Customer Reviews

Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Man of Style

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book was on my wishlist for months before it was published. I adore Regency England, and the possibility of a biography on one of its leading men was too much to pass up.

Kelly introduces us to Brummell in his childhood, the son of common parents who wanted a better life for their children. He leads us through Brummell's time at Eton, and in the army (though he never saw battle), through his amazing reign as London's famed favorite, and then, painfully, his fall from grace and his battle with syphilis and debt in France.

Beau Brummell is often depicted as a bored, cruelly witty man who took hours to tie his cravat. Kelly shows us this side of Brummell, certainly, but also gives great insight as to why Brummell was the way he was. The biography is littered with tantalizing Brummell one-liners that will make you laugh out loud- and probably had the same effect on Regency society. Readers are presented with hypotheses on Brummell's love life, his gambling addiction, and the constancy of his friends. And, melded with all this, we are given a wonderful, realistic view of Regency London in all its glory and perversity.

Kelly is clearly sympathetic to Brummell, and one can't help but agree with him. Brummell deals with seemingly insurmountable problems (many caused by his reckless spending) with amazing sangfroid and humor. So that, when one approaches the end of the book, and is faced with harrowing descriptions of a man suffering endlessly from a wasting disease, it is impossible not to feel for him.

Kelly paints a portait not only of a leading man of the Regency era, but also of the era itself. The biography is interesting, well-presented and compassionate. If you like Regency London, you will want to read this book.

Whew! By the tale's end, the moral is pretty clear. And what a wild, awful ride it was.

This archetypal dandy has to rank as a world-class obsessive-compulsive: three hours to wash, shave and dress, with two changes a day! These ritualistic ablutions would certainly have intrigued Proust and other celebrated male valetudinarians.

A life of shopping, primping and whoring ended up exactly where one might expect -- a telescoping tragedy of ostracism, poverty, institutionalization and grotesque, siphyllitic insanity.

Kelly's publishers should have relented and offered significantly more visual material. Snuff boxes and family pictures are great. What would have been better, though, would have been to document visually Brummell's distinctive (if terribly costly) contribution to civilization: the suit.

Either that, or spare us the endless, excruciating details of his ignominious end!

I give this book a strong rating for a couple of reasons.

First, the book compelled me to turn the page. Full of zest and anecdotes that brings the scenes to life, the story was interesting and lively enough that I wanted to see what came next. Second, the author cuts through the legends and delivers the facts behind the man. Where the man's reputation and tales grew over time, there was misinformation, and the author clarifies what is real and what was not. Third, the author presented a wonderful interpretation of Beau. Whereas other stories of BB tend to a biographical string of one event onto the next, the author explains their significance and highlights their interest. For instance, while Beau later wrote a book on male costume, the author explains how Beau's heart really wasn't into the work and the result was a lame book. Forth, the author makes smart conjecture, filling in the gaps and the rest of the tale of the Beau's life.

So, if you're interested in reading about Beau, I'd make this your first book.

The best biographies don't just give us a portrait of their subject, but plunge us into an historical moment. Ian Kelly does both beautifully in his new biography of Beau Brummell. You learn not only about Brummell's unlikely rise from commoner to tastemaker, but also about the subtleties of dandyism -- unlike our understanding of the term, "dandy" did NOT mean foppish, quite the opposite -- about the craftsmanship required for exquisite tailoring, about the philosophical musings prompted by one man's ideals of beauty in Regency London.

Hey, guys, I know a lot of you hate the coat-and-tie look, but if you read about Brummell you'll understand what a leap forward this now-modern uniform was. He originated the style, and the fact that it survives to this day, in altered form, is a testament to his life. Yes, there's an element of snob appeal here, sometimes distasteful, but there's also the glory of a man shining like the sun just by walking down the street. That's something few people ever achieve.

Beau Brummell was uniquely HIMSELF, though he has inspired legions of imitators. He's also inspired poets and philosophers, whatever you may think of them, from Byron to Baudelaire to D'Aurevilly to Wilde to Camus to Woolf. And not content to be a clotheshorse, he was also a wit, honing his verbal skills in the sometimes nasty society of the upper crust. His fall from grace, and his physical deterioration -- all the worse for his high standards of cleanliness in his younger days -- make for sad reading. Brummell was, in his way, revolutionary, and Ian Kelly depicts both him and his era vividly.

Ian Kelly has written an excellent biography of a man who rose from obscurity to command the respect of English society. It's a fascinating study, well written & reseaeched. A highly intelligent man, in another era, Brummell might have achieved much more; but in Regency England, the strictures of a rigid class structure combined with disease and his spendthrift ways toppled him from the heights to a miserable end.

One quibble; on a recent visit to the UK, I saw the English edition, which is nicely illustrated with color prints, and looks much more elegant than the North American edition. A book about Brummell should above all else be handsome!

I was drawn to the tale of Beau Brummell because I had heard of him as some ultimate arbiter on men's formal clothing, style, inventor of the modern suit, etc.

