Princess Weeks and the host dissect Beau Brummell's rise as the first celebrity and architect of the modern suit, clarifying that he synthesized 18th-century trends into a business uniform rather than inventing them literally. They expose the brutal Eton culture of "tunding" and sexual abuse, noting how Brummell survived through wit and charm amidst a colonial mindset that justified atrocities like the Bengal famine. The discussion highlights his protective love for Julia Storer, whose seduction by Colonel Cotton led to her ostracization, and concludes that Brummell was a decent man using fashion as armor against a vicious aristocratic system, paralleling modern influencer dynamics. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Behind The Bastards Intro00:05:17
Cool zone media.
What's got a functional sedative, my host of this podcast?
This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast hosted by someone with PTSD who has not been sleeping well for the last like six months and finally got on a good sedative.
I went out like a fucking zombie last night and I woke up actually feeling like I slept.
So I'm unstoppable today.
I'm unconquerable.
I woke up at 11, 10 a.m., which is the earliest I've gotten up in months.
Feeling great, everybody.
Really feeling good.
I can't mix these with alcohol, which is a bummer, unlike benzos, which my doctor says are safe to mix with alcohol.
No, don't do that.
It'll kill you.
It killed everybody in the 70s.
That's why there's none of those people left.
I'm really glad that you've gotten some sleep, mostly because that makes my life a lot easier, but also good for you.
Speaking of not speaking of doing drugs in the 1970s, but speaking of being as cool as the 1970s, our guest this week, Princess Weeks.
Princess, you are a YouTuber, a comedian, and you are here today.
How are you feeling?
I wish I had slept as well as you.
Now I know what I need.
I'm so hype.
I'm so hype.
I am a history nerd.
I love this podcast.
I want to know who my bastard is so badly.
All right.
Well, we're going to get into it.
I do want to ask you one question first about the past because, you know, it's been going around this year.
I think it was this year that this started.
The whole like, how often do you as a man think about the Roman Empire?
And for most, at least for me and all of my social circle, my male social circle, it's a daily thing.
But what I think is a more universal experience, at least among the people that I know and care for, male and female, is how often do you think about getting access to those good height of the 70s qualities?
Because that's what I don't stop thinking about.
Every day for me, it's thinking about lewds.
Hourly.
Hourly, hourly.
Okay, that's good.
Yeah.
Speaking of qualities, that was the drug of the fashionable self in the height of Hollywood, I don't know, like grime and shit in the 70s, degeneracy, financial industry degeneracy.
And when I think about degeneracy, when I think about fashion, one thing that comes to mind is the suit, right?
The suit and tie, the uniform of the finance industry, the uniform of business, of class, of wealth and power in the Western world.
And today, this week, we're going to talk about where the suit and tie came from.
And we're going to talk about where the concept of a celebrity came from, because the modern suit and tie, our conception of a celebrity, the fashion influencer, everything that's going to become like the way influencing works on Instagram and TikTok, all of it was created in the 1700s by one man, and his name was Bo Brummel.
And that's what we're going to talk about this week, Princess.
Have you heard of Bo?
I hate him already.
I've never heard of Bo.
I was really wrecking my brain.
But every time he said suit and tie, I kept thinking about Justin Timberlake.
So like it was going to be either way, we were going to get some more.
Yeah, we all have Justin on the brain.
This is interesting.
I kind of wonder how you're going to, if you're going to wind up actually hating this guy, but we'll move to that after the cold open because we're done with the cold open.
We're ready to hit the fucking ground running.
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You know the famous author Roll Dahl.
He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG.
But did you know he was a spy?
Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
All episodes are out now.
Was this before he wrote his stories?
It must have been.
What?
Okay, I don't think that's true.
I'm telling you, I was a spy.
Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Readers, Katie's finalists, publicists, we have an incredible new episode this week for you guys.
We have our girl Hillary Duff in here, and we can't wait for you to hear this episode.
They put on Lizzie McGuire at 2 a.m. video on demand.
This guy's playing.
2 a.m.
2 a.m.
Whatever time it is.
Lizzie McGuire and I'm like, wild back.
It was like a first closet moment for me where I was like, I don't feel like she's hot like the rest of them.
No, no, no.
I was like, she's beautiful.
I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are.
I'm not like.
Listen to Las Culturalistas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
We're back.
Roald Dahl Empire Secrets00:15:19
I am so excited.
You had me at 1700s.
Yes, yes.
And what's weird to me is how of the stuff that like a lot of times you can see if you were like, yeah, this is the origin of this very modern thing.
And you'd be like, well, I can see how it built from there.
When it comes to him, everything he's doing as a fashion influencer is exactly the way it works today for people using social media, but he's doing it person to person in very like intriguing ways.
He like knows he, this is the guy who learns how to make shit spread virally, but he's doing it all analog.
And it's really interesting the way that he like makes this work.
But I'm also, here's the thing, the admission I'm going to make to you as we come back is I don't know that he's actually a bastard.
A lot of people are convinced that he was.
This is going to be an interesting one for us.
I guess I should just get into it.
You ready for me to start the script, Princess?
I'm so ready.
So you look great.
I am not what you would call a fashionable man.
I am wearing like a discount Chud hoodie that I got from the hunting store.
This is the Chud hoodie?
It's like it's got a faded deer head printer on it and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, everybody loves Vid Chud.
One of my one of my favorite things about when like Robert and I fly in for like a business meeting or go meet with someone for a business meeting is like, I'll come and I am business Barbie.
And then there's Robert in his Chud hoodie.
And it just works.
It just really works.
He's connected.
Yeah, I look like someone.
Like I'm confident enough to say this about myself.
I look like, I'm not, but I look like someone who might pull a gun on you in the parking lot for taking the space for my F-250, which I park in four spaces, right?
Like that's a job.
That's the vibe I give off.
I'm very polite with my parking, but I don't dress well.
I did used to, which I think is surprising because I haven't in a long time.
Kind of the change for me was back in 2017.
I had a near-death experience and I was wearing uncomfortable pants and a belt.
And I was like, well, if I'm going to die, and I am someday, I'm not going to die in a die wearing like sweatpants, like some nice thin merino blend or something, right?
And that's all I've worn ever since.
So I might be better primed than most people to accept that the inventor of the suit and tie, Bo Brummel, could be a bastard.
But before we, you know, go further, I need to clarify that like, first off, Bo did not invent, he's not a tailor.
He doesn't actually like make any of this stuff.
So he didn't actually, he didn't literally invent the suit and tie.
Like a bunch of different guys over a long period of time invented the suit and tie, iterating.
But he is the one who first combined a series of fashion trends in the way that guaranteed the suit and tie would be the result, you know, a couple of generations down the line, right?
And he is most, it seems like broadly agreed by fashion historians that it's fair to credit him as being the father or at least the spiritual father of the modern Western suit, right?
Even though he did not literally make it.
We'll walk through that whole process and I think that'll make it more understandable later.
So I was excited when I started doing my research on him because I refused to wear a tie.
I did just get fitted for a suit for the first time in like a decade because at my dad's funeral, I looked like shit and my brother looked reasonably nice in a suit.
And I was like, I actually kind of feel bad that I look like shit, you know?
Like my dad wouldn't have cared.
Like he knows, he knew the kind of trash person that I was.
But I'm going to, I'm trying to dress up a little bit more now.
That said, you know, I'm not inherently sympathetic to a fashion influencer.
And I found a couple articles when I started doing this.
That's why I started reading about him that made him sound like a sinister figure.
And the first of them was a piece in Esquire that describes him as a boring, uptight villain by Alexandra Rowland.
And she makes the case that he killed the era of like elaborate, creative, colorful men's fashion and is kind of responsible for the fact that men today, that's her argument, that men today are scared to express themselves through clothing, right?
