George IV hung around with a circle of noble, well-dressed fellows whom a reader will meet often in the pages of a Regency romance. They were often styled as Corinthians, and members of The Four-In-Hand Club. The most famous of these dashing young men, though not himself of noble blood, was Beau Brummel. Beau Brummel was the top of the heap until one day, when he was feeling particularly full of himself, he asked one of George IV’s cronies ‘Who is your fat friend?’ Such wanton disrespect for royalty was too much, even for the worshipful in-crowd. Beau Brummel was disgraced, left the country and eventually died in poverty. Nowadays he would probably have done well on the talk show circuit.
