Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Beau Brummell: The First Celebrity and Inventor of the Suit and Tie

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Robert sits down with Princess Weekes to finish talking about Beau Brummell, the first fashion influencer and modern celebrity, and discuss whether or not he was really a bastard. Sources: Beau Brumme...ll was a 19th-century fashion icon for men (archive.is) "Beau" Brummell, the Dandy Who Invented Men’s Suits (aristocracy.london) Beau Brummell Wasn’t a Hero of Modern Men’s Fashion. He Was a Villain. A Boring, Uptight Villain. (esquire.com) https://reginajeffers.blog/2022/07/18/purchasing-commissions-during-the-napoleonic-wars/ A Revolution in Masculine Style: How Beau Brummell Changed Jane Austen’s World » JASNA Beau Brummell: The Most Stylish History Maker – Never Was (neverwasmag.com) Man of the Cloth - The New York Times (nytimes.com) Blog | Regency History https://www.amazon.com/dp/1416584587?psc=1&language=en_USSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 We are back and we're thinking about George IV. Most of the Kings of England sucked. He definitely did as well. Of all the Kings of England, bottom 10% are we going to say? Where's he going on the Kings of England list? He's not even that iconic. At least Henry VIII, horrible person, but you know, oh Yeah, Henry VIII. Yeah
Starting point is 00:00:28 Yeah, he was your eighth old man. He was a Henry Henry VIII. He is he is As I remember from the song Yeah, I'm trying to think of who was a good King of England Nobody I guess I guess I think technically I guess technically, I think technically, I mean, King's, no, because even Richard the Lionheart was, was, was, you know, doing crusades and those. He was, he was literally doing a crusade. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:00:55 It's like, that's not great, dog. It might be your best. I don't know. Uh, Queen Victoria's got the Irish potato famine. Yeah, might be Charles. If Charles drops dead, having not done anything too terrible as king, I guess he might wind up being our best. Five stars.
Starting point is 00:01:11 A real model of behavior for fail sons around the world. Yeah. But also proof, you can always turn your girlfriend into your wife at any point. Yeah. Never give up. Never surrender. You just got to believe in yourself.
Starting point is 00:01:28 You got to believe in yourself and the fact that you're rich and famous. And who knows who he would be if he had gone to Eaton. He didn't go. Yeah. He didn't go. No. They would have taught him, I don't know, I don't want to make fun too much of his sausage fingers because I think it's a serious medical issue, but
Starting point is 00:01:49 He also refuses to take modern medicine because he believes him in Dumb shit wizards, so I guess it is his fault He probably had there's a single pill that would fix all of his circulation problems But he just like takes strychnine made from some sort of fucking plant sap every day God, I love it when people who have all of the money in the world to be healthy aren't purely because they don't believe in medicine. It's always a lot of fun. The Steve Jobs effect, we call it.
Starting point is 00:02:13 Yeah, yeah. All of your problems are entirely self-generated. Anyway. What a choice. Princess, are you ready to get back to the story of Bo Brummel, who we have just gotten up to age 16, right? He is. Yeah, I'm ready.
Starting point is 00:02:28 And Bo is not afraid, unlike those. Not afraid. Uh, he at least is good at putting on such an image of confidence and fearlessness that dozens of people wrote about it and their writing has come down to us 300 years later about how this guy is like a Fonzie level of cool. 300 years later, we have a whole library worth of just people talking about like, man, that guy was cool. That guy was rad as shit, you know?
Starting point is 00:02:56 That guy fucks. Yeah, he definitely fucks. Henry Winkler level of fucks. And you guys think about Henry Winkler as we throw the ads. Ever get the feeling someone's watching you? Well, in 1971, a group of anti-war activists had that feeling. I was in the heart of the dragon,
Starting point is 00:03:16 and it was my job to stop the fire. So they decided to do something insane, break in to the FBI, and expose J. Edgar Hoover's dirty secrets. We had some idea that this was pretty explosive. I'm Ed Helms. Listen to season two of Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women's
Starting point is 00:03:44 sports. Every day I'm bringing you the stakes, stars, stats, and stories to keep you up to date. If you're new to women's sports, welcome. And if you've been around, let's make things nice and comfy for our new friends. Good Game is where we go to celebrate, debate, and dissect the teamwork, competition,
Starting point is 00:04:00 and rivalries that we love to watch. Join us, let's have some fun. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Owen Wilson stars in Tom Slick, Mystery Hunter, an action-packed thrill ride based on the mostly true tale of explorer, scientific legend,
Starting point is 00:04:23 and alleged spy, Tom Slick. No one has been able to find the Yeti. It's a mystery that does not want to be solved. That's why I'm here. Listen to my show, Tom Slick, Mystery Hunter, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your most thrilling adventure stories. We're back.
Starting point is 00:04:47 I love Henry Wayne. He's had a great career, you know? Yeah, great hair still. Yeah. Take that. It's, because it's easy to be, you know, as a young man, he was quite handsome. It's easy to seem cool briefly when you're like young
Starting point is 00:04:59 and really handsome, but he grew up into a man who looks like, and I mean, this is no insult to him, looks like your dad's accountant and is still really cool Like still you kind of want to be Henry Winkler and that means he's always just had that kind of deep vein of cool running Through him. I appreciate that Some somebody's gonna point out that he killed someone in the 1970s and then all that I'll have to feel bad point out that he killed someone in the 1970s and then I'll have to feel bad. I don't think so. He was too busy getting killed off as principles in horror movies to really do any murdering
Starting point is 00:05:30 himself. He did do a lot of that, didn't he? Yeah. I'm just a little bit like... I kept thinking that the fellow who died recently, the leading man who passed recently- Donald Sutherland. Yeah, Donald. We were just talking about it before we recorded.
Starting point is 00:05:45 I had mistakenly thought he was involved in the Natalie Wood thing, and I just realized when he died, like, oh, I was just, like, tarring this man with a horrible brush for no reason, just because I'm bad at keeping track of celebrities. Yeah. And it made me feel like- You're like, all these white men did something wrong.
Starting point is 00:06:01 Yeah, it made me feel, I've had a couple of weird arguments. Like, I had one about Billy Joel with some lady in my mentions who was like, Okay, you like him, but he's he's an abuser. He's like, it was an abusive husband. And I was like, I don't know where you're getting that from. No one's ever accused him of that. Like his exes seem to speak really well of him. And he spent the last 30 years primarily raising money for like a battered woman shelter. I actually think he's kind of fine on this, but I think it's, you just half hear something and you mistakenly like blame some random famous person
Starting point is 00:06:31 for something they did not do. I'm sure we've all done it at some point. It's just too many names out there to keep track of. Like- Yeah, rumors circulate about dead people and you're just kind of like, well, they, like I remember like not to defend her, but I remember people saying like, oh yeah,
Starting point is 00:06:45 Mary Tudor burned like over 300 people. And the numbers like 275. It's like, that's still not great. That's not great. I was expecting more. That is like 20. If you think about it in murder terms, thinking someone killed 25 more people than they did
Starting point is 00:07:01 is a lot, although not a lot if they did kill 275 people. So I don don't know I don't know where you want to go on this you know yeah, we'll call that the Matthew Broderick conundrum Anyway look at Matthew Broderick dark dark. I know I know it's dark history look This is this is the show that we're on my brother used to confuse Dennis Quaid and Harrison Ford, and I feel like That is not chill Harrison Ford and I feel like that is not Joe. No, because Harrison Ford never killed anybody. Not that I'm aware of. Except for with kindness. Anyway, we're talking about Bo.
Starting point is 00:07:35 So Bo's parents, you know, he is basically on his own in the world by age 16 or so, which is not uncommon in the period. In a lot of most of like the Western world at 14, you're generally starting to be seen as a full adult. You're still, most people see this kind of view you as very young, but you're often like working full time, right? Like you're supporting yourself or helping to support your family by that age if you're a man.
Starting point is 00:07:59 Um, and it's not super common, especially among commoners. It's rare for girls to like, it's not the norm for girls to be like married and having kids at that time, but it's not unheard of, especially among the aristocracy, right? So the fact that Bo's childhood ends a little early has a lot to do with the fact that his parents both die when he's very young, his mom passes in 1793 when he is 15 years old, um, his, he doesn't write a lot about her. The evidence we have seems that maybe by the time
Starting point is 00:08:27 he was kind of in his late teens, they were a little bit cold and his dad is cold on him. He is the least favorite son of his family. His mom and his dad both seem to view him as kind of a fuck around because he's this like party boy. He's loved by his classmates. He has no ambition. That is kind of a thing about Bo
Starting point is 00:08:44 for someone who's as famous as he was, he never wants to do anything. He doesn't wanna be in government. He doesn't want a job. He just likes having fun. And his parents seem to recognize that and are sort of disgusted with him because his dad is not entirely a self-made man,
Starting point is 00:09:01 but makes a lot of money. His biographer suggests that his mom's death and his failure with Julia pushes him at this point away from the women who had been his primary influences and early friends into the world of rich young assholes like the Prince of Wales. In 1794, the next year, his father dies just as George is finishing his time at Eaton. I've heard wildly divergent estimates of what his family estate is worth. The low end, and this is what Ian Kelly says, probably around five million pounds in modern
Starting point is 00:09:32 money. But also you can never get very close to accurate descriptions of what the money is worth because most people don't use money in their day-to-day life. An average peasant or whatever, an average person in the countryside, particularly in the countryside, if you're farming, money is not a day-to-day thing for you. Most of what you do, you accomplish. You either grow it, you pull it to the ground, or you barter with your neighbors. Every now and then you'll get money. You can pay your taxes directly with the crops that you grow. People in the city use money, but even then a lot of it's on credit and script.
