A Bow-Street investigation lately exhibited a happy instance of the career of one of those “elegant” coxcombs who lounge through the capital in the desperate determination to be fashionables; who poison the air with their cigars, astonish the rabble by their watch-chains and eye-glasses, and fleece tailors and tradesmen innumerable. This brilliant personage, who adopted the rather unaristocratic name of Plunket, and who certainly ought to have called himself Augustus, Sedley, Fitz-Montague, or some such captivating appellatives , what tradesman, or milliner’s apprentice can resist a romantic name! , after making an experiment of his faculties for gulling mankind in a somewhat private way in London, dashed down to the sea-coast, and appeared among the circle of the watering-places, like a star of the first magnitude.

He was, however, any thing but a fixed star, for he revolved with brilliant rapidity from Hastings, westward, through all the showy promenades, and first-rate hotels, which like a border of palaces fringe the whole southern coast of this ruined, broken, bankrupt, and ill-represented island! But his headquarters were at Brighton, and in this he showed his taste, as well in the picturesque, as in the table. For Brighton carries away the palm from every spot in England for beauty, as well as for gourmandise; which is equivalent to saying, that it is the finest thing of the kind in Europe, which pretty completely settles the question as to the globe. The chevalier travelled with the recherché elegance that no man but the Englishman ever thinks of attaining, or, of course, ever attains. His whole establishment, the perfection of costly simplicity , his travelling chariot, an utterly unornamented affair, but in which the nicest eye could not discern any thing to hang an observation upon. And this is the English idea of perfection. In his grooms, his horses, his carriage, his establishment, the object of the perfectionist is not to dazzle; which is the foreigner’s object, and which the Englishman deems vulgar; but to defy any man living to find fault with any point of the entire. From this came the grey coats of his grooms, made with the finest skill of Stultz, his dark-bodied equipage, in whose niche Mercury himself might have acknowledged the model of lightness and ease, and in whose exquisite varnish the Venus Calypyx might have contemplated all her beauties without feeling the want of her mirror. The Marquis of Hertford comprehends this state of affairs; and any one who has seen the result of that noble person’s studies in coachmen’s draperies and harness, will perceive at once the drift of our panegyrie, and that the noble Marquis was not born in vain.

The Chevalier Williams was certainly not to be compared with the Marquis. But he soared after him as high as his inferior genins suffered; and his britchska, his two postilions, and his pair of grooms, not omitting a showy Chevalieress in the inside, were for their time among the most polished appendages of Brighton. His bills , but why should such things be mentioned in the same page with those “children of fire and offspring of the sun,” the exquisites of Regent Street? , amounted to some trifle above or below L.100 a-week. And this was merely in his private hours; for he was fond of society, now and then entertained handsomely, had a round of friendships not unworthy himself, and though never stooping to the bon vivant, yet could shine at the head of his own sumptuous tables. In other instances he loved philosophic retirement, and devoted to the Chevalieress and one or two select friends, clever at ecarté, those hours for which the fashionable world pined. But the fashionable world itself has its changes, and, one day, a remarkably plain-
dressed personage, but with a remarkably keen eye, and a hurriedly investigating countenance, alighted from a passing stage at the door of the hotel, and enquired for the Chevalier. An interview followed, of which the particulars are buried in the most profound secrecy; but which ensued in the stranger’s locking the door of the apartment on the outside, and proceeding up stairs sans ceremonie, to an apartment of Parisian pomp, where, indulging herself with the delicious sea-view, lounged the Chevalieress in the viranda. She was a handsome woman, and was extremely indignant at the intrusion. The stranger attempted to explain, but the lady would listen to no explanation, and was proceeding to eject him by manual process, when he told her in plain professional language, that if she refused to let him examine the apartment he must lock her up too; that he had turned the key upon her husband, whom he had arrested on a charge of forgery to a large extent, and that the pair must put themselves en route, for London under his charge within the next half hour. The poet sings,

“Love, light as air, at sight of human ties,
Waves his white wings, and in a moment flies.”

He never waved them more rapidly than at the sight of the Bow-Street officer’s ties, for the first display of his warrant instantly dissolved the connexion. The lady declared that she was simply the Platonic acquaintance of the gentleman; that she had a husband of her own, from whom, though temporarily parted, she had never thought of being divorced; and that having had the honour of the Chevalier’s friendship but for an extremely brief period, she was determined not to risk her own peace of mind by stirring an inch from the spot to follow him to jail. She observed that she even thought herself ill-used in not having been let sufficiently into his confidence; for she had, as she firmly protested, been led to think by his declarations that he was overflowing with opulence.

The lady having thus cleared her conscience, and fortified her reputation, stood at the viranda to have the last indignant look at the “too lovely, too perfidious” Platonic, who had thus let Cupid’s wings put themselves in motion. The Chevalier was whisked away in the first passing stage, with the officer at his side, to prevent his experiencing the embarrassments of a purseless hero on an English high-road; and the drama has ended for the time in his consignment to Newgate, under a long succession of charges of swindling.

Quoted from: “The World we Live in. No. XIII” In: Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, November 1837.