BEAU BRUMMELL’S GRAVE

Evening Star, Issue 22463, 7 October 1936, Page 12

BEAU BRUMMELL’S GRAVE

Large numbers of British tourists visit the grave of George Bryan Brummel, better known as “ Beau Brummell, in the Protestant cemetery of Caen, one of the most picturesque Normandy cities, rich in souvenirs of William the Conqueror. “ Beau Brummell,” the gay, dashing arbiter of fashion, bosom friend of George IV. when he was Regent, the wit whose sparkling sallies set the table in a roar, in his day the most talked of man in England, lies in an obscure foreign grave. He was a great gambler and money spinner. Then suddenly came the collapse, the loss of the Regent’s friendship, heavy gambling debts, and flight in 1816 to Calais and Caen. He was cast into prison for debt. But later, in the very town in which he had been in prison, he became British Consul, from 1830 to 1832. Eventually his mind gave way. For hours he would sit silent and despondent, and then suddenly in imagination he would bo surrounded by all the gay friends of his earlier life, and his incoherent remarks would be interspersed with flashes of his old wit. He died in a lunatic asylum in 1840. To Thomas Moore, ; who visited him before he died, he expressed the desire that he might not die “ as William the Conqueror died,” referring to the historical fact of the Conqueror’s body being left naked and abandoned. He wanted to be buried in England, but none of his former friends who had fawned on him in his hour of royal favour troubled to carry out Brummell’s dying wish.