While we hold you by the button

• Posted by mgr on May 5th, 2008 filed in Zeitdokumente
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WE should have disclaimed, last week, in giving the portrait of the most ornate man of modern times, all approbation of dandyism—(as yet)—on this side the water. Dandyism, in the abstract, we delight in, glorify and rejoice over. But it has its scenery and its appertainages. A dandy, in place, is the foreground to a picture—the forward star of a troop untelescoped by the vulgar—the embroidered flower on the veil before a life of mystery. His superiour elegance is like the gold edge of a cloud unfathomable; or (to come to earth) like the soldier’s uniform—tinsel but for its association with force and glory. What were the dandies of the firmament, for example—(comets)—without those uninterpretable tails!

But—to alight, in Broadway:

A dandy indigenous to New-York has no background— no untelescoped associations or connections—no power and glory—and no uninterpretable tail. He is like a docked comet. He is like Tom Fool in a uniform bought at the pawnbroker’s. He is a label on an empty bottle. Count D’Orsay drives by you in the Park, and a long ancestry of titled soldiers and courtiers, and a present life of impenetrable scenery and luxury untold, arise up for background to his cab and tiger. Mr. James Jessamy drives by you in Broadway, and you know at what trade his glory was manufactured, and you know “what he does of an evening,” and you know his “mechanical rogues” of relations, the tailor who made him, the hatter who thatched him, and the baker who sold him gingerbread when a boy. You admire, or envy, D’Orsay, as you happen to be constituted—but you laugh, you scarce know why, at Mr. Jessamy. The latter, perhaps, has the better right to his toggery and turn-out; but still you laugh!

Very far short of dandyism, however, lies the point of dressing judiciously—dressing, that is to say, so as to make the most of your personal advantages. The favour of women is of course the first of life-time ambitions, and the dear tyrants have a weakness for the exteriour. “Tu as du remarquer,” says Balzac; “si toutefois tu еs capable d’observer un fait moral, que la femme aime le fat. Sais tu pourquoi la femme aime le fat? Mon ami! les fats sont les seuls hommes qui aient soin d’eux mêmes!” And there are ladies, even on this plain side of the water, who adore a dandy, and of course there are cases where the dread laugh (mentioned at the close of the preceding paragraph) must be braved to aid a particular magnetism. If your dandy be a sensible man, and past the moulting age, depend upon it he is ticketed for some two eyes only, and can afford, for a consideration he has, to let “the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds,” &c. Had Count D’Orsay been born in Common-Council-dom and gone home, sometimes by the Waverley Line, sometimes by the Knickerbocker, he never would have been a dandy—(except at least for a motive paramount to ridicule)—though, with his superb person, he could hardly have dressed cleanly without being called a fop by the shallow. D’Orsay is a man of sense, and knows too much to open the public oyster with his private razor. So don’t come to America, dear D’Orsay! Stay among your belongings—your

“Tapestries of India; Tyrian canopies;
Heroic bronzes; pictures half divine—
Apelles’ pencil; statues that the Greek
Has wrought to living beauty; amethyst urns
And onyx essenced with the Persian rose;
Couches of mother-pearl, and tortoise-shell;
Crystalline mirrors; tables in which gems
Make the mosaic; cups of argentry
Thick with immortal sculptures.”

Stay where

“Your meat shall all come in, in Indian shells—
Dishes of agate, set in gold, and studded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths and rubies;
Your foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calver’d salmon,
Knots, godwits, lampreys. And yourself shall have
The beards of barbels serv’d instead of salads,
Oil’d mushrooms and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow newly cut off,
Dress’d with an exquisite and poignant sauce.”

Yet if you should take the whim to come over the water, Count, I need scarce suggest to your good sense that you had best come with a consignment of buttons from Brummagem!

Quoted from: The New Mirror. No. 5, Vol. II. November, 4th,1843: 80.

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