Lest they feel effeminate.
And I'm going to read a quote from her article.
Beau Brummel, who was the beginning of 200 years of death for men's fashion, and the reason that many straight white heterosexual men today feel self-conscious about wearing color or textures or patterns or anything else that makes them stand out from the sea of dull blues and grays.
Sure, there have always been flares of counterculture, almost all of which relied on styles appropriated from marginalized communities, but the prevailing baseline of appropriate and presentable menswear, the things worn by senators, CEOs, and lawyers, has not significantly changed in centuries.
Now, and I think what she's, it comes to her overall analysis of like fashion.
I don't think that's wrong.
I mean, it's obviously like it's a paragraph that's simplifying it a bit.
But I think there's an argument to be made there.
I think it's interesting because like every year during the Met Gala, that's always the conversation.
It's like the women, whether or not they're on theme or not, that's a whole different conversation.
But the women will wear these extravagant outfits, like really live lavishly.
But it feels like post-Halloween middle grade, it just becomes like your Batman's, your black suit.
Like the Batman outfit is the suit and tie of Halloween menswear.
So I'm so intrigued about like why he decided to be so boring.
And I think this is where I disagree with Alexandra.
And I think she's being unfair because I think she wanted to find an easy way to thing to blame for what is a much more complicated problem, which is men feeling like they'll be considered gay if they express themselves.
Because Bo was not boring.
And I don't actually think it's fair to say that he made fashion boring.
I think it's fair to say that because of some of the trends he started, other people made fashion boring.
But he was a disruptor of fashion in a way that I think was actually, he deserves credit for being creative in.
He was an artist in a lot of ways.
And I think that the reason Roland comes down on him so hard and the reason a lot of like pop history writers do is that it's it's you're always looking when you do kind of pop internet history, looking for traffic.
You're searching for like algorithmic glory, right?
You want to be able to make a quick case that seems to explain something frustrating about the world and everyone can get angry at a guy.
And sometimes it's easy to do that.
Sometimes there's good ways to do that, right?
We do that a decent bit around here.
But also, I think when you do that, you can run into the trap of over extending a few facts about someone and ultimately losing the person's humanity and kind of exaggerating and missing where a lot of the harm actually came from.
I'm not trying to come down on Alexandra.
I've done this myself.
There's plenty of criticism from my body of work.
But this whole subject is personal to me because I'm not just a guy who dresses like shit because it's comfortable.
I'm also a guy I've dealt with an eating disorder.
I've spent a lot of my adult life insecure about my appearance.
It took me years to like figure out who I was.
And I think that's the case for a lot of men, right?
We're no different from anybody else in that regard.
And I think that like the way Hollywood, I actually really appreciate Channing Tatum's talked a good amount about like the, how, you know, being as gorgeous as he is, but like how many weird body image issues he got, because if you're a leading man, you are basically your job is to be professionally a disordered eater.
Like you're supposed to have body dysmorphia from my mother said that too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it's good that they do say that, right?
Like I, you know, you can argue there's, they, they contributed to the harm, but I think it's more like in the same way that, well, we all drive cars, right?
Because we've got to, you know, I think it's, it's useful when people come out and acknowledge this stuff.
And I think that's kind of how I came in looking at Bo, right?
And I think what I saw in him when I did a deeper dive and read some of the more the actual, like not pop history, but like professional, rigorous academic history about him is I saw a man who was not just dealing with his own insecurity, but who was living inside of a, of a vicious, one of the most viciously evil social systems that ever existed, which is the upper crust of the aristocracy in the early British Empire.
It's one of the most hideous and cruel cultures that ever existed.
And I think he was a decent man who was desperate to find a way to survive and protect himself.
And he kind of did the best that he could.
And that's where I come down on Bo, actually.
And I think there's still some, a lot of harmful aspects of his legacy, but I think it's a much more interesting story than just like he hated fashion and he made men afraid to dress well, right?
We'll see how you think when we get through this.
Ultimately, I do want to note, I think a lot of the conclusions from Alexandra's article are still valid.
Bromell did inaugurate a sea change in male fashion that is dominant today.
And this has had toxic knock-on effects.
He's also the first modern celebrity.
He is a man who, his life was very similar to modern professional fashion influencers today in ways that are like so direct, it's kind of boggling.
But I don't know if I would call him a bastard.
That said, by talking about his life, we're going to go into the deep sickness at the heart of the British Empire and its culture.
So either way, we are going to get behind some bastards.
I promise you we'll fit the name.
17th, 18th centuries British.
Yeah.
I was like, this is called like the region.
This is the regency era.
Ever.
We're bastards.
Come on, bastards, baby.
Let's go.
If you want the most, the biggest touchstone culturally for this era is Jane Austen.
Jane Austen is a contemporary of Bo.
She's born, I think, two and a half years before him, but they live in London basically during the same time.
And she never references him directly.
I read a very detailed article by some scholars with the Jane Austen Fan Club, who I trust to know their shit, who argue like she didn't reference him directly, but most of the male characters in her novels were either based on him or reactions to him.
Not entirely, right?
But like Mr. Darcy has a lot of Bo in him, right?
So that's an argument that people make, right?
I'm not a Jane Austen scholar, but these Jane Austen scholars make that argument.
So George Brian Grumble was born on June 7th, 1778 in Downing Street, London.
The house he was born and partly raised in was essentially a palace.
Yeah, Downing Street.
So that's like the heart of government.
Yeah, I was like, I was like, I was like, exactly.
I was going to say, like, I know that address.
He is raised there.
I mean, they were basically a palace for government employees at the highest level of British government.
That's where he's raised and he spends most of his childhood, right?
This is where the people who are running the empire live well for very little while they make the empire go.
His father is a guy named Billy, Billy Brummell, and he is private secretary to Lord North, the first Lord of the Treasury.
So that's a big gig, right?
This is the guy who is running the purse for the entire British Empire.
Lord North, that sounds Lord North.
Yes.
He's a powerful man.
Billy is notable.
Yeah.
George's dad, and George is going to become Beau.
Billy is notable because he's one of a small elite cadre of men who hold high positions in the British state, but are not members of the aristocracy.
They are commoners, right?
Technically, they are commoners, but they are not common, you know.
Their families had been in living memory.
They are not of the nobility, but they are extremely wealthy and very privileged, right?
Billy's dad.
The middleton, essentially.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
You might even look at them as like the Cheneys, to be honest.
So these are the people who they have a lot of money and a lot of power.
You know, their dads generally made a lot of money and a lot of power.
And then before that, the family lineage was a little more common.
Billy's dad, Bo's grandpa, had made the family fortune because he owned a boarding house.
And on paper, that makes him sound like he owned a motel.
The reality is that he was a pimp, right?
Because of where this, and this is reading between the lines, but historians seem to broadly agree, given where the boarding house was located, he made his money providing beds and employing women who stepped out with the men who ran the country.
So this is not a tawdry boarding house.
This is a guy who, and this is not like some street pimp.
This is a guy who provides escorts to the most powerful men in the, to kings, literally to the king.
Official mistresses and all those kind of things.
Yeah.
Exactly, exactly.
Billy's dad is going to die with an estate worth the modern equivalent of something like $15 million, right?
So he is not, he's not just like running a motel six, you know, this is a man who is doing, he's doing some pimping, right?
Like it ain't easy.
It is not easy, no.
But you could argue it's necessary, somewhat.
He also had a private apartment in Hampton Court, which is a former royal palace, right?
So it's one of those places where it's a fashion.
I don't think you pay to live there.
I think if you are important and well-liked enough, you basically get an invite from the aristocracy to like, you can have a subsidized apartment at Hampton Court, right?
So again, not just a guy running a boarding house, right?
This is a man who is powerful.
