Regency Men: Baron Ferdinand de Geramb

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There were many who asserted that Baron de Géramb was not a nobleman and that he was a German Jew who having married the widow of a Hungarian Baron assumed her first husband's title while others believed him to be a French refugee His rank as a German general however gave him the entrée to London society and he attracted much attention in his walks abroad by his ringlets his superb moustaches and his immense spurs Soon the dandies copied him and moustaches à la Géramb gold spurs several inches long and tight laced coats were the fashion a fashion that Byron noticed in The Waltz when he remarked that corsets were

Transferred to those ambiguous things that ape Goats in their visage women in their shape Taken up by the Prince Regent he became a power in what may be called the costume depart ment of the War Office and designed for the British army the uniform of the Hussars After a time however he was ordered out of England in April 1812 under the Alien Act being re garded as an impostor when he offered at a price to raise twenty four thousand Croatian troops to proceed against Napoleon On the Continent he wrote against Napoleon who im prisoned him at Vincennes whereupon the General made a vow that if he was released he would renounce the world the flesh and the devil and become a monk He kept his word entered a Trappist monastery under the name of Brother Joseph and before his death in 1848 had become Abbot and Procurator General of the Order 1
Melville, L. (1908). The Beaux of the Regency; Volume 1. United States: Creative Media Partners, LLC.

I am always amazed to find these characters in the annals of Regency history. The Baron, later Brother Mary Joseph, would be steeped in the struggles of European royalty during the French Revolution. He was remembered as courageous, then holy.  But also, a bit eccentric.

The Pope would name him a titular abbot, and he would go on to publish numerous religious works.

His time in London was short lived, roughly a year and ten months, and he was known to be great friends with another known eccentric, Romeo Coates.

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One Response to Regency Men: Baron Ferdinand de Geramb

  1. Susan Macdonald says:
    October 18, 2023 at 11:38 am

    Dame Barbara Cartland never mentioned him in any of her stories.