Indeed there was a flavour of Brummel's biting insolence in some of the sayings that were attributed to the New Yorker.

For example, there was a well-known literary woman of New York, who had in some way incurred the arbiter's august disapproval.
"She write stories of New York society!" he said.

"Why, I have seen her myself, buying her Madeira at Park & Tilford's in a demijohn." When Thackeray was contemplating writing "The Virginians," he desired information about the personality of Washington, and applied to the American historian Kennedy.

Kennedy began to impart his knowledge in the manner that might have been expected from a historian when the Englishman interrupted rather testily, "No, no.

That's not what I want.
Tell me, was he a fussy old gentleman in a wig, who spilled snuff down the front of his coat ?" It was in some such spirit that I applied to that old friend of the fine Italian manner, and the profound personal and inherited knowledge of the ways and the men and women of New York.