'Who's your fat friend?' - the impudent humour of Beau Brummell

It seems however Brummell made no allowance for lesser aristocrats where mirth – or more importantly – dress sense, was concerned:

"The Duke of Bedford appeared one day at White's club in a new coat and asked Brummell's opinion of it. 'Turn round', said Brummell, and his grace obediently did so. Then, feeling the lapel delicately between thumb and forefinger, 'Bedford', he said, more in sorrow than in anger, 'do you call this thing a coat?' (7)

In a similar way, Brummell's cronies would make contenders for fashionable status as uncomfortable as possible: whenever their exacting standards were not met:

'A young sportsman called on Brummell at Chesterfield Street, and was shown into the drawing room, where a number of the leading dandies were assembled. Shortly after his arrival, he observed that the entire company was gazing earnestly at him – for what reason he could not imagine.

"My dear fellow," said his host, coming towards him with a look of concern on his face, and looking him carefully over through his eyeglass – "My dear fellow, where did you pick up that extraordinary affair you have put on your back?"

... (after several jibes)...

"Is there anything the matter with my coat?" the visitor asked in an agony of confusion.

"Coat!" exclaimed Brummell.

"Coat!" cried his friends in chorus.

"For heavens sake, my dear fellow, don't misapply names so abominably!" cried the Beau, while everyone continued to scrutinise the garment of their unhappy victim. "It is no more like a coat than it is like a cauliflower – if it is, I'll be damned!" (8)

On such occasions, where the efforts of others to secure style simply became subject to the copious causticity of Brummell's fashion-jury; a sense of the theatrical was manifest in his own manner of adjudication.

Indeed:

"When he complained about catching a cold through being left in a room with a 'damp stranger', or that he could never love a woman who ate cabbage, or when he assured a lady, shocked and honoured by the favour of his company, that he could talk to her because 'no one is watching', he seemed to take his place in a stage tradition, certainly as one begetter of arch camp but also as a child of Georgian high comedy.' (9)

There may well be risk of over-analysis, or at least over-speculation, as to Brummell's muses as 'prime dandy.' For it has also been argued:

'A dandy is a clothes-wearing man, a man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of clothes wisely and well.' (10)

In which case Brummell's knowledge of his own outstanding dress sense was quintessential to his public persona. And yet in relatively private company his humour was no less dry and capricious:

'An acquaintance having, in a morning call, bored [Brummell] dreadfully about some tour he had made in the north of England, inquired with great pertinacity of his impatient listener which of the lakes he preferred; when Brummell, quite tired of the man's tedious raptures, turned his head imploringly toward his valet ...

"Robinson."

"Sir."

"Which of the lakes do I admire?"

"Windemere, sir," replied that distinguished individual.

"Ah yes, – Windemere," repeated Brummell, "so it is, – Windemere." (11)

In 1819 (3 years after Brummell fled to France to escape his creditors) an attempt at salvaging the repartee of Britain's 'first celebrity' was undertaken by William Hazlitt – who compiled his Brummelliana. It was Hazlitt's belief that Brummell's: