Who the heck is Beau Brummell?

[mrsbrown]

Today at work I read this article while sitting in the lunch room with a bunch of other people. It featured this quote:'

He was something of a dandy, always sporting yellow socks. In fact, his house in Mayfair had once been the home of Beau Brummell.

I looked up, about to read it to someone and exclaim over the fact that I knew what the writer was talking about and how clever I am, when I stopped, looked at the twenty-something who's a fitness fanatic, and the 50-something who probably doesn't read the sort of books I do, and I stopped myself.

So I'm exclaiming here, and then I'm going to bed

Comments

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

That happens to me all the time. *sigh*

OK, lemme tell you a little story. There's a suburb of Ottawa called Orleans, and it's kinda nasty, lots of crime (by Canadian standards, which is to say, not much), etc.

So one of my co-workers described it one day (this was all on our company chatserver, btw) as "Orleans: home of the body bag".

And I made a joke about "... and cross-dressing chicks in armour, don't forget that!"

My co-worker looked at me blankly.

I said, "please tell me you know what I'm talking about."

Co-worker continued to look blank.

I said "Well, it was rather before your time, I suppose."

Co-worker said, suspiciously, "Is this one of your weird SCA things?"

Whereupon I explained to him, in small words.

Another co-worker then pointed out that the main street running through Orleans is in fact called Boulevard Jean d'Arc (or something like that).

*facepalm*

[mrsbrown.livejournal.com]

In very small words - I'm glad you explained yourself, I didn't get it at first either...

[sjkasabi.livejournal.com]

aieeee! It's like that where I work too, you know. And when I hung out in history departments the rest of the inhabitants may have been "oh yeah, well, Beau Brummell, but did you know that when Harold Macmilliam..." but you couldn't make even quite popular popular culture references and assume you would be understood. Never mind the obscure stuff I'm into.

It's just life.

If they had a local gangster

[erudito.livejournal.com]

Would that mean he could say he was Made of Orleans?

And also

[erudito.livejournal.com]

A friend who is a full Professor (in a Political Science) department in Cornel University never ceases to be amazed at how much contemporary politics his fellow political science academics are completely ignorant of.

I used to find the Parliamentary Library wasn't like that. It was not so much they would get the reference (though they often would) but that it was expected everyone would have odd and quirky knowledge.