His son, Billy, Bo's dad, started out as a valet.
And a valet, if you're technically common by blood, a lot of times you're going to work as a valet.
That is, you could call it a working class gig, but it's basically this kind of class of people who do a lot of the administration of the empire, but who aren't nobility themselves.
They start out as basically body servants for the aristocracy.
And part of that job is making connections, becoming liked and trusted.
And then eventually, as the young man that when you're both 19, 20, 21, you're squiring about to parties, you're holding his hair back as he pukes.
When he takes his positions in the empire, he'll give you positions below him, right?
Because he knows he can trust you, you know?
That is how a lot of the actual like business of the empire gets done.
Billy does well enough to make himself indispensable to a number of powerful men, including Lord North.
His son, George, the future Beau, is baptized on July 2nd in the parish church for the House of Commons, right?
So again, he's a commoner, but not common.
He grows up.
His child playmates are royal, right?
They're members of the aristocracy.
They're, you know, princes and princesses and the like.
Most of the adult influences around young George are women because his dad's working all the time.
So he is largely raised by his mom and his aunts.
And as a result, he's got to be really good with women.
And I don't mean like, oh, he's a Lothario.
I mean that like he genuinely enjoys their company and is a good friend.
And most of what we know about he respects women a little bit.
He a lot like most of what we know about him is like a lot of the women were who were his friends or his mistresses wrote about him and they all tended to be like, yeah, he was fucking rad.
Like he, he didn't suck.
He would listen to what you had to say.
He didn't hit you.
He was like a nice guy.
Like I keep reminding myself that we're talking 1700s, 1800s, Great Britain.
George's Royal Childhood00:07:33
Yeah.
Because I'm waiting for the bastardy.
There will be some, there's a lot of bastardry in the social class, but like again, one of the things you have to respect about this guy is we have a lot of women who wrote about him and none of them were like, and this is the time he was like an abusive prick to me, you know?
And you really have to be pretty cool to not have stories like that about you in the 1700s as a man of means.
Right.
Exactly.
It's like when they're like, yeah, Hunter Biden, he does crack, but he's very nice while he does it.
Yeah.
It's it is if you've known people who use a lot of crack or cocaine, it's really hard to do that every 20 minutes and have someone be like, I felt safe with him.
He just seemed like such a calming presence.
Such a nice chill process.
They're like, calming.
Interesting.
He did $11,000 worth of crack a day, but I felt like really calm around him.
He was a centering presence.
Yeah.
Most of the adult influences for, again, for young George are women.
His aunts noted later that he was a massive baby with a massive appetite.
That is the number one thing they say about him as a baby is like, he was fucking huge.
One of the stories we get about him is he was, they had tarts one day, and he was so into eating a tart that when he got full and he couldn't eat anymore, he started screaming because he wanted to eat more tart.
Classic lady.
Yeah, yeah, same homie.
It's like my cat.
She's like, she's like, I know you just fed me, but like, I could use another round.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel, I feel, I feel that.
So in 1780, Lord North and the party of men that George's dad had made his bed with were firmly on the downswing of their careers because, you know, 1780, what do we all know happened a couple of years earlier?
The Great Britain loses freedom.
North America, right?
Freedom, Yeah, freedom, freedom.
The best parts.
All the good parts.
My God.
You know, the Virginia, New York, probably other states.
Delaware.
Oh, my God.
Can you imagine losing Delaware and all of the great, I feel like Sheets?
They've got Sheetses in Delaware.
Maybe I'm wrong about who has Sheets.
They got a bank there.
I think they got a bank.
Oh, yeah.
Oldest something's in Delaware.
Yeah.
A crushing blow to Lord North and the cadre of men who were running the empire, right?
And so George's dad and his friends, they're not going to be out of power immediately, but this is going to kind of they're passing a deer of their power because they are, he is like one of the guys who helps lose the United States.
Yeah.
And you're going to take a hit for that.
Yeah.
And it's, you know, that's not the only thing that happens.
They also are the men who like win a big war against France.
So that part's good.
But Lord North makes some other mistakes.
His biggest is that he doesn't really hate Catholics as much as most men in the UK do.
And that's going to hurt him.
Amateur mistake.
Right, right.
Not being racist enough against the Irish.
Yeah.
So the fact that he just doesn't hate Irish people quite enough culminates in June of 1780 in an angry mob attacking the Brummel home in London.
George is not directly exposed to any violence, but he would have heard the shouting.
He would have seen the fear in his family's faces, and he would have heard volleys of gunfire from royal troops who had to put down the rioters by shooting into crowds.
It's pretty ugly.
So his family, they spend most of their time out in the country after this, a lot of it, right?
This is not an uncommon thing for people with means and wealth to do during this period.
We're in the lead up to the French Revolution, right?
So things are not going to get a lot calmer in the near future.
They also officially get given rooms at the Hampton Court Palace then, which is something of an upgrade from Downing Street.
And during this period, George is going to have his first brush with fame because he and his brother are painted by a famous artist named Joshua Reynolds.
And this is Beau and his brother as like four-year-olds.
Oh, that's these kids?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's literally very famous.
Very famous painting.
Yeah, they look, you would say, if you don't know much about like classic art, you would say, well, they look like little girls and they look like little girls because little boys wore dresses back then, right?
It's elegant.
It's cute.
Dresses are very convenient to put on a little kid.
So I get it.
You can find, I think, photos of FDR in a dress as a baby.
So this, this practice lasts a while.
We just don't do that for no good reason.
I remember we went to, when I was in college, we went to FDR's house in Poughkeepsie, and his mother had like clipped out his baby curls and like kept them forever to like, I guess, harass Eleanor with them.
Yeah, it would be off.
She wasn't such a raging bitch, but like definitely there are like all these little pictures of little baby FDR with little curls.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was a gorgeous baby.
You can just tell that baby's gonna, well, he's gonna do some problematic things, but overall, one of the better presidents.
Yeah.
It's a low.
He's gonna win some, he's gonna lose some.
Yeah.
He's gonna commit some crimes against humanity.
He's gonna stop some crimes against humanity, like net, like down to crimes against humanity, which is not bad for a president.
Not great for a president either.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Whatever.
Who cares?
So while the painting's being made, a famous poet, Mary Robinson, lover of the Prince of Wales, is inspired to write a poem about Bo, who she describes as an infant cherub that's also famous.
So he is like kind of a child star in his era, although he's largely not aware of it.
Like he winds up in a lot of very famous art just because he's a really cute kid and he's around all of these artists who hang around the people running the country.
That was enlightening to me.
Reading that was enlightening to me because it made a lot of the more pop history articles on his background read differently.
I want to give you an idea of how he's normally written about in some of these kind of less nuanced takes.
Here's a quote from a Nat Geo article by Ignatio Pero.
Bo Brummel was not an aristocrat.
He was a commoner admitted to the royal circle.
That's technically, literally true, but it makes it sound like he snuck his way in as opposed to, well, no, there's a class of people who are common, but are part of the upper class.
And his family was very, very solidly among that group of people.
The Esquire article tries to portray his family as like economically anxious and social climbers, describing them as middle-class Londoners with loftier aspirations who were desperate to climb that next rung on the social ladder.
And that's not really right because they were at the top.
They were as high as you could go in the social ladder.
Bo's dad is the body man for like the Lord of the Treasury.
There's really not a higher place for them to have gone.
Anyway, the Brummel family are not royalty, though.
And as you can see, though, he was like, he's not common as a child.
In 1786, his father decided to leave governance behind.
He had done very well for himself in Downing Street.
And now that he was like in his 50s, he decided to spend his remaining years investing his wealth into property and entering a sort of working retirement.
So he buys a country home for his family.
It's a mansion.
It's made in the style of older homes that had never really existed, but like this was people's idea of what older manners have been.
