It seems incredulous to modern gentlemen that such a man should have been tolerated even at a club.  Take, for instance, his vulgar treatment of Lord Mayor Combe, whose name we still see with others over many a public-house in London, and who was then a most prosperous brewer and thriving gambler.  At Brookes’ one evening the Beau and the Brewer were playing at the same table, ‘Come, Mash-tub’, cried the ‘gentleman,’ ‘what do you set?’ Mash-tub unresentingly set a pony, and the Beau won twelve of him in succession.  Pocketing his cash, he made him a bow, and exclaimed, ’Thank you, Alderman, in future I shall drink no porter but yours.’  But Combe was worthy of his namesake, Shakspere’s friend, and answered very aptly, ’I wish, sir, that every other blackguard in London would tell me the same.’

Then again, after ruining a young fool of fortune at the tables, and being reproached by the youth’s father for leading his son astray, he replied with charming affectation, ’Why, sir, I did all I could for him.  I once gave him my arm all the way from White’s to Brookes’!’

When Brummell really wanted a dinner, while at Calais, he could not give up his impertinence for the sake of it.  Lord Westmoreland called on him, and, perhaps out of compassion, asked him to dine at three o’clock with him.  ‘Your Lordship is very kind,’ said the Beau, ’but really I could not feed at such an hour.’  Sooner or later he was glad to feed with any one who was toady enough to ask him.  He was once placed in a delightfully awkward position from having accepted the invitation of a charitable but vulgar-looking Britisher at Calais.  He was walking with Lord Sefton, when the individual passed and nodded familiarly.  ’Who’s your friend, Brummell?’—­’Not mine, he must be bowing to you.’  But presently the man passed again, and this time was cruel enough to exclaim, ‘Don’t forget, Brum, don’t forget—­goose at four!’ The poor Beau must have wished the earth to open under him.  He was equally imprudent in the way in which he treated an old acquaintance who arrived at the town to which he had retreated, and of whom he was fool enough to be ashamed.  He generally took away their characters summarily, but on one occasion was frightened almost out of his wits by being called to account for this conduct.  An officer who had lost his nose in an engagement in the Peninsula, called on him, and in very strong terms requested to know why the Beau had reported that he was a retired hatter.  His manner alarmed the rascal, who apologized, and protested that there must be a mistake; he had never said so.  The officer retired, and as he was going, Brummell added:  ’Yes, it must be a mistake, for now I think of it, I never dealt with a hatter without a nose.’

So much for the good breeding of this friend of George IV. and the Duke of York.