time forth,” continued Brummell, after the generally excited laugh had subsided, “I shall religiously pay my tailors’ bills. The act of Weston has heroified the profession.”

Alas! poor fallen potentate! he could not have paid his share of the _table d’hôte_, had he sat down at that at which Candide encountered half-a-dozen dethroned kings in Venice. A few hours after he was an Adullamite in Calais, warming the poor palette afterwards to be occupied by Romeo Coates.

Some half-century to come, the grandson of Mr. Millais perhaps may limn the scene when George IV., on his Hanover trip, suddenly observing at Calais his ex-friend making his way, pale and serious, through the crowd, sank back in his carriage with a “Good God,—Brummell!” and almost fainted at the recognition.

During fourteen years did the fallen dandy impatiently support his exile, and very patiently endure the disgrace of living on the charity of his friends and on that of compassionate and, too often, insulted acquaintances. He abused the fare set before him with delicate courtesy, and ridiculed the hosts who had gone to some expense to make his misery tolerable. He never learned modesty; never had a heart; not even one made out of brains, as in the case of Fontenelle. In his fallen state he annoyed his hearers with repetitions of abuse, levied against those he had known in the period of his spangled vanity. He was particularly bitter against the Duke of Clarence, whom he described as “a man who did very well to wear a cocked hat and walk about the quarter-deck crying ‘luff!’” and who was so rough and uncivilized, according to the narrator, that the latter was compelled to “cut” him!

Destitute, idle, and in debt, his position at Calais was one that would have appalled any honest and industrious man. It simply annoyed our hero, because he was no longer imperious master. His impudence however did not forsake him, but his independence _did_; and when he accepted the consulship at Caen, with its poor £80 per annum set apart to provide for his necessities, the remainder to be devoted to the liquidation of his Calais debts, he was as much a pensioned slave as the veriest lacquey _could_ be.

His pride was wounded, but his arrogance flourished. This too was shaken when the consulship was suppressed; and pride and arrogance were crushed when his friends had died off, contributions ceased, debts increased, and the solid door of the gloomiest of prisons stood barred and locked between him and the world.

Retributive justice fell upon this splendidly-useless human being. He had been proud of two things, his extreme refinement and his mental qualifications. He was terribly smitten in both directions. After his release from prison he fell into the tender keeping of the Sisters of Charity of the “Bon Sauveur” at Caen. He was an abject pauper, and worse. His infirmities were of that sort at which a nice and healthy nature is repelled; and he who had detected vulgarity in the odour of a rose became, in his degraded hours, ere death relieved him, offensive to a degree that turned sick and disgusted the charity of all but of the Sisters who nursed him.

There was something again awful in the direction in which his mind “drove,” while his soul itself was fast drifting over the turbulent cataracts of time into the boundless lake of calm eternity. He was for ever imagining himself among the scenes and companions of his days of noisy but empty triumph. It was his custom of an afternoon, when convalescent and clean, to arrange the furniture of his little room as for expected company. There all alone sat the spectral fop waiting for spectres; and as to his mind’s diseased eye these glided in, and to his deceived ear were duly announced, that ghastly shattered beau arose and went into mock raptures: he received his “dear duchess” with delight; and favoured shadowy countesses were led by him to the visionary sofa; and intangible lords were touched familiarly upon their non-existent shoulders; and the whole phantom _soirée_ was gone through with a solemn trifling, till the shadows which came had as shadows departed, leaving with the solitary host just sufficient reason to enable him to appreciate the utter nothingness of all the scene, and to burst into childish tears at the recollection of the stupendous folly.

The flattered guest of princes died in a workhouse. He who had sat at palace-banquets would have died of starvation and uncleanness but for the alms and the hearts of the charitable Sisters, to whom, rare occurrence! he was not ungrateful. At the period of his decease, in the month of March, 1840, he was in his sixty-second year; and the “old man” had not died within him ere he breathed his last. After his death, we are told that several packets of letters,—tied up with different-coloured ribbons, and carefully numbered,—a miniature, a silver shaving-dish, a gold ring, and a few silver spoons, were found in a trunk at the hôtel. The miniature and letters were taken possession of by the vice-consul, and the remaining effects by the landlord, in liquidation of an account which had only been partially cancelled. This person said, that in the same parcel with the letters was another containing a great many locks of hair. Oh, poor human nature! what demoniacal vanity was here! But let us be just to this once-glittering simpleton. If he kept letters, he at least kept them sacred. He never published one to injure even a living enemy. Vain as he was, he was not revengeful; and no provocation could have worked upon him as a fancied provocation did upon “the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker,” who red-taped the open-hearted notes of Moore, and produced them as _petards_ to blow to pieces the poet’s reputation when that once gayest of bards lay mute and defenceless in his grave.

Hugh Miller, in his excellent Autobiography, remarks that the _Loligo vulgaris_, or cuttle-fish, swims with its feet foremost,—in other words, _follows its tail_, and often gets “gravelled,” by darting blindly ashore, whence it cannot regain its home within the waters. Something like this has ever been the fate of the “beau;” for he who follows rather the animal than the intellectual propensities, is sure to rush, sooner or later, upon his own destruction.

