Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844

“Where then, madam,” I said, “is the bride?—and who, I pray you, is the bridegroom?”

“The bridegroom is the Viscount Lessingholm. This maiden is the bride.”

“But Alice Snowton, my lady. I did think it was your honourable grandchild who was to be united to this noble gentleman.”

“And so it is—and so it is! She is Alice Snowton no longer. Our good friend, Master Snowton, the steward on my daughter Pevensey’s Wiltshire manor, was good enough to adopt her as his niece; and for her better concealment we placed her in the charge of a person whose character for meekness and simplicity was too notorious to raise suspicion of his being concerned in such a plot. Even to herself, till lately, her parentage was unknown, as Master Snowton kept well the secret.”

“And one other question,” I said;   “the child to whom I became bound as godfather?”

“’Tis the same. This is the poor Lucy Hesseltine, whose orphanship you witnessed in that lone and yet comfortable death.”

The lady Lucy Hesseltine, or rather Alice Snowton, for by that name I loved her best, did throw her arms about my neck, and kissed my cheek, and said I had been a kind godfather to her, yea, had been a father to her, and my excellent wife a mother. At this my heart was much moved, and I saw tears come to the eyes of several of the bystanders, but no tear came to the eyes of the great lady herself.

“Let this be enough,” she said. “Let us finish what we have yet to do.”

And thereupon, all being ready and in their due places, I began; but when I came to the question—“Lucy Hesseltine, wilt thou have this man to be thy lawful husband?”—a sudden noise in the court-yard under the window made me pause; but the great lady commanded me with a frown to go on, and I concluded the question, and received in reply a sweet but audible “yes.” But the noise was again repeated, and the assistants sprang to their feet, for it was the sound of the sharp shooting off of pistols.

“Stir not for your lives till the ceremony is over!” cried the great lady; and I hurried with trembling lips over the remainder of the service. A loud voice in the yard was heard amid the trampling of much horse. “In the king’s name, surrender!” the voice said. “We have a warrant here, and soldiers!”

“For as much as Frederick and Lucy Hesseltine,” (I said as calmly as I could, though with my heart quaking within me) “have consented together in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth either to other, and have declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring, and by joining of hands—I pronounce that they be man and wife together!”

“Now then, my lords and gentlemen,” cried the great lady, springing to her feet, “to the defence! We are witnesses of this marriage, and clashing swords must play the wedding peel. If need be, fear not in such quarrel to do your best; yea, to the shedding of blood! Though the blood were my son’s, it were well shed in such a holy cause. Now then, Lucy, come! Guard the front entrance but an hour, and we shall be beyond pursuit.”

