THE REIGN OF BEAU BRUMMELL

A vogue gone by, symbolized and personified in this exquisite eccentric, Beau Brummell, fluent and graceful in presentation. Eton and Oxford found him precociously aware of himself; later he was an intimate member of the coterie around the Prince Regent, fat George. He became a successful do-nothing, gallant, dandy, arbiter of attire. There followed years of extravagance, of gambling, of brief but meaningless affairs. A break with the prince and bankruptcy forced him to France, where the last half of his life was spent in comparative poverty, punctuated by a paltry consulate position, by paralytic seizures, by loss of memory and ending in an institution.