Starting point is 00:10:10 And so when you're talking about these wealthy people who do have fortunes, even something like if you're saying something is like the equivalent of a million pounds, just based on how we calculate stuff, it's usually really much more than that because most people don't have money most of the time, right? I've seen some estimates that the family fortune was more like 50 million dollars. Either way, his dad leaves them a lot of money. And the custom of the time, most people would have given it all to the oldest brother, William, right? A lot of, this is a period of time in which a lot of colonization is happening,
Starting point is 00:10:40 a lot of colonization is driven by second and third sons, you know, we don't get any of the family money That is Losers right like yeah, you're born to be fucked with you know, your big brother's the one who's gonna get all the money That doesn't happen with the Brummel's Billy the their dad is kind of a forward-thinking guy and he splits the estate up and to his credit This shows you a little bit of a progressive streak in the Brummel's the estate up and to his credit, this shows you a little bit of a progressive streak in the Brummel's. He has two sons and a daughter and each of them gets the same share of the family money, which is rare. Yeah. And yeah, nice. Yeah. Depending on how you want to calculate
Starting point is 00:11:16 it, Georgia's share of this is probably between like one and a half million to three million pounds and modern money. Um, it's a lot. It is enough that if he had wanted to live a modest life, he could have been comfortable and never worked. It's also enough that, not enough to be comfortable and live like a rich person, right? Like today, if you inherit $3 million at 16, if you invest that right, you can live comfortably forever if your tastes aren't too fancy.
Starting point is 00:11:43 But if you wanna live in a New York high rise, right, in a world where, like, you're going to run through three million dollars pretty quick, you know? Real quick, yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of money. It's not enough to be rich forever, right? That's the amount that he inherits.
Starting point is 00:11:57 So, he also, he's not going to immediately get access to it. It comes to him in a trust, and he's going to have to beg his new guardian for any money initially that he wants to pay. And this guardian, it's like he's Godfather or something, it's a friend of the family. The guardian sends the boys to Oxford initially, because he's like, well, you're done at Eaton. You should all go to the best school of the day.
Starting point is 00:12:16 And today, actually get to speak at Oxford a year or so ago. Very nice town, very pretty school, very academically. I'd rather went there for a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like one of the most respected schools you can go to. It's not really a school back then in the way we think of things. There are classes, you learn some things.
Starting point is 00:12:37 Most of what you learn if you are in this social class is how to drink like a son of a bitch, right? You are not- Oh again, so double drinking. Yes, yes, yes. You learned how to drink like a son of a bitch, right? You are not- Again, so double drinking. Yes, yes, yes. You learned how to drink as a boy and now it's time to learn how to drink like a man. You know, like that's why you go to Oxford. That's most of what you learn.
Starting point is 00:12:54 And I am not making this up. So one of the most prominent Oxford graduates who went there, he goes there a bit before George's day, but I think his statement about Oxford in this period of time, and Oxford is, it's not a college, it's a series of colleges in one town that all kind of get wrapped up, but there's like a number of different universities.
Starting point is 00:13:12 One of like a guy who goes to Oxford in the period of like, basically a generation before George is Edward Gibbon, who you might not know him by name, but he is the guy who writes the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, right? He is one of the biggest names in the history of academia, right? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, very, yeah. And this is what he says about Oxford in this time.
Starting point is 00:13:33 I spent 14 months at Magdalen College. They proved to be the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life, right? We didn't do shit but drink. Ian Kelly quotes a contemporary politician who preceded George at Oxford by a little bit and said, a gentleman commoner was under no restraint and never called upon to attend either lectures or chapel or hall. The set of men with whom I lived were very pleasant
Starting point is 00:13:55 but very idle fellows. Our life was an imitation of high life in London. We are pretending to be adults and we are learning how to be ready to be rich Dilettantes in the city, you know And we're not learning that because there's nothing to do we're learning that because being a rich dilettante in the city is How you get the jobs running the Empire, right? This is part of why some of the people who run it do stuff like try to hold
Starting point is 00:14:21 Afghanistan not all that long after this period of time and get everybody killed. It also part of what you do have to accept is there's a degree to this is a very effective system at the end of the day in creating people who are hard and cruel enough to run an empire that is extremely powerful. This is the drinking, the insults, the petty bon mots, the fact that you have to be so quick witted, you have to be able to keep track of who is where and who you can insult and who you shouldn't. The fact that you have to be able to drink too excess dirt,
Starting point is 00:14:58 but not too much because you don't wanna lose track of like maintaining your path in the social structure, that requires a lot of a person. And it doesn't breed people who are good at governing India, but it creates people who are good at understanding how to hold power in India. You know? It does.
Starting point is 00:15:18 That's why they do it. Right. They hold the line of the hierarchy. And they're also so, from the whole homosocial hierarchy and they're also so, from that, from the whole homosocial dynamic, they're also ready to believe the person on top of them knows best. So they'll just believe whatever being told by the person above them. Yeah, yeah. It's this, I have talked to, I was not a high school girl, but I have talked to my friends
Starting point is 00:15:40 who were high school girls and they'll talk about, especially when you're like, I think the show Yellow Jackets gets an aspect of this pretty well, but like how, how brutal girls can be in like social hierarchy to each other at that age. Men have their own version of that. And you should look at the, the, the culture that produces the rulers of England as like a really gossipy high school. Everybody's fucking, everybody's talking shit and gossiping about each other. And George, all he wants, he doesn't want any of the jobs. He wants to sail to the top of that
Starting point is 00:16:14 without actually being responsible for anything, right? He is in a lot of ways the consummate slacker, right? Yeah, like he is kind of like the patron saint of slackers, you know Which is part of why I respect when you're a B plus student. You're like, I'm gonna be okay Yeah, like I'm a B plus student. I can pass all the classes. Yeah, I'm not gonna study though. Yeah. Yeah So this segment of society was as George came of age also deeply spooked the culprit of this scaredness came of age also deeply spooked. The culprit of this scaredness, spookiness, was the French Revolution, which is kind of lingering.
Starting point is 00:16:48 It hits while George is at Eton. He comes home from like school for a holiday to be told at his family manor like, oh yeah, you know, they just did a revolution in France. Looks pretty nasty for people like us over there. Killed the king and queen. Yeah, killed a lot of fucking people. And so everybody, it doesn't hit Great Britain,
Starting point is 00:17:06 but a lot of refugees do. A lot of these French nobles and wealthy people who flee wind up coming to London and stuff. And the whole aristocracy is terrified, is this shit gonna spread? Because they're not looking at it as just the French Revolution. They're also looking at what just happened
Starting point is 00:17:22 in the United States, right? Which did include a lot of violence towards members of the British aristocracy who stayed loyal. And they're thinking, are we about to have an uprising of the common people, right? Are we on the verge of a revolution, you know? Right. Yeah. Part of what they are aware of is that a lot of the men and women who had faced the guillotine during this era had been identified by the crowd as aristocrats because they were dressed very well, right? They are wearing the clothes of incredibly rich people. And this starts to accelerate a change that had already begun to sweep British fashion earlier in the 1780s. Wool replaces silk, gold and silver seems the less desirable than flat colors in an age where you never know is a mob about to come for us.
Starting point is 00:18:08 So this is starting to happen. And parts of this had started before the French Revolution, but that really accelerates this like, I don't know if I want to be wearing the equivalent of like $200,000 in silk at all times and like gold, literal gold braid. Like I shouldn't carry my purse in this neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things I think that is an aspect of this, you know, we're dealing with this weird thing where you've got a chunk of people
Starting point is 00:18:36 who believe that guys like Donald Trump, literal billionaires, guys like Elon Musk, are basically working class because they they seem common and coarse in a way that like, well, he's saying what I feel like. So maybe he's not one of like the ruling class and they are, but part of what lets people get away with this is that suits are a thing that rich people wear, but also a lot of people wear, I would say 99% of people I have seen wearing tailored suits were not wealthy
Starting point is 00:19:05 Most of them are working class, right? Because for a lot of working class people like you just wear a suit to work, right? Like or at least a casual suit or something right and that has allowed I think It's as opposed to in this kind of pre-regency period early Regency period if you see a rich person you immediately know by their dress That they're rich, right? Right. And part of what's going to happen, this change in fashion, is going to change that.
Starting point is 00:19:31 It's never again going to be as easy to tell how rich the rich are just by their clothes, unless you really know your fashion shit, right? Right. It's kind of like how, like, when the Silicon Valley tech bros came up and they were wearing like sweatpants and just really casual like athleisure but very expensive watches. And so like accessories became the new indicator of stuff, not necessarily the clothes you were wearing. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:57 And it's part because like those are a little easier to take off. They're a little less immediately obvious, you know. Bo is going to be part of why that becomes how people look at fashion. We're going to, we're, we're getting to all that. So he only spends a couple of months at Oxford. He gives it up in like a semester as a useless waste of money. And he comes to his guardian and is like, look, I don't think Oxford's going to help me get where I want to get. I want some of my money released now because I need to buy a commission in the Royal army. I want to pay to become an officer in the Army. If you join the Army today, number one, you never pay because that
Starting point is 00:20:32 would be very sketchy to pay to join the Army. You will start, there's two tracks and the British are actually part of why because the British helped to invent and they're kind of cribbing from the Romans. We crib in part from the Romans, from the French, from the British, you know, how we organize our army. There's two tracks in the military. And this is true then it's true this day. There's non-commissioned officers, privates, sergeants, corporals, right? That's not the order it goes in, but whatever. And then there's officers, right? That's your lieutenants, your captains, your majors, your colonels, yada, yada, yada, on and up.
Starting point is 00:21:06 They do slightly different things and they're different social classes historically. This is a little bit less the case in the United States, but not really that much because officers have to have a college degree, right? Generally, not always. My grandpa never graduated eighth grade, but he became an officer because everyone above him got shot to death in Korea. It does happen occasionally, but as a general rule, officers are people who have an education. And in this period, officers are usually the aristocracy or gentlemen commoners, like Bo. And in the modern militaries, there's no way to start out as a higher rank.
Starting point is 00:21:45 You start out at the bottom of your respective rung, usually either like a private or a second lieutenant if you're an officer, right? Because modern militaries have found that if you can bribe people for better jobs, what happens is all of your officers suck and they get everyone killed all the time. This is a problem in a lot of different militaries, right?