Yeah.
And it's, it was built.
It's like Greece.
We're like, this is the 50s.
Yeah, exactly.
Aristocrat Financial Legacy00:04:09
Exactly.
No one ever lived this way.
Right.
And the guy who builds it, it's kind of like a McMansion in some ways.
It's built by, it's like a super fancy house built by this aristocrat who bankrupts himself building it.
And then Billy is able to get it for cheap because he's just much smarter than a lot of these guys, right?
Here's how Ian Kelly, Bo's biographer, describes the process of readying the home for habitation.
Donnington Grove still bears the marks of the Brummel's social ambitions.
Like all fashion-conscious Georgian landowners, they wanted to create an arcadia without visible signs of the economy that supported their luxury.
They had a paper mill demolished.
It spoiled the view and replaced with a medieval style fishing pavilion.
See, this is like Jefferson's doing a lot of similar stuff where, like, you don't want anyone to see the servants, right?
You only want to see, you just want it to look like it's magical.
Clean.
Yeah, like you want that, like, minimalist, like, like, oh, yeah, just the black people just appear in the house and then they just vanish.
Right, right, right.
So, we're going to talk more about Bo's childhood and his attendance at a little school called Eaton.
But first off, before we do that, why don't you eat in some of these ads?
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We're back.
Eton Culture And Acculturation00:15:16
So as a boy, as like a young kid, pre-adolescent, George's idol, George is the future beau.
His idol is his older neighbor, who's a semi-famous guy, Tom Sheridan.
Tom is going to become like he's a celebrity of his day.
He's a soldier.
He writes plays.
He's like a professional adulterer.
He's one of these men who like part of his legacy is how good he is at cheating on his different wives and mistresses, right?
Classic kind of guy.
And like most of those guys, he dies young of tuberculosis, right?
And that's how you know it was big.
You know, like it's like, yeah, he was prolific.
Yeah.
You're not really like a famous romantic like male influencer if you don't die of TB.
That's like the, that's like the capstone, you know, that's like winning an Oscar in this era, right?
If Leonardo DiCaprio had been a regency era like Dandy, he would have been looking to die of fucking tuberculosis by 40, as opposed to doing that bear movie where he won the Oscar.
Right.
It's like, you got to be out by 36 like Byron, because then it's like, what are we, what are we even doing here?
Yeah, it's not going to get better, right?
After 36, you're pretty much washed in this period of time anyway.
So yeah, Tom Sheridan, the main thing that George is going to take from him is that Tom is a wit, and that's what George is going to grow up wanting to be.
So I should digress here.
One thing the story of Bo Brummel makes clear is that Twitter didn't invent anything new.
It just gave us a way to do it online, right?
People have always appreciated sharing funny bits, like little lines by strangers.
And people have always gotten famous.
People have always in part gotten famous from dropping good one-liners.
Most of Regency era British culture that comes down to us is at least a huge amount of it is in the form of one-liners and quips from people like Tom and Bo, who are more famous for like, like Tom writes plays and stuff, but he's mostly famous for like these little put-downs and jokes, these epigrams than any play or novel, right?
Tom is said to have originated this bit.
When his father demanded he take a wife, he responded, yes, sir, but whose?
And then his dad is like, look, motherfucker, I'm not joking around.
If you don't marry, I'm going to cut you off with only a penny to your name.
And Tom's response was, can I have the penny now then?
Right?
He's that kind of a wit, right?
Yeah.
These are the bits.
No wonder he was sleeping with people's wives.
Exactly.
Of course he is.
Right.
And this is, there's no difference between this and dunking on dudes on Twitter, right?
Like it is the same thing, right?
And ancient Rome, they're doing this too.
A lot of like Roman graffiti is like dunks.
It's little, and in fact, these British guys, all of them in school, are studying the way Romans and Greeks used to dunk on each other in order to like, and that's like the core of a lot of like the culture of humor in this time.
We should teach that course before people get like podcaster mics.
Like it should be a required course before you get a mic.
You have to be able to do that.
Yes, exactly.
Take a witticism class.
Yeah, take take a yeah, take a good class in dunking.
People back then, you have to understand being a poster isn't new.
We've always had posters.
The ancient Romans were some of the best posters who ever lived.
They would understand the internet in a second, you know.
Now, the ancient Greeks, yeah, they were posters too.
A lot of posters.
Most people in history were posters.
That's that's the great lesson of humankind.
I think the Greeks would have had like a substack.
Yeah.
Yeah, if it's fucking, oh my God.
Aristotle would have loved Aristotle would have loved substack kids.
Jesus, yeah.
Aristotle would, yeah, he would, he would have had like, it would have been one of those things too, where you would have gotten like 10 pages in, and then they would, it would have had like the to read the rest of this, you got to subscribe to Aristotle's substack.
Yeah.
Right.
And no one would have.
So we just would have had like a bunch of half articles, which is kind of what we have with Aristotle now.
So these little bits, stories about people giving these little bits about these japes made at parties would spread person to person through letters, through like human gossip, and through newspapers and magazines, which reported on a lot of like the social gossip between the big figures of the day.
Novels were another major place where this kind of culture spread.
Jane Austen is a big part of this, right?
So Bo grows up idolizing Tom Sheridan and specifically idolizing the fact that he earns a lot of respect because he's funny and kind of a dick.
He's going to learn from Tom that like that's sort of how you make a place in yourself in society is you learn how to put people down in a way that's so funny they don't really get angry at you, you know?
That's the kind of the key to social success and his culture.
In 1786, his dad sends him away to Eton, the most famous and prestigious boarding school on the island.
This is the school of the prince and the future king, the Prince of Wales now attends.
And it's not, Eton is, it's still around today and it is a school today.
At this point in time, it's not a school in the way modern people mean when they talk about a school.
You don't go to Eton to learn a trade or a vocation.
You don't go there because like, well, I'd like to be an English major or I would like to be, you know, be an engineer or whatever.
You go there, you do go there to prepare for your job.
But as I talked about earlier, jobs for people in this social class at the top of the ladder in the British Empire are given out by aristocrats to like the people they trust the most.
And so the way that you prepare to start your future career and to get a job is not learning how to do things.
It's learning how to be good company, right?
It's learning how to fit in at the parties that will eventually secure you a gig.
So Eternians, they learn Greek, they read the classics, they study philosophy.
But the purpose of most of this is so that they can like share references.
And you should think about this not as today, if somebody's dropping references to like Homer or Virgil in like conversation, like, oh, you want people to know you're smart, right?
In this era, it's more like how if you're hanging out with like a bunch of 30-something comedians, everybody's like quoting old bits from The Simpsons, right?
It helps you fit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That must be why Charles was so that makes total sense.
Yeah.
Because King Charles didn't go there.
Right.
And he was real mad about it and definitely sent his sons there.
But that makes a lot of sense.
I think we lose a lot when we see these classical educations learning Latin, learning Greek and all this stuff as like, well, because they were much smarter than us, as opposed to like, this was kind of the meme culture of the day.
Being able to throw a good Plato quote in when somebody said something or make a good reference to him, that was how people, that was how like you communicated, you know?
Yeah.
It's like fuckboy finishing school, but like because they did it in Latin.
Yeah.
It seems fancier to us, but it's not really any different from the way like the internet accultures us all to communicate now, right?
In its early days, back in the 1500s, education at Eton had been largely religious.
But as Britain had sucked in the world's wealth more and more of the focus had turned towards cultivating a social class who would wield obscure knowledge to separate themselves from commoners and gain a common identity, right?
That was kind of existed in exclusion.
to the rest of the country and the rest of the world.
The people who did not have that education would almost speak a different language.
At the end of the 18th century, the specific style of speaking that was taught in Eton was based on classic Greek and Roman epigrammatists.
