SlR,

I HAVE been for a long while wondering that you have never lifted your pen to chastise a tribe of beings who make very pestilent inroads upon the comfort of society; namely, our village and country foplings.

Probably your forbearance has proceeded from contempt. But this feeling must not actuate us all. If our abodes be infested with vermin, they ought to be routed. “A necessary act incurs no blame;” and the assumed elevation of the sons of vanity should no more protect them from the expression of our scorn than the splendid station of the ugly, creeping animal which Burns espied on “the towering top of Miss’s bonnet” exempted it from censure. Permit me then to aid you a little in the laudable work in which you are engaged, by drapping you a few dashes of my plain, clumsy pencil, with the view of furnishing you, and through you the public, a picture of that disgusting and despicable creature, the modern fop.

For this purpose I shall attempt the portrait of Lewis Q. Z. Bubble, one of the fashionables of the day; as his characteristics will be found to represent those of much the larger class of the individuals who come under the general appellation of fops or coxcombs. His father was rich, but immoral, moving in splendour, and rioting in all the excesses of folly and gay licentiousness. At an early age, Lewis was initiated into the genteel vices of high life. He was sent to school; but the reins of discipline were snatched from the hands of the preceptor, and thrown loose upon the neck of the boy. His pockets were filled with dollars, which he was encouraged to spend in pleasure; but peremptorily denied the privilege of squandering, (to use the phraseology of his parents,) in charitable offices, unless when a trifling donation could be made to ensure the fame of generosity. Instead of his studies, he loved fine clothes, cards, balls, wine, an the midnight carouse.

And he soon became the theme of many a quilting and tea party; one of the favourites of the pretty, independent misses of the first circle. The elegance of his bow, or rather nod; the careless, open case of his countenance, particularly at entering a room which contained dignified strangers and venerable personages, before whom mere bookworm youngsters were diffident, silent, and awkward; the free thinking air with which he could ridicule the gloomy seriousness of religion, and laugh at the humdrum restrictions of morality; the polished activity with which he wound through the mazes of the dance; and the gracefulness of his manner and attitudes in handing beverage to the ladies around the halt; these, and many other such, were the qualifications which drew forth the eulogiums of the flippant belles on the youthful beau, and excited his ambition to leave his compeers behind. In these accomplishments he is still an adept; but to them there are many others added, equally requisite for placing him at the very summit of the ton.

Boasting of his unrestrained liberty, he is enslaved by the most tyrannical and degrading corruption. Nocturnal profligacy contaminates and debases all the affections of his heart, and all the powers of his mind. Swearing has become so habitual to him that all his conversation, no matter what the subject, or to whom addressed, is interlarded with profanity. Drinking freely has also become an item in his scheme of regimen. And on occasions in which the beneficence of Heaven beams upon our country, and calls for the grateful homage of pure and cheerful hearts, he thinks, or pretends to think it, if not praiseworthy, at least very pardonable, to brutalize his nature by intoxication, which he and his associates are pleased to denominate the altitude of festivity. It is one of the fundamental maxims by which his conduct is regulated, or more truly, divested of regulation, to act regardless of the opinions of all persons but those of his own coterie. Manliness of spirit is confounded with licentiousness in his vocabulary.

But that you and your readers may be the better able to recognize Mr. Bubble, should you meet him in your walks, I will here describe him to you as he now presents himself to my eye in a neighbouring porch, of which my window commands a view. He inclines already, not a little, to corpulence, the effect of idleness and luxury. His complexion shows a blooming wine flush, while the bloated rotundity of his cheeks evidently proves that they have never been consumed by the midnight vigils of anxious meditation. He has a proud carriage; a stalking, lofty strut which seems almost to disdain the world on which he treads. And sometimes, particularly when he is satisfied there is no danger of his having to encounter resolute opposition, he puts a bullying swagger into his voice and gait accompanied by the dexterous swing of his bludgeon, a badge of gentility without which he seems incapable of sitting, standing, or locomotion. By these manoeuvres the humble crowd are so deeply awed that they leave a wide space to his occupancy; and choose, rather to move around him at a distance, and at the expense of trudging through the mire, than to expose themselves to the jog of his bended elbow, or the sweep of his leg or cane. His neck is intrenched in as many cravats as Hector’s shield was in stratums of bull’s hide. His whiskers, to which the comb and the brush are applied regularly every half hour, and which are contemplated fully as often in the glass, run in flowing hedges from his ears to the point of his chin, where they terminate for want of more soil in which to cultivate their prolongation. These vast garnishments of his tipper story are happily supported by the projection of his double-deep, snowy ruffles; which I see fluttering like streamers in the gale; and now they are concealed from my view by the volume of cloudy perfume that pours from his lips, while they relax their pressure on the burning cigar. There hangs from his fob a huge golden chain, to which is appended a prodigious bunch of keys, trinkets, and seals, whose reflections in the sun vie in lustre with the blaze of a nabob’s equipage. The whole figure, taken together, exhibits a grandeur from which even the opic muse might imbibe inspiration. And I may safely add that nothing in all the science of motion can exceed, in beauty and taste, the mode in which he throws back from his mouth the little roll of fragrant weed; turning out the palm of his hand, and gently holding between the two fingers next to the thumb the roll aforesaid, while he blows before him, into the lap of the playful breezes, its undulating, spiral fumes. I have heard it asserted, not incredibly, that he acquired the art of doing this thing so well by dint of many a long hour’s practice before a mirror. So mighty is the force of a ruling passion!

But the character which I have undertaken, to delineate has still other features deserving our notice. I must, therefore, defer to a future time the completion of my picture; when it shall be animated with a little more of the intellectual expression of the original and receive the last touches of

C. JACK DAUBER.

Quoted from: Conrad Speece: The Mountaineer. No. 31, May 25, 1815.