Starting point is 00:22:02 It's always a problem. Sounds about right. Yeah, yeah. You look at a lot of these to go into kind of some contemporary history. There's been a lot written about like, you have these wars between Israel and a lot of its neighbors. And a lot of these armies like Egypt and Syria
Starting point is 00:22:16 perform really badly. And part of it is because if you're a dictator, if you're a strong man in power, you don't necessarily want an army that makes it easy for good officers to gain power because that's your those are the people who might overthrow you, right? So you want toadies and stuff, people are effectively buying. And that's how a lot of shit works in the British Army kind of for for quite a while, and
Starting point is 00:22:39 especially during this period. Back in the late 1700s and early 1800s, rank is not something a rich man earned. It was something he bought. And this practice had started in the reign of Charles II. Being able to buy a commission actually had a reasonable origin. It was trying to deal with the fact that you had a lot of rich guys who wanted to be officers. They would join, they would get everybody killed, or if a battle would go badly, they would run away, and they would kind of like fuck over the army. So they were trying to establish accountability. And initially the way buying a commission worked
Starting point is 00:23:11 is it was like- Pay up. Pay, well it was like bonding out of jail. It was, in order to become an officer, you give us a chunk of money, and when you're done, we'll give it to you back, unless you run away in battle or get everybody killed. If you fuck up, you don give it to you back unless you run away and battle or get everybody killed. If you fuck up, you don't get this money back, right?
Starting point is 00:23:28 So it starts from a good, an intelligent desire to like, we need to have some accountability, right? But by the time Bo is there, it has turned into a way for if you're an asshole with a lot of money, you can pay to have a cool sounding rank. Like I would like it if people called me captain. I would like to be called Colonel, right? Here's a pile of money. Like I would like it if people called me captain. I would like to be called colonel, right? Here's a pile of money.
Starting point is 00:23:47 Now I'm a colonel, right? But it did lead to people who didn't know their shit being in command of military units. And British defeat in the Revolutionary War is going to be blamed by a lot of people at home on these officers who have paid for their commissions. Now I think historians have largely agreed that that's not a primary cause. It wasn't 0% of why things go badly for them, but it's not the main reason things do, right? But a lot of people do blame that for the defeat at the time, right? It's also worth noting that the army does this because the army is the second tier British military thing. The Royal Navy, you're never
Starting point is 00:24:25 able to do this. It's got some corruption of its own, but that's part of why the Navy always wins, you know, is they don't do stupid shit. They're like, this is going to be sick. Yeah. We don't have any. We have no flex with the Navy. The Navy's got look at us and everyone we're picking fights with. Right. Right. Otherwise, we're just getting. We're an island nation. We need this shit to work. We cannot fuck around with the Navy.
Starting point is 00:24:51 And you shouldn't fuck around with the Navy either, which is why this podcast is sponsored entirely by the British Royal Navy circa 1790. Was it easy to get a sponsorship from a bunch of men who have been dead for 200 years? Actually, yes. But that's because we at Coolzone employ only the finest oracles for our ad sales team. So thank you, oracles.
Starting point is 00:25:22 Tom Slick, February 14th, 1958. We just heard it. The proof. Owen Wilson is Tom Slick, Mystery Hunter. To track the Yeti is an expectation of life and death, Mr. Slick. It's a mystery that does not want to be solved. That's why I'm here. We're gonna die!
Starting point is 00:25:47 Nellis, when chance arrives... God, I need my blood pressure checked after that. Mom, you don't have to listen to this if it's too much. These are my father's untold stories. I am listening. Join Claire in Live Slick, played by Sissy Spacek and Skyler Fisk, Welcome adventure stories. Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women's sports. Every day I'm bringing you the stakes, stats, stars and stories to keep you up to date.
Starting point is 00:26:37 If you're new to women's sports, welcome. Can't wait to show you around. And if you've been around, let's make things nice and comfy for our new friends. We want Good Game to be just like women's sports, the best of the competition, teamwork, and rivalries that we love, minus the toxic masculinity and drunken brawls. Where else but women's sports?
Starting point is 00:26:56 Do we see a player passing her ex-wife on the WNBA's all-time leading scorer list, and then watch her new fiance, teammate and MVP candidate talk about it afterward on SportsCenter. Shout out to Duana Bonner and Alyssa Thomas. The tea, y'all. The tea is so good. Good Game is where we go to celebrate, debate and dissect those stories and all aspects of women's sports. Join us. Let's have some fun. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:27:30 Late on the evening of March 8th, 1971, a group of anti-war activists did something insane. Holy s***, we are really here. This is really happening. They weren't professional criminals. They were ordinary citizens, but they needed to know the truth about the FBI. Burglary's forged blackmail letters and threats of violence were used to try to stop anti-war marches.
Starting point is 00:27:54 Even if that meant risking everything. I just felt like I was living in the heart of the dragon and it was just my job to stop the fire. I'm Ed Helms, host of Snafu, season two, Medburg, the story of a daring heist that exposed J. Edgar Hoover's secret FBI. If it meant some risks that were involved, well, that's what citizens sometimes have to do.
Starting point is 00:28:20 Listen to season two of Snafu on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Princess, is there a dead person you'd like our oracles to get you in contact with? Oh man, yes. Please, I wanna talk to Catherine of Aragon. Oh, hell yeah. Just for like five minutes. please. I wanna talk to Catherine of Aragon. Oh, hell yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:45 Just for like five minutes. Yeah. I have questions. Yeah, yeah, I got a couple of those. You know, honestly, it's not a person for me, but I would like to let Hitler's dog know that we don't blame him. That's good, yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:57 Like none of it's on you, buddy. Like it's not on you, man. Like we know, you didn't have any choice. You're a German shepherd. Like it's not on you, man. Nobody blames you, right? We're all in agreement. I just feel like he might be holding onto some trauma.
Starting point is 00:29:12 One innocent. Yeah. The only person in that bunker who didn't deserve what happened to him. So, by the late 1790s, only some cavalry and infantry regiments let people purchase commissions, and a lot of these are show units meant for parade duty rather than fighting Napoleon, which is happening at this time, and Napoleon, pretty good at fighting.
Starting point is 00:29:34 You don't want to send some asshole who bought a thousand men. You need a guy who's going to be named after a steak. You know, that's what you need. Right, right, exactly. Yes, exactly. The man who's going to have boots named after him is the one we can trust to do this shit. And of all of the fake regiments in the British Royal Army, the fakest of the fake was the elite 10th light Dragoons, which had been christened the Prince of Wales's own, right? It's supposed to be an honorific, you know, this is the specific unit, the elite.
Starting point is 00:30:05 In the czarist rush, you get the elite horse guards, which are like the crown prince's own or whatever. And here, that equivalent is the 10th light dragoons. Now, the Prince of Wales at this point is George Augustus Frederick. Born in 1762, he is in his early 30s when 16-year-old George Brummel pays to join his unit. Now, in the future, he is going to be King George IV, one of the shit of all of the dog shit King's
Starting point is 00:30:30 kingdom has ever had near the bottom of the pile. He is famous for being a selfish asshole to everyone around him. He's famous for like among the standards of the kings of England, people being like, yeah, this guy was really addicted to people. Just didn't seem to care about anyone else. Yeah, especially his wife, like, horrible marriage. Yeah, terrible marriage. He was like, you're not coming to the funeral. His wife, Queen Charlotte, Princess Charlotte, doesn't like George, but George actually feels sorry for her because he sees how she's treated.
Starting point is 00:31:02 He is there for the wedding. We're getting to this. The Tenth Light Dragoons and how they worked and why they came about are a testament to the kind of lifestyle the future king lived. Because he was heir, his dad, and some of this isn't his fault, his dad won't let him do anything. He doesn't want him to have a real job
Starting point is 00:31:18 because the prince, the only real job that's fit for a prince is to be a soldier. And that's dangerous, right? Your heir is the future of the dynasty. Dad wants you safe at home, not getting into any trouble. And so you can't actually learn to be good at anything. There's nothing for you. And so the prince, he grows past his twenties to his thirties.
Starting point is 00:31:39 The only thing, his wife will say, the only thing he was ever good at was fashion. He knew fabric. He knew good cuts of clothing. He was even, he could have been a great tailor, you know, if he had come about in a different time where he was actually allowed and needed to do something. He might've actually been a person with a skill and it would have been better for him because he is miserable his whole life.
Starting point is 00:32:01 Because he has no talent. Like most people, we have these guys today. A lot of people who are not good for anything fetishize military uniforms and dressing and looking and pretending to be militant as a way to hide the fact that they have no talent, right? He is like one of these guys who marches around city streets and fucking soldier get up and whatnot,
Starting point is 00:32:24 waving a flag or whatever. Like he is, he has a lot of that in him. Yeah, fucking LARPers, military LARPers. Yeah. He is a LARPer and he is deeply insecure about it. He collected replicas of every kind of uniform in the Royal Army. When his brother, his brother goes, his brother who,
Starting point is 00:32:41 his younger brother who has a real job doing actual statesmanship visits Berlin and in 1791 as part of like, you know, they're fighting Napoleon, right? The Prussians are our allies and whatnot. So he's he's he's there for diplomatic reasons. And when he goes, his eldest brother is the fail list of fail sons, he's not allowed to do anything is like, if you go, this is what he writes in the letter being like, I want you to bring me these
Starting point is 00:33:04 back, the complete uniforms acc a kutrimar, saddle and bridle, et cetera, of one of the Zaytans, Hussars, as well as one of the officers' complete uniforms, clothing, sword, cap, saddle, bridle, chabrik, pistols, in short, everything complete. I want the whole, all of the uniform, all of the bits, all of the uniform all of the bits all of the dresses He's like, you know that this is a guy this today
Starting point is 00:33:28 He might have wound up like in a nerdier thing being one of those rich dudes who has like all of the fucking Imperial officer, you know every stormtrooper uniform a great Darth Vader costume. He's that kind of guy Only he's not Brother buy it for him, right? He doesn't even- He's like, this is this kind of Vader costume. This is from the video game. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:33:49 But he's also, he's not, there's something, respect, if you're the kind to do, especially, I've known some people who like buy all the equipment to like make their own custom uniforms and shit like that's a skill. You have to learn a lot about tailoring. Oh yeah, I have cosplay friends who do that, yeah. Right, a lot of respect for that. He is the kind of guy who pays to have all that made for him. The specific uniform that he's most obsessed with
Starting point is 00:34:10 is the uniform of the Prussian hussars. And a hussar is a kind of cavalry. These guys are the Navy SEALs of their day. They are special forces. They are the best of the best, right? Not only are these hussars, they have a pretty good combat record, but they look really cool. If you look up the Death's Head hussars, they have a pretty good combat record, but they look really cool.
Starting point is 00:34:26 If you look up the Death's Head hussars, these guys, they wear these huge shakos, these big bearskin hats that have bear fur on them, these huge round hats, and it has a skull and crossbones. Do you see the Death's Head? That is where the Nazis get the Death's Head from. It comes from these units, these elite units of hussars. Now, these guys aren't Nazis, right? They don't exist yet. Right. This is just it looks cool to have a school in crossbones in your helmet.
Starting point is 00:34:52 Right. No, no, no, for sure. It's just like Hitler. Hitler is just such a like he says a Pinterest artist of like, I like this. I like this. I like this. I like this. I'm just going to ruin it retroactively. The guy who makes the SS what they are, Heinrich Himmler, is exactly the same kind of nerd about this stuff that the future King of England is going to be.
Starting point is 00:35:12 And he's also obsessed with these hussars and their great uniforms and whatnot. So that's what the Prince of Wales wants. What he covets about these guys, because he is never going to see anything close to a fight, is their reputation for being deadly skilled professionals. He wants respect and people respect these men, right? In Beau Brumbel's biography, Ian Kelly writes,
Starting point is 00:35:35 "'Such was the issue's importance in his mind "'that he wrote directly to Sir Henry Dundas, "'Secretary for War, threatening that if he were not "'granted the rank and uniform of a major general, it must lead to a total separation between the king and myself. He put it more eloquently to his father, I have no option but to lead a life which must to the public eye where the color of idleness, which from the sense of it so appearing must sit irksomely upon me. A uniform would make him appear properly royal, a soldier prince leading
Starting point is 00:36:05 his people. In letters to his father, he likened himself to the black prince and in the portraits he commissioned and poised himself as a man of action, a military prince. He wants to be seen as this great warrior. He's never gonna get a chance to do that, right? He would have gotten killed immediately. He would have gotten the whole British army. Yeah, sorry, honey, you're a scrub. He would have won the shit out of this war if anyone had let this son of a bitch near a battlefield. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:36:30 Absolutely. Yeah. And his dad knows this. The most the prince is, yeah, these guys are so funny. His dad knows this. The most the prince is ever gonna get is a single regiment created just for him in 1793. The 10th regiment of light dragoons,
Starting point is 00:36:47 the prince of Wales's own never does anything. They are not a real military unit. They exist. This is, today people who have this desire and a little bit more inside themselves, if they've got some money, they just start playing Warhammer, right? But this is his equivalent of playing one of these
Starting point is 00:37:08 like toy soldier games, right? Instead of, he doesn't have to buy models and build and paint them. He just gets a body of men. He designs their uniform from the ground up. He is kind of like painting these guys and assembling them. He's like, yeah, give him some men,
Starting point is 00:37:23 some men we don't need. Let him dress them up however he wants. He can march them around on a field and pretend he's a general. Now, to give you an idea of like how little his father trusts him, he gets this unit gets made early on. And like, I think the yeah, in the in 1793, he doesn't get or in 1783 or something like that. But he doesn't get command of it until 1793, he doesn't get, or in 1783 or something like that, but he doesn't get command of it until 1793,
Starting point is 00:37:49 when war with France starts. So at first, other people are running this because his dad doesn't even trust him to run a fake unit designed for him to like look fancy in. But when war with France starts, they're like, we're gonna need to get a lot of soldiers. And if we show the Prince Regent trotting around with his fake army,
Starting point is 00:38:07 it might make the royalty look like we're more invested in this fight. And maybe more commoners will join up to die for us. So he makes his son, he gives him proper command of the unit in 1793, but he backdates his rank to 1782. He retcons his son being a colonel in the army, so he's not the most junior officer because you can't have that. Right? Yeah. Right. That would be embarrassing.
Starting point is 00:38:33 Now, the king does make it clear to everyone involved in running the military under no circumstances will my son ever leave the country. We are not using him or this unit for anything. So the prince's only job is to design the uniforms, which are the most elaborate and expensive military outfits in all of Europe. George Brumble joins the 10th for two reasons. First off, the guy who stole his first girlfriend had been their old colonel. And second, it's a way to get close to the prince. Social and professional advancement in regency England is tied entirely to who you know.
Starting point is 00:39:03 And the prince is basically the best man to know. He had met the prince once earlier at Windsor Castle, and the future king had expressed an interest. George comes to the castle dressed differently from everyone else, dressed really down. He's kind of dressed casually, but it's sort of, he looks like he just rolled out of bed, but he spent four hours setting himself up to look like he just rolled out of bed. And he looks like he's dressed down, but in the, cause he's wearing this outfit that's like a costume, right? That's like a casual costume, but he is perfectly tailored.
Starting point is 00:39:33 He has every single measurement he has like set out to show off his body to the best degree. And the king is like, oh dude, you look fucking dope. Sick, yeah. Like the prince is, yeah. And the prince, you know, not to body shame a dead man, he is known for being corpulent, right? And so he is insecure about this.
Starting point is 00:39:52 He gets made fun of for this. And Bo is thin and muscular and handsome, right? So the prince is like, how can I dress like you? And he listens to everything the 16 year old boy has to say, right? Oh my God. He's desperate to be this kid. He's year old boy has to say, right? Oh my God. He's desperate to be this kid. He's just, cause he's cool, right?
Starting point is 00:40:09 One of the criticisms I might have of Ian Kelly, he was a very good and a very serious biographer. He jumps around this fact that like, cause he, Kelly kind of leans into this. It's a little bit of a mystery. Why everyone likes him so much. Some of it was this, he was charming. He was like, what he doesn't, cause he's a little bit too,
Starting point is 00:40:23 I think professional to say this is like, Beau's just cool, right? And the same. Yeah, he looks like Timothy Chalamet. Yeah, exactly. Right, like people just wanna be like him. So, yeah, and you know, the Prince of Wales, who is 30 something, kind of falls for him.
Starting point is 00:40:41 So when George applies for entry into the regiment, the Prince of Wales says yes. Now George has to pay and he has to pay out the ass for these uniforms, but he quickly becomes one of the most popular men in the unit, despite being a literal child. A lot of these guys are in their 20s and 30s. He is 16 and they all look up to him, right?
Starting point is 00:41:02 Now he can drink with the best of them. He's very funny. And pretty soon the Prince is up to him, right? Now he can drink with the best of them. He's very funny. And pretty soon the prince is dressing like him, which means everyone else starts dressing like him, right? Oh yeah. What an influencer. Yeah, he is an influencer. And to be fair, the prince is not bad at fashion
Starting point is 00:41:18 and the tense elaborate uniform has an influence on George and is going to play a part in the creation of the modern suit. The cavalry officers, like all cavalry officers, were these skin-tight breeches. Theirs are made of wool and they're so thin that the wearer almost looks naked or a lot of, because it's a pale kind of whitish blue color a lot of times, you look like a marble statue like these ancient Greek statues, right? That everybody worships, right?
Starting point is 00:41:43 English writing breeches had become popular by this point in post-revolutionary France because they're athleisure, right? They're a little more like blue jeans. A lot of people see them as, right? They're egalitarian, you know? But these were the most popular writing breeches, and the writing breeches Beau wears before he joins this unit are usually knee-high because you're wearing them with cavalry boots, which go up very high. The 10th, just because the prince likes them, their breeches go down low, low enough that
Starting point is 00:42:11 you can actually wear them with regular shoes. They're close to trousers, right? Modern slacks in a lot of ways, other than how tight they are. George Brummel appreciates these pants, right? And he's going to integrate them into his uniform. And these, the pants that he starts wearing when he's in the tent are seen by people as like one of the precursors to modern slacks.
Starting point is 00:42:32 George Brummel appreciated these pants, but the rest of the uniform he considered a pain because it was so intricate and expensive. It cost about 350 pounds to buy your own uniform. And it- Damn. Yeah, right? That's not cheap today,
Starting point is 00:42:46 but a housekeeper back then makes 15 a year. You're already paying to play because like you already put up money to be here in the first place. Now I have to go buy extra? Yeah, it's just a disaster. Like a footman is making 17 pounds a year. A French chef, you know,
Starting point is 00:43:02 they live pretty well is making 60 pounds. So this is a crazy amount of money to spend on your outfit. Yeah. Yeah. Even for a rich kid. Um, now the primary occupation of the Prince's own hasars, cause they're not allowed to fight is alcoholism. Uh, they did do some drills and war games, but those are mostly, you spend the day writing
Starting point is 00:43:22 around doing a war game and then you spend several days drunk off your ass Just and Bo is like I've been training my whole life Finally I have been the kind of alcoholic that doesn't exist on the planet anymore since age 13 I'm ready coach put my ass in and they have a lot of terms for this Like they'll say call certain songs like two bottle Songs and three bottle songs were like you can sing this kind of song when you've had two bottles of wine This kind of song you're gonna need three bottles for right? And there's also term like a three bottle man a man who can easily put away three bottles of wine in the night and like
Starting point is 00:43:58 Still keep his head about him be ready the next day to go ride around to do whatever gonna bullshit, right? ready the next day to go ride around and do whatever kind of bullshit, right? And that's all you're doing, is drinking and riding around. The prince described his ideal soldiers as men of fashion and gentlemen. And he spent most of his time forcing bottles of wine down their throats and doing his,
Starting point is 00:44:15 basically they're all doing karaoke. That's what partying is then, is you all sing together while you get recklessly drunk. One veteran of the unit later recalled, the officers of those days were thrown headlong into a vicious school, where at times they were expected to act as if in reality they were thinking beings, and at others chastised for merely thinking. The officers were suffered to get drunk, swear, gamble, seduce, and run into death at pleasure.
