Character Sketches of Romance Volume I Part 35

BEAU HEWITT was the original of sir George Etherege's "Sir Fopling Flutter," in the comedy called _The Man of Mode or Sir Fopling Flutter_ (1676).

BEAU NASH, Richard Nash, called also "King of Bath;" a Welsh gentleman, who for fifteen years managed the bath-rooms of Bath, and conducted the b.a.l.l.s with unparalleled splendor and decorum. In his old age he sank into poverty (1674-1761).

BEAU D'ORSAY _(Le)_, father of count d'Orsay, whom Byron calls "_Jeune Cupidon._"

BEAU SEANT, the Templars' banner, half white and half black; the white signified that the Templars were good to Christians, the black, that they were evil to infidels.

BEAU TIBBS, in Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_, a dandy noted for his finery, vanity, and poverty.

BEAUCLERK, Henry I. king of England (1068, 1100-1135).

BEAUFORT, the lover of Maria Wilding, whom he ultimately marries.--A.

Murphy, _The Citizen_ (a farce).

BEAUJEU (_Mons. le chevalier de_), keeper of a gambling-house to which Dalgarno takes Nigel.--Sir W. Scott, _Fortunes of Nigel_ (time, James I.).

_Beaujeu_ (_Mons. le comte de_), a French officer in the army of the Chevalier Charles Edward, the Pretender.--Sir W. Scott, _Waverley_ (time, George II.).

BEAUMAINS ("_big hands_"), a nickname which sir Key (Arthur's steward) gave to Gareth when he was kitchen drudge in the palace. "He had the largest hands that ever man saw." Gareth was the son of king Lot and Margawse (king Arthur's sister). His brothers were sir Gaw'ain, sir Agravain, and sir Gaheris. Mordred was his half-brother.--Sir T.

Malory, _History of Prince Arthur_, i. 120 (1470).

[Ill.u.s.tration] His achievements are given under the name "Gareth"

(q.v.).

Tennyson, in his _Gareth and Lynette_, makes sir Key tauntingly address Lancelot thus, referring to Gareth:

Fair and fine, forsooth!

Sir Fine-face, sir Fair-hands? But see thou to it That thine own fineness, Lancelot, some fine day, Undo thee not.

Be it remembered that Key himself called Gareth "Beaumain" from the extraordinary size of the lad's hands; but the taunt put into the mouth of Key by the poet indicates that the lad prided himself on his "fine" face and "fair" hands, which is not the case. If "fair hands"

is a translation of this nickname, it should be "fine hands," which bears the equivocal sense of _big_ and _beautiful_.

BEAU'MANOIR (_Sir Lucas_), Grand-Master of the Knights Templars.--Sir W. Scott, _Ivanhoe_ (time, Richard I.).

BEAUPRE [_Bo-pray_'], son of judge Vertaigne (2 _syl_.) and brother of Lami'ra.--Beaumont and Fletcher, _The Little French Lawyer_ (1647).

BEAUTe (2 _syl_). _La dame de Beaute_. Agnes Sorel, so called from the chateau de Beaute, on the banks of the Marne, given to her by Charles VII. (1409-1450).

BEAUTIFUL CORISANDE (3 _syl_). Diane comtesse de Guiche et de Grammont. She was the daughter of Paul d'Andouins, and married Philibert de Grammont, who died in 1580. The widow outlived her husband for twenty-six years. Henri IV., before he was king of Navarre, was desperately smitten by La belle Corisande, and when Henri was at war with the League, she sold her diamonds to raise for him a levy of 20,000 Gascons (1554-1620).

(The letters of Henri to Corisande are still preserved in the _Bibliotheque de l'a.r.s.enal_, and were published in 1769.)

BEAUTIFUL PARRICIDE (_The_), Beatrice Cenci, daughter of a Roman n.o.bleman, who plotted the death of her father because he violently defiled her. She was executed in 1605. Sh.e.l.ley has a tragedy on the subject, ent.i.tled _The Cenci_. Guido Reni's portrait of Beatrice is well known through its numberless reproductions.

BEAUTY (_Queen of_). So the daughter of Schems'edeen' Mohammed, vizier of Egypt, was called. She married her cousin, Bed'redeen' Ha.s.san, son of Nour'edeen' Ali, vizier of Basora.--_Arabian Nights_ ("Nouredeen Ali," etc.).

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (_La Belle et la Bete_'), from _Les Contes Marines_ of Mde. Villeneuvre (1740), the most beautiful of all nursery tales. A young and lovely woman saved her father by putting herself in the power of a frightful but kind-hearted monster, whose respectful affection and melancholy overcame her aversion to his ugliness, and she consented to become his bride. Being thus freed from enchantment, the monster a.s.sumed his proper form and became a young and handsome prince.

BEAUTY OF b.u.t.tERMERE (3 syl.), Mary Robinson, who married John Hatfield, a heartless impostor executed for forgery at Carlisle in 1803.

BEAUX' STRATAGEM (_The_), by George Farquhar. Thomas viscount Aimwell and his friend Archer (the two beaux), having run through all their money, set out fortune-hunting, and come to Lichfield as "master and man." Aimwell pretends to be very unwell, and as lady Bountiful's hobby is tending the sick and playing the leech, she orders him to be removed to her mansion. Here he and Dorinda (daughter of lady Bountiful) fall in love with each other, and finally marry. Archer falls in love with Mrs. Sullen, the wife of squire Sullen, who had been married fourteen months but agreed to a divorce on the score of incompatibility of tastes and temper. This marriage forms no part of the play; all we are told is that she returns to the roof of her brother, sir Charles Freeman (1707).