And so saying she glided rapidly, with the nearly fainting bride, towards the hidden stairs, while Viscount Lessingholm rushed rapidly with drawn sword down the grand flight, and sprang on his grey horse. In the confusion my Waller had disappeared, and in great agonies of fear I slipped into the court-yard. Oh, what a sight met my eyes! There were several men lying dead, which had been shot or otherwise killed, and their horses were galloping hither and thither with loose reins and stirrups flapping; other men were groaning, and writhing in great pains, tearing the ground with bleeding hands, and dragging themselves, if such were possible, away from the mêlée. Meanwhile, horsemen drawn up on either side were doing battle with sword and pistol; and the trampling and noise of the shouting, the groans and deep execrations, all resounding at once in that atmosphere of smoke and approaching night, were fearful to listen to, and I bethought me of some way of escape. I slipped within the piazza of the servants’ court, and made my way towards the gate; but here the battle raged the fiercest, the noble Viscount Lessingholm being determined to keep it closed, and the furious Marquis resolute to force it open, whereby an accession of men might come to him which were shut out on the other side—the warder of the door having only admitted the marquis himself, and about fifty of the king’s dragoons. The retainers which I had seen on my entrance amounted to seventy or more; and seeing they had most of them been soldiers, yea, some which had grizzled locks, having been among the shouters at Dunbar, and on many fields besides, under the cruel eye of the ferocious Oliver himself, they did cry “Ha, ha! at the spear of the rider, and smelt the battle afar off.” The Marquis of Danfield did spur his black war-horse, with his sword poised high in air   towards the noble Viscount of Lessingholm, and with fierce cries the noble viscount raised also his sword, and was in act to strike the undefended head of his assailant. “Stop, Frederick!” cried a voice, which proceeded from the Earl Fitzoswald; “it is Danfield himself!” whereupon the young gentleman did ward off the blow aimed at him by the marquis, and passed on. All this I saw ere I gave up hopes of getting out by the gate; but seeing this was hopeless, I pursued my way back again, with intent to get out by one of the postern windows, and hurry homeward across the fields; and having opened a window near unto the buttery, I hung by my hands, and then shutting my eyes and commending my soul to Heaven, I let go, and dropt safely down upon the greensward. But ere I could recover myself sufficiently, I was set upon as if I had been an armed enemy, by a large number of mounted men, which were of the company of the marquis, whereby I saw that the house was surrounded, and feared the great lady and Alice (I would say the Viscountess Lessingholm) were intercepted in their retreat. Howbeit, I gave myself up prisoner, by reason of various blows with the flats of sabres, and sundry monitions to surrender or die. I was led in great fear to the front of the court, and brought before a proud, fierce-browed commander, which interrogated me “of all that was going on, and whether the Lady Lucy Mallerden was in the Court?” Whereto I answered, that I was so overcome with terror that I knew little of what I had seen, and, with regard to the noble lady, I was persuaded she was not within the walls. “If you answer me,” he said, “truly, and tell me what road she has taken, I will send you away in safety, and secure you his majesty’s pardon for any thing you may have done against his crown and dignity; but if you refuse, I will assuredly hang you on the court-yard gate the moment we gain possession thereof. Now, say which way went they?” I was sore put to it, for it was like betraying innocent blood to tell these savage men the course my godchild pursued in her escape; and yet to tell an untruth was repugnant to my nature, and I said to the captain, “It is a hard matter for me to point out where my friends are fleeing unto.”

“Then you’ll be hung as high as Haman at daybreak; so you can take your choice,” said he.

“If I direct you unto the place whereunto she is gone,” I said, “it will be a hard matter to find her.”

“That’s our business, not yours. Tell us where it is.”

“For, suppose she were in hiding in a city, a large busy place like Bristol, and waited for a conveyance to a foreign land”–

“In Bristol! Oho, say no more! Ensign Morley, take ten of the best mounted of the troop and scour the northern roads towards Bristol. You will overtake them ere they are far advanced.”

“I pray you, captain,” I said, “to observe—I have not told you she is gone towards Bristol.”

“I know you haven’t,” he said smiling, “I will bear witness you have kept her secret well; but here we are about to enter the Court, for the firing is finished. The rebels will be on gibbets within twenty-four hours, every one.”

But there was no sign of the gate being opened. Contrariwise there did appear, in the dimness of the evening-sky, certain dark caps above the outside wall, which I did recognize as being worn by the serving-men of the great lady’s friends; and while we were yet talking a flight of bullets passed close over our heads, and three or four of the troopers fell off dead men, leaving their saddles empty and their horses masterless.

