pass some short time in this entrance of France. The English 'residents'
were always on the look-out, generally crowding round the packet-boat,
and the new arrival was sure to be accosted by some old and attached
friend, who had not seen him for years. Just as Buttons, who is always
breaking the plates and tumblers, has the invariable mode of accounting
for his carelessness, 'they fell apart, sir, in my 'ands!' so these
expatriated Britons had always a tale of confidence misplaced--security
for a bond--bail for a delinquent, or in short any hard case, which
compelled them, much against their wills, to remain 'for a period' on
the shores of France. To such men, whom you had known in seven-guinea
waistcoats at White's and Watier's, and found in seven-shilling coats on
the Calais pier, it was impossible to refuse your five-pound note, and
in time the black-mail of Calais came to be reckoned among the
established expenses of a Continental tour.

Brummell was a distinguished beggar of this description, and managed so
adroitly that the new arrivals thought themselves obliged by Mr.
Brummell's acceptance of their donations. The man who could not eat
cabbages, drive in a hackney-coach, or wear less than three shirts a
day, was now supported by voluntary contributions, and did not see
anything derogatory to a gentleman in their acceptance. If Brummell had
now turned his talents to account; if he had practised his painting, in
which he was not altogether despicable; or his poetry, in which he had
already had some trifling success: if he had even engaged himself as a
waiter at Quillacq's, or given lessons in the art of deportment, his
fine friends from town might have cut him, but posterity would have
withheld its blame. He was a beggar of the merriest kind. While he wrote
letters to friends in England, asking for remittances, and describing
his wretched condition on a bed of straw and eating bran bread, he had a
good barrel of Dorchester ale in his lodgings, his usual glass of