Besides, how great is the outlay required to make a “beau,”—well-scented and useless, though perhaps temporarily agreeable! The sacrifices are greater than I have space to enumerate; the result in proportion is infinitesimally small. It reminds me of the six hundred pounds’ weight of rose-leaves required to produce a single ounce of the _attar_. Sad waste of many values in order to achieve a fashionable smell!

Not that a man should be indifferent to dress or to personal appearance. Dr. Chalmers himself illustrates the fact that some care about costume is consistent with the occupations of the mightiest intellect. In his ‘Journal’ (July, 1824), he says:—“Dressed for dinner. Have got a new way of folding up my coat, which I shall teach you when I get home, as it is of great use to a traveller. I am about as fond of it as I was of the new method of washing my hands.” From Chalmers to Chifney is perhaps going a long way for another illustration. They however who remember the late celebrated jockey in the days of his retirement will admit its propriety. How glossily patriarchal the old rider used to look, when, turned pedestrian, he was wont to pace Regent-street, in broad-brimmed hat and a clerical-looking surtout! Had he only been less grave of aspect, and more frolicsome of action, one might have taken him for Wilberforce.

It is really pleasant to trace how celebrated men in other climes than that of England make of costume a means to an end. I am reminded of this by a passage in one of the late Lord Metcalfe’s letters, in which he records his visit to the camp of Holkar, and notices one of that chief’s dandy captains, Ameer Khan. “Ameer Khan,” he says, “is blackguard in his looks, and affected on the occasion of my reception to be particularly fierce, by rubbing his coat over with gunpowder, and assuming in every way the air of a common soldier.” This was only Brummell “with a difference;” the Beau used to anoint himself with the oil of impudence in order to impose on the world, as Ameer Khan rubbed his coat with gunpowder that he might excite admiration in the breast of the civilian-soldier of Deeg.

For the reason that induced Miss Agnes Strickland to close her record of the Queens with the reign of Queen Anne, so do I close that of the beaux with the biography of Brummell. D’Orsay was indeed a greater than he; but he has too recently shuffled off this mortal coil to be strictly dealt with, and the truth concerning him might hurt the feelings of those of his followers who continue to wear deep stocks with long ends. His career only furnished a further proof that the profession of a “beau” is not a paying one. He was _great_ in a Fielding-ian sense, and according to the poet’s maxim which says, “Base is the slave that pays.” Mere generosity does not make a gentleman; and even generosity that is oblivious of justice is of no value. There was really nothing to admire in him. A recent “friend and acquaintance” indeed has been so hard put to it to find out a virtue in D’Orsay, that he has fixed upon his neglect of paying his creditors as one; and the “friend” thinks that it was sufficient honour for tradesmen to have him for their debtor! He resided at Gore House; gave dinners to Louis Napoleon, which cost the giver nothing in money, and the hungry recipient as little in gratitude; he drew caricature portraits of his “familiars;” proposed a public subscription for the polluting Paul de Kock; and was the author of a portrait or figure of our Saviour, the idea of which seemed to be taken from that of Decker in the old comedy, who dared to say of Him that He was—

“The first true gentleman that ever breathed.”

Finally, the worst thing that could happen for the reputation of the deceased Count is, that he should have so mistaken an advocate as the author of ‘Friends and Acquaintances.’ Better would it have been for the irreproachably-dressed D’Orsay, if he could have said as the Psalmist did:—“My lovers and friends hast thou put away from me, and hid mine acquaintance out of my sight.”

In the annals of dress however, the doctors of the olden time claim as much notice as the beaux. If my readers be sick of the latter, here are a few medical gentlemen, in full costume, ready to be consulted.

DOCTORS READY DRESSED.

“These, Sir,
Are Death’s Masters of the Ceremonies;
More strangely-clad officials never yet
Usher’d the way to Death’s cold festival.”

OLD PLAY.

Of all the doctors on the learned _rota_, there may have been more famous, but none more deserving, than Freake. He was regardless of nothing but dress; and he had a capital appreciation of fun, and a strong predilection for matters of fantasy.

Dr. Freake of St. Bartholomew’s, and his cousin the Justice, were not only given to dreaming, but to publish their dreams. They deemed their visions not only important to themselves and the public generally, but to the sovereigns of Europe especially. The dreams were wildly unintelligible, and the interpretations unintelligibly wild. But the Justice had active common-sense about him when he was awake. He was a careful dresser, which is more than can be said for the Doctor, and he presented the Bodleian Library with a collection of medals. Their tricksy spirits added the word _freak_ to the vocabulary of the English language.

The Doctor’s cousin, like the Doctor, was not a fop; and as much could scarcely be said of the profession generally. Granger says indeed of Dr. Col that he was _not_ a coxcomb. This was at a time when the physicians _were_ coxcombs; and the apothecaries, who followed and copied the more dignified brethren, were coxcombs and _meta_-physicians. The medical coxcomb of the day has thus been dressed up by a popular poet:—

“Each son of Sol, to make him look more big,
Had on a large, grave, decent, three-tail’d wig;
His clothes full-trimm’d, with button-holes behind;
Stiff were the skirts with buckram stoutly lined;
The cloth, cut velvet, or more reverend black,
Full made, and powder’d, half-way down his back;
Large decent cuffs, which near the ground did reach,
With half-a-dozen buttons fix’d on each.
Grave were their faces, fix’d in solemn state!
These men struck awe, their presence carried weight;
In reverend wigs, old heads young shoulders bore,
And twenty-five or thirty seem’d threescore.”