“Draw close my men,” cried the captain, “right wheel;” and setting his men an example, he did gallop with what speed he might from the propinquity of the wall. As for myself, I was in some sort relieved by the knowledge that the noble mansion still continued in possession of the Viscount Lessingholm; and comforting myself with the assurance that no evil could befall my daughter Waller while under his protection, I did contrive to seize by the bridle one of the dragoons’ horses, (a stout black horse, which, being never claimed, did do my farming work for fifteen years,) and,   climbing up into the saddle, betook me home to inform my excellent wife of all these dreadful events. All next day, and all the next—yea, for three whole days—I stayed in my quiet home, receiving information quietly by means of a note brought to me by my servants, that the mansion still held out, that Waller was quite safe, and that, provided no artillery was brought to bear against them, that they could hold out till the time came. What was the meaning of the latter phraseology, I did not know; but considering it desirable at that period to cut down certain trees on my recently purchased estate, I proceeded with Thomas Hodge the carpenter, and various other artificers of my parishioners, (all being friends and dependents of the great lady,) and with saws and other instruments did level the whole row of very large oaks and elm trees which bordered the only high-road from Oxford; and, by some strange accident, all the trees did fall exactly across the same, and made it utterly impossible to move thereupon with cart or waggon; so that it was much to be suspected that the guns, which we heard were ordered to come up from Wallingford, could by no means get over the obstruction. It is also to be observed that Master George Railsworth, the mason, who had contracted to repair the strong bridge over our stream, did take this opportunity of taking down two of the arches of the same, and could find no sufficient assistance to enable him to restore them, which made the road impassable for horse or man. On the following day, namely, the fifth day of November, we heard that all the king’s soldiers were suddenly ordered from all parts up to London, and that the Marquis of Danfield had been left to his imprisonment in Mallerden Court. Whereupon I bethought me it would be safe to venture up once more, and bring my daughter Waller to the securer custody of my excellent wife. Next morning, at early dawn, I accordingly did go up, and was admitted, after a short parley, by the gate-keeper, which had a helmet on his head and a sword in his hand. Speedily I was in the arms of my daughter Waller, who looked as happy as if none of these scenes had been transacted before her eyes; and moreover did refuse, in very positive terms, to leave the Court till her dear friend Alice—I would say the Lady Lucy—returned. I reasoned with her, and reprimanded her, and showed her in what a fearful state of danger we all were, by reason of the rebellion we had been guilty of against his majesty the king. Whereupon the child did only laugh, and told me, “Here she would abide until the time came.” And with this enigmatical expression I was fain to be content; for she would vouchsafe me no other. And, corroborative of all which, she said, she relied on the assurances made unto her to that effect by Sir Walter Ouseley, one of the young gentlemen which had acted as bridegroom’s man to the noble Viscount Lessingholm, and was now in the Court as his lieutenant in the defence of the same. A goodly young gentleman he was, and fair to look upon, and extraordinary kind to me, soothing my fears, and encouraging me to hope for better things than those my terrors made me anticipate. I enquired of the behavings of the Marquis of Danfield, and learned to my surprise that it was expected that before this day was over, if he did receive a courier, as was thought, from the Lord Churchill, one of the king’s favourite officers, he would withdraw all his objections to the marriage, and rather be an encourager and advocate of the same. In these discourses the time passed away, and about three of the clock, after we had dined in the great hall, we were looking out from the battlements and saw a dust on the western road.

“It is Churchill’s letter,” said the noble Viscount Lessingholm, “and he has kept his promise for once.”

“There is too much dust for only one courier’s heels—there be twenty in company at least,” replied Sir Walter Ouseley, which had the arm of my Waller closely locked in his.

“There may be a surprise intended,” cried the noble viscount. “Hoist the flag, man the walls, treble the watchers, and sound for the men into the yard.”

We of the peaceful professions—videlicet, my daughter Waller and I—did descend from the bartizan, and   betook ourselves to the great withdrawing room, to wait for the result of the approach. We had not waited long when the door opened, and no other than the great lady herself, and my loved and lovely godchild, the Viscountess Lessingholm, came into the apartment. The great lady was now appareled as became her rank, having discarded those Bohemian habiliments which were her disguise in times of danger. Oh! it was a great sight to behold, the meeting between the Lady Lucy and my daughter Waller; but when hurried steps sounded on the stairs, and the door opened, and the noble viscount rushed into her arms, it was impossible to keep from tears. My feeble pen can venture on no such lofty flights of description, and therefore I will not attempt it. Meanwhile, in the outer court, great shouting was heard. Sir Walter Ouseley came up to us, and announced that the Marquis of Danfield “presented his respects to his noble mother, and congratulated her on the glorious news.”

