The worthy glass manufacturer, having failed to make his son a gentleman in one way, took the best step to make him a blackguard, and, in spite of the wild inclinations he had already evinced, bought him a commission in the army.  In this new position the incipient Beau did everything but his duty; dressed superbly, but would not be in time for parade, spent more money than he had, but did not obey orders; and finally, though not expelled from the army, he found it convenient to sell his commission, and return home, after spending the proceeds.

Papa was now disgusted, and sent the young Hopeless to shift for himself.  What could a well-disposed, handsome youth do to keep body and, not soul, but clothes together?  He had but one talent, and that was for dress.  Alas, for our degenerate days!  When we are pitched upon our own bottoms, we must work; and that is a highly ungentlemanly thing to do.  But in the beginning of the last century, such a degrading resource was quite unnecessary.  There were always at hand plenty of establishments where a youth could obtain the necessary funds to pay his tailor, if fortune favoured him; and if not, he could follow the fashion of the day, and take to what the Japanese call ‘the happy Despatch.’  Nash probably suspected that he had no brains to blow out, and he determined the more resolutely to make fortune his mistress.  He went to the gaming-table, and turned his one guinea into ten, and his ten into a hundred, and was soon blazing about in gold lace, and a new sword, the very delight of dandies.

He had entered his name, by way of excuse, at the Temple, and we can quite believe that he ate all the requisite dinners, though it is not so certain that he paid for them.  He soon found that a fine coat is not so very far beneath a good brain in worldly estimation, and when, on the accession of William the Third, the Templars, according to the old custom, gave his Majesty a banquet, Nash, as a promising Beau, was selected to manage the establishment.  It was his first experience of the duties of an M.C., and he conducted himself so ably on this occasion that the king even offered to make a knight of him.  Probably Master Richard thought of his empty purse, for he replied with some of that assurance which afterwards stood him in such good stead, ’Please your majesty, if you intend to make me a knight, I wish I may be one of your poor knights of Windsor, and then I shall have a fortune, at least able to support my title.’  William did not see the force of this argument, and Mr. Nash remained Mr. Nash till the day of his death.  He had another chance of the title, however, in days when he could have better maintained it, but again he refused.  Queen Anne once asked him why he declined knighthood.  He replied:  ’There is Sir William Read, the mountebank, who has just been knighted, and I should have to call him “brother."’ The honour was, in fact, rather a cheap one in those days, and who knows whether a man who had done such signal service to his country did not look forward to a peerage?  Worse men than even Beau Nash have had it.