We have said that Brummel's grandfather was a pastrycook. His aunt is
said to have been the widow of a grandson of Brawn, the celebrated
cook who kept 'The Rummer,' in Queen Street, and who had himself kept
'The Rummer' public-house, at the Old Mews Gate, at Charing Cross.
Brummel spoke with a relish worthy a descendant of 'The Rummer,' of
the savoury pies of his aunt Brawn, who then resided at Kilburn. Henry
Carey, in the _Dissertation on Dumpling_, assumes Braun, or Braund, as
he calls him, to have been the direct descendant in the male line of
his imaginary Brawnd, knighted by King John for his unrivalled skill in
making dumplings, and who subsequently resided, as he tells us, "at the
ancient manor of Brands, _alias_ Braunds, near Kilburn, in Middlesex."
Curious the accident that found Brummel's "Aunt Brawn" a resident at
Kilburn, a century after the _Dissertation on Dumpling_ was written.
[Illustration: Beau Brummel at Calais.]
[Illustration: Sir Lumley Skeffington in a "Jean de Brie."]
Sir Lumley Skeffington, Bart.
This accomplished gentleman was the son of Sir William Skeffington, a
much respected Baronet of Bilsdon, in Leicestershire, where he enjoyed
considerable estates and great provincial esteem. He was born in 1778,
and was educated at Soho School, and at Newcome's, at Hackney. At
the latter he distinguished himself in the dramatic performances for
which the school was long celebrated. Dr. Benjamin Hoadley, author
of _The Suspicious Husband_, and his brother, Dr. John Hoadley, were
both educated here, and shone in their amateur performances; at the
representation of 1764, there were upwards of "one hundred gentlemen's
coaches." Young Skeffington excelled in Hamlet, as he afterwards shone
in "the glass of fashion." His hereditary prospects afforded him a
ready introduction to the fashionable world, and during upwards of
twenty years he was considered as a leader of _ton_, and one of the
most finished gentlemen in England. He was a person of considerable
taste in literature: he wrote _The Word of Honour_, a comedy, and the
dialogue and songs of a highly finished melodrama, founded on the
legend of _The Sleeping Beauty_. In 1818 he lost his father, who having
embarrassed his estates, his son, as an act of filial duty to rescue a
parent from distress, consented to the cutting off the entail, by which
he deprived himself of that substantial provision without which the
life of a gentleman is a life of misery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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