“I knew how it would be,” she said, “with base natures such as his and Churchill’s. We accept their assistance, but despise the instrument. He will now be fierce against his benefactor, (who, though a bad king, was tender to his friends,) and bitterer against his faith than if he had never been either a courtier or a bigot. I receive his congratulations, Sir Walter Ouseley, but I decline an interview for some time to come.”

“He desired me also, my lady,” said Sir Walter, “to convey his blessing to the bride, and his tender love to his new son, the Viscount Lessingholm.”

“Well, let them not reject it. The blessing even of such a father has its value. But we must now make preparation, for the celebration of the happy nuptials, in a style fitting the rank of the parties. The prince is pleased with what we have done”–

The young man, Sir Walter Ouseley, who had been whispering in my ear, here broke in on the great lady’s speech.

“If it would please you, madam, at the same time, to permit two others to be happy, I have obtained Master Willis’s consent thereto, and also the consent of this fair maiden.”

The viscountess took Waller in her arms, and kissed her cheek, and the great lady smiled.

“I knew not, Sir Walter Ouseley, that you were so perfect a soldier as to sustain an attack and lay siege at the same time; but since in both you have been successful, I give you my hearty good wishes. And so, dear friends and true supporters, let us be thankful for the great deliverance wrought for this land and nation, as well as for ourselves. Our defender, the noble William, landed three days ago at Torbay, and is now in Hampton Court. The king has taken flight, never to be restored. Therefore, God save the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary, the props and ornaments of a true Protestant throne!”

BEAU BRUMMELL.[30 - The Life of George Brummell, Esq. By Captain Jesse. 2 volumes.]

All things change; ours is the age of masses and classes, the last was the age of individuals. Half a dozen remarkable men then represented the London world, in politics, poetry, bon-mots, dining out, and gaming. Pitt and Fox, the Dukes of Queensberry and Norfolk, Sheridan and General Scott, were the substitutes for mankind in the great metropolis. George Brummell was the last of the beaus. The flame of beauism was expiring; but it flamed in its socket brighter than ever, and Beau Brummell made a more conspicuous figure in the supreme bon-ton of elegant absurdity, than any or all his predecessors. The only permanent beau on earth is the American savage. The Indians, who have been lately exhibiting their back-wood deformities in our island at shilling a-head, were prodigious dressers; Greek taste might probably have dissented from their principles of costume, but there could be no doubt of the study of their decoration. Their coiffeur might not altogether supersede either the Titus or the Brutus in the eye of a Parisian, but it had evidently been twisted on system; and if their drapery in general might startle Baron Stulz, it evidently cost as dexterous cutting out, and as ambitious tailoring, as the most recherché suit that ever turned a “middling man” into a figure for Bond Street.

But the charm which is the very soul of European fashion, is scorned by the Indian. Change—the “Cynthia of the minute,” the morning thought and midnight dream of the dilettanti in human drapery—has no captivation for the red man. He may like variety in his scalps or his squaws; but not a feather, not a stripe of yellow on one cheek, or of green on another, exhibits a sign of the common mutabilities of man. He struts in the plumes which his fathers wore, is attired in the same nether garments, exhibits the same head-gear, and decorates his physiognomy with the sane proportion of white-wash, red-lead, bear’s-grease, and Prussian blue.

