Poor Beau Brummell. After having played his small part on life's stage,
his thin shade still occasionally wanders across the boards of the
theatre. Blanchard Jerrold wrote a play upon him, which was acted at the
Lyceum Theatre in 1859, when Emery played the title role. Jerrold's
play, which has for sub-title "The King of Calais," treats of that
period in Brummell's life in which he had retired across the channel to
live upon black-mail and to drift into that Consulship at Caen which he
so queerly resigned, to end a poor madman, trying to shave his own
peruke. Jerrold's is a grim play; either it or a version on the same
lines of Brummell's fall is being played across the Atlantic at this
very hour by Mr. Mansfield whose study of the final decay and idiotcy of
the famous beau is said to rival the impressiveness of his Mr. Hyde.
Beau Brummell is never likely to be quite forgotten. Folly often brings
with it a kind of immortality. The fool who fired the Temple of Ephesus
has secured his place in history with Aristides and Themistocles; the
fop who gave a kind of epic dignity to neck-clothes, and who asked the
famous "Who's your fat friend?" question, is remembered as a figure of
that age which includes the name of Sheridan and the name of Burke.
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