Starting point is 00:44:39 That such a school produced many scamps, many incorrigible bad characters, is but little surprising. It is indeed truly wonderful that it produced anything else." He's like, Jesus Christ. Most of us turned into pieces of shit, but that's not what's amazing. What's amazing is that any of us didn't. Right. It's like some of us actually became part of members of society. They died two years after because their livers were completely destroyed, but good for them. They were melting from the inside out.
Starting point is 00:45:08 George Brummel does extremely well in this world. Brummel is noted as being, quote, the life and soul of the mess with his regiment for his original wit and collection of good stories were inexhaustible. And at the dinner table, he always kept his brother officers in roars of laughter. Every regiment in those days had a practiced and privileged jester whose province it was to put an immediate stop to serious conversation by pun or joke and return to quote the hilarity which usually pervades our military society. So he is he is seen as the guy is like he can stop anyone from like he's making dark jokes, he's making jokes, you know, lewd jokes about women, and his goal
Starting point is 00:45:45 is to redirect conversation, to keep everybody in high spirits, right? Especially when they start losing money, as they're all going into debt, trying to afford to be in this unit, that's part of his job, and he's good at it. He does so well at this side of army life that after a year in the regiment, at age 17,
Starting point is 00:46:02 he is picked to be the best man at the royal wedding or at least one of a couple of them. He's the best man at Charles IV's royal wedding. That's crazy. Now the wedding itself is a disaster. The prince and the princess know each other from paintings like that's what they have and like letters where they describe each other and they both lie right there neither of them is honest, right? They were not pleased. Like you, Tinder, take into its natural ancestor.
Starting point is 00:46:31 And the princess is like, well, he really did not accurately describe his weight when he talked to me. And his issue with her is that, this is a thing I think is common among German princesses, she doesn't bathe. and he doesn't love that. Nobody does. A lot of people try to talk to her about this, about like, hey,
Starting point is 00:46:51 I got bath might help. Yeah, I guess this. But they don't really. That's not that's not the style at the time. So because he's such a piece of shit, the prince is going to spend their wedding night and honeymoon mostly mocking his new bride. And George is he tries to redirect, he feels like bad for her.
Starting point is 00:47:08 Cause he's, this, yeah, she's a little like weird and foreign but she just like left her home to come here and she seems really lonely. And like you're being very shitty to her. The future, he does however get incredible, absolutely housed with the prince. They are just drunk as shit. The prince is too drunk to fuck, right?
Starting point is 00:47:26 When they come in on their honeymoon, she blames Bo for that. Like honestly, that might've been the best thing for everybody. But she blames Bo for like, you got him too drunk to even do the one thing he's supposed to do, right? So tomorrow, honey. Yeah. George buys a promotion to Lieutenant in 1795
Starting point is 00:47:48 and then Captain in 1796. His only injury came when he fell off a horse and broke his nose, thus ruining his profile. In 1798, yeah, some people say it makes him more handsome like Harrison Ford's little chin scar. I probably does. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that's gonna be my chin scar. Probably does. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:48:05 That's going to be my guess because he still does pretty well. In 1798, the regiment moves to Manchester and George is like, it's the end of my military career. I don't want to go to Manchester because that's not London. London is the city that matters. And here's how his earliest biographer William Jesse describes him going to the prince to talk about leaving. Why, the fact is, your royal highness, I have heard that we are ordered to Manchester.
Starting point is 00:48:30 Now, you must be aware how disagreeable this would be to me. I really could not go. Think your royal highness, Manchester. Besides, you would not be there. I have therefore, with your royal highness's permission determined to sell out." Like, why would I go there? You're not there. What kind of a place is it without you?
Starting point is 00:48:49 Like babe, it's you and me. Yeah, you and me, bro. And the prince is like, well, yeah, of course. You know, I don't wanna be not around you. Without you, yeah. I love you, dog. Yeah, exactly. So, Bo cashes out and he moves to London. He takes possession of his inheritance at this point.
Starting point is 00:49:04 He's a full adult. He buys a house in the most fashionable part of town. He is very close to Sapple Row. You may have heard of Sapple Row. It's generally broadly, it's like where you get your nicest tailored suits today. Bo is going to make Sapple Row, Sapple Row. He is where that's why that starts
Starting point is 00:49:21 because that's where he goes and a lot of his tailors are, right? He starts buying clothes. He starts building goes and a lot of his tailors are, right? He starts buying clothes. He starts building relationships with a bunch of different tailors. One of his things is he will talk shit about people who are like, oh, you go to the same tailor for your waistcoat and your jacket.
Starting point is 00:49:36 There's no good vest man who's a good jacket man. You bought your hat and shoes from the same tailor. Oh, okay. They look like it. Yeah. Those look like the hats of a shoe man. Like those muppets. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:51 Mm-hmm. Oh my God, like those muppets who are like, look at them, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Like, he is, yeah. Just totally a troll. Yeah, that's exactly what he's doing. So he picks a different guy for each thing, and he designs a series of suits for himself.
Starting point is 00:50:08 They are based off of the stripped down suit that he had started wearing at Eaton. A little bit, he takes the breeches from his uniform in the 10th. And this becomes the prototype of the Western suit. This is where it has its origin point. Bo finalizes his sartorial experiments just as fashion in England is hitting a turning point. The term dandy had first entered the lexicon in 1780,
Starting point is 00:50:32 and it means basically a person who studies who is obsessed with fashion, kind of, right? Bo is going to be the man. He doesn't originate that term, but he defines it. When people write about dandies in this period, most of them are writing about Beau, right? Most of his contemporaries see him as the first of the dandies. In 1795, the prime minister has introduced a new tax on wig powder. This is part of the war against Napoleon,
Starting point is 00:50:56 and it accelerated the demise of the old style of fashion, which had been on its way out since the French Revolution, at least. Beau was gonna be one of the first people, and a lot of the prince and a lot of other people follow him who stops wearing a wig and he kind of does if you look at the way Napoleon looked that kind of almost Greek statue hairstyle, that's how Beau wears his hair and it's how everybody starts to wear their hair. An improvement because I've seen those other hairstyles. They're not it. Yeah, it's a step forward. We can agree on that.
Starting point is 00:51:26 In National Geographic, Ignacio Perro writes, the growth of a new British style, one that embraced simplicity, structure, and understatement with monochrome and military fabrics, abandoned such pre-revolutionary fashions. Psychologist John Carl Flugel later dubbed this gradual process of simplification in men's dress as the great masculine renunciation
Starting point is 00:51:46 Whereby men's fashion became inspired by social equality It turned its back on extravagance and excessive grooming became regarded as a feminine trait, right? And that's weird because in part Bo is going to advocate much more grooming than had been okay I say he loves to groom you have groom, but his kind of grooming is, you should be clean, you should wear good clothing, you should have good skin, and as a result, you won't need to wear cosmetics as much. So it is, people see it as less grooming
Starting point is 00:52:17 because he's saying, no, you should actually take care of your body rather than getting obsessed with all the ways to hide the fact that you're filthy and gross, you know? That's the kind of fashionista he is. Now, a lot of these changes in style had started before Bo and would have happened without him. He doesn't kill the old style of fashion entirely on its own, but it dies as he comes into his own
Starting point is 00:52:38 as like a popular man in high society. And he is the first person with a vision of what's gonna come next, right? And that's why he's able to make this change. He's able to make it because the prince is the king of high society in London and he is dressing like Beau. He is telling everyone else to dress like Beau.
Starting point is 00:52:57 Beau is going around all these tailors and when people realize this is who the king follows for fashion advice, they will go to the same tailors that Beau is and they will ask them, what is he wearing? What does he say is the best fabrics? What does he say is the best way to dress? And part of why he gets credit for inventing the suit is he doesn't have one tailor. There's not one guy who makes an outfit that he wears because he picks all these tailors. It's them who are kind of coming up with these alterations and
Starting point is 00:53:25 innovations on new styles, but he is the one putting them all together. So he gets all the credit for creating the suit, even though he's using a bunch of people for it. The look. Right? Yeah. Within months of arriving in London, flocks of aristocrats are following Bo around. They will come to his house in the morning. And this starts with the prince and some of his hangers on. They will go to seebo in the morning and watch him dress.
Starting point is 00:53:48 Cause they wanna know like, how do you look like you just rolled out of bed? What is it you do? And it takes him hours and they will, it becomes like one of the most fashionable things to do. Cause again, part of what this guy is doing, he is living the life of a TikTok influencer, but we're like a TikTok fashion influencer,
Starting point is 00:54:04 you've taken videos of you putting on your makeup, videos of you dressing up. Yeah, get ready with me. Yeah. Yeah. It's just IRL. They're like, we're gonna see this live in person. Yeah, they're literally at his house watching him do this, right?
Starting point is 00:54:14 But it's no different, you know? It's just like it's actually in his home because that's the way it's gotta be back then. Once he has, the prince kind of acts like the algorithm, right, that boosts his content into everybody's feed once he's got this everyone's attention because of the prince he keeps it because he knows he understands how fame works he understands how to keep his name on everybody's lip and he does it very intentionally some of why is because he's got a great eye for
Starting point is 00:54:41 style bow is probably the first fashionable man of influence to insist that what matters is not how expensive your clothing looks. It's not having all these layers, not having all this jewelry, it's not having all this paint on your face. It's having really quality fabrics, particularly fine linen,
Starting point is 00:54:58 and it's cut in a way to show off your natural attributes. You don't wanna wear too much. You wanna show off your body, because you're showing off, I have the time and money to spend all my time thinking about how I look and how I present myself, right? Rather than I paid somebody to buy me the fanciest clothing, you know?
Starting point is 00:55:16 And that's so interesting, because how you're explaining him is not how it was framed in that opening article. So, because it's so specific, and it's so funny because we talk so much about the downside of like fast fashion and Bo would have been the first one being like, yeah, we don't buy from she had. We get ourself custom made and like spend the actual money.
Starting point is 00:55:35 And instead of like so in a lot of ways, it is like this revolution of like less because even that macaroni thing, it just sounds like a bunch of like kids that went to the continent, like went to Ibiza for a weekend and were like, this is my personality now. This is my personality. Dickwigs. I paid a servant to buy whatever they wear over there and I just put on what they bring me. Right?