Such was the learned and able individual by whose help we became the heirs of our forefathers,—helping the one into life, the other out of it. I will add a sketch of a German doctor, and then of a French doctor of some celebrity, both for his costume and his professional and personal qualities. And first, of the professional dress of the _Medicus Germanicus_.

Madame Schopenhauer says of the German doctors of the last century that they were all aged—not so much by weight of years as of preconceived opinions. She could not imagine that any of them had ever been young, or had ever condescended to the sports of the young. For many years of her life she never either saw or heard of a young physician. These vice-lords of human life, incomparably clever at guessing, were addressed by the style and title of “Excellency;” and even as Falstaff was “Jack Falstaff” only with his familiars, so he must have been a very intimate friend indeed who ventured to call a German physician “Herr Doctor.”

He who has seen Bundle in the ‘Waterman’ may have a very good idea of a German medico’s wig:—snow white, thickly powdered, and excruciatingly curled. It had further the distinction of resting, one portion on the back and two descending in front of the shoulders. A scarlet cloth coat adorned with gold lace, ruffles deeper plaited than Lord Ogilvie’s, a shirt-frill as wide as a mainsail, silk stockings, knee-breeches, and an acre of buckles on the shoes enriched with gold and gems, a low-crowned cocked hat under the arm, too small for the head, and a stout walking-stick or fancy cane, with clouded or carved head-pieces,—and ever applied to prop the chin in cases where it was necessary to let it be thought that the physician was thinking,—it was thus attired that these patented murderers went forth to slay. What should we think _now_ of Dr. Locock in a gold-laced scarlet coat, like Lablache in ‘Dulcamara’?

The ‘Connoisseur,’ speaking of the medical dress in England, says:—“When we see a snuff-coloured suit of ditto, with bolus-buttons, a metal-headed cane, and an enormous bushy grizzle, we as readily know the wearer to be a dispenser of life and death, as if we had seen him pounding a mortar or⸺, etc.”

In France, the medical costume of the last century and of the preceding one was quite as singular. At an earlier period the dress of the “mire,” that primitive healer of the people, was a familiar sight to the Parisians, especially in the neighbourhood of the Rue de la Harpe. A long black robe covered the dirt, and stood for dignity in this once remarkable personage, who traversed the streets, vending dreadful unctions. He was always escorted by a boy bearing a monkey, and this monkey was bled a dozen times a day by the learned gentleman, to satisfy the passers-by that he, the professor, and not the monkey, was a skilful hand at phlebotomy.

In a street adjacent to the Rue de la Harpe resided, during a portion of the troubled reign of Louis XVI., the celebrated Dr. Audry. He had lived there for twenty years without being able to achieve any of the renown which he subsequently acquired. He had fallen in love, but _that_ did not help him. He lacked one indispensable thing, wanting which nobody trusted him. He wore no wig. He had a magnificent head of hair of his own; but to retain that was only wearing a testimonial of incapacity. The fair lady, who was his heart’s familiar friend, resided in a house opposite his own; and when she heard that her Samson was about to be shorn, she burst into tears, and reproached him with infidelity. “Such splendid curls!” sobbed the damsel.

“My colleagues do not wear them!” said Audry.

“You in a peruke!” exclaimed the lady, hardly knowing whether to laugh or to cry at the idea of her lover in a wig.

“It is the symbol and livery of science. Without it, it appears, I cannot be a doctor.”

The lady insisted, by way of compromise, that she should be permitted to select the wig; and she expressly made choice of one of such colossal dimensions and of so easy a fit, that poor Audry looked more like a fool than a physician in it. But it helped to bring him into fashion. He was considered as an old gentleman; and young ladies admitted him to their circles and _causeries_, from which they affected to banish youth of aspect less mature. His popularity was on the increase, just as an adventure happened to him, which might have shaken a reputation more firmly established.

He was one evening summoned to attend a wealthy English Peer, whose mansion was in the Rue Tournon. His way thither led him beneath the window of his fair friend, who had been rather piqued by his success among the ladies, and who had previously resolved to overthrow both cause and effect connected therewith. She was a pretty, sparkling, and joyously mischievous girl of some three-and-twenty years; and her father loved her nearly as much as he did fishing, which, for an enthusiastic angler as he was, was no small proof of paternal affection. The damsel contrived so well that, as the doctor passed, she flung her line, with the paternal fish-hook at the end of it, and caught up the wig therewith as lightly as her father would have picked up a trout.

Dr. Audry looked up in astonishment, and prayed for his professional peruke in vain. Being hurried, moreover, he passed on his way, and repaired to his patient with a head like Mr. Buckstone’s in Scrub.