This book satisfied my curiosity to some extent. I only wish it had more illustrations of clothing at the time and how it evolved. Sometimes it is difficult to imagine what kinds of pants or neckties are being described since they are clearly different from what we see today.

I was disappointed to learn that Brummell was a shallow celebrity, famous for being famous, Paris Hilton of his day. He ended up alone in an asylum and died of terminal syphilis - pretty sad tale overall.

The books is a fascinating description of the social mores in London / Britain during Brummell's time, covering topics like sexuality, Lord Byron, the "public school" educational system, etc. I think this was in fact the book's strongest side.

I stumbled on this subject...this charming man Beau Brummell, and then read the book.

Not so much about Beau Brummell, the "celebrity" ( I abhor biographies of "celebrities". I would rather spend time reading biographies of people I want to learn from.)

I enjoy the writing very much. The prose and the style are very engaging, as a good book ought to be.

This well-written, sympathetic and thorough biography will no doubt be the standard work on its subject for many years to come. Brummell, the friend of royalty and arbiter of taste for a generation, came from a relatively modest background, and like many high-flying parvenues, he ultimately over-reached himself, crashed and burned. Obsessive, cutting, narcissistic and vain, he does not seem to have been a particularly nice man, and the restraint he advocated in dress was notably absent from other areas of his life. A compulsive gambler, he alienated his friend the Prince of Wales, and after fleeing his debtors, eked out the last years of his life in France. The Beau's end, as a pitiful bankrupt syphilitic, was an extremely sad one, though I have to say I felt sorrier for some of the people he had ripped off or insulted in the course of his career as a celebrity.

Despite his manifold shortcomings as a human being, Beau Brummel left a lasting legacy, creating a revolution in men's fashion which has lasted down to the present day. It's hard to like the Beau, but if you read this book, you will certainly come to understand him and appreciate his achievements.

First: Do not be thrown off by the apparent length of this biography. Nearly 100 pages are citations and indexes. In my edition, the actual biography clocked in at 312 pages.

This is probably the most complete biography of Beau Brummell -- the first celebrity famous for being famous and for dressing really really well. Of course, Brummell was more than that - he actually created modern dress for men, ruled the British social scene for a few short years, and his wit was as sharp as his dress sense.

The format of the biography is somewhat unusual. The beginning and end of Brummell's life are written basically chronologically, but the years during the height of Brummell's popularity in London, instead of being split into years, are split into Morning, Afternoon, and Evening. Basically, these chapters break down how Brummell would have spent his typical mornings, afternoons, and evenings during those years, punctuated with specific and often amusing anecdotes. This is a clever way getting insight into Brummell's life without being stuck reading list after list of Brummell's debts and shopping sprees in chronological order.

I felt that the beginning (Brummell's childhood and military years) started slowly, the middle (Brummell's ton years) became interesting, and the ending (Brummell's exile) remained intriguing, if incredibly tragic. I also felt that Ian Kelly worked hard to present the possibilities of the more enigmatic aspects of Brummell's life (such as his sexuality) without jumping to conclusions or taking too much stock in too little evidence.

The only thing I felt was missing -- and I've had a hard time finding it anywhere else -- is a clear delineation of what clothing was like before and after Beau Brummell. Paintings of typical male clothing from two time periods would have been helpful. It's hard to appreciate the impact Beau had on fashion when one can't visualize it.

Ian Kelly's Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Man of Style is a very well researched - and well written - biography of George "Beau" Brummell. For those unfamiliar with the name, Brummell was the ultimate arbiter of style and taste - and most especially fashion - of Regency England. He was also arguably the first real 'celebrity' in that his fame was based not so much on anything he actually did as it was on being who he was and how people perceived that. Like many modern day celebrities, Brummell was famous just for being Brummell.

"'In London,' Casanova said, 'everything is easy to him who has money and is not afraid of spending it.' It was an aphorism by which twenty-one-year-old George Brummell set about his assault on London society. On his coming of age in 1799, a third of the family estate was released to him...
--His brother William bought an estate at Wivenhoe near Colchester with his third of the inheritance and lived the life of a country squire. His sister Maria's money was given over by law to her husband, Captain Blackshaw, and eventually it allowed their daughters to marry into continental nobility. George Bryan Brummell, however - the youngest of the three and in the usual run of things the one who should have had no 'expectations' and been forced into a career - spent his inheritance rather differently. His first acquisitions were the finest wardrobe the West End could offer, and a suitably fashionable address in which to wear it."

Kelly's research into Brummell's life is extremely thorough and he draws on an extraordinarily wide range of resources, all of which he credits, and he takes the time to note when different sources give differing accounts of the same events and to give his opinion as to which is more reliable.

About the only short-coming the book has is that it fails to properly put Brummell's effect on men's fashion into full context. While the illustrations give numerous examples of Brummell's 'Dandy' look that came to dominate men's fashion and was the precursor to the three-piece suit that prevails today, it would've been highly helpful to have included some examples of the styles that were prevalent before Brummell's arrival on the scene and some showing how his look evolved over the succeeding decades into the modern men's suit.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in Brummell, Regency England or the history of fashion and the phenomemon of being a celebrity.