Starting point is 00:55:55 Beau was like, no, no, no. Your entire life is about thinking about what you're wearing and how you look. That's all you spend. And that's what means you're an actual fashionable gentleman. Now, part of what helps Bo in this, another thing that helps is that he's gorgeous. He is like six foot five and 190 pounds. He's built like a Greek statue, right? Part of like Bo is one of the men, like that phrase, the turning, like turning of the leg or something like that comes from the fact that he wore these very tight pants over his
Starting point is 00:56:23 extremely muscular legs and he looks like a statue, right? He looks like a Greek statue. He's deliberately cultivating that look. He wants people to see him as a piece of meat, you know? Part of the point of these pants is you can see the outline of his dick, you know? He's got those like gray, fucking gray,
Starting point is 00:56:41 gray sweatpants look going on, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. This becomes. And he's six five. He's six five, he's probably around. Bill eyes, finance. Yeah, yeah, we don't know exactly.
Starting point is 00:56:53 Weirdly enough, Ian Kelly is the one who calculates how tall he probably was because his wine merchants kept track of his weight and we know some of his measurements so you can kind of triangulate about, but he's tall and he's reasonably muscular and thin right like he's got that kind of that kind of built you know um yeah the last ingredient to bo's success was that he had a modern understanding of how to manage and cultivate celebrity he kind of invents western celebrity in a very real way part of it is that
Starting point is 00:57:22 he's very witty he's very funny, people copy him and quote him, right, which spreads his fame. He also, he develops an affectation of carrying around, it's basically like a magnifying glass that he will look at people as they walk in at parties and judge their outfits and be like, oh, you must have gotten your boots from a shirt, man. Like that.
Starting point is 00:57:44 And he's being a bitch, but he's also, he's really funny with it. And that's part of the entertainment is Bose going, and he's going to talk some shit at you. But in the way that like a standup comedian, he's going to maybe pick random people from the audience and give them some shit. And like you, you come into the experience
Starting point is 00:57:58 knowing that's going to happen. Part of what he's doing is he's like, he's part standup comedy, right? He would have loved fashion. Oh my God. He he's like, he's part standup comedy, right? He would have loved fashion police. Oh my God. He'd been like, I wanna watch. He would, Bravo is his favorite show. Yes, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:58:12 His jokes become reported on in newspapers and magazines. There's gonna be at least one newspaper at the time that's devoted just to Bo. His name is in the title. It's not just about him, but it's like, it's following fashion and he's fashion, right? Yeah, he's got his own, he's got a fanzine, you know? Oh my God, the fan ads.
Starting point is 00:58:30 Yeah, there's fan cams of him, but they're just all texts. His first biographer, William Jesse, gives one example of this from when the Duke of Bedford came calling to ask Bo's opinion on his new coat. So this Duke comes in and is like, I've got a fine new coat and I want you to tell me, is this a good fit? Is this work?
Starting point is 00:58:49 Should I go to the party in this? And Bo quote, Bo examined him from head to toe with as much attention as an adjutant of the lifeguards would the sentries on a drawing room day. Turn around, said the Bo. His grace did so and the examination was continued in front. When it was concluded, Brummel stepped forward and feeling the lapel delicately did so, and the examination was continued in front. When it was concluded, Brummel stepped forward, and, feeling the lapel delicately with his thumb and finger,
Starting point is 00:59:09 said in the most earnest and amusing manner, Bedford, do you call this thing a coat? This really a coat? This is a coat, huh? You think this is a coat? This is a coat to you, huh? So you came outside and you thought, this is it. This is what I'm doing. He literally is doing the, what are those? Yeah. And this is, I get why, like Alexandra, like we started with, I get why she says like,
Starting point is 00:59:35 oh, he's just being cruel. He's just being mean to people. This is bitchy. You can take that from this. It is a bit bitchy, but what I get from that quote, what you have to interpret is that it's not about what he's saying. Part of it is about there's a bunch of people around.
Starting point is 00:59:48 Everyone's crowded into his salon to watch him dress. This guy comes in, this Duke asks for his dress, and Bo is, he's putting on a show. He's pantomime. He's going up and up to him with a spyglass and looking around. People are not just laughing at the Duke who's getting a little bit of shit talked about his fashion. They're laughing at Bo being this parody of himself. This really like obsessive, like ridiculous fashion. That's part of the joke. The joke is on him.
Starting point is 01:00:12 And that's why no one ever gets too angry at Bo because part of it is that like he's funny. And this is what he knows how to do. This is how he's always defuse situations. I'm just gonna be funny and cute. That's gonna carry me throughout life. So far so good. And it's, you know, what's happening.
Starting point is 01:00:28 I'm gonna talk shit about you. I'm also gonna like make a little fun of myself. And by making, but that, by taking the piss out of both of us, we can all relax a little. I made a joke about the prince. I made a joke about the Duke. I made a joke about me. Everybody can kind of be okay now, right?
Starting point is 01:00:42 Like we're all a little bit in a more casual air now. So, Bo is, you know, interesting fella. He leans into the absurdity of his reputation, his reputation for incredible excess, usually by lying, he spreads myths about himself. He starts telling everyone, they ask him, wow, you have the shiniest, the blackest boots, how do you black your boots? And he's like, oh, I only shine them you have the shiniest, the blackest boots. How do you black your boots?
Starting point is 01:01:05 And he's like, oh, I only shine them with fine champagne. I use champagne to shine my boots. Champagne is not a great way to shine your boots. This is a lie. He's poking fun at his image. He's like, obviously I, the bow, I wax my boots with fine champagne, of course. And people know this is a bit, right?
Starting point is 01:01:25 In modern era, a lot of people are like, wow, this guy was like such a wasteful, rich asshole, he's wack. No, no, no, people at the time know he's fucking around, right? Yeah. He claims, cause it's again, a sign of wealth to be able to eat meat for every meal,
Starting point is 01:01:37 he claims he doesn't even eat vegetables. When one high born lady at a party is like, do you really not eat vegetables? He's like, well, madam, once I ate a pea, I had a single pea once, right? Again, he's fucking around. I could just see, thank God he didn't have a microphone because his podcast would be so hot in the streets.
Starting point is 01:01:59 Oh my God, this guy, he would have been a great podcaster. The only thing is he would have had to be focused on YouTube because the podcast, I think he would have been a great podcaster, yeah. Yeah. The only thing is he would have had to be focused on YouTube because a podcast, I think he would have said, would have denied everyone looking at me, right? They can't see me, what's half the point? Yeah. He would do the Joe Rogan, do both, just film, have his little, like, his pee,
Starting point is 01:02:17 his one pee that he has just sitting there. His female friends who get closer to him than most of the men are able to get glimpses of the real man, carefully weaving an illusion to keep himself protected in the object of desire. One of his good friends, one of the few people who's able to be himself around is Lady Hester Stanhope. And she writes memoirs of her time as a woman in high society.
Starting point is 01:02:37 And she says that he once admitted to her, quote, my dear Lady Hester, it is my folly that is the making of me. If I did not impertinently stare at Duchessesses out of countenance and nod over my shoulder to a prince, I should be forgotten in a week. And if the world is so silly as to admire my absurdities, you and I may know better. But what's that signify? Right? Look, if the world wants me to be this ridiculous parody of a rich man, and they're going to
Starting point is 01:03:05 reward me for that, you and I may know I'm more than that. I could be better than that. But why bother? Right. You know? And it's like, this has been him from childhood. So it's like, there's like, when he was his first child, he was posing for that cute little pic that we talked about in part one.
Starting point is 01:03:22 Like, we are in this deeply shallow image obsessed cruel culture. I can succeed around you amongst some of the people that I could be a person around, you know there's more to me than that. You know that this is an act, but the act is good enough for these people that like why should we respect them? We just need to get by.
Starting point is 01:03:40 We need to survive among them and that's what I'm doing. I have found a way to protect myself. Exactly. Since TikTok and Instagram didn't exist then, Bo was a poster, but he had to do his posting analog style. And the way he did this, since he can't make a bunch of different videos, he goes one on one to every tailor in the city. He tells them his thoughts on the different dresses and fabric of the day and they tell everyone what he thinks. You go around, you follow the Beau route on Savile Row and these other fashionable streets, and everybody's quoting him, right?
Starting point is 01:04:11 His presence, and they give him a lot of shit for free and shit on credit, because the fact that Beau shops somewhere will get out, and then you can use this, you can just tell people that Beau says, you should buy this or that, right? And that'll sell it. Time is a flat circle. Like, that's just so like, just like Keith Lee, like I'm outside
Starting point is 01:04:29 the tailor and he doesn't know I'm coming, but my waistcoat's got a little tear in it. So we're going to see if he can fix it up today. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Now through this method, he spent years as the most viral man in the London scene. Jane Austen is again very likely to have based a number of characters partly on him. And so did Catherine Gore, a Regency satire author who described a dandy in the image of Beau as, a nobody who made himself somebody and gave the law to everybody. In the making of himself, he creates rules that others begin to follow, you know? And that's where a lot of the shit to Bogitz because he does, he locks down men's fashion
Starting point is 01:05:10 for some would argue centuries because of how dominant he is. But he doesn't do that because he's against men expressing themselves. He is expressing himself as a man and how he thinks he likes to look. It's this culture that he understands how fucked up it is that takes that to an extreme, right?
Starting point is 01:05:30 It becomes law. I don't know how much you wanna blame him for that because he is just trying to get by. No one said you had to throw away your wigs. No one said you had to shop wearing your weird dune hats, but like, I'm gonna do me over here with my dick out. Yeah, yeah, I'm dicks out over here. And like, I can't be blamed if everybody, nobody has a good idea after I'm gone.
Starting point is 01:05:51 And his chief innovation involved the cravat, which is a neck garment that is a precursor to the modern tie. And Bo is, if not the father, then the grandfather of the tie. Cravats had existed before him, but he makes them because he crafts a way of tying them that is meant to look haphazard.
