Beau Brummell And His Times

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV About 1822, six years after Brummell had left England, Chateaubriand was able to say, "The dandy betrays the proud independence of his character by keeping his hat on his head, lounging upon a sofa, and stretching out his boots in the faces of ladies seated in admiration before him. He rides with a stick, which he carries like a wax taper, paying no attention to the horse which he happens to find between his legs. . . . It is said that he can hardly know whether he exists, whether the world is about him, whether it contains ladies, or whether he should greet his neighbour."1 It is thus obvious that Brummell's success had borne its fruit, and that his example had been unexpectedly triumphant. There was, 1 Chateaubriand, Mdmoires d'Outre-Tombe, ed. Bire, vol. iv. p. 246. moreover, no one else to serve as a model. While handsome George was reigning in Brighton, the Revolutionists in France had driven out the decent people. Most of these dmigrds met once more in London, but wretched was their condition. Povertystricken and dying of hunger, they were obliged first of all to find some means of earning their living, and the cheerfulness with which all these noblemen set to work is well known. Some, like M. de Caumont, set up as bookbinders; others became coal merchants, like M. de Chavannes; others, again, dancing masters, like the Chevalier de Payen.1 They snapped their fingers at fortune; and though constantly obliged to go without supper, they used to meet every evening to dance "to the violin of an assessor of the Parliament Court of Brittany."2 Notwithstanding their cheerfulness, their lives were very secluded, and they were in no position to set the tone of Society. When the Court of France had been destroyed and its members...

"If people turn to look at you in the street, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable." -- Beau Brummell Long before tabloids and television, Beau Brummell was the first person famous for being famous, the male socialite of his time, the first metrosexual -- 200 years before the word was conceived. His name has become synonymous with wit, profligacy, fine tailoring, and fashion. A style pundit, Brummell was singly responsible for changing forever the way men dress -- inventing, in effect, the suit. Brummell cut a dramatic swath through British society, from his early years as a favorite of the Prince of Wales and an arbiter of taste in the Age of Elegance, to his precipitous fall into poverty, incarceration, and madness. Brummell created the blueprint for celebrity crash and burn, falling dramatically out of favor and spending his last years in a hellish asylum. For nearly two decades, Brummell ruled over the tastes and pursuits of the well heeled and influential, and for almost as long, lived in penury and exile. With vivid prose, critically acclaimed biographer Ian Kelly unlocks the glittering, turbulent world of late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth-century London -- the first truly modern metropolis: venal, fashion-and-celebrity obsessed, self-centered and self-doubting -- through the life of one of its greatest heroes and most tragic victims. Brummell personified London's West End, where a new style of masculinity and modern men's fashion were first defined. Brummell was the leading Casanova and elusive bachelor of his time, appealing to both men and women of his society. The man Lord Byron once claimed was more important than Napoleon, Brummell was the ultimate cosmopolitan man. "Toyboy" to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and leader of playboys including the eventual king of England, Brummell inspired Pushkin to write Eugene Onegin, and Byron to write Don Juan, and he influenced others from Oscar Wilde to Coco Chanel. Through love letters, historical records, and poems, Kelly reveals the man inside the suit, unlocking the scandalous behavior of London's high society while illuminating Brummell's enigmatic life in the colorful, tumultuous West End. A rare rendering of an era filled with excess, scandal, promiscuity, opulence, and luxury, Beau Brummell is the first comprehensive view of an elegant and ultimately tragic figure whose influence continues to this day.

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Beau Brummell was a Pretoria farm boy from South Africa, with a short back and sides haircut, named Michael Bush, who became a flamboyant Rock 'n Roll pop star in London during the swinging 60's along with Tom Jones, Beatles and Rolling Stones. Adopting the persona of regency dandy Beau Brummell Esquire. In the 1970's he was the star of the biggest selling photo story magazine "Beau the Untamed" in South Africa. His cowboy movie "Three Bullets for a Long Gun" sold in the USA in 1971, showed around the world. But, it was as a nudist that he really became famous. His Nudist Colony called Beau Valley, was visited by more than 100,000 families mostly German and Afrikaans. The first nudist resort in apartheid South Africa for "Whites Only." Beau was arrested 9 times by the police. Professor Phillip Tobias said "Brummell featured in my t.v. series, Tobias' Bodies, on evolution and South Africa as the Cradle of Man, because he was a great supporter of evolution, Charles Darwin and my work at Wits University." Tobias said that our ancestors wore no clothes, this is the natural state making a very good link in Brummell's mind. Naturism or nudism is the theme of Beau's book intertwined with Darwin's evolution. Enjoy this Nude Extravaganza out of Africa.

Traces the life the the English dandy who transformed the world of fashion in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. -- Dust jacket.