Dress is much more essentially connected with character than is generally supposed. Putting dandyism entirely out of the question, there is scarcely any individual who does not exhibit some peculiarity in dress, more or less striking; and I venture to assert, that there is not one man in five hundred wholly inattentive to the subject. However remote a man may be from a coxcomb, or however near he may be to a sloven, he will have some choice in the cut, colour, or quality of his habiliments. A perfect indifference in these particulars is not always a proof of a mind superior to trifles; it as often argues a deficiency of taste, and a neutralized insipidity of character.

There are many coxcombs besides the unfortunate dandy “par excellence.” Look at that young physician carefully habited in sables, with silken hose, or Hessian boots (the order of the day for those who would be very grave and very dressy), with his hair cropped shortish, curled, and mayhap powdered. Is he less a coxcomb than the young hussar, with his lace and his trappings, his spurs and his feathers? Is the smooth Quaker, with his fine broad-brimmed beaver, his superfine sapped cloth, and his snow-white linen, less a dandy in his way than the most finished exquisite at Almack’s? Look at the parson, with his nice regulation hat, cambric handkerchief (a powerful auxiliary in the pulpit), and general chasteness and decorous propriety of costume. There is nothing out of character here, all is graceful harmony. No fan of the dress discovers the shape completely except the stockings. There is an orthodox width in the coat-flaps, an Athanasian laxity in the inexpressibles, the cravat is adjusted with ecclesiastical precision, and the very wig is redolent of Church establishment! This is what wе expect; this is as it should be. But do not suppose for a moment that this reverend gentleman’s toilet has cost him less pains than that of Lady Caroline when she goes to court, or General Furbelow when he attires for a field-day. (…)

The genuine dandy, who loves dress for its own sake, will, I think, be always found to be a dandy in every other particular. Many men are set down as dandies very erroneously, merely from a contemplation of their outsides. Persons may dress very elegantly, nay even cox-comically, from other motives than personal vanity or the womanish love of ornament. But your dandy of the true breed shows blood in every thing. All about him is arranged in the nicest possible order; his toilet, dressing-case, desk, &c. every thing in short that he possesses is evidently selected with a view to show and outside, from the merest ornamental appendages of his person, down to the lowest articles of vulgar household utility.

If he be fond of reading, for example, his books will be as complete dandies as himself, sporting their gay liveries of purple, green, or red embroidered with gold. If he write, he will have (like Rousseau when employed in the composition of Eloise) his portfolio tied with ribbons of rose-colour, his bronze inkstand, his superfine gilt-edged paper, and his gold sand. He can drink his wine out of nothing but the finest cut-glass, nor his tea but from the most costly china. He is a marvellous amateur of nickknacks. Carries the prettiest snuff-boxes, scent-bottles, tweezer-cases, penknives, gold toothpicks, in the universe. He must always have the best ivory in his nail and tooth-brushes; he is not less critical in the choice of boot-hooks than of boots, of shoeing-horns than of slippers. Nor is it the eye alone that he is studious to gratify. He must “sweets to every sense disclose.”

He delights in bon-bons and comfits, perfumes and swansdown. Our great moralist has thus poetically described one of this character, whose rank and wealth enabled him to indulge his peculiar taste: , “The dishes of luxury cover his table, the voice of harmony lulls him in his bowers; he breathes the fragrance of the groves of Java, and sleeps on the down of the cygnets of Ganges.” , Be it observed, however, that it is not a taste for magnificence and splendour that characterizes a man of this sort, so much as a fondness for all that is neat, effeminate, finical, and nick-knackish.

If the genuine dandy have a turn for literature, the same sort of taste will accompany him there that belongs to him in other matters. He may talk of Shakspeare or Milton, but he never reads them. But he is one of those who would have read Waller when it was the fashion to read that poet. He is caught with the tinsel of language, and cannot discriminate the sterling ore of thought. He prefers Thompson to Milton, and Darwin to Pope. The sentimentality of Zimmerman weighs more with him than could the manly sense and profound philosophy of Bacon. If he understood Latin, he would prefer Quintus Curtius and Floras to Tacitus and Livy, as he does the ambitious and ornamental style of Gibbon to the unaffected simplicity of Hume. But it is the French writers that enjoy the highest place in his affections and esteem. With the exception of some great names, the French literati may be pronounced a race of dandies, or of writers to please a dandy. Even some of their best authors are not wholly untinctured with this character.

The flimsy philosophy of Helvetius, the elegant immorality of Marmontel, the couleur de rose style of Florian, the sentiment and tone of pretension in the highly-gifted, but affected “première femme du siècle,” the dandy superficial religionism of Chateaubriand, , all are in perfect unison with such a taste as I have described. Dandyism is indeed the pervading character of the French nation. It is mixed up with their best and with their worst qualities. It is found in the court, in the senate, at the altar, and in the field; amid the gravest acts and the most frivolous amusements. It was equally conspicuous in the heartless profligacy of the old “régime” and the ruffian atrocities of the Revolution. The French present a striking specimen of that sort of keeping in national character, which I have attempted to demonstrate in individuals. Neither the lapse of time, nor the changes of circumstance, have affected the essential attributes of the Gallic mind. The same appetite for novelty, the same light-mindedness, the same ferocity, which marked the Gaul and the Frank in the days of Caesar or of Clovis, belong to the modern Frenchman under Napoleon or Louis.

Quoted from: “On Keeping, or Costume in Character.” In: New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal. Vol. VII. 1824: 162-167.