Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852

COMMON LAW.

Question.– "What is a real action?"

Answer.– "An action brought in earnest, and not by way of a joke."

Question.– "What are original writs?"

Answer.– "Pot-hooks, hangers, and trammels."

EQUITY AND CONVEYANCING.

Question.– "What are a Bill and Answer?"

Answer.– "Ask my tailor."

Question.– "How would you file a Bill?"

Answer.– "I don't know; but I would lay a case before a blacksmith."

Question.– "What steps would you take to dissolve an injunction?"

Answer.– "I should put it into some very hot water, and let it remain there until it had melted."

Question.– "What are post-nuptial articles?"

Answer.– "Children."

CRIMINAL LAW AND BANKRUPTCY.

Question.– "What is Simple Larceny?"

Answer.– "Picking a pocket of a handkerchief, and leaving a purse of money behind."

Question.– "What is Grand Larceny?"

Answer.– "The Income Tax."

Question.– "How would you proceed to make a man a bankrupt?"

Answer.– "Induce him to take one of the theatres."

Question.– "How is the property of a bankrupt disposed of?"

Answer.– "The solicitors and other legal functionaries divide it among themselves!"

There is not only a good deal of humor, but some salutary satire in this burlesque examination. Many a victim can testify, for example, to the truth of the last answer. After all he was not so far wrong who said, that "Law was like a magical stream; once wet your foot in it, and you must needs walk on, until you are overwhelmed in the endless stormy waters."

The history of Beau Brummell is a fruitful one. There can hardly be a better lesson taught of the consequences of a useless life, than is taught by his brilliant yet melancholy career. His impudence was inimitable – it was appalling. His sayings were delivered in a way that was so deliberate, so imperturbably cool, that no person could do justice to it. And yet people of the first class, nobles of the realm, nay, royalty itself, "put up" with his sarcastic says, his impudent comments, without either retort or remonstrance. Here are a couple of specimens of his impudence, recorded by one who knew him well:

"Dining one day at a gentleman's house in Hampshire, where the Champagne was far from being good, he waited for a pause in the conversation, and then condemned it by raising his glass, and saying, in a voice loud enough to be heard by every one at the table:

"'John, bring me some more of that wild cider.'

"'Brummell,' said one of his club friends, on one occasion, 'you were not here yesterday; where did you dine?

"'Dine!' he replied; 'why, with a person of the name of R – . I believe he wishes me to notice him; hence the dinner: but to give the devil his due he desired that I would make up the party myself, so I asked A – , M – , P – , and a few others, and I assure you, the affair turned off quite uniquely. There was every delicacy in or out of season. The Sillery was perfect; and not a wish remained ungratified. But my dear fellow,' continued Brummell, musing, 'conceive my astonishment, when I tell you that R – himself had the assurance to sit down and dine with us!'"

The nonchalance, the total indifference which he could at any time assume, is well illustrated in the following anecdote:

"An acquaintance having, in a morning call, bored him dreadfully about some tour he had made in the north of England, inquired with great pertinacity of his impatient listener, which of the lakes he preferred?

"Brummell, quite tired of the man's tedious raptures, turned his head imploringly toward his valet, who was arranging something in the room, and said,

"'Robinson!'

"'Sir."

"'Which of the lakes do I admire?'

"'Windermere, sir,' replied that distinguished individual.

"'Ah, yes – Windermere,' replied Brummell; so it is – yes; Windermere!'"

An anecdote of him which is somewhat more familiar, but which possesses the same characteristics with the above, is one which represents him as saying, in reply to the remark of a lady, who, observing that at a dinner where they met, the great beau took no vegetables, asked him whether such was his general habit, and if he never ate any.

"Yes, my dear madam," he replied, "I once ate a pea!"

But the best thing told of Brummell, in this kind, is one which does not appear in Captain Jesse's "Life" of him, nor, to our knowledge, has it appeared in print. But it is undoubtedly authentic. It runs in this wise.

Being one day seated at one of the tables of his favorite club-house, near the fire-place, he was enjoying the perusal of the Times newspaper, when a stout, burly member entered, and walking up to the fire-place, turned his back to the grateful warmth, parted his coat-tails, and stood before the beau in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes. Presently he began to sneeze. Brummell looked up imploringly and with a gesture indicating great annoyance, removed a little further off.

Scarcely had he taken his new seat, before another burst of sneezing, louder than before, startled him from his temporary repose. He was looking reproachfully, but "more in sorrow than in anger," when a third explosion of sternutation, "mist" from the effects of which reached to where he sat, brought him to his feet: "Good Heavens!" he exclaimed; "we can't stand this! Waiter, it is raining! Bring us an umbrella!"

But this man, who was the very pattern in manners and dress of his time, who could even bully and satirize princes of the royal line with impunity, this example of an aimless life, met with a sad fate at last. His dissolute habits and enormous debts compelled him to flee from England, in the night, to a small town on the French coast, where, after being appointed, for a time, to the indifferent British consulate, he became again involved, by reason of his expensive habits and over-delicate tastes, and was at last confined in prison for debt. Just before he was incarcerated, the following anecdote is related of him:

"While promenading one day on the pier, an old associate of his, who had just arrived by the packet from England, met him unexpectedly in the street, and cordially shaking hands with him, said:

"'My dear Brummell, I am delighted to see you! Do you know we thought in London that you were dead! The report, I assure you, was in very general circulation when I left.'

"'Mere stock-jobbing, mere stock-jobbing!' was the beau's reply."

Stock-jobbing on such a profitless subject as a decayed, penniless dandy! The farce of brazen impudence and assurance could no farther go.

Not long after this, Brummell became partially insane; and the great inventor of STARCH was last seen shrieking from between his prison bars in the asylum, complaining that the pigeon given him for his dinner was "a skeleton;" that his mutton chops were "not larger than a penny-piece;" that his biscuits were "like a bad half-penny;" that he had "but six potatoes;" and that the cherries sent for his dessert were "positively unripe."

And so he continued to the very last. He had a horror of sealing his insane notes with a wafer; he babbled of primrose-colored gloves, eau-de-Cologne, and oil for his wigs, and patent-blacking for his boots.

But at last he died. Some charitable Englishman tried to get him into a private asylum, but no such institution would receive him. This good Samaritan was obliged to pay a person to be with him night and day; but still he, the refined, the recherché Beau Brummell, the "glass of fashion and the mould of form," the "observed of all observers," the companion and pet of royalty and the nobility, could not even be kept clean. He drew his last breath upon a straw mattress, rising occasionally from his humble pallet to welcome an imaginary prince, or noble earl, or stately duchess, to his wretched apartment, with no diminution of his mocking grace and studied courtesy of manner. Dandled, dreaded, deserted, doomed, demented, dying dandy!