Beau Brummell: The Commoner Who Dressed the Regency and Fled to Calais

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George Bryan Brummell, known as Beau Brummell, was the grandson of William Brummell, a politician's valet who opened a confectionery business and rented rooms in London. A lodger helped Beau's father, also William, into a Treasury clerkship, and he grew rich enough to buy a country estate in Berkshire. At Eton, George added a gold buckle to the standard white stock, and at Oxford he shamed classmates out of cheap cotton stockings. He left after a year when his father died, inherited about 30,000 pounds, and bought a commission in the 10th Light Dragoons, the Prince of Wales's personal regiment. His easy self-assurance won over the prince, he made captain within three years, and in 1797 he resigned rather than move with the regiment to Manchester, which he considered too industrial. From his house on Chesterfield Street in Mayfair he replaced silks, knee breeches and powder with dark wool tailcoats, full-length trousers made with the tailor Jonathan Meyer, and starched white linen.

He spent up to five hours a day bathing, shaving and dressing, and the Prince Regent came to watch. He lived on credit beside far richer men. After the prince became Regent in 1811 and broke with the Whigs, relations cooled. At a July 1813 masquerade at Watier's the Regent cut him, and Brummell asked Lord Alvanley, who's your fat friend? In 1816, deep in debt, he fled to Calais. Friends secured him a British consular post in Caen in 1830, which he recommended abolishing, hoping for a better one. He was jailed for debt in 1835, declined with syphilis and dementia, and died in 1840 in a charitable asylum near Caen.

• His valet carried away armfuls of rejected cravats, calling them our failures.
• He claimed a man could dress properly for 800 pounds a year with tolerable economy, when a skilled craftsman earned about 52.
• He told the Duke of Bedford, Bedford, do you call this thing a coat?
• In Calais and Caen he hosted imaginary parties, announcing guests who never came.
• His statue on Jermyn Street in London carries the line: to be truly elegant, one should not be noticed.