Alas! as the years went by the evening of the Beau’s life began to grow cloudy. The old man grew choleric and testy: he became egotistical and would weary the company with his oft-repeated tales. There is something strangely pathetic about the spectacle of this aged “glass of fashion” clinging peevishly to the last remnants of his mock power, which with the passing of the years he had come to consider his natural right. “Old Beau Knash makes himself disagreeable to all who come to Bath. He is now become fit only to read ‘Shirlock’ upon death, by which he may save his soul and gaine more proffits than ever he could by his white hatt, suppose it was to be dyed red,” wrote an impertinent illiterate eager to usurp the old gentleman’s place, who, having lived and prospered in the reigns of half a dozen sovereigns of England, was now “labouring under the unconquerable distemper of old age.” Sick and decrepit, the antique Macaroni drifted into poverty. At the last, even his cherished collection of snuff-boxes had to be sold, and he gladly accepted a pension of ten pounds to be delivered him on the first Monday of every month. Only after his death did something of the glamour of his ancient renown revive. For we are told that on a certain afternoon in the middle of February, 1761, the farm-labourers of Somerset unyoked their oxen, the colliers ceased from mining, the weavers from spinning, in order to witness from the stately roof-tops of Bath the body of the celebrated old fop pass by on its way to its final resting place in the Abbey church; there to await the ordained hour when, in a form more glorified than it had ever been by lace or frill, it should be called to appear before the presence of its Maker. From _Thirteen Worthies_ by Llewelyn Powys. By permission of Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., holders of the copyright. LADY HESTER STANHOPE LYTTON STRACHEY The Pitt nose has a curious history. One can watch its transmigrations through three lives. The tremendous hook of old Lord Chatham, under whose curve Empires came to birth, was succeeded by the bleak upward-pointing nose of William Pitt the younger--the rigid symbol of an indomitable _hauteur_. With Lady Hester Stanhope came the final stage. The nose, still with an upward tilt in it, had lost its masculinity; the hard bones of the uncle and the grandfather had disappeared. Lady Hester’s was a nose of wild ambitions, of pride grown fantastical, a nose that scorned the earth, shooting off, one fancies, towards some eternally eccentric heaven. It was a nose, in fact, altogether in the air.