When Lord A⸺ beheld him he exclaimed, “What! waited upon by the assistant, when I sent for the principal?—by a student, when I needed a practitioner?—but perhaps you are Doctor Audry’s nephew:—well, my groom has the same sort of rheumatism that I have; be kind enough to go and look after him.”

Audry, in his memoirs, in telling the tale, does not forget the sequel. Thus insulted, he rushed, in a rage, to the offending lady, who met him with open arms and laughing eyes. “My dear doctor,” said she, “do not storm; Papa was just on the point of securing to you something better than a peruke,—a fortune!”

“You are a light—”

“Thing to be loved, as you love me: I know it,” said the lady archly, “but St. Severin is our parish nevertheless.”

“St. Severin our parish? I do not comprehend; unless I am authorized to go there and arrange for our marriage.”

“Take all that papa prescribes upon that head; and, talking of heads, you shall have your peruke again after the honeymoon.” Audry was content; and the wedding went off as merrily as though it had been the last act in an old comedy; though the newly-espoused couple did not lead quite so angelical a life afterwards, as either St. Severin of Cologne, or his namesake of Bordeaux. But it was neither to be expected nor required of them. They would not have been half as profitable to the state if they had followed, throughout, the example set them by the saint whose name graced the church wherein they were united.

A Dacota doctor is perhaps, neither in costume nor practice, more absurd than his European brethren of the early part of the last century. His fee is a blanket, a buffalo robe, or a pipe; his dress is chiefly composed of the first two articles; and his cunning lies in his sacred rattle, which he shakes as Christian doctors do their heads, and there is no doubt as much in one as in the other. Wherever he goes he carries with him his medicine-bag; and to ask him what that mysterious article contains, and upon what grounds he applies its contents, would be an insult as profound as if you asked your own medical man for the reasons of his practice, and expected that he would (or could) give you an answer. The Winnebagoes are attired like their learned brethren among the Dacotas; but dress is not thought so much of by them as possession of the medicine-bag: to lose this is to lose reputation. But, savages as these are, they have some very wise observances. The chief of these is the medicine-dance. This is a grand solemnity, given by the doctors, for two reasons: one, for the increase of practice, just as we find the fashion to be at home; the other reason is, in order to appease the dead who have died under medical treatment. And perhaps _that_ is also the reason why our own medicine-men give such neat dinners, such splendid balls, or such enjoyable quadrilles on the carpet and _soirées dansantes_. These entertainments are born of remorse; and when next you join the saltatory throng at the house of your medical friend, ponder gravely, good reader, on the solemnity of the occasion, and impress upon that fair girl, with her hair _à l’Impératrice_, that the object for which you mutually point the light fantastic toe, is to rescue the medical master of the house from the revengeful visits of the unskilfully slain at his hands. That understood, plunge with frantic velocity into the _valse à deux temps_. The sacred rattles of the Dacotas and Winnebagoes are always shaken with maddening rapidity on these occasions, and you are the rattles by which doctors live. The more you are shaken, the better they live; and should you have the honour of perishing by their prescription, find comfort in knowing that other waltzers will perform, not in your memory, but that you may be peacefully forgotten, the “medicine-dance” of the medically murdered.

It will be found only another division of this subject to treat of odd dressers and dresses, after touching upon doctors and costume,—doctors who so often looked like the Laird of Cockpen, of whom we are told that

“His wig was well powther’d and as good as new,
His jacket was red, and his hose they were blue;
He put on a ring, a sword, and cock’d hat;
Ah, who could refuse the Laird wi’ a’ that?”

If the doctors were sometimes queerly costumed, their matches might be occasionally found among the laity. For these I open the last scene, and “Enter mob variously attired.”

ODD FASHIONS.

“Avec ceci finit la comédie; allez-vous-en, gens de la noce, et
dites du bien de l’auteur.”—_Crispin à la Foire._

The fashion of tattooing has a singular origin. We are indebted for our knowledge thereof to Clearchus, who tells us that the women of Scythia, having seized upon some Thracian women who dwelt in their vicinity, traced on their bodies, by means of needles, certain marks, which the latter could not contemplate without being made very angry. The lady who went down Regent-street the other day with the shop-ticket affixed to her new shawl, and which contained the announcement, “Very chaste, £1. 5_s._,” was not half so ridiculous as these poor Thracian ladies, with the etchings about them drawn by their dear Scythian cousins. It does not seem ever to have entered the heads of the victims that they might have concealed their annoyance beneath a garment. They did not wear garments at that time. They however hit upon a device not unworthy of that page of the Duke de Vendôme who, losing his shoulder-knot of ribbons, on being pursued as he was leaving the boudoir of a maid of honour, hurried to the room where his fellow-pages were sleeping and cut the knots off from every laced coat in the apartment, and so escaped detection.

The Thracian women fixed upon as happy an expedient. They so mixed up the tattooed marks with other designs, that the original drawings were entirely lost in the embellishments, like Handel’s airs in a certain lady’s cadences. By this means the characteristic sign of their shame and ignominy was no longer discernible, and the mode of tattooing became a mode indeed in Thrace. A young lady there could not have had a greater compliment paid to her at a ball than to be told that, front and back, her tattooing was in the true style of the Thracian improvement on the Scythian design. The dear creature might blush, but she would feel happily sure that she had made a conquest, and would make all her young friends savage by telling them the secret.

