Brummell

Brummell, GEORGE BRYAN, better known as 'Beau Brummell,' was born in London, 7th June 1778, the son of Lord North's private secretary, and grandson of a gentleman's gentleman. At Eton, and during a brief sojourn at Oxford, he was less distinguished for studiousness than for the exquisiteness of his dress and manners; and after four years in the army, having come into a fortune of £30,000, he entered society on his true vocation of arbiter of elegancies. His success was brilliant; but the pace was too hot, and his wit was, moreover, too fine for his twenty years' patron and admirer, the Prince Regent. They quarrelled in 1813, and gambling debts three years later forced Brummell to flee to Calais. He struggled on there, reckless as before, for fourteen years; from 1830 to 1832 held a sinecure consulate at Caen; and, after three years of drivelling imbecility, died in the pauper lunatic asylum of that old Norman city, 30th March 1840. See his Life by Jesse (1844; new ed. 1886).