Si quis nunc quœrat, quo res hœc pertinet? ¡lluc:
Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt.
Malthinus tunicis demissis ambulat —
—-Uter est insanior horum? Hor.

What in the name of Phaeton is this vehicle rolling quickly along St. James’s Street, its shapeless leathern hood made after the model of one of Dr. Birkbeck’s cures for a smoking chimney, intended to turn, like a well-trained husband, its deaf ear to the storm, so humble in its construction as almost to perform the office of scavenger by sweeping the street, looking like a sledge, or a baker’s barrow? Who inhabits this shell? Which of the Linnean vermiculi is shrouded in the interior of this univalvular locomotive conch, this Long Acre nautilus? Why it is positively nothing after all but a cabriolet. See, it pulls up with a sudden full-stop check; the boy groom hastily dismounts from his lodgment, where he might with truth have complained, like the gentle bird of old which found no rest for the sole of its foot. The inhabitant creeps out, like a duckling from its shell, or like a seed from its pod, or like the bright flash of the eye of an Albanian beauty from the recesses of her dark hood! What is the creature like? Very much like a man of five feet ten high; plainly clad in a blue frock coat, a black silk neckcloth, dark colored, somewhat close fitting trowsers, tightly confined under the foot, nothing extraordinary or extreme, simple, nothing for description, nothing in the exterior even for L. E. L. to fall in love with. But mark the proud glance of his eye, the manly independence of his step, his air, and manner, What is he? a Man of Fashion.

Well, then, who can this be ambling an old English thorough-bred horse along the Champs Elysees? His method of equitation ultra-military; his legs inflexible, something like a pair of tailors’ shears across a goose handle; his gay colored coat, small and shapeless, a mere tailor’s remnant; his party-colored waistcoats in endless folds of radiance, like skeins of pattern silks, a mantua-maker’s Iris around his neck; his apology for a hat, looking as though he had plotted economy in his purchase by buying one two sizes less than a fit; his hair like a worn-out birch besom in advance of each of his ears, and then his impassable forest of whiskers, sufficient to raise the envy of every speculative chair-stuffer in Paris. Who is he? Why he is a French Man of Fashion.

Can this being claim any kindred or alliance in nature with the two former? is he to be ranked by natural historians in the same order in nature? You may see him on the bleak barren coast of Winter Harbor in about 75 degrees north latitude; his broad and flat countenance, high cheek bones, small and deep-sunk eyes, short pug nose, large mouth, thick lips, coarse black and straight hair, his greasy tawny brown skin, are the envy and admiration of his tribe. His jacket descending as low as the hip joint, is made of the white dog or wolf skin, the fur inside next bis body; his dress breeches are distinguished from the Vulgar by being of the finest bear fur, the hair side outward. Then look at his seal skin canoe, full two feet longer than any other, far or near; the handles of the paddles marvellously inlaid with bone, his knife made from the tusks of a mighty walrus he has slain, carved and ornamented. But observe his carriage, his dancing, the loudness and majesty of his voice, the style in which he handles his fishing spear. What is he? An Esquimaux Man of Fashion.

Nature, how general, how immutable are thy laws! how little subject to change are the great principles upon which the human mind in every state and stage is affected, is moved to joy and sorrow! All these men of fashion are actuated by one feeling, uniformly the same in its origin, uniformly the same in its results. The results, what are they? Admiration, and an ardent desire to imitate. We shall presently see the reasons of this universal effect produced from such apparently dissimilar causes; but look to the positive consequences of this pervading, evanescent, untangible influence called Fashion. In London or Paris, here is a man has gained, no matter how, the station of a leader, he is in the van of the prevailing mode; nay, he is himself the former and framer of that mode. Thousands stand aloof in reverential awe, behold his present form of existence, watch the last changes effected in his dress, his equipage, his furniture, his colloquial idioms. Go to any public place of resort, and if sufficient time from the last change be afforded, you will see a thousand coats squared by the same pattern as his. Like the children in Cruikshank’s picture of Philoprogenitiveness, you may all swear to the father by a main feature, their legitimacy is proved beyond controversy by the length of the nose!

Have these blind followers grasped the object of their painful pursuit? are they now settled as men of fashion by the figure of their skirts? Pshaw, Lord Velvet and Beau Broadcloth had their skirts a full inch shorter last Sunday in the Park. The former length is now a solecism, a barbarity, an offence to taste, a scandal to the shears. No, this is the characteristic, the very essence of the idol: we call to it fervently as Macbeth did to the unembodied dagger, “Come, let me clutch thee;” we call in vain! Let the time come when there can exist ten thousand men of fashion (in the close application of the word) in England, and the face of nature must be changed, the constitution of man himself broken and revolutionized.

The results of fashion being the same in all forms of society, and under every modification of appearance, so are the individuals who may properly be said to control that influence. They are alike in their feelings in relation to others. A man of fashion in Pall Mall or Melville Island, is in constant contradiction, not only to all society, but to himself. He despises his fellow worms, because they are unlike him, while he is in anxious and unceasing activity to prevent such a degrading approximation. He possesses the power of keeping in the van, and heaps contumely on those whom he does not permit to approach; like the vanity of the fore-wheel of a carriage boasting that the posterior one never overtakes it. He treats those who are not successful rivals with contempt; and those who are, with hatred. Neither does he own any greater degree of kindness for those who are his equals, even though at such a distance that he need not entertain any fear of obstruction in the range of his own particular influence. He is not content to occupy his own orbit, but despises those who move in any other. Only suppose placed by any concurrence of circumstances in one apartment, a Bond Street, a Place du Carousel, and a North Pole Man of Fashion. Think of the cold contempt, and the silent but proud disdain, of the two first, and the loud screech of unbridled laughter from the polished and dexterous seal catcher, the glory of his tribe! A genuine votary of fashion in one latitude or other, must of necessity be an antisocial man, although it is only in society he can obtain the object of his earnest desire, the delight of his soul. Strange paradox.

As there is not, nor can be, any real community of feeling between coeval men of fashion, so neither is any posthumous respect shown to those in whose steps they follow. All authority is denied, even to those who could tell us as country epitaphs do, “I was once what you are now.” Fashion despises the sacred tie of ancