This is a dandy peer; but, like most of the confraternity, has got aground, and owes to his title the privilege of saying, what brother Dumbell and many others, cannot; namely, “nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus.” But so incomplete does his lordship feel with the rex dandyorum omnium, that he has scarcely done any thing else but pass and repass from Dover to Calais since the exile of bis chief.
The deroute of this edifying fraternity seems to be quite general: their nominal head (for there is not a real head amongst them) expatriated; the dandy delegate on his travels, as much from necessity as choice; the old dandy-lion not so fierce as formerly, since his rencontre with the Hibernian O’M-a; the commercial dandy, like a fish out of water; and the other respectable set disregarded, and growing out of fashion.
What attraction the peer can haves discovered in his socius and prototype Mr. Dumbell, we cannot imagine. It has been said, that they hunt in couples, that they work together, that they are up, and the like. But all this is Arabic to us; we know, that the peer can work very well single handed, and his company is worthy of being courted without the addition of his model.
The tradesmen and the town have found Mr. Dumbell and his dandy associates very taking; and, however long they may sojourn amongst foreigners, they need not fear being out of their friends books. But why my lord should be thus mightily taken we cannot possibly guess.
When we said that the dandies had not a head amongst them, we ought to beg Lord Lavender’s pardon: nature gave him an excellent one; but, as he only makes use of it to hang his hat upon, we had for a moment forgot to count it. Nature, indeed, has gifted him with no small degree of talent. As a scholar, and a man of refined taste and eloquence, he might have dazzled in the senate, or in the pursuit of the belles lettres, and have shone a jewel in society, where conversation and pursuits are useful and intellectual.
We grieve sincerely, however, when we see his taste confined to the adjustment of a cravat, the contour of a waistcoat, or the ineffable slope of a velvet collar; when we behold him the poor copyist of a still poorer copyist, and when his name is familiarly made the topic of conversation of the frail sisterhood, trumpeted by battered Aspasias, and disgracefully coupled with that of a Right Honourable Mulciber, whose intimate footing in a house where the cloven heel presides, is less to be wondered at.
In a word, when instead of being the delight of one bad house, he is the admiration of another; which other, however, is now gaining such celebrity, that in time, the family parlour of mother W-d’s may so teem with nobility as to acquire the illustrious title of, the Star Chamber!!!
Quoted from: The Englishman in Paris. Vol. 1. London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1819: 44-47.