MR. EDITOR,
For the benefit of a few of our Townsmen, I take the liberty of enclosing you some extracts on Dandyism. Surely men should never be ambitious of the notoriety and obloquy which must ever attach to a vile affectation of female delicacy, plaits, and pocket-holes.
JOHN BULL.
“God never made a coxcomb worth a grost.”
“What grieves and induces me to vent my sorrow in your pages, is the change which appears to be taking place in the character of the rising generation. That I am an enemy to refined and polished manners, my situation in life must deny; and it is not of them that I complain. It is of that departure , not from the simplicity of nature, for that and a state of modern civilisation are incompatible, but, from the character of an Englishman, that our rising generation is now undergoing. Did they know with what disgust the Frenchified dandy (I abhor the name) of the present day is looked upon by men much younger than myself, they would be ashamed of the mongrel character which they have assumed: nor can we wonder that when speaking of them, in a convivial hour, a master of fox-hounds was lately behaved into the expression that “the rising generation of the present day were not fit to throw guts to a boar.” The expression, we must admit, was a coarse one, and can only be qualified by the indignant feeling which gave birth to it.
“Having occasion to call on a friend at a celebrated hotel, I confess I fell disgusted with my young countrymen. It was about one o’clock in the afternoon, the dinner-hour of their ancestors, when the young men of fashion were just crawling from their beds to their breakfast. With the appearance of most of them I was much struck, and could scarcely fancy myself in my own country; but from one or two of them, I confess, I turned away in loathing. The ringlets in their hair, the rings on their fingers, the brooches in their neck cloths, their petticoat breeches, their affected and mincing manner of bringing out their words, their enervated countenances, their epicene appearance, and their foreign look, all contributed to disgust me. I am not, Mr. Editor, I repeat it, an enemy to the fashionable refinements of this polished age, provided they be kept within proper bounds; neither am I one of those, a “landator temporis acti” , who think nothing right or proper but what was in vogue in their younger days. On the contrary, I hail with pleasure and satisfaction the rapid strides that my Country has made towards improvement, and general amelioration of manners: but it is this change of character that I lament; this being, as it were, ashamed of our own country, and imitating another, to which, though comparisons may be odious, we ever have been, and ever shall be, superior. What! are the masters of Europe to become petit-maîtres? Is the manly and consistent character of an Englishman to give place to the grimace and finisalness of a Frenchman? Is it because a man chooses to spend a month in Paris, that he is to leave his homely English habits behind him, and return “bedizened with the tattered foppery of the Palais Royal?” Had the French eagle been planted on the Tower of London, we could do no more. Tacitas, when speaking of the ancient Britons adopting the dress and manner of the Romans, their conquerors, says they looked upon it as a refinement, whereas he considered it a badge of their subjection. “Pars servitudis wrat.”
“But why is it necessary that we should imitate any nation? Imitation implies inferiority; and to whom is an English gentleman to bow but to his King, and to the laws of his country. If I may be allowed the expression, the ancient French, the noblesse of the last century, were remarkable for their high breeding, and in conversational accomplishments not to be excelled. Their language gave them an advantage in social converse, and their natural vivacity made the most of it. That day, however, is gone by; and the French people may now be compared to a newly-ploughed field, where the kind and cultivated soil is buried underneath that of an inferior quality, and which nothing but the genial influence of succeeding seasons can soften or ameliorate. Notwithstanding all this, the mania for every thing French is revived, but it is nothing new. It was so in Charles the Second’s time, till Dryden ridiculed the people out of
it by his inimitable plays.
“If we now see a yonng man of fashion riding, he sits on his horse like a pair of tongs, with the legs open, with the tip of his toe just touching the stirrup; and if we meet him in a one-horse carriage, it must be in a French cabriolet, or in a gig with wheels as broad as waggon-wheels, made solely for paved roads. If we are to imitate other nations, in God’s name let us imitate them in what they excel. If a man is to be a singer, let him be taught by an Italian; if a fiddler, let him fiddle like a German; and if a painter, let him imitate Vandyke or Rubens; but he need not go from home to learn how to sit his horse, to build a carriage, or to dress and look like a gentleman.
“Fielding says “there is a certain air of natural gentility which it is not in the power of dress to give, nor to conceal;” and to the man of real taste, it is the “simplex munditis”, the elegantly neat , that alone can please. Rings, ringlets, and brooches, ill become an Englishman, who above all others, makes the worst of coxcombs. Mr. Washington Irving, author of Bracebridge Hall, has assured us of this. “In a country,” says he, “where intellect and action are trammelled and restrained, men of rank and fortune may become idlers and triflers with impunity; but an English coxcomb is inexcusable, and this perhaps is the reason why he is the most offensive and insupportable coxcomb in the world.”
“A dandy will never go down here. The country is not indigenous to his growth; his nature seems perverted. The lower orders of the people are seldom wrong in the bulk of their judgment; and to them a dandy is obnoxious. Even the ballad singers in the streets have them in derision. When last in town I heard a woman amusing a crowd of listeners with a song on the subject, the chorus of which was, “Am I not a beautiful man?” Mr. Editor, as an old coachman likes the smack of the whip, so no man adores a beautiful woman more than your humble servant, but away with the “beautiful man,” and the “nice man.” Such epithets belong to the other sex. Also away with stays, petticoat-breeches, red and green silk and satin neck-hand-kerchiefs, and all such appearances of the epicene gender. Тhе full breast, the slender waist, the prominent hip, and the delicate complexion, belong to a woman, and not to a man. , Shakespeare says
“Black men are pearl in beausome indies’ eyes.”
And why should an Englishman be ashamed of looking like an Englishman, in rude health, and good keeping? Caesar was not afraid of Antony and Dolabella, because they were fat and sleek, but of Brutus and Cassius, because they were thin.
“Let not the young men of the present day imagine that this change of character is approved of by women. It is no compliment to the fair sex to affect their manners and be effeminate. On the contrary, that male feature by which our sex is distinguished, is most agreeable to them.
“In the hardier ages of antiquity, refinement was watched with a very jealous eye. Plato would have banished music from his republic; and Vespasian broke a young Roman officer for being perfumed, saying, he had rather he had stunk of garlic. All this, however, may have been in the extreme; but such examples are not without their force. So long as the Romans took pleasure in arms and the management of horses, they were unconquerable, till Sylla returned from Asia and indulged them in luxuries, which enervated them, and nothing would then please them but a statue. When the Athenians saw themselves raised above the other states of Greece, they gave uÑ€ their exercises and became degenerate. Think what a Roman soldier was, and think what a Roman soldier is! The one feared nothing, and braved any thing; the other cannot go on parade without an umbrella under his arm. What would Fabricius have said to this?
Quoted from: The Manchester Iris. A Literary and Scientific Miscellany. No. 48, Vol. I. December 28, 1822.