An epigram is an, it's a bit, right?
That's what we would call a bit.
It's a couple of good lines, usually satiric that often played the role of like a rap battle, right?
This is how a lot of like old-time Greek and Roman thinkers would like talk shit on each other in epigrams, right?
It's also how ancient Greek and Roman graffiti took, like that's the, form it took.
One surviving epigram from Pompeii reads, and this is like, it's, this is graffiti on a wall in Pompeii.
I'm astonished, Wall, that you haven't collapsed into ruins since you're holding up the weary verse of so many poets, right?
Like, I'm surprised that you haven't collapsed into the weight of everybody trying to seem smart by like throwing out a good one-liner, you know?
Some Taylor Swift-ass shit right there.
Yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
So department ass wall.
Yeah, it is kind of like that.
Somebody bitching about everybody.
Yeah, trying to, trying to put on airs, seem smarter than they are.
So it's here that George Brummel is educated in the art of observing the world and then boiling his thoughts into a single razor sharp line.
He develops a reputation for cutting mockery and also for being the funniest kid in school, right?
He is like the guy.
He's the cut up.
He's the, he's, he's, he's, he's a charming joker.
Now, another major focus of Eaton culture are the uniforms.
Boys are expected to own a dozen shirts and cravats, plus numerous pairs of pants, waistcoats, breeches, hats and stockings for different occasions.
And knowing what to wear and when is part of what you is a big part of what you're learning there, because that's part of what separates you from the masses who have whatever set of clothes they have, right?
And maybe a Sunday set of clothes and generally look like shit, right?
Yeah.
You have the wealth to have clothing and care about how you look.
Forcing boys who are generally 12 or 13, that's when you start at Eaton, to fit into this social class is not a peaceful process.
You don't just do it by teaching them Greek and making them dress up.
You do it by beating the shit out of them, right?
That is a major part of acculturating young men here.
And I'm going to quote from an article by Austin Jensen.
For breaches of discipline, a boy would be flogged.
Eaton specifically used to be renowned for its use of corporal punishment, generally known as beating.
Friday was set aside as flogging day.
Until 1964, offending boys could be summoned to the headmaster or lower master as appropriate to receive a birching on the bare posterior in a semi-public ceremony held in the library.
So like every Friday, you all go to get the shit beat out of you and watch.
Like everybody's got to watch as your bare ass gets paddled in front of the school.
And they wonder why these are not well people.
Like, yeah, why all of them grow up.
I mean, I'm sure it's part of why guys like Beau's grandpa are able to make a good living as a pimp, right?
Because there's probably a lot of money for early dominatrixes in this culture, right?
Right.
Because you've got to develop a complex where it's like everything about you is like latched on to like this weird social, like sadomasochist thing.
But you got to be smart while you did it by like doing a whiff after like you kept your ass beat.
Yeah, you got to be able to make a good, there's, there's a great movie called If that's set, it's actually the first Malcolm McDowell movie.
Like it's, it's his first starring role, but it's set in the mid-century, 20th century at one of these boarding schools.
And they're still about this brutal into the late 20th century.
But like one of the things it covers is the way in which it's almost ritualized and sexualized, this physical violence that all of the boys have to endure.
And it's a pretty vicious system.
The prefects who are the older boys do a lot of the actual beatings.
It was called a tunding, which was beating a disobedient student across the back of his waistcoat with a ground ash the width of a finger.
So it's like a finger width ash stick.
Ash is very hard wood.
And the art of it is to catch the edge of a shoulder blade to hit someone in the back and catch them or like hit them over the shoulder and catch them in the back and hit the same spot every time.
Right.
And you're kind of the goal is to cut their vest, their waistcoat into strips by whipping them over time.
Cause then they have to pay to replace it too.
Not only are you driving up welts on their back, but they have to replace their clothes.
God.
The British are not a well people.
I hate that they colonized all of my groups.
It's like you were whipping each other's clothes off and then you also had time to enslave so many people.
Like pick a honda.
Get us into the therapy.
Anytime you read about like that's probably why they did it.
They were like, this is our therapy is doing a couple of genocides, right?
Like, yeah, that's how we're going to starve 30 million people in Bengal.
And that's, that's really good for the soul.
It is interesting every time you read about like, oh, the British encountered this barbarous practice in Kenya or this horrible practice in India.
And like every culture has things that they do and have done that are not certainly we don't consider to be moral in a modern sense that we're really ugly.
But they act as if like you guys are whipping each other bloody and you've ritualized it.
And like some chunk of the boys are always sexually molesting each other because like that is partly how the system is built is to like enable these like systems of sexual abuse.
Cause you have younger boys are paired.
It's called the fag fag master system.
That is where the slur comes from.
And a fag is a younger boy who is paired with an older boy and he's basically that boy's servant.
And the older boy can, in addition to whip him, basically is supposed to control him.
And it's not always sexual, but a lot of these relationships are sexual and they're deeply abusive.
And this is like part of the culture of going to a private school is you are probably going to get molested.
That's a very, especially in this period of very high odds, right?
Like these are barbarous.
Especially when they're like.
Right.
Especially when they're like fetishizing the Greeks that were like very much in that mentality of you, you, you rear a young boy for that same kind of like molestation, but also like you're supposed to be giving them access to your mind.
And that's supposed to elevate them through that whole process.
Yeah.
And so it's, it's, you're going, you, part of what you're doing is you're mixing in in the head the things that the kid's going to grow up to be proud of, my education, my professional competence, and you're also chaining that to the abuse that they endure at the hands of adults, which is, I mean, it profoundly damages the Greeks.
It profoundly damages the Brits, you know?
We are still dealing with some of the consequences of this to this day.
One thing that is interesting about this system is that in this school, I said at Eton, the Prince of Wales goes here.
Most of the like high aristocracy go to Eton.
They are not immune to being punished.
They are not immune to being punished by people who are lower than them on the social hierarchy.
They get the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, who go to the school a little before George does, are noted by their sisters having been flogged like dogs for misbehavior.
So there's also an element of like trauma bonding for the entire upper class in that they have this common experience.
That's very important.
Now, George, he goes through this system.
Innate Social Navigation Skills00:03:17
He is noted as being very well liked.
He is not somebody who ever is noted as having flogged anyone else.
And he seems to have almost entirely escaped being physically abused himself in a way that is so unique.
It was remarked upon by his peers at the time.
Like somehow he always got out of it and nobody else did.
Right.
And part of how he got out of the bullshit is like everyone really liked him.
We have numerous reports from his classmates of like, he was the cool kid in school.
He was the kid you wanted to be.
And nobody, even like the upperclassmen, the school teachers just didn't seem to want to fuck with him much because he was so funny.
He was so like, you wanted him to like you and think you were cool, right?
Do we have any like information?
Like, what books was he reading?
Like, where is he getting his coolness from?
Like, why is he so fucking cool?
He's, he's reading.
Natural Riz.
Yeah, he's got, it's kind of just natural Riz.
You know, he paid attention to Tom growing up.
He pays attention to like how you craft a joke.
He does really well in school.
So he's good on his Greek and his Latin.
He's good at his history.
He's not the best.
He avoids doing too well because he doesn't want to like, then people don't like you if you do too well, but he's like good enough to be noted as a good student, not so good that people are like, fuck with him for it, right?
He has this, he's one of these people who seems to be born with an innate sense of social navigation.
He always knows how to be most maximally appealing in any situation without crossing any kind of lines that like make you tiring to people.
Everything you said about him reminds me of what people said about Truman Capote about how like even when he was like very like toxic, but he was so funny, so charming, knew stuff about everybody that he always would have for the most part, a circle of people around him because he was just so engrossing.
It even kind of reminds me of Shakespeare with the idea of like this person who's like not of the right class to some people, but still like very charismatic, knows enough stuff that like it doesn't matter enough.