Beauism, in England, scarcely goes farther back than the days of Charles II. It may be said that Elizabeth had her beaux; but the true beau being an existence of which no man living can discover the use, and which is, in fact, wholly useless except to his tailor and the caricaturists, the chevaliers of the time of Queen Bess are not entitled to the honour of the name. Raleigh, no doubt, was a good dresser; but then he could write and fight, and was good for something. Leicester is recorded as a superb dresser; but then he dabbled in statesmanship, war, and love-making, and of course had not much time on his hands. The Sedleys, Rochesters, and their compeers, had too much actual occupation, good and bad, to be fairly ranked among those gossamery ornaments of mankind; they were idle enough in their hearts for the purpose, but their lives were not shadows, their sole object was not self. They were more nice about swords than snuff-boxes and, if they were spendthrifts, their profusion was not limited to a diamond ring or a Perigord pie. They loved, hated, read, wrote, frolicked and fought; they could frown as well as smile, and see the eccentricity of their own follies as well as enjoy them. But the true beau is a beau-ideal, an abstraction substantialized only by the scissors, a concentrated essence of frivolity, infinitely sensitive to his own indulgence, chill as the poles to the indulgence of all others; prodigal to his own appetites, never suffering a shilling to escape for the behoof of others; magnanimously mean, ridiculously wise, and contemptibly clever; selfishness is the secret, the spring, and the principle of, par excellence, the beau.

In the brief introduction prefixed to the “Life,” some of those individuals who approached closest to perfection of old times are mentioned.   One of those was Sir George Hewitt, on whom Etheridge, the comic writer, sketched his Sir Fopling Flutter. This beau found a place in poetry as well as in prose,

“Had it not better been than thus to roam,
To stay, and tie the cravat-string at home?
To strut, look big, strike pantaloon, and swear
With Hewitt—D–me, There’s no action here?”

Wilson followed. He was a personage who first established the fashion of living by one’s wits. Returning from the army in Flanders with forty shillings in his pocket, he suddenly started into high life in the most dashing style, eclipsed every body by his equipage, stud, table, and dress. As he was not known at the gaming-table, conjecture was busy on the subject of his finances; and he was charitably supposed to have commenced his career by robbing a Dutch mail of a package of diamonds. Still he glittered, until involved in a duel with Mississippi Law; the latter financier, probably jealous of so eminent a rival, ran a rapier through his body.

The next on the list is Beau Fielding. He was intended for the bar, but intending himself for nothing, his pursuit was fashion. He set up a showy equipage, went to court, and led the life of “a man about town.” He was remarkably handsome, attracted the notice of Charles II., and reigned as the monarch of beauism. He was rapidly ruined, but repaired his fortune by marrying an heiress. She died; and the beau was duped by an Englishwoman, whom he married under the idea that she was a Madame Delaune, a widow of great wealth. Finding out the deception, he cast her off, and married the Duchess of Cleveland, though in her sixty-first year. For this marriage he was prosecuted, and found guilty of bigamy. He then became reconciled to his former wife, and died, in 1712, at the age of sixty-one. He was the Orlando of the Tatler.

Beau Edgeworth lives only in the record of Steele, in the 246th number of the Tatler, as a “very handsome youth who frequented the coffeehouses about Charing-Cross, and wore a very pretty ribbon with a cross of jewels on his breast.” Beau Nash completes the list of the ancient heroes, dying in 1761, at the age of eighty-eight—a man of singular success in his frivolous style; made for a master of the ceremonies, the model of all sovereigns of water-drinking places; absurd and ingenious, silly and shrewd, avaricious and extravagant. He created Bath; he taught decency to “bucks,” civility to card-players, care to prodigals, and caution to Irishmen! Bath has never seen his like again. In English high life, birth is every thing or nothing. Men of the lowest extraction generally start up, and range the streets arm-in-arm with the highest. Middle life alone is prohibited to make its approach; the line of demarcation there is like the gulf of Curtius, not to be filled up, and is growing wider and wider every day. The line of George Brummell is like that of the Gothic kings—without a pedigree; like that of the Indian rajahs—is lost in the clouds of antiquity; and like that of Romulus—puzzles the sagacious with rumours of original irregularity of descent. But the most probable existing conjecture is, that his grandfather was a confectioner in Bury Street, St James’s. We care not a straw about the matter, though the biographer is evidently uneasy on the subject, doubts the trade, and seems to think that he has thrown a shade of suspicion, a sort of exculpatory veil over this fatal rumour, by proving that this grandfather and his wife were both buried, as is shown by a stone, still to be seen by the curious, in St James’s church-yard. We were not before aware that Christian burial was forbidden to confectioners. The biographer further adds the convincing evidence of gentility, that this grandfather was buried within a few feet of the well-known ribald, Tom Durfey. Scepticism must now hang down its head, and fly the field.

