The genuine Dandy (1820)

• Posted by mgr on April 20th, 2008 filed in Definitionen
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I am not quite certain that Scotland can produce a single specimen of the genuine Dandy. In fact, the term here appears to me to be both imperfectly understood and very grievously misapplied. Were I to divine the meaning of the word from the qualities of those persons whom it is here used to designate, I should conceive a Dandy to be nothing more than a gentleman in a white great-coat and a starched cravat, or, in the most liberal extension of its meaning, a person who is rather gay and foppish in his dress.

But a Dandy is something more, nay, a great deal more, than all this. I should define him, in few words, to be a person who has acquired such a degree of refinement in all matters of taste as is unattainable, or at least unattained, by the generality of his countrymen. Dress, therefore, does not constitute Dandyism; because dress is only one of the many modes in which this fastidious refinement is displayed. A true Dandy decorates his person far less with the view of captivation, than from the abstract love of elegance and beauty, in which he delights. His extraordinary attention to his toilet is, therefore, quite compatible with the utter absence of personal vanity, and the same ruling principle is uniformly visible in his habits, his manners, and his enjoyments.

Nothing, therefore, is more easy than to distinguish the real Dandy from the impostor. The latter never can maintain the same consistency of character which is inseparable from the former. For instance, if, in Old Slaughter’s Coffee-house, I discover a gaudy coxcomb complacently devouring a tough beef-steak, and extracting the lining of a pot of porter, I know at once, from the coarseness and vulgarity of his appetite, that he has no real pretensions to the character of a Dandy. In this country, when I find the very Arbitri Elegantiarum, the Dilletanti Society, holding their meetings in a tavern in one of the filthiest closes of the city, braving, with heroic courage, the risk of an impure baptism from the neighbouring windows, at their entrance and their exit, and drinking the memory of Michael Angelo, or Raphael, or Phidias, or Milton, in libations of whisky-punch, I cannot but consider that the coarseness of their habits and propensities appears utterly inconsistent with that delicacy of taste in other matters to which they make pretension.

But that I may not carry my system of exclusion too far, I am inclined to divide the Dandies into two classes— the real, and the imitative. The former being those who really accord with the definition I have already given, and the latter merely a set of contemptible spooneys, who endeavour to attract attention by copying peculiarities which they really do not possess.

I have already hinted that the Dandies of the North are chiefly of the imitative description. They want that boldness of character, and strength of outline, which distinguish their more accomplished prototypes in the South. They have none of that redeeming elegance—that visible consciousness of superior bon-ton— that calm and non-chalant assurance of manner—that complacent look of contemptuous self-approbation, which almost succeeds in disarming ridicule, by showing that on such a subject ridicule would be exerted in vain. There are no Scottish Petershams, no Brummells, no Skeffingtons, no Cottons, no Nugents, no Churchills, no Cooks, no M’Kinnons, no Websters, no Foxes, and, what is more, no Pottses.

One reason for this striking inferiority certainly is, that this metropolis is only the casual and transient resort of the aristocracy of the country. Very few, indeed, of the nobility make Edinburgh their permanent residence; and those are scarcely sufficient to leaven the great mass of society in which they are mingled. By far the greater proportion, therefore—indeed I may say the whole of the young men of this city, belong to a profession.—They are lawyers, attornies, merchants, soldiers, sailors, and India nabobs.

Now, I need not tell you, my dear Potts, how utterly ridiculous it is, in most of these men, to set up in the character of Dandies. What do you think of a Dandy in a three-tailed wig ? Of a Dandy making out a mittimus, and writing papers for the princely remuneration of three pence a page? Of a Dandy who has been accustomed to reef top-sails, and swallow salt junk in a cockpit? Of a Dandy who sells sugar, and speculates in shag-tobacco? Or of a Dandy who has all his life been drilling black men, or growing indigo in the burning plains of Hindostan? It is such people, my dear Potts, whom I wish you to come hither to eclipse. It is over such loving and obedient subjects (as I am sure you will find them) that I desire you to reign. From a simple centumvir I would raise you to be king. They have the capacity to admire, without the power of rivalling you ; and, as Ingleby is acknowledged the Emperor of all Conjurors, so will Potts be instantaneously hailed as the Great Mogul of all the Dandies of Scotland.

Fashion does not travel, like Fame, on the wind ; and I have often remarked, with wonder, the prodigious length of time which she requires to perform even a journey of four hundred miles. The London newspapers arrive here in three days; but the London fashions are generally a couple of years on the road. For instance, white great-coats, which were utterly exploded three seasons ago in London, are now in full bloom in Edinburgh, and are reckoned quite the go.

The hats, coats, and inexpressibles, which now greet my eyes, are all equally antique in point of fashion; and I remember, in 1817, that the beaux of Cheapside were distinguished by much the same cut and colour of dress as that which I now observe from my windows on those frequenting the well-known shop of that accurate reasoner a posteriori, Christie the breeches-maker. There are, it is true, in this city, some agents or emissaries of London tailors, who receive orders to procure supplies of town-made habiliments for such gentlemen as are dissatisfied with the taste and skill of their indigenous Schneiders: but either these houses are not of the first water in their profession, or they presume considerably on the ignorance of their customers; for I really never could perceive much superiority in the articles thus imported, over the native productions of the country.

But it were well if want of fashion were the only objection that could be made to the costume of the Scottish Dandies. There apparently exists, among some of them, a total want of taste, and ignorance of propriety in dress. Folks in this country may be seen writing law-papers in leather-breeches and jockey-boots, parading Prince’s Street in shooting-jackets and long gaiters, and riding on horseback in nankeen trowsers and double-channelled pumps. Now, nobody can appreciate better than you the gross errors of which these people are guilty ;—nobody can show them better a specimen of that true taste in dress, which confers even a grace upon foppishness, by never suffering it to deviate from the nicest propriety. There is a rule of fitness which you must teach these Scottish satellites of yours never to profane. Let them know that a man should dress differently when he intends to ride a fox-chace, or to walk the streets;—that he need not put on his sporting paraphernalia when he means merely to hunt for precedents in the Dictionary of Derisions; —that there is something absurd in eating ice enveloped in an upper Benjamin, and vulgar in going to the dress-boxes of the theatre in a morning surtout and coloured cravat. In short, you will have much to teach, and they much to learn; but as I am sure this will be a mutual pleasure to you both, I need say no more on the subject.

At routs and balls, your appearance will form no less remarkable an era than on the pavé of Prince’s Street. In you the belles of Edinburgh will at once recognise a being of a superior order, whose slightest attentions cannot but confer honour on all to whom they are paid. If you want an heiress in a snug small way, there are abundance of little misses who will jump at your knowing exterior with an alacrity most pregnant of dismay to the discarded would-be Dandies, on whom their encouraging smiles are at present lavished, only because there is no opportunity of bestowing them more wisely. At the clubs, you will be hailed and greeted with a warmth which, in spite of its vulgarity, must be in some measure gratifying to your vanity. You need only, in a word, utter your fiat, and take possession of the Dandy sovereignty of the North by a single coup-de-main. Come down, my dear Potts—and yet why should I say so ? —for I fear, were you once established in the sweets of Autocracy, there would be little chance of winning from you even a casual visit to your old friends in the South.

From: Lockhart, John Gibson: Peter’s Letters to His Kinsfolk. New York, 1820: 446-450.

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