Yeah, it doesn't matter.
And he seems to be, he seems to be so confident and he seems to know what he wants so well that you kind of line up behind him.
Because most people, even if you're at the top of the class, even if you're the fucking Prince of Wales inside, you're a ball of insecurity.
And I actually think Bo was as well.
I think everyone is.
But he seemed to have a sense of direction for himself that kind of makes everyone feel like you want to just follow, you want him to like you because then you feel like maybe you know where you're going to.
He's that kind of a person, right?
He's a natural leader.
I also think of Tom Cruise when I see this, not that Tom doesn't have his weird side, but like, if you notice how people will point this out, you can look at like long shots of Tom when he's like, they're not actively filming, but like he's on set and you'll see him like walking and he's like 100 yards back from the camera, but his face, he always instinctively is always turned in such a way that it's ideally framed in the camera.
He just has, he always knows in his brain how he's being looked at and how to present himself.
And that's part of what makes him Tom Cruise.
Bo's got that, right?
Almost Supernatural Leadership00:03:11
It's almost a supernatural sense for that sort of thing.
And you know what else is supernatural?
The quality of our sponsors.
You'll see God.
I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
If I'm outside with my parents and they're seeing all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
They believe everything.
But at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
They cannot feed their kids.
They do not have homes.
Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
On a recent episode of the podcast, Money and Wealth with John O'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budginista Alicia to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money.
What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here?
We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never, ever taught.
Financial education is not always about like, I'm going to get rich.
That's great.
It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.
If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more.
Listen to Money and Wealth with John O'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Hey, Ernest, what's up?
Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth.
On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship.
From stocks and real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, we translate complex financial topics into real conversations everyone can understand.
Because the truth is, most people were never taught how money really works.
But once you understand the system, you can start to build within it.
That means ownership, smarter investing, and creating opportunities, not just for yourself, but for the next generation.
If you want to learn how to build wealth, understand the markets, and think like an owner, Earn Your Leisure is the podcast for you.
Listen to Earn Your Leisure on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Disarming Cruel Wealthy Sons00:06:30
We're back and we're talking about Bo.
So I've talked about, you know, the system that he's in where you've got he, you know, all the younger kids in Eaton are the job title they have is fags.
And then you have your older boy who's your master who is supposed to run you.
We have a quote from the guy who was that for Bo.
And this is what he said about Bo while they were in school together.
No one at the school was so full of animation, fun, and wit.
He was a general favorite.
Our dame, his tutor, and my tutor and Dr. Goodall all petted him.
You asked me whether he was pugnacious.
I do not remember that he ever fought or quarreled with anyone.
Indeed, it was impossible for anyone to be more good-natured than he was.
And again, like everyone fights at this school.
Everybody gets into scraps except for Bo.
Nobody even wants to fight him.
He's just that kind of naturally charming.
And that's what I see in that is that like his, this is a defense mechanism.
He is someone who knows and we get from the women who know him at the time.
He doesn't like a lot of aspects of how brutal this system is.
Like nobody really does.
And he knows that the way to protect himself is by being defensively likable.
Right.
So yeah.
Now, Eaton is not a placid place.
Boys are given a lot more freedom than we give adolescents today.
One of the other things you learn at Eaton is how to drink, which you start learning as a young man in the British aristocracy at 13 or 14.
So these boys outside of school, there's a town nearby that has a couple of bars that cater specifically to Eaton boys.
And part of what you're learning is how to drink like a man, right?
Like you are getting wasted as a little kid because you need to be able to drink like a son of a bitch in order to in order to exist in high society, right?
How can you die of a liver problem if you don't start drinking right now?
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you don't really get a handle on this soon, you might live past 40.
And we don't want that.
Nobody wants to live.
You've got to get some tuberculosis, guys.
You know, come on.
Right.
Amateur hour.
Yeah, right.
Like, what if you wind up not being sauced your entire adult life?
That would be a real loss.
So these kids are rich little shits.
They wind up in fights with local boys a lot because they can't even communicate with these boys.
They are raised speaking effectively different languages and often literally different languages because they communicate a lot in Latin among each other, right?
In French and Greek.
This passage from a biography on Bo Brummel by Ian Kelly describes one instance of young Bo confronting the violence that resulted from this situation, this kind of discrepancy between the local common kids and the Eaton boys.
A boatman who had found himself at some altercation with the schoolboys was on the point of being thrown over the bridge into the low waters of the Thames by a mob of over 100 Etonians.
Buck Brummel, perhaps 14 at the time, caught the attention and laughter of the Etonian and Cad hooligans alike by shouting, my dear fellows, don't send him into the river.
That man is obviously in a state of perspiration and it almost amounts to a certainty that he will catch cold.
Brummel was rewarded with guffaws, perhaps some amusement in the face of such paradoxical whimsy typical of his later style, and the boatman was released.
So he comes upon a crowd because his schoolboys, they run around in big groups because they will get picked on by the locals otherwise.
They start a fight with this random working class guy and they're about to throw him into the fucking river.
And Bo comes up and he makes fun of the guy.
He's like, look at how sweaty he is.
Like, you don't want to like, he's already wet enough.
You don't need to throw him into the river.
But he makes fun of this guy to disarm the situation and stop him from being further abused, which I think speaks to an aspect of his character that's actually like complex and positive.
Yeah.
Cool guy.
So it was learning this that made me think Bo was a more complicated figure than the first articles I read made him out to be.
To quote again from that Esquire article attacking him, he made a habitual performance of wry cruelty, lifting himself up by putting other people down.
And a lot of people, even to this day, think that kind of thing is funny.
And I think the difference is, I think what Alexandra is doing there is she's looking at a lot of internet put-down culture, which is deeply cruel and is focused around singling people out, often making uncharitable conclusions or often uncharitable interpretations of their words to get in a quick dunk for social media engagement.
That's a huge most of social media today, and it's really ugly.
It's very abusive.
It's part of why harassment is such a problem online.
And I kind of see a lot of what Bo's doing is kind of the opposite.
And part of how you can get that, some of these are put-downs.
He says mean things to people.
They usually still like him.
And the mean things are often to diffuse tense social situations with humor, right?
By taking the piss out of people, as opposed to trying to like, I think he does that.
He can be a dick too.
It's not the only thing he does, but we get examples of him that come down to us from 300 years ago of him stopping fights by by this kind of thing, by like, you know, making a good joke at the right time.
Yeah, I'm going to use my history minor cap on and say like he probably, I don't know, I don't know who this guy is, but I'm guessing he probably pissed off somebody that was high enough that they were able to sort of like reframe a narrative.
Cause right now he sounds great.
I would love a blunt rotation with him.
Yeah.
That sounds like I think he'd be really cool.
But I definitely think that like there's going to be a mixture of like a class issue because people keep talking about him in these articles that you're referencing as if he's like a Kardashian almost as if like, where does he think he's coming from with his fat ass, you know, like trying to take up space in our society.
So I can't wait to see who he pisses off because I know that I know it's coming.
We are building to that because that is his fault.
His fall is he like, he talks shit about the wrong guy.
And that does like destroy his entire life eventually.
Right.
That'll do it.
And the guy he talks shit about deserves it.
You know, it's, it's not fair on his part that he gets fucked for that.
But yeah, I think you have to look at his put downs, the fact that this is the primary way that he communicates with the world, but within the context of this is how his social class communicates with each other.
Having a sharp tongue is the key to popularity and the key to protecting yourself.
And it says a lot that his old master describes him as like, nobody wanted to fight with this guy, which means all of the jokes he's making, none of them like culminate in someone demanding an honor duel with him, right?
Montem Costumes And Violence00:15:01
Like they don't.
They were good natured.
