George Bryan Brummell - The Beau in popular culture

Dandy, born in London, UK. At Eton, and during a brief sojourn at Oxford, he was less distinguished for studiousness than for the exquisiteness of his dress and manners; and after four years in the army, having come into a fortune, he entered on his true vocation as arbiter of elegancies. A close friend and protégé of the prince regent (the future George IV), they quarrelled in 1813, and gambling debts forced Brummell to flee to France (1816). He died in the lunatic asylum in Caen.

George Bryan Brummell (born June 7, 1778, London, England – died March 30, 1840, Caen, France), better known as Beau Brummell, was an arbiter of fashion in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent. Brummell is credited with introducing and bringing to fashion the modern man's suit worn with necktie;

Brummell was an undergraduate student at Oriel College, Oxford in 1794.

A falling-out with the Prince of Wales was Brummell's downfall; Brummell fled England in 1816 as the result of thousands of pounds of accumulated debts to tradesmen (his gambling debts, as "debts of honour," were always paid immediately).

A statue of Brummell stands on Jermyn Street in St. James, London

The Beau in popular culture

Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote the essay On Dandyism and George Brummell. Beau Brummell's life was dramatised in an 1890 stageplay by American playwright Clyde Fitch; and in a 2006 BBC television drama, Beau Brummell: This Charming Man starring James Purefoy as Brummell, and first broadcast on BBC Four on June 19, 2006.

He became, behind only the Prince Regent and the Lady Patronesses of Almack's, the historical character most likely to appear in Regency Romances.

Stephen Sondheim, in Gypsy (1959), used Brummell's name to create a stunning rhyme:

Once my clothes were shabby. So I took a vow, Said, "This bum'll be Beau Brummell."

He also is affectionately remembered by Little Orphan Annie in the Broadway musical Annie (1977), wherein she refers to his keen sense of fashion: "Your clothes may be Beau Brummelly, they stand out a mile ... From singer-songwriter Billy Joel's "Glass Houses" album (1980), the listener is told in the hit "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" that "you could really be a Beau Brummell, baby, if you just give it half a chance". Eliot mentioned him in "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" (which Andrew Lloyd Webber later made into the hit Broadway musical "Cats") in his poem about Bustopher Jones: "In the whole of St. James's the smartest of names / Is the name of this Brummell of cats." The Life of Beau Brummell. Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Dandy. Beau Brummell: His Life and Letters. The Dandy: Brummell to Beerbohm. Origins and Reception of Regency Dandyism: Brummell to Baudelaire.