His affectation was quite as great as his impudence:  and he won the reputation of fastidiousness—­nothing gives more prestige—­by dint of being openly rude.  No hospitality or kindness melted him, when he thought he could gain a march.  At one dinner, not liking the champagne, he called to the servant to give him ‘some more of that cider:’  at another, to which he was invited in days when a dinner was a charity to him, after helping himself to a wing of capon, and trying a morsel of it, he took it up in his napkin, called to his dog—­he was generally accompanied by a puppy, even to parties, as if one at a time were not enough—­and presenting it to him, said aloud, ’Here, Atons, try if you can get your teeth through that, for I’m d—­d if I can!’

To the last he resented offers of intimacy from those whom he considered his inferiors, and as there are ladies enough everywhere, he had ample opportunity for administering rebuke to those who pressed into his society.  On one occasion he was sauntering with a friend at Caen under the window of a lady who longed for nothing more than to have the great arbiter elegantiarum at her house.  When seeing him beneath, she put her head out, and called out to him, ’Good evening, Mr. Brummell, won’t you come up and take tea?’ The Beau looked up with extreme severity expressed on his face, and replied, ’Madam, you take medicine—­you take a walk—­you take a liberty—­but you drink tea,’ and walked on, having, it may be hoped, cured the lady of her admiration.

In the life of such a man there could not of course be much striking incident.  He lived for ‘society,’ and the whole of his story consists in his rise and fall in that narrow world.  Though admired and sought after by the women—­so much so that at his death his chief assets were locks of hair, the only things he could not have turned into money—­he never married.  Wedlock might have sobered him, and made him a more sensible, if not more respectable member of society, but his advances towards matrimony never brought him to the crisis.  He accounted for one rejection in his usual way.  ‘What could I do, my dear fellar,’ he lisped, ‘when I actually saw Lady Mary eat cabbage?’ At another time he is said to have induced some deluded young creature to elope with him from a ball-room, but managed the affair so ill, that the lovers (?) were caught in the next street, and the affair came to an end.  He wrote rather ecstatic love-letters to Lady Marys and Miss ——­s, gave married ladies advice on the treatment of their spouses and was tender to various widows, but though he went on in this way through life, he was never, it would seem, in love, from the mere fact that he was incapable of passion.