Exactly, exactly.
So yeah, I think that's what we see with Bo is he enters, he's entering and he's aware that he's entering a culture dominated by the cruel, wealthy fail sons of his era who are on the lookout for any signs of difference that they can attack in the people around them.
And he makes himself their idol and the most popular boy at the school as a method of self-defense, because that's the only way to get by in this world, right?
And I kind of see him in that as a little bit of a rebel, right?
And it's from a desire to rebel at Eaton that the foundations of what would become the modern suit are going to present themselves to Bo for the first time.
Every year, Eaton boys engaged in a festival called Mantam.
Montem is a mix of like how we see Halloween today and like a child riot.
Like it was a controlled riot of rich kids kind of mixed with Halloween.
All of the Eaton boys.
Of course.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Of course.
They get to say, that's just a fun little rich boy riot.
Yeah.
The kids need their little, their little riot, you know.
We got to let them beat up the commoners, which is a lot of what happens during Montem.
The boys will elect captains and the captains and the kids, the upperclassmen who get elected to positions, almost it's like a homecoming thing.
They dress in these insanely elaborate, expensive uniforms.
And the younger boys dress in these quasi-military uniforms and they form up in gangs on like the bridges and they will rob common people trying to cross the road, basically.
Hoodlums.
Yeah, hoodlums.
It's kind of, it's ritualized.
So like they're not like, they usually are not taking your actual stuff.
You know, at Montem, you want to have like some treats and stuff for the boys who are like going to be pretending to be brigands, like, right?
Give them some beer, you know?
That's how they're getting the trick-or-treat.
It's like, it's like, we'll fight you or give us your food.
Right.
And usually it's like a friendly, yeah, the kids are out tonight.
They're doing their Montem thing.
We'll give them some treats.
Sometimes people fuck up or the kids are drunk.
And so they start shit.
Or sometimes the locals are drunk and they start.
So things can get very violent.
Sometimes Montam turns into something that is like a really ugly riot, but it is supposed to be this like ritualized sort of blowing off of steam thing.
And like every other aspect of Eaton, Montam has a rigorously enforced class system.
So the higher up you get, the more insane your costume, which fits in, you know, the costumes at Montam fit in with the fancy dress of the day, which emphasizes men are wearing these powdered wigs.
that we're all familiar with from like Revolutionary War era media, right?
And they wear these incredible multi-piece outfits that would be considered like a bit much at the Met Gala today.
And to give a little more detail about this, I want to quote from an article I found published by the Jane Austen Society written by Jeffrey Nigro and William Phillips.
By 1775, yeah, this is good.
We got a fun picture coming up for you.
By 1775, it was still acceptable for men to wear silk, satin, or velvet in bright or pastel colors with lace cravats and cuffs, powdered hair, and perfume.
The most extreme fashion victims of the moment were the macaronis.
These foppish men supposedly derived their fame from the macaroni club, an organization of fashionable young Englishmen who had returned from the grand tour with a love for continental fashions, culture, and cuisine.
The macaroni style was an extreme form of appearance, exaggerated in costumes, cosmetics, and hairstyles.
And these people, I'm going to show you, Sophie's going to pull up a picture to look at how this, this is a, this is a macaroni, like a man dressed in this style.
And it's like, oh my God.
He looks like he has the, looks like he has the dune worm on his fucking head, dog.
What are you talking about?
He's the inside guy.
He's easy to drink.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he's got like Marge Simpson hair.
I would describe the look on his face as like, what if there was a pedophile for pedophiles?
Like it is a creepy smile.
He's got like a joker smile.
It's exacerbated by his insane makeup.
Oh my God.
They should be thanking this man.
Like it looks like his hairstyle is about to ejaculate.
Like it really does.
It's gaping at me.
It's really so gross.
I love it.
But I'm glad it's gone.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm glad it died out.
I'm glad it existed and we can look at this picture now.
And you can see how elaborate and heavy that dress is, right?
And this is not, that hair piece is not a normal day-to-day wear for someone.
That is masquerade wear that I just showed you, but it shows you like the during festivals, how outrageous the costumes were.
And the normal social costumes are less insane, but they're still really elaborate.
There's a lot of gold and gilding and silver on them, a lot of jewelry, a lot of makeup, a lot of powder.
And the hair pieces people wore at the time are not light or comfortable.
Outfits like this, which are outfits that are more elaborate than this, are common among upperclassmen during Montam.
But one group of boys who make up the majority of the Montem crowd, the younger boys, are Pullmen, and they wear a simpler outfit because they're kind of the grunts, the soldiers of the older boys who are wearing these elaborate outfits.
And they wear dark blue jackets with two rows of buttons and pale tight writing breeches.
George comes to prefer this outfit as a matter of daily wear as opposed to the more elaborate, like fancy dress of the time.
And when he goes, gets out of Eaton, he continues to dress like a Pullman.
Like this is like a costume, but it's one that he really digs and he just starts wearing it every day.
And it's important to note, this outfit, what he is wearing, the Pullman's outfit that becomes, he is going to eventually kind of streamline this into the precursor of the modern suit.
This is a quasi-military outfit.
It is made in part in imitation of some of the military outfits of the day.
It's also athleisure, right?
Most popular dress clothing is very restrictive, both because of the weight and the materials used to make it.
The outfits George favored take after the jackets and stuff and the waistcoats take after military uniforms, which you have to be able to move in to some extent.
And the breeches are riding pants.
They're not quite modern trousers, but you're meant to be able to move in them, right?
So what you're telling me is that not only was he the precursor of the suit and tie, he was a precursor of wearing leggings as pants.
Yes, yes.
These are literally legs.
These are so tight.
One of the jokes women make is that once breeches start being like common and the more common fascial pants, one of the jokes women will make is that like, oh, these are great.
You can always tell what your man is thinking, right?
Because you can see, you can see his dick through the fucking, it's so tight, right?
Like, because these are skin-tight pants.
You're almost poured into them as a man.
These are yoga pants.
Yeah.
And older people will attack this outfit for the same reason that they attack yoga pants.
Where it's like, it's obscene.
The kids are dressing this way.
These tight breeches.
Feel me.
Yeah.
They're cutting off the circulation.
They're going to end the bloodline.
Right, right, right.
So influenced by the central role of fashion at Eaton, by the time George Brummel left the school, he had developed a reputation for fastidiousness, right?
He is noted to be almost obsessively focused on his personal hygiene and the fit of his clothes.
He's already spending a significant time every day getting ready to dress.
He's always focused on how he looks.
And he might have had what we would describe as like dysmorphia or even, you know, some sort of like it's impossible to know, but I'm going to read you a quote from Ian Kelly's biography.
It may speak partly of an uncomfortable relationship with his body.
This may be attributed to his position in the male gaze at Eaton, a supremely homosexualized environment.
It may also be related to growing up in a highly sexualized society that was at the same time violently antipathetic to the direct outlet of adolescent male energy, right?
Everyone is a lot.
There's a lot of these boys are fucking each other, right?
There's not a small amount of older men, particularly at the school who are also abusing boys.
And everyone's dressing, it's very common.
A lot of these dresses are, especially like the outfits that he prefers.
These tight leggings are extremely revealing.
And he's always conscious of how he looks because he's always conscious that he's being sexualized, right?
And that influences him a lot.
And the evidence that he suggests that we have, I think, suggests that the fact that he adopts this outfit for himself and he's going to make everyone else adopt it as a result of how much they want to be like him because he is the cool guy.
Everyone wants to be like Bo.
I see this suit he starts to create as a suit of armor, right?
To protect himself from his fellow men, right?
And he's so good at this that they come to admire him.
He is rare, if not singular in this period for being a man of his social class who had a lot of close female friends.
And one of the first is Julia Storer.
This is his first love.