BEDE (_Adam_ and _Seth_), brothers, carpenters. Seth loves the fair gospeller Dinah Morris, but she marries Adam.--George Eliot, _Adam Bede_.

_Bede (Cuthbert_), the Rev. Edward Bradley, author of _The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman_ (1857).

BED'ER ("_the full moon_"), son of Gulna're (3 syl.), the young king of Persia. As his mother was an under-sea princess, he was enabled to live under water as well as on land. Beder was a young man of handsome person, quick parts, agreeable manners, and amiable disposition. He fell in love with Giauha're, daughter of the king of Samandal, the most powerful of the under-sea empires, but Giauhare changed him into a white bird with red beak and red legs. After various adventures, Beder resumed his human form and married Giauhare.--_Arabian Nights_ ("Beder and Giauhare").

BED'IVERE (_Sir_) or BED'IVER, king Arthur's butler and a knight of the Round Table. He was the last of Arthur's knights, and was sent by the dying king to throw his sword Excalibur into the mere. Being cast in, it was caught by an arm "clothed in white samite," and drawn into the stream.--Tennyson, _Morte d'Arthur_.

Tennyson's _Morte d'Arthur_ is a very close and in many parts a verbal rendering of the same tale in sir Thomas Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, iii. 168 (1470).

BEDLOE (_Augustus_), an eccentric Virginian, an opium-eater, and easily hypnotized, in Edgar Allan Poe's _Tale of the Ragged Mountains_ (1846).

BEDOTT (_Widow_). (See HEZEKIAH BEDOTT.)

BED'OUINS [_Bed'.winz_], nomadic tribes of Arabia. In common parlance, "the homeless street poor." Thus gutter-children are called "Bedouins."

BED'REDEEN' HAS'SAN of Baso'ra, son of Nour'edeen' Ali grand vizier of Basora, and nephew to Schems'edeen' Mohammed vizier of Egypt. His beauty was transcendent and his talents of the first order. When twenty years old his father died, and the sultan, angry with him for keeping from court, confiscated all his goods, and would have seized Bedredeen if he had not made his escape. During sleep he was conveyed by fairies to Cairo, and subst.i.tuted for an ugly groom (Hunchback) to whom his cousin, the Queen of Beauty, was to have been married. Next day he was carried off by the same means to Damascus, where he lived for ten years as a pastry-cook. Search was made for him, and the search party, halting outside the city of Damascus, sent for some cheese-cakes. When the cheese-cakes arrived, the widow of Nouredeen declared that they must have been made by her son, for no one else knew the secret of making them, and that she herself had taught it to him. On hearing this, the vizier ordered Bedredeen to be seized, "for making cheese-cakes without pepper," and the joke was carried on till the party arrived at Cairo, when the pastry-cook prince was reunited to his wife, the Queen of Beauty.--_Arabian Nights_ ("Nouredeen Ali,"

etc.).

BEDWIN (_Mrs._), housekeeper to Mr. Brownlow. A kind, motherly soul, who loves Oliver Twist most dearly.--C. d.i.c.kens, _Oliver Twist_ (1837).

BEE OF ATTICA, Soph'ocles the dramatist (B.C. 495-405). The "Athenian Bee" was Plato the philosopher (B.C. 428-347).

The Bee of Attica rivalled aeschylus when in the possession of the stage.--Sir W. Scott, _The Drama._

BEEF'INGTON (_Milor_), introduced in _The Rovers._ Casimir is a Polish emigrant, and Beefington an English n.o.bleman exiled by the tyranny of king John.--_Anti-Jacobin._

"Will without power," said the sagacious Casimir, to Milor Beefington, "is like children playing at soldiers."--Macaulay.

BE'ELZELBUB (4 _syl_.), called "prince of the devils" (_Matt._ xii.

24), wors.h.i.+pped at Ekron, a city of the Philistines (2 _Kings_ i. 2), and made by Milton second to Satan.

One next himself in power and next in crime--Beelzebub.

_Paradise Lost_, i. 80 (1665).

BEE'NIE (2 _syl_.), chambermaid at Old St. Ronan's inn, held by Meg Dods.--Sir W. Scott, _St. Ronan's Well_ (time, George III.).

BEES (_Telling the_), a superst.i.tion still prevalent in some rural districts that the bees must be told at once if a death occur in the family, or every swarm will take flight. In Whittier's poem, _Telling the Bees_, the lover coming to visit his mistress sees the small servant draping the hives with black, and hears her chant:

"Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence, Mistress Mary is dead and gone."

BEFA'NA, the good fairy of Italian children. She is supposed to fill their shoes and socks with toys when they go to bed on Twelfth Night.

Some one enters the bedroom for the purpose, and the wakeful youngters cry out, "_Ecco la Befana!_" According to legend, Befana was too busy with house affairs to take heed of the Magi when they went to offer their gifts, and said she would stop for their return; but they returned by another way, and Befana every Twelfth Night watches to see them. The name is a corruption of _Epiphania_.