Starting point is 01:06:08 If someone had rolled out of bed, hung over, and tossed it on, he could sometimes hours getting it right, right? And again, everyone's watching him. He'll cut, during the day, and he has, it's an act too. He's got his manservant, when people are like waiting in the salon,
Starting point is 01:06:23 having their tea or whatnot, waiting for him to be ready to come out, his manservant when people are like waiting in this lawn and their tea or whatnot waiting for him to be ready to come out. His manservant walk back and forth with these bodily baskets with dozens of crumpled cravats in them and he'll be like, these are our failures today. We've been trying for hours to get it just right, you know, but he might be ready for you now. Exactly. Right.
Starting point is 01:06:41 Oh, my gosh. We know a lot about his daily routine because it's the number one show in town. The Prince of Wales will show up a lot of the time because he wants some of Bo's cool to rub off on him. Highborn men come by every day just to watch Bo dress. Ian Kelly writes, once his friend, the Prince of Wales adopted both the style and habit of attending the Chesterfield Street, that's where he lives, levies. Brummel's position in fashion history became assured.
Starting point is 01:07:03 He had the required arrogance, poise, and connections, but also understood that the rules were intimidating to many. The father of modern costume, as Max Bierbohm titled Brummel, had a style that was uniquely his, but perfect to the spirit of the age. Quiet, reasonable and beautiful, free from folly or affection, yet susceptible to exquisite ordering, plastic, austere, economical. It appeared post-revolutionary, neoclassical, ordered and enlightened, and in this it did seem democratic. It did not shout wealth or privilege, it quietly insisted the point. It celebrated, not at least in the sheer time it took to achieve the look, wealth, privilege, and elegant indolence. Brummel's revolutionary fetishizing of detail
Starting point is 01:07:40 was later described by Baudelaire as defining, "... man who is rich and idle and who has no other occupation than the perpetual pursuit of happiness, whose solitary vice is elegance. Sounds like a hater to me. Oh, Baudelaire was a famous hater. Speaking of the pursuit of elegance, our sponsors, Elegant as Hell. Owen Wilson is Tom Slick, Mystery Hunter. To track the Yeti is an expectation of life and death, Mr. Slick. It's a mystery that does not want to be solved. That's why I'm here.
Starting point is 01:08:34 We're gonna die! Nellis, when chance arrives, act! God, I need my blood pressure checked after that. Mom, you don't have to listen to this if it's too much. These are my father's untold stories. I am listening. Join Claire and Liv Slick, played by Sissy Spacek and Skyler Fisk, as they uncover the truth behind a man they thought they knew.
Starting point is 01:09:02 Listen to my show, Tom Slick on the I heart radio app Apple podcast Or wherever you get your most thrilling adventure stories Late on the evening of March 8th, 1971 a group of anti-war activists did something insane Holy shit. We are really here. This is really happening. They weren't professional criminals. They were ordinary citizens, but they needed to know the truth about the FBI.
Starting point is 01:09:33 Burglars forged blackmail letters and threats of violence were used to try to stop anti-war marches. Even if that meant risking everything. I just felt like I was living in the heart of the dragon and it was just my job to stop the fire. I'm Ed Helms, host of Snafu, season two, Medburg, the story of a daring heist that exposed J. Edgar Hoover's secret FBI. If it meant some risks that were involved, well, that's what citizens sometimes have to do.
Starting point is 01:10:06 Listen to season two of Snafu on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women's sports. Every day I'm bringing you the stakes, stats, stars and stories to keep you up to date. If you're new to women's sports, welcome. Can't wait to show you around. And if you've been around, let's make things nice and comfy for our new friends.
Starting point is 01:10:36 We want Good Game to be just like women's sports. The best of the competition, teamwork and rivalries that we love, minus the toxic masculinity and drunken brawls. Where else but women's sports? Do we see a player passing her ex-wife on the WNBA's all-time leading scorer list and then watch her new fiancé, teammate and MVP candidate talk about it afterward on Sports Center? Shout out to Duana Bonner and Alyssa Thomas.
Starting point is 01:11:00 The tea, y'all. The tea is so good. Good Game is where we go to celebrate, debate, and dissect those stories and all aspects of women's sports. Join us. Let's have some fun. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spayne on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 01:11:24 We're back. Now, the author of that Esquire piece was correct in that Bo's dominance in fashion leads to a growing homogeneity of men's dress in London, which spreads through the Western world. His proto-suit becomes the norm in men's fashion with shocking speed, maybe faster than any other fashion so influential had ever been before, thanks to the new mass media of the day and Bo's modern molding of his own celebrity. He largely gets credit for this development despite not making any of the clothes himself.
Starting point is 01:11:53 This also stops the fact that he uses all these tailors, no one else shares credit with him. He gets the nickname Bo around 1799 and it had previously, it meant like beautiful. It's like calling a boy, you know, pretty little man or something like that. It's initially, it becomes with him, it goes from being an insult to actually like a compliment, right? Because it means that you are beautiful. He's going to reclaim it. He's like, yes, I am. Yeah. Ian Kelly continues, people copied what he wore, how he spoke, even how he shaved.
Starting point is 01:12:23 Tobacco sold out of his favorite ranges of snuff and clubs and dances were judged on his attendance or participation. Tailors gave him their goods simply for the honor or publicity of his wearing them in a manner immediately familiar in our own celebrity and fashion obsessed age. The decimation of the beaver population of North America
Starting point is 01:12:39 in the 19th century was set in motion by his sudden taste for beavers,aver skin top hats like he carries that he causes Inadvertently a beaver genocide because he wears a hat one day that's made out of beaver skin and people just wipe them out We're still dealing with the part of our wildfire problem comes from this to be honest Yeah, like the the destruction of beaver populations in North America is actually still catastrophic to this Part of our wildfire problem comes from this to be honest. Oh shit. Yeah, like the destruction of beaver populations in North America is actually still catastrophic to this day and Bo Brummel has a lot to do with it.
Starting point is 01:13:13 Now, could he have known. One bastard count. Yeah, right. Accidental bastard count. You know, although I will say he's not innocent here too because he is, he's not a fast guy, but he is a disposable fashion guy. Part of it is because he loves white. He insists on the thinnest gloves, the whitest shirts,
Starting point is 01:13:32 the whitest thin, often leather pants. Right. And these will if thin white things don't last, you know, they get stained. They get holes in them. So he is throwing shit out constantly, which, and so he inaugurates this cycle of like, you are replacing everything rapidly, right? You are having it tailored every day and you are having it cleaned every day and you are running through your clothes.
Starting point is 01:13:55 That's so expensive. Right, it's expensive. It builds an industry for fashion, but it is deeply wasteful, right? And that is on him, right? That is something he has a major factor in, right? And he is also, he's an avatar of conspicuous consumption, right?
Starting point is 01:14:12 And he's an avatar of it in a way that is democratic. Conspicuous consumption had been limited in part because there were only so many rich people, but in part because only rich people could afford it. And he makes looking good more affordable which makes more people spend money to do it. So he increases the number of people who are focused on fashion as a luxury as a result of making it a little more democratic. He also lays down his fashion dictates in a
Starting point is 01:14:39 way that does not brook disagreement because that's kind of the humor of the time. Fashion historian Anne Hollander argues, it is possible to make the case that masculine formal dress of today is directly Brummel's responsibility. He's a little bit of a cult leader at his height and that he will make things that are kind of seen as jokes and people will follow them to the letter. One of his bits was he would say, if John Bull, which is like Joe Schmo, right, turns around to look at you, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight or too fashionable. Right. You don't want to be noticed by the commoners.
Starting point is 01:15:10 Only rich men who understand the quality of your cut should notice you. Common people, you should blend into the crowd, you know. Right. It's the same. It's like with Silicon Valley fashion of the day. Again, how much you want to blame him morally for that. Right. But one thing that is interesting to me is that he is not interested in gaining power, like with Silicon Valley fashion of the day. And again, how much you want to blame him morally for that, but one thing that is interesting to me is that he is not interested in gaining power.
Starting point is 01:15:29 Given his standing with the prince and his status in pop culture, he should have been a powerful man. He should have wound up in government and he had the opportunity, but he never tries. He has no ambition. Maybe it's he was just lazy. Maybe it's that he recognized doing that, you're gonna have to do awful things. Maybe it's he was just lazy.
Starting point is 01:15:45 Maybe it's that he recognized doing that you're going to have to do awful things. And he did. He really didn't want to. His life was fine as it was. He was happy with the things that he had. I don't know. But this is part of the problem it's going to cost for him is that he he rapidly runs out of money.
Starting point is 01:16:00 Everything he has is on credit. The prince is able to keep his creditors at bay by saying, hey man, I'm gonna be the king. This guy is my friend. Don't call in his debts. And a lot of people are willing to extend him credit because they're like, well, he's gonna be running the empire pretty soon, right? He's gonna have some kind of job.
Starting point is 01:16:16 That's bestie. Right, yeah, yeah. But he never quite does. And so this is eventually going to create an unsustainable situation. But before it does, he launches one more trend among the high society in London when we're all grateful for He gets them to stop smelling like shit. He is an advocate of daily baths He is an advocate uniquely people who do shower and bathe regularly
Starting point is 01:16:38 It's often cold because that's viewed as being healthier right that you want a bracing cold plunge or whatnot He likes hot baths. Cause if he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he,
Starting point is 01:16:52 he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he off in a bath and get rid of the gross stuff that way, that's a lot nicer to me. Amen. Yeah. And he also avoids a lot of the cosmetics of the day, which is good for everyone's health because most of them are like made out of poison. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:17:14 So he helps out with the health of the upper class to a significant degree in that manner. He spends more than a decade as the it person in London society, which is a long time to be that kind of guy. In addition to the prototypical suit, he also starts the tradition of rich people dressing like farmers. Like he wears hunting jackets and like outdoor clothing that's not actually meant to be worn outdoors.
Starting point is 01:17:36 It's meant to walk around the park but it imitates outdoor clothing, you know? So we have like fashionable car hearts thanks to Bo Brummel too. Yeah, he helped start that. His downfall comes in part due to his refusal to get a real job Well, Bo pioneers modern celebrity. He doesn't know how to make you can't make money off it. There's no instinct There's no like patreon, right? Monetization. Yeah, and he gets some stuff for free and on credit
Starting point is 01:18:01 But nobody's like paying you to advertise really at this point. And he's also gambling, starting in his late 20s and early 30s, which quickly fucks him over, you know? Now all this might have been survival if he had stayed in the king's good graces, but Bo nursed a contempt for the prince. He never thinks he's a good man. He doesn't like the way he treats his wife. He doesn't like the way he treats anyone.