He describes it as he falls violently in love with her when he's like 14 or 15, but he ultimately loses out to the guy who wins her, you know, in the parlance of the time is they are both four.
Julie is 14 or 15, Bo is 14 or 15.
The guy who, you know, she winds up going with is 30 years old.
45 colonel.
Yeah, yeah.
Just twice her age, you know?
He is a colonel in the army, Colonel Cotton.
Oh, that sounds great.
Yeah, sorry, Barbara.
I was like, villain, villain, villain.
He is seen as being very handsome of his day, although Bo will repeatedly note as an adult that he stank.
He smelled terrible.
Bo is obsessed with his hygiene.
Bo is the, at least in this period, eventually he's going to make this this, again, people will all follow him in this, but he is like the first man of his social class to make daily hot baths a part of his life, right?
Icon.
Honestly, you're selling.
I'm like, we love it.
We love to see it.
He's unique because like he doesn't wear perfume.
He refuses to because he's like, you only wear perfume if you're fucking gross, right?
Like, because that's why people wear perfume in this period of time.
I'm not going to just take a fucking bath and have your clothes washed every day, you know?
And I think some of that is a reaction to this colonel who he thinks is nasty and who also wins.
Again, we are talking about a pedophilic relationship, but the way he looks at it in the time is this is another man who has won, you know, who's beaten him in this contest, right?
I'm not saying that because I think that's a good way to look at it, but that's how it's looked at at the time.
And you have to, you have to know that, right?
You know, again, this is the 30-year-old and the 14-year-old or something.
Julia and George are both teenagers.
The colonel is a creep.
He is also married.
So this is not, because 30-year-olds can court 15-year-olds in this period and there'd be a degree of legitimacy to it.
This is not that kind of case.
He is married.
He is not supposed to be doing this.
His wife, to make this, this fucking Colonel Cotton, his wife has postpartum depression.
And after she has like, I forget, I think it's their first or second kid, she's like, I'm never going to sleep in the same bed with you again because I don't want any more kids.
This is awful.
And so he's like, well, I guess I'm going to go fuck a child.
Cool dude.
There you go.
I mean, rational decision.
It's like, yeah.
What do you want to want me to leave you?
Would she rather I not get blown?
I don't understand the question.
Yeah, it's fine.
I will ruin the life of a teenage girl, which he does.
So he has extramarital sex with a child.
This devastates young George, and it's much, much worse for Julia because she gets pregnant.
Now, at that time, she is a high society woman.
She is a member of the aristocracy.
And being having sex out of wedlock with a married man, it means you're worthless now.
You can't get married.
And that's all your future social capital is your ability to get married.
She is going to become an unperson because of this, right?
Lacking better options, thus, she hides her pregnancy in the outlandish outfits of the upper class, which gives you an idea of how ridiculous the dress is during this period.
Right, right.
She is able to hide that she's pregnant until her water breaks during an audience with the queen, which is the worst time for this to happen.
That's a shady ass baby.
That's a shady baby.
I've been like, dude, what the fuck?
That baby is an op.
Yeah.
So like her water breaks at like a party and it's the queen and all of the queen's friends.
And this, her whole family is almost wiped out as like influential members of society because of the shame from this.
Her brother challenges Colonel Cotton to a duel.
Colonel Cotton, by the way, is fine.
This is not the end of his social life.
Of course.
She gets thrown out of her home.
And since she's married, she can't go to Colonel Cotton's home.
So she winds up sneaking into an empty room at the palace because there are a lot of empty rooms and she has to deliver her own baby at age 15 alone.
Jesus.
Fuck it.
I hate everything.
Now, kill Cotton.
George stops talking to her for a while, not because of this, but because like she breaks up with him, right?
And he's brokenhearted.
But we know at the time he writes about, because he's aware of what happens to her and he thinks it's awful.
He's like upset about how cruel this is.
Like this fucking 30-year-old molests her and now she's an unperson.
That's like, like, fuck my culture, right?
Like, he's very much angry about this.
She is going to have four more kids with the Colonel because basically she winds up living in sin with him in a country house.
Thankfully, she is rich.
She's a lot luckier than most women in this situation and that she does have family money.
So she doesn't wind up desperate.
She will eventually become one of the most famous courtesans of her era.
She becomes a famous and successful high-end sex worker for the aristocracy and actually kind of earns her way to a degree back into high society because if you are a high-end courtesan, there are certain high society gatherings that you're allowed in.
And she does eventually, it's part, she's a very powerful woman in that way.
And it's from her memoirs that we know some of what we know about George because as adults, they become friends and lovers again.
And we don't know the full details of their relationship.
It speaks well to Bo that, like, he does not care that she has a love child, which is how he describes it.
That's the parlance of the times with this older.
He doesn't care that she's disgraced.
He thinks the society is wrong.
And he actually, one of the beautiful hints that we get about like what the kind of decency at his heart is that he writes a poem for her child, for this baby, because he views what happens to this baby and his mom as an evil, right?
And he, again, he does describe this as a love child.
We think that's gross.
Bo's Indifference To Scandal00:05:21
That's how people talked about this at the time, right?
And here is the poem he writes for her child.
Unhappy child of indiscretion, poor slumberer on a breast forlorn, pledge in reproof of past transgression, dear though unwelcome to be born.
And lest the injurious world upbraid thee for mine or for thy mother's ill, a nameless father still shall aid thee, a hand unseen protect thee still.
Meanwhile, in these sequestered valleys, still thou shalt rest in calm content, for innocence may smile at malice, and thou, oh, thou art innocent.
And this is because he like he helps her out.
He helps protect her and her kids as an adult.
He's like, that's a decent man, aware of the evil of his time.
And that's actually a pretty good poem, too.
He's a good writer, you know?
Yeah, he's a good man, Savannah.
You know, like, that's all very solid for him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Solid dude for the 1780s.
I know.
The Hunter Biden of his time.
True.
The Hunter.
Strong Hunter vibes.
The George Brummel who writes this would be at age 16 is going to make his first decision as an independent adult, which is going to be to purchase a commission as an officer in the army, specifically in the very regiment where the Colonel Cotton disgraced Colonel Cotton had once held his command, right?
He's going to choose to not just join the army.
Again, he's obsessed with smelling good because this guy smells bad.
He joins the same regiment that this guy had once helped to run.
And it was at this regiment that he's going to meet the man who's going to make him into a star, the future king and current Prince of Wales.
And we're going to talk about all that in part two.
Princess, how are you feeling about Bo so far?
Hero or villain?
I mean, I'm really rude for the guy.
I feel like he got cut out there by rich.
I feel like he got cut out there by rich white people, which who hasn't?
So I really, I'm waiting for something bad to happen so I can see why they hate him, but I'm rooting for the guy.
Yeah, yeah.
There'll be, there's a couple of like, he's not a perfect man, but so far, I see a guy who's just trying to do his best in a really fucking dog shit society.
Yeah.
And who amongst us doesn't feel like that sometimes?
So true, Robert.
And also, I like the, I like the Regency era men attire.
I like those tight ass breeches.
So shout out to him.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Our yoga pants entrepreneur.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, I'm going to go put on some yoga pants.
I'm actually going to put on much looser pants.
And we'll be back.
And, well, for you and I, it'll be like seven minutes, but for the audience, it'll be like a day or so.
Princess, do you have anything you want to plug at the end here?
Yeah.
I just, my YouTube channel is Princess Weeks.
I have fun videos out.
By the time this comes out, I should have some new fun stuff.
And I'm really excited to learn more about Bo.
Yeah, that's me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Check out Princess.
And I'm not going to tell you to go buy a suit because you know who can't afford to do that?
A lot of people.
But I don't know.
Get some yoga pants.
Get some yoga pants.
Change.
Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
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