Regency Hygiene, or the Lack Thereof, Part II: Beau Brummell

George Bryan "Beau" Brummell (1778-1840) almost single-handedly brought frequent bathing into vogue in the Regency. The son of a clerk, he was not particularly distinguished for his good looks, education or connection. But he was always very neat, his clothes were a masterpiece of simple elegance, and both his garments and his body were always spotless.

Brummell insisted that a gentleman be clean--clean as in total body immersion in water. His efforts succeeded in part because he had gained the favor of the crown prince, George, later the prince regent. When Brummell converted the prince, the upper classes followed, with the lower orders not far behind.

Brummell turned personal hygiene into an art form. He was famous for his daily three-hour regimen of scrubbing every part of his body, removing all the hair from his face, and then wrapping himself in immaculate, simple clothes that were the antithesis of the male fashions of the previous fifty years. Although his manner of dress was at first called "dandyism", Brummell created the masculine attire we still use today: shirt, tie, jacket and trousers, all well-tailored, on a meticulously clean body.

When he was born, the standard of male beauty consisted of a wardrobe of costly, brightly-colored fabrics, powdered hair or wig, makeup (yes the men wore makeup) and high-heeled shoes. All over a dirty body and filthy hair, both heavily doused with perfume in an attempt to mask, usually unsuccessfully, massive body odor due to infrequent bathing. See previous post.

As an example, these stills from the 2006 BBC production Beau Brummell: This Charming Man show (left), the Prince of Wales before Brummell's influence, and (right), afterwards.

Brummell was not the first proponent of cleanliness. The return to bathing had started before he was born. In the mid 1700's, Philip Stanhope, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, wrote a famous series of letters to his son emphasizing personal hygiene. In France, Jean-Jacque Rousseau extolled cleanliness in his novel, Emile, or On Education (1762), although he personally was not that fastidious.

But the English considered anything French suspicious, and they turned to copious amounts of soap and water only when the consummately British Brummell arrived on the scene.

Brummell's story did not end happily. He fell out with his patron, the Prince of Wales. Afterwards, his gambling debts forced him to flee to France, where he spent the rest of his life. His gambling debts increased as his health declined. He died at sixty-two due to the complications of tertiary syphilis.

Today, we remember Brummell as a male fashion plate. In time, advances in science and the wider availability of soap and hot water cleaned up a world mired in dirt. But Beau Brummell hastened that day by making cleanliness fashionable.

Thank you all,
Linda
Linda Banche
Welcome to My World of Historical Hilarity!
http://www.lindabanche.com

Dressing a Dandy

Posted by Jen Black
One of the little known facts of Beau Brummell’s residence in Chesterfield Street was that it had limited wine-cellar space but an unexpectedly large coal-cellar. This housed the sea-coal that fed the fires that allowed Brummell’s addiction to bathing. He bathed in hot water, and this was considered as remarkable as the fact that he bathed every day.

Captain Jesse and Harriette Wilson report his words: ‘No perfumes, but very fine linen, plenty of it, and country washing.’ City-dried washing, with all the attendant soot spots, would not do; therefore gentlemen’s shirts and unmentionables strewed the washing lines of Islington.

According to Brummell, if the clothes were clean, so should the body beneath them be. The musk and old perfumes worn by the previous generation to hide their lack of personal hygiene were banished along with wigs and lace.

Brummell kept the door of his bedroom ajar so he could converse with friends as he washed, shaved and dressed, even though some of the time he was naked. He exfoliated his body with a coarse-hair brush, and shaved himself with a series of miniature cut-throat razors and then plucked out stray hairs with tweezers. A modern barber suggests the reason for the high neckcloth pioneered by Brummell may well have been to hide razor rash.

Dressing the upper body began a plain, lightly starched white shirt with a collar so large that it enveloped the wearer’s entire head before being folded down. Neck and cuffs fastened with tiny Dorset buttons, and the collar was folded once to the level of the ears. Then a triangle of fine Irish muslin, folded twice over at the widest point, was wrapped around the neck.
Brummell stood before the mirror with his chin in the air and then tied the particular knot of the day and lowered his chin slowly to achieve the desired rucks in the starched material. Once pressed into place and rubbed with an older shirt, the pleats would last for the day.

If all did not go well, the cloths and even the shirt were ripped off and the whole business begun again. Out went the cost of lace and spangles and in came adherence to perfection of line, which demonstrated a gentleman’s wealth and style in a different way.