Starting point is 01:18:22 He loves making fun of him. This story is probably not true, but it gives you a hint of the kind of shit he would talk about the prince. The story, they're all hung over, he's at the palace one day with the prince, and he keeps being like, hey, hey, princey, go fetch me some champagne. Go get me some champagne, future king. Pick me up a fucking bottle. Get your manservant to bring me a bottle.
Starting point is 01:18:43 And it gets kicked out. That probably didn't literally happen, but stuff like it did because we have a lot of stories about them having fights. And it's often because Bo, he's usually good at taking the piss out of people and not making them angry, but the prince is really fragile and doesn't like it. Sometimes Bo goes too far for him. And when he's in his late 30s, he's going to blow up their relationship entirely. I'm going to quote from the New York Times here. A version of the story goes that one afternoon, after another of Brummel's and the heir to the throne's frequent fallouts, he bumped into the prince while strolling with his fellow
Starting point is 01:19:16 dandy Lord Alvin Lee. When the prince warmly acknowledged Alvin Lee but ignored him, Brummel is said to have coolly inquired, Alvin Lee, who's your fat friend? The prince never spoke to him again. Yeah. Yeah, that's gonna fuck you buddy. That's not nice, Beau. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:19:34 And like, I don't got much sympathy for the prince here, but like, yeah, you're not gonna keep his friendship there. He is never gonna forgive this. Yeah, he's sensitive about his shit, you know. And he originates another great phrase during this because people are like when the French the prince drops him, people are like, are you worried that you're going to fall out of your standing in society? And Brummel says, I made him what he is.
Starting point is 01:19:57 I can unmake him. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's that guy. That guy. Unfortunately, he has gone a little too far here. Some of it may be he is, in his 30s, he is no longer as handsome as he used to be. He is no longer as thin and muscular as he used to be. He's pushing 40 now, right?
Starting point is 01:20:17 Just like Capote, it's like, when you're not a twink anymore, it's really rough out there. They don't have Ozimbic, they don't have the really good, he can't do that kind of like modern Hollywood steroids, they just don't have it yet, right? So by middle age, he is flat broke, he's worse because he's in horrible debt,
Starting point is 01:20:35 and once the prince withdraws his protection, his creditors are like, well, this guy's never actually gonna be powerful. We should try to get some money out of him, right? So his life falls apart in 1816 after a horrible losing streak at one of the clubs where he kept a permanent table. He flees permanently from London to Calais on the French coast because his creditors won't follow him there.
Starting point is 01:20:57 He has some investments, he's got some annuities, and France is a war-torn country at this point. So it's like the third world, the people in London and he can live off of what he's got there reasonably well. Right. He spends the rest of his life as a tourist attraction, still famous. And in the years after he flees London, a lot of famous people will continue to write about him. Authors like Benjamin Disraeli and Oscar Wilde feature him in their writing. Oscar Wilde is said to have patterned a lot of his life and personality, especially early on, on Bo. I can see that. Yeah, very similar guys.
Starting point is 01:21:30 Dandy on Dandy, for sure. The Duke of Wellington, the destroyer of Napoleon, also worships his style, right? Like he dresses based on how Bo dressed. And the playwright Lord Byron intentionally is also, he is one of these guys who is dressing in the image. And these guys are, you shouldn't think of it as copying him as much as the way that like men today,
Starting point is 01:21:50 if you wanna look good, you can still look at pictures of how Cary Grant dressed and go like, well, shit, that guy knew how to put together an outfit, right, you can do a lot worse than trying to dress like Cary Grant did, right? Like that's the kind of thing, you know? He's just this immortal icon of cool for people who blow up anywhere near that era.
Starting point is 01:22:08 But his older life is not going to be a happy one. One by one, his good friends died and he grows lonelier and lonelier. And as he grows lonelier and lonelier, something grows inside him, syphilis. He is, of course, of course he's got syphilis. Woo, there it is. There's no way this man, all of his friends are high class prostitutes.
Starting point is 01:22:29 There's no way this man isn't more syphilis than human by the time he's 60, right? Like he is 80% syphilis by body weight, you know? You are catching the pox if you're in a room with Bo Brummel. Over the course of like 20 or 30 years, it reaches the tertiary stages, which brings about hallucinations, madness.
Starting point is 01:22:49 You go crazy. There's a worm eating holes in your brain, basically. His last friend and fan in his dying years is a young man named Fichet, who is the son of the owner of the hotel, and Fichet wants to be a valet, and Brummel's like, if you follow me around, I'll teach you how to introduce royalty, I'll teach you wants to be a valet and Brummel's like, if you follow me around,
Starting point is 01:23:05 I'll teach you how to introduce royalty. I'll teach you how to be a high society man. And he does. And in return, Fichet spends Bo's final years humoring him and because Bo is losing his mind, his primary occupation in his last years is he has Fichet escort him to balls and galas that exist only in his head. Right? Yeah, it's like a, it's bleak. I'm going to quote from Ian Kelly here because he writes very evocatively about this end period in Beaux's life. Brummel had taught him how to announce royalty and how much obeisance was expected by the victor of Waterloo. And Monsieur Brummel taught Fichet about clothes. It was Fichet also who acted as valet to the hotel celebrated dandy and wit helping him into his evening coat and handing him the
Starting point is 01:23:52 whitest of cravats with the reverence of a sacristan. Yet these soirees would end suddenly and in the same way. One moment Brummell would hold out his arm to escort the Duchess of Devonshire across the room. The next his eyes were open to the reality around him. The room was empty. There was nothing in front of him but the candles, the flowers, and the young Frenchman with pity in his eyes. Fichet eventually became inured, he said,
Starting point is 01:24:13 to the dark pantomime of announcing Brummel's ghosts, the long-dead duchesses and courtesans, the regency celebrities who had been Moncheur's friends. But he dreaded the moment when Brummel woke from his masquerade and saw the reality around him, the ruination of his fame and fortune and of his mind. Babylon and all its desolation, as one friend of Brummel said, was a sight less awful. The Frenchman would then blow out the candles, shut the windows, and leave Beau Brummel, the most sociable man in London, to the complete privacy and utter silence of his ruined mind.
Starting point is 01:24:44 Damn. Yeah. That's so sad. That's a fucking storybook ending, like a sad one. But wow, what an ending, right? That's so gangster. But like, none of I know about him. I'm like, I like I just wanted to return the other day. Like, that's all his fashion.
Starting point is 01:25:02 Yes. Like he did that. He is the making. One thing I've read in that Jane Austen Society article is that the other day like that's all his fashion. Yes. Like he did that shit. He is the making. One thing I've read in that Jane Austen Society article is that he of the in the Regency era Bo Brummel created the style and Jane Austen created the substance. Right. And I think there's a lot to that. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:25:19 People who are Regency nerds say that and I'm not. So who am I to argue with them? For sure yeah, he dies at age 62 in an insane asylum destitute and reduced to incoherence, which is a bummer That's sad. He wasn't a he wasn't a bastard little capitalist troll little capitalist troll, but Hard to blame him. What options did he have in the culture he was born into? You know, uh, and you see what happens when you mommy blog your children in portraits. You see what happens now?
Starting point is 01:25:53 Don't put your kids in your fucking YouTube videos, right? They'll grow up syphilitic and insane. That's how they'll die in Calais at a madden house. Oh, man. They'll run out of pass out. He was a bastard. I definitely think he bred bad culture. Yes, he bred bad culture.
Starting point is 01:26:13 Bastardry grew in his image. But he was, I think fundamentally a sensitive and intelligent and basically attempted to be a decent soul most of the time, living in an evil culture. And he got to roast a king. That's Joe. And he got to roast a king, right? Good for him. Yeah. That's how you get your downfall. That's pretty damn good.
Starting point is 01:26:33 And also, like, from what I've heard is, like, they didn't like the reason why they also preserved that fashion because it was seen as less feminine. I don't feel like that's what Bo thought about it anyway. I don't think of him as thinking like there's anything wrong if it was so and then he just was kind of not it He was just not as rich. So he's like I can't exactly and bring back fucking big I can't afford to dress like that crazy But I can't afford to spend all of my time thinking about how I look and so I'll beat you that way And then you'll become me, right? Yeah, anyway
Starting point is 01:27:05 That's Bo baby and you'll become me, right? There you go. Anyway. Yay. That's Bo baby. Yay. Princess, you got any pluggables to plug before we roll out here? Yeah, first of all, just thank you so much for having me. It's been literally a pleasure. You can find me on YouTube as Princess Weeks. I'm still technically on X as Weeks Princess.
Starting point is 01:27:22 And then I'm also on TikTok as Princess Pendulum, where I cannot wait to talk about House of the Dragon every single day. Yeah, there we go. Well, you can find me on Twitter too much, but that's about it. Also in a million podcasts. So just keep listening to the podcast you're listening to. You'll keep getting me. I have a novel.
Starting point is 01:27:41 It's called After the Revolution. Just type that and Robert Evans into Google. You'll find places to buy it. It's from AK Press. You can also just buy it from them. Anyway, episode's done. That's it, babies. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ever get the feeling someone's watching you?
Starting point is 01:28:14 Well, in 1971, a group of anti-war activists had that feeling. I was in the heart of the dragon and it was my job to stop the fire. So they decided to do something insane, break in to the FBI and expose J. Edgar Hoover's dirty secrets. We had some idea that this was pretty explosive. I'm Ed Helms. Listen to season two of Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Good Game with Sarah Spain, your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women's
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Starting point is 01:29:10 Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spayne on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Owen Wilson stars in Tom Slick, Mystery Hunter, action packed thrill ride based on the mostly true tale of explorer, scientific legend and alleged spy Tom Slick. No one has been able to find the Yeti. It's a mystery that does not want to be solved. That's why I'm here. Listen to my show, Tom Slick Mystery Hunter, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your most thrilling adventure stories.

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