To the Editor of the Sporting Magazine.

SIR,

I Read in your Number for September, a letter on dandyism, signed, A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, and I readily agree that dandyism is a disgrace to manhood; I also most freely admit that the good COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, as he acknowledges himself, “is not free from prejudice;” he is indeed the very reverse. These points conceded, I must beg leave to differ from him in almost every other. The great error, or rather prejudice, of your correspondent, consists in believing dandyism to be a French vice. I have lived five years in the capital of France, (not as many patriotic English country gentlemen do, out of economy, upon two thousand a year, but to complete my professional education) and will venture to assert that the word Dandy has no corresponding term in the French language, and that for the simple reason, that not having the thing, they do not want the word to express it. For a voucher on this head, I would offer the testimony of Lady Morgan’s excellent work on France, but that I fear the authority of so Jacobinical a writer, who is, besides, a professed admirer of the fine arts, would have but little weight with one who holds all the fine arts in utter contempt, except, perhaps, the art of boxing. I have studied the French character well, and maintain that for one fop you meet among them, yon could find ten in our own country; and far from the extravagancies of dandyism having been imported from France, I can prove by the authority of all those Englishmen, who, before they passed judgment on the French, took the trouble of going to see them, that the men at Paris constantly follow the English fashions; and the only French dandies I saw there, were but awkward imitators of their masters, the English dandies, who every day kept pouring in from London, in great numbers.

If your correspondent had taken the pains to become as well acquainted with the present generation of France, as he seems to be with the vicious, degraded, and truly dandyish ancient nobility of the old regime, he would have learnt that the character of a petit maître is now utterly unknown in France, and only seen upon the stage, where we even have but a faint personification of the part, because the actors have under their eyes no living models to study from. I readily admit that the English are inferior to no nation on earth in most things, superior to some in many things, and above all in what is called style, of which dandyism is but an exaggeration. But if the English are superior to other men in many respects, it does not follow that whatever they may chance to be deficient in, is that in which they try to imitate others. Let them imitate the French in what good their character presents, then they may claim the title of the first of men in every thing. I recollect reading in one of the most insignificant of those numberless publications of “Trips to Paris,” with which the English public have been treated to satiety since the peace, an instance of the great importance which genteel English people, of all ages, attach to dress. The party with whose coffee-house adventures we are made acquainted, had gone to the Bois de Boulogne in a carriage, passing on their way back through les Champs Elisés, where numbers of Parisian bourgeois were regaling themselves with a diner champêtre, under the trees; they fancied it would be agreeable to dine there too; which, after going home to dress, they accordingly did.

The French nation, Sir, is indeed, to use part of your correspondent’s simile, “like a new ploughed field,” where useful seeds have been sown by the hand of Liberty, and will soon rise to full and glorious maturity if Holy Alliances will but let them, and even though they will not.

So far from the loose great-coat and black neck-cloth, which so much annoy the COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, having been borrowed from the French, they have most certainly been lent to them; for such a dress is known in France only since it has there been the fashion to ape the English dandies. I am sorry our bucks should adopt the French mode of riding, because the French do not ride well; nor am I more partial to their style of carriage-building; but I cannot help remarking, how singular it is that we should imitate that nation precisely in these two particulars, wherein they have so avowedly been endeavouring to imitate us these seven years. As to the reproach of a slovenly manner of eating their dinner, of spitting on the floor, &c. a short residence at Paris would have convinced your correspondent that it is infinitely more applicable to his admired ancient nobility than to the present generation. The ancient aristocracy, so renowned for their politeness, were, nevertheless, constantly reproached by the English for their excessive demonstration of civility, for their bowing and scraping, , in short, for what we then called their affectation. Now, the present generation have got rid of a great deal of this, and endeavour to imitate the English in what they acknowledge to be true politeness. But your correspondent, who is so fond of nature in the English youths, will not admit of it in the French; and because a French gentleman, who was, no doubt, most politely teased to sing, although he asserted he could not, which is tantamount to giving a man the lie, was at last obliged to give his reason for refusing, the whole nation is to be stigmatised as unmannerly and indelicate. I would advise the COUNTRY GENTLEMAN to read a chapter in “Sterne’s Sentimental Journey,” and there learn to treat with more indulgence manners which displease him only because they differ from those of his own country, and not from any real impropriety.

If the English youth of fashion, having left the University to make the grand tour, “return to their native country unincumbered with the frippery and frivolity” with which they set out, by all means let the dandies of Bond-street and Pall Mall be sent upon their travels immediately. “The country,” says your correspondent, “is not indigenous to the growth of a dandy (not the best English imaginable, by the bye), he will never go down there.” Do, Sir, take the trouble to question the first travelled and unprejudiced person of your acquaintance, and if he does not say that England is of all the world the country where dandies thrive most and multiply fastest, I will consent to admit that England is not a country indigenous to honour, courage, genius, which I believe to flourish there as well as, and I hope more permanently than, even dandyism.

If this rectification should appear to you worthy of a place in your next Number, its insertion will oblige your humble servant,

VINDEX.

St. Heller, Jersey, Nov. 10, 1822

Quoted from: The Sporting Magazine or Monthly Calendar of the Transactions of The Turf, The Chase, and Every Other Diversion interesting to the Man of Pleasure, Enterprise & Spirit. London: Pittmann, January 1823, Vol. XI. N.S., No. LXIV.