Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/133

 A few hours before his flight from England in May 1816 poor George Brummell sent to Davies the piteous appeal :


 * ", —Lend me two hundred pounds. The banks are shut and all my money is in the three per cents. It shall be repaid to-morrow morning.
 * Yours,

The reply was as laconic and as true:


 * ", — Tis very unfortunate, but all my money is in the three per cents.
 * Yours

One of Scrope's best-remembered jests was on the flight of the "Beau," who bought at Calais a French grammar to improve his French. Davies when asked what progress the exile had made in his studies remarked that "like Buonaparte in Russia, he had been stopped by the elements." Byron put the witticism into Beppo, "a fair exchange and no robbery," as he alleged.

A great crowd of persons distinguished in the inmost circles of Whiggism became members of Brooks's Club on 11 May 1816. Among them were Cam Hobhouse, Leicester Stanhope, Raikes the diarist and Scrope Davies. Somewhat later in that year Hobhouse and he visited Byron at Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Leman. On 30 July 1816 they "crossed to Calais and supped with Brummell." They travelled through the Belgian cities to Cologne and then ascended the Rhine. Nearly a month after their departure—it was on 26 August—the travellers arrived at Villa Diodati, "a delightful house and spot." Next day they walked to Geneva and two days later the party, including Byron, set off on an excursion to Chamouni. Davies returned to England on 5 September, when Hobhouse "took F.G.                                              I