Among the odd dressers of the last century was the celebrated French philosopher and poet, Monsieur de la Condamine. Like George Selwyn, he was an indefatigable attendant at executions. He of course did not forget that of Damiens, the most horrible butchery ever enacted on the Grève, and at which French ladies were present with opera glasses, the better to enjoy the spectacle. Even so wits, philosophers, and “females” honoured the Mannings with their presence, in front of Horsemonger-lane gaol.

Condamine went for ever in search of truth, like Diogenes looking for a man. At the execution of Damiens, he pushed his way close to the dread officers of the law, and there, with his trumpet fastened to his ear (for he was “as deaf as a post”), and his pencil and tablets in his hands, he watched and recorded progress. At each tearing of the flesh by the pincers, or at each blow dealt by the bar which crushed the limbs on which it fell, Condamine exclaimed, “What does he say now? what does he say now?” The satellites of Charlot, the hangman, wished to drive him away as a troublesome fellow, but the executioner civilly remarked that “the gentleman was an amateur, and might stay if he liked.” With all this, De la Condamine was a simple-minded and humane man. In our London streets he produced a great effect; there he walked, dressed as laxly as Sir Simon Slack, and carrying with him a huge umbrella, almost as huge an ear-trumpet, a telescope, a compass, and a map of London permanently unfolded. He questioned everybody he met, but as he did this in English, as he thought, of which he did not comprehend a word, he was exceedingly like a metaphysician, who necessarily does not understand either what he says or what is said to him. His singular appearance in the streets speedily brought a counterfeit presentment of him on the stage, and, from King downwards, all the English actors who played Frenchmen dressed them after the pattern of M. De la Condamine.

As I have above noticed the Paris executioner,—“Monsieur de Paris,” as he used to be called,—I may further remark that the personage who filled that office some twenty years ago was one of the best-dressed and best-informed men I ever met with. He might have been taken for a reverend abbé, who did not deem that the dignity of priest was hurt by uniting with it the joviality of man. He was a man indeed of bloody hands, but he had gentle affections too; and he loved his children, ay, reader, as well as thou lovest thine own.

The Earl of Ferrers, who murdered his steward in 1760, was condemned to be executed for his crime. He had been originally married in a suit of white kerseymere and silver; and he chose to be hung in the same suit, it being as appropriate to one occasion, he said, as the other. Walpole, discerning the effect this might have on fashion, remarks, “I suppose every highwayman will preserve the blue handkerchief he has about his neck when he is married, that he may die like a lord.”

The Earl dated his misfortunes from the day on which he married the sister of Sir William Meredith. He accused the lady of having _met_ him drunk at an assembly, and having kept him so till the ceremony was over. Had he charged her with making him drunk, the lady, who was a faithful wife, might have been more to blame; and as for keeping him drunk afterwards, he was seldom subsequently sober, and had only himself to blame.

This coroneted brute, who was remarkable for his taste in dress, was at once fond and faithless. He kept his Countess in continual fear of her life, beating her by day and threatening to shoot her at night. They were separated; and it was because Johnson, his steward, advanced her some portion of her allowance without the knowledge of the Earl, that the latter shot him at three o’clock in the afternoon, and continued tormenting him till one in the morning, rejoicing to kill him slowly!

After being sentenced by a unanimous vote of the House of Lords, he passed his time in the Tower in playing picquet with the warders; and, like Jerome Cardan, he would not play for pastime, but for money. He drank as much wine as he could get, and then took to beer, for want of something better.

In the procession, which moved from the Tower to Tyburn, this doomed man, in his wedding clothes, was the only person who did not appear affected. His coachman blubbered and the officials looked grave, but the indifferent Lord made comments on the crowd, alluded now and then to the purpose in hand, and had the condescension to acknowledge that he _did_ believe in a God.

As connected with fashion, it may be noticed that the Earl was the first man who suffered by the “new drop.” To travel to the other world by the “Ferrers’ Stage,” of course had its popular and peculiar signification. Let me add, that while he was hanging in white, the sheriffs, in mourning and robes of office, were coolly standing on the scaffold, eating and drinking, and helping up their friends to drink with them. The executioners fought for the rope, and he who lost it cried; “but,” says Walpole, who was not there to see, “the universal crowd behaved with great decency and admiration.”

There is another act to this tragedy. Lady Ferrers subsequently married Lord Frederick Campbell, brother of the Duke of Argyle, at whose seat, Combe Bank, Kent, she was unfortunately burnt to death.

