The Reign of Beau Brummell

THOSE of us who remember Arnold Daly in Clyde Fitch’s Beau Brummell will not be surprised to read that Mr. Connely’s interest in the Beau began when he first witnessed that remarkable performance. That was twenty-five years ago, and since then he has apparently exhausted the sources of information about his hero in preparing to write this centenary biography. As far as the book contains new materials, these are found mostly in the beginning and the end — those concerning Brummell’s parentage, childhood, school and college days and his last years in exile at Calais— and in a more extensive study of Brummell’s noisome friend the Prince Regent. The narrative as a whole is interesting without being brilliant. What this book proves quite conclusively is that Brummell was no mere exquisite, egotist, and worldling. His influence was, considering the times in which he lived, almost wholly good. It is this fact that has made the author call his book the reign of Beau Brummell, for there can be no doubt that for some years the Beau was much more a king than either George III or George IV. It is this largeness in the man that made him so much more important than the other super-dandies of the Age of Dandies and that made even Byron, as Virginia Woolf has said, speak of him ’with mingled respect and jealousy.’