To Lord Alvanley was awarded the reputation, good or bad, of all the witticisms in the clubs after the abdication of the throne of dandyism by Brummell; who, before that time, was always quoted as the sayer of good things, as Sheridan had been some time before. Lord Alvanley had the talk of the day completely under his control, and was the arbiter of the school for scandal in St. James's. A bon mot attributed to him gave rise to the belief that Solomon caused the downfall and disappearance of Brummell; for on some friends of the prince of dandies observing that if he had remained in London something might have been done for him by his old associates, Alvanley replied, "He has done quite right to be off: it was Solomon's judgment."
When Sir Lumley Skeffington, who had been a lion in his day—and whose spectacle, the Sleeping Beauty, produced at a great expense on the stage, had made him looked up to as deserving all the blandishments of fashionable life—re-appeared some years after his complete downfall and seclusion in the bench, he fancied that by a very gay external appearance he would recover his lost position; but he found his old friends very shy of him. Alvanley being asked, on one occasion, who that smart-looking individual was, answered, "It is a second edition of the Sleeping Beauty bound in calf, richly gilt, and illustrated by many cuts."
One of the gay men of the day, named Judge, being incarcerated in the Bench, some one observed he believed it was the first instance of a Judge reaching the bench without being previously called to the bar; to which Alvanley replied, "Many a bad judge has been taken from the bench and placed at the bar." He used to say that Brummell was the only Dandelion that flourished year after year in the hot-bed of the fashionable world: he had taken root. Lions were generally annual, but Brummell was perennial, and quoted a letter from Walter Scott: "If you are celebrated for writing verses, or for slicing cucumbers, for being two feet taller, or two feet less, than any other biped, for acting plays when you should be whipped at school, or for attending schools and institutions when you should be preparing for your grave, your notoriety becomes a talisman, an 'open sesame,' which gives way to everything, till you are voted a bore, and discarded for a new plaything." This appeared in a letter from Walter Scott to the Earl of Dalkeith, when he himself, Belzoni, Master Betty the Roscius, and old Joseph Lancaster, the schoolmaster, were the lions of the season, and were one night brought together by my indefatigable old friend, Lady Cork, who was "the Lady of Lyons" of that day.
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