We come to a less misty and remote period. In the house of this ancestor, who (proh dedecus!) let lodgings, lived Charles Jenkinson, then holding some nondescript office under government. We still want a history of that singularly dexterous, shy, silent,   and successful man; who, like Jupiter in Homer, did more by a nod than others by a harangue—made more as a scene-shifter than any actor on the stage of Westminster—continually crept on, while whole generations of highfliers dropped and died; and at length, like a worm at the bottom of a pool, started up to the surface, put on wings, and fluttered in the sunshine, Earl of Liverpool! The loss of such a biography is a positive injury to all students of the art of rising. Jenkinson was struck by the neatness of the autograph in which “Apartments to be Let” was displayed on the door; and probably, conscious that the “art of letting” was the true test of talents, made the young writer his amanuensis, and finally obtained for him a clerkship in the treasury. He was next in connexion with Lord North for the twelve years of that witty and blundering nobleman’s unhappy administration, and enjoyed no less than three offices, by which he netted L.2500 a-year. He was abused a good deal by the party-ink of his time; but the salary enabled him to bear spattering to any amount, and probably only increased Lord North’s sympathy for his fellow-sufferer, until that noble lord was suffocated in the public mire.

But after the crush of the minister, the man felt that his day was done; and he retired to “domestic virtue” as it is termed, took a good house in the country, enjoyed himself, and in 1794 died, leaving two sons and a daughter, and L.65,000 among them.

George Bryan Brummell, the second son, was born in June 1778. The biographer observes characteristically, that the beau avoided the topic of his genealogical tree with a sacred mystery. It appears that he avoided with equal caution all mention of the startling fact, that one of his Christian names was Bryan. It never escaped his lips; it never slipped into his signature; it was never suffered to “come between the wind and his nobility.” If it had by any unhappy chance transpired, he must have fainted on the spot, have fled from society, and hid his discomfiture in

“Deserts where no men abide.”

Brummell was a dandy by instinct, a good dresser by the force of original genius; a first-rate tyer of cravats on the involuntary principle. When a boy at Eton, in 1790, he acquired his first distinction not by “longs and shorts,” but by the singular nicety of his stock with a gold buckle, the smart cut of his coat, and his finished study of manners. Others might see glory only through hexameters and pentameters; renown might await others only through boating or cricket; with him the colour of his coat and the cut of his waistcoat were the materials of fame. Fellows and provosts of Eton might seem to others the “magnificoes” of mankind—the colossal figures which overtopped the age by their elevation, or eclipsed it by their splendour—the “dii majorum gentium,” who sat on the pinnacle of the modern Olympus; but Brummell saw nothing great but his tailor—nothing worthy of respect among the human arts but the art of cutting out a coat—and nothing fit to ensure human fame with posterity but the power to create and to bequeath a new fashion.

But the name of dandy was of later date; the age had not attained sufficient elegance for so polished a title; it was still buck or macaroni; the latter having been the legacy of the semi-barbarian age which preceded the eighteenth century. Brummell was called Buck Brummell when an urchin at Eton—a preliminary evidence of the honours which awaited him in a generation fitter to reward his skill and acknowledge his superiority. Dandy was a thing yet to come, but which, in his instance, was sure to come.