There was about this time another celebrated personage remarkable for her style of dress. We have all heard of “Sappho’s diamonds on her dirty smock,” and Pope’s line does not seem overcharged. “I have seen Lady Mary Wortley Montague,” writes Walpole in 1762; “I think her avarice, her dirt, and her vivacity are all increased. Her dress, like her languages, is a _galimatias_ of several countries; the ground-work rags, and the embroidery nastiness. She needs no cap, no handkerchief, no gown, no petticoat, no shoes. An old black-lace hood represents the first; the fur of a horseman’s coat, which replaces the third, serves for the second; a dimity petticoat is deputy, and officiates for the fourth; and slippers act the part of the last. When I was at Florence, and she was expected there, we drew _Sortes Virgilianas_ for her; we literally drew

‘Insanam vatem aspicies.’

It would have been a stronger prophecy now even than it was then.”

I think it was said of Lady Mary, that, on being once at the French Opera, some one remarked to her, “Mon dieu, Miladi, que vous avez les mains sales!” “Ah!” exclaimed the dirty lady with a conscious pride, “si vous voyiez mes pieds!” This story however is something apocryphal.

The worst feature in Lady Mary was that she was not only dirty as an elderly woman, but had been so as a young one. Two-and-twenty years before Walpole wrote the above account of her, he thus photographed the nymph whom Pope had transiently adored. Walpole met her at Florence in 1740, and there, he says, she was “laughed at by the whole town. Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze any one that never heard her name. She wears a foul mob that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang loose, never combed or curled; an old mazarine blue wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face swelled violently on one side, with the remains of a ⸺ partly covered with a plaister, and partly with white paint, which, for cheapness, she has bought so coarse, that you would not use it to wash a chimney.”

Spence, who saw this clever and eccentric lady during the following year at Rome, describes her as brilliant, irregular, and erratic as a comet; at once wise and imprudent, “the loveliest, most disagreeable, best-natured, cruellest woman in the world; all things by turns, and nothing long.”

Three foreign travellers in England have pleasantly remarked upon an old custom which would now be considered more honoured in the breach than the observance. The custom alluded to is that of kissing. Chalcondyles, the Greek, who visited our respected ancestors between four and five centuries ago, was highly surprised, delighted, and edified with this novel mode. He says of it:—“As for English females and children, their customs are liberal in the extreme. For instance, when a visitor calls at a friend’s house, his first act is to kiss his friend’s wife; he is then a duly installed guest. Persons meeting in the street follow the same custom, and no one sees anything improper in the action.” Nicander Nucius, another Greek traveller, of a century later, also adverts to this oscillatory fashion. “The English,” he says, “manifest much simplicity and lack of jealousy in their habits and customs as regards females; for not only do members of the same family and household kiss them on the lips with complimentary salutations and enfolding of the arms round the waist, but even strangers when introduced follow the same mode; and it is one which does not appear to them in any degree unbecoming.”

The third commentator is Erasmus, and it is astonishing how lively the Dutchman becomes when expatiating on this ticklish subject. Writing from England to Andrelinus in 1499, he says unctuously:—“They have a custom too which can never be sufficiently commended. On your arrival, you are welcomed with kisses. On your departure, you are sent off with kisses. If you return, the embraces are repeated. Do you receive a visit, your first entertainment is of kisses. Do your guests depart, you distribute kisses amongst them. Wherever you meet them they greet you with a kiss. In short, whichever way you turn, there is nothing but kissing. Ah! Faustus, if you had once tasted the tenderness, the fragrance of these kisses, you would wish to stay in England, not for a ten years’ voyage, like Solon’s, but as long as you lived.”

I leave to the bachelors to pronounce upon the merits of this custom—which must have had its disadvantages too;—a qualified remark which I the more feel bound to make, as, were I to join in the ecstatic laudation of the grave Dutchman,—why, to use Hood’s words,

“I have my fears about my ears, I’m not a single man!”

Let us now turn from English fashions to French incidents. Some years ago, the summer evening _habitués_ of the Champs Elysées used to find amusement in listening to an open-air entertainment of some singularity. A pale, thin, fragile, but bright-eyed and intellectual-looking girl of perhaps ten or twelve years of age used to appear in the most crowded part of the walk, an hour or so before sunset, attended by an old woman who carried a violin, a tin cup, and a carpet. While the girl stood apart for a moment, with something of a rapt look, the old woman spread the carpet, put down the cup at one corner, and scraped a preliminary air upon the violin. The air was not always appropriate to the drama that was to follow, for the favourite overture of the performer was “Ma’m’selle Pinson est une blonde!”—and that was like making “Yankee Doodle” or “Nancy Dawson” pass as introductory symphonies to ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Macbeth.’

However, the orchestra having terminated the prelude, the girl stepped on to the carpet, with the air of a little tragedy queen, and recited long tirades from Racine and Corneille. But then she recited them superbly; and despite her air of suffering and her exceedingly poor attire, she produced such an effect upon her hearers that while she rested, the audience were never weary of filling the cup carried round by the old woman, with sous and half-franc pieces, in order to encourage her to new efforts. The collection was always a large one; and when the delicate-looking child retired, all palpitating and with a flush upon her cheek, of which it were difficult to say whether it were the flush of her own triumph or that of death destined to triumph over her, the acclamations and cordial compliments of her hearers greeted her as she passed.

Well, a winter had gone, and a summer had come, but with it did not come to the loiterers in the Elysian fields the Tragic Muse whom they were disposed and eager to welcome. But during the year a marvellous child appeared on the stage of the Gymnase Dramatique. She came like a meteor and so departed. The truth was, that her friends saw at once that she was too good for that stage, and she was withdrawn, in order to appear on one more classical. Well do I remember that we loiterers in the shady avenues that lead to Neuilly used to dispute, and we youths the loudest of all, as to whether the _débutante_ of the Gymnase was or was not the inspired nymph that used in the public highway to create as much delight as Duchesnois herself before the critical pit of the “Français.”

The dispute was not to be determined by us, and in the meantime we spoke of our absent delight as of a lost Pleiad, and so the year wore away. And then came the eventful night on which a girl, of whom no one had previously heard by the name which she now wore, glided on to the stage of the Théâtre Français, and in a moment awoke French Tragedy out of the shroud in which she had been decently enveloped since Duchesnois had laid her down to die. The name of the girl was RACHEL; and so pale and unearthly was she, yet so inspired in her look, so commanding, so irresistible, that every one was not only ready to acknowledge the new sovereign of the tragic throne, but all Paris declared that the Rachel who was now famous for ever was no other than the poor girl who used to stand on a carpet in the Champs Elysées and recite Racine for sous and half-franc pieces.

The lady most concerned maintained a discreet silence, and various were opinions as to the identity. In course of time, however, she seems herself to have cleared up the mystery by one of the prettiest possible and most practical of confessions. As this is a question of evidence, I think it better to let my witness speak rather than myself condense the testimony, and here is the deposition—_ce dont il s’agit_. I have only first to premise that it is given by Madame Colmache in one of those pleasant Paris letters which used to appear in the ‘Atlas,’ to the great amusement and edification of the readers. The following is a portion of a letter which appeared in February, 1851.

“Rachel’s hôtel in the Rue Trudon is gradually growing into the most exquisite little palace in the world. The long-talked of _fête_, which was to have been given by the Tragedian upon the occasion of the Mardi Gras, and to which all Paris was intriguing and disputing to get invited, has been postponed _sine die_, and a literary and poetical festival was offered to her friends instead, on Sunday last. The inauguration of the hôtel took place under the most brilliant auspices. The vast number of rooms contained in the hôtel excited some surprise; the more so as it is formally announced that the fair owner intends for the future to reside entirely alone. ‘By whom will all these apartments be occupied?’ said Alexandre Dumas to Viennet, as they strolled through the long suite of saloons and boudoirs. ‘By the owner’s _souvenirs_, of course,’ replied the latter. ‘Oh! then I fear they will be terribly crowded,’ replied Alexandre laughing. To those who complain of the sadness of the times and of the sad neglect of art manifested by the public of our own day, a walk through that exquisitely adorned temple, which certainly may rival, both in elegance and richness, the dwelling of Aspasia and the villa of Lais, would be productive of an immediate change of opinion. No expense has been spared upon the decoration of the hôtel; some of the artists who stand highest have not disdained to furnish some of the designs for the moulding; the ceilings are all painted by the greatest masters; and the rich draperies which conceal the walls have all been taught to hang, according to the strictest rules of symmetry, by the great master hand.”

The _fête_, says the writer, was concluded by an epilogue of great interest; and it is this epilogue which connects the Tragédienne of the “Français,” with the little Thespian of the Champs Elysées. The epilogue is truly described as one displaying a strange and singular aspect of the human heart.

“The _soirée_ had been accepted as one of a purely literary character, and every celebrity appertaining to every branch of literature came, of course. The fair hostess recited in costume every one of her principal _tirades_, from all the great tragedies wherein she has acquired undying fame, and then withdrew amid the hearty applause and unfeigned expressions of delight of the whole company. Presently she returned before them in a new character to them, but of an old one to herself,—that of a street-singer, her head bound by a Madras handkerchief, her shoulders enveloped in an old Tartan shawl, a cotton petticoat descending just below the knee, and an old guitar slung across her bosom. Her appearance caused an almost painful interest. There was poetry in the whole scene—in the very clatter of her sabots as she passed up the splendid gallery, all hung with looking-glass, and adorned with gilt tripods—in the wooden bowl with the sou at the bottom, which she rattled as she stepped forward with a melancholy smile. She walked straight to the head of the gallery, and standing motionless for a moment, began the ballad which she had sung the last of all before she was summoned from the street to the stage, from rags and poverty, to glory, influence, and riches. By a singular coincidence, this ballad happened to be the same formerly sung in ‘Fanchon la Veilleuse,’—‘Elle a quitté,’—relating how Fanchon had left her humble home for wealth and grandeur, and how she was gradually pining amidst the splendour of her lot for the love and liberty she had once enjoyed. The voice of the singer, perhaps from fatigue, perhaps from emotion, was low and faltering, and produced an effect such as not the most powerful of her _tirades_ from Racine or Corneille has ever been able to produce,—_tears_ from her audience. This incident will long be remembered by those who witnessed it.”

No doubt; and the writer might have added a closing incident which is said to have followed the song, namely, that the singer, or reciter, for even her songs were recited, as every one will remember who has witnessed her ‘Lycisca’ in the high-coloured tragedy of ‘Valeria,’—having terminated her song, carried round the little cup or bowl, as of yore, only this time intimating to those to whom her trembling hand extended it—“It is for the poor!” But to revert to older, as well as odder fashions.

The consequences of the treaty which the Colophonians made with the Lydians, will serve to show that alliances are not necessarily advantageous to the weaker party. The Colophonians were an austere people. They were the Quakers of antiquity, and Mr. Bright himself might admire them. But no sooner were they united with the Lydians than Colophon became full of Lydian milliners, tailors, jewellers, and hairdressers, and the reign of simplicity was over for ever. Prior to this a Colophonian woman no more thought about her dress than did Maria Theresa, who, on being told that she was a grandmother, rushed into the neighbouring Opera-house, in her flannel nightdress and huge nightcap, in which she looked like Mrs. Gamp, and announced to the ecstatic audience that an heir was born to the greatness of Hapsburg Lorraine.

The Colophonians were once as careless of appearances, but now, men and women, they all adopted Lydian fashions. In one day, a thousand of the former, who had never known what a mantle was before, were seen on the public place, as proud of their jaunty purple cloaks as Rubini of his ‘Almaviva.’ Men and women alike had a gold ornament at the end of every lock of hair; and as for perfume, it was used to such an extent that for miles round the air was full of it, and the Lydian Atkinsons toiled in vain to meet the demand by supply.

Extravagance in dress has brought many a family to two-and-sixpence in the pound, but it ruined Miletus outright. The rich people there not only impoverished themselves by their incredible extravagance in finery, worse than our ancestors at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, who wore whole estates upon their backs, but they despised the poor, who were offensive to them for their homely fashions and rough tongues. Well, these extravagant persons became insolent and helpless, or what we should now call so; and the poor then sued them after the fashion of men who knew not of Bankruptcy Courts. They expelled the old oppressors, but they seized their children; and confining them in different granges, caused them to be trodden to death by the oxen used for treading out the corn. The rich however returned in strength, and seizing the poor men, women, and children, they covered them with pitch and put light to them,—so leaving them to perish. The sacred olive-tree in the Temple was so disgusted at both parties that it set fire to itself, and died of spontaneous combustion. The colour of its crackling leaves became a favourite one with religious persons; and a “robe feuille-morte” was as much in vogue in the district as it more recently was in Paris and the provinces.

There are some very odd “habits” about some of the swarthy potentates of torrid Africa. Of these I can however mention but the following:—The territory of Damagram, in Central Africa, is inhabited by the wildest of the African races. The method of supplying the slave-market there is truly nefarious. If the Sultan of Zinder wants goar nuts for his dessert, or calico to make what the good King Dagobert had so much difficulty in adjusting to his royal person, and if he has no money to purchase them, he sends his officials to a neighbouring village, in open day, to steal two or three families and bring them to the Sultan. These families are immediately exchanged for the goar nuts or the calico, and the swarthy tailor who makes up the royal suit perhaps reflects, as he sews, that the stuff has cost two or three living cousins, whose fate it is to be sent beyond the Atlantic to raise more cotton, that shall find its way again to the African tailors’ hands, after it has been paid for with more human flesh. It is not _all_ the African chiefs that care to be dressed in calico. The Marghi, for instance, give little employment for tailors: their dress consists of a simple band of leather passed between their loins and fixed round their girdle. When this and a profusion of neatly-made rings of iron and ivory are fixed on the arms and legs, the Marghi gentlemen are dressed for the day.

The oddest of fashions or dresses was one which was once adopted by the rich but parsimonious Fountayn Wilson, the wealthy but thrifty landowner of Yorkshire. When loyal gentlemen were raising militia companies during the late war, Mr. Wilson not only followed the fashion, but he bought, at a low rate, a quantity of grey cloth, in the expectation that Government would purchase it at an advanced price, and so put a profit into Fountayn’s pocket. He was disappointed, but he consoled himself by wearing nothing for years but dresses made out of this coarse militia grey. But London once saw him in a stranger dress than this.

Mr. Wilson, having accepted an invitation to dinner on a day whereon he had to attend as member of a committee of the House of Commons, ordered his servant to bring down to the house at six o’clock, a change of dress, and a hackney coach, in which he said he would effect the change as he rode in it. Ablution he did not think about; but if his old black coat would do to dine in, he felt bound to change his nether garment. He had just reached the Horse Guards, and he had just taken off his trousers, and was about to put his legs into the other pair, when _crack!_ went the axle-tree, and down came the coach! An officious mob assembled to lend help; but when they beheld an embarrassed gentleman with two pairs of trousers, and neither of them on, great was their astonishment, and loudly did they publish the fact. Poor Fountayn sat helpless and victimized, till a good-natured officer who was passing, and knew the eccentric M.P., released him, by claiming him as a relative; and as he led him covered with a cloak through the shrieking crowd, he calmed the laughers into silence by significantly pointing with his finger to his forehead,—which seemed to imply that they ought to have compassion on the infirmity of an imbecile gentleman, so well provided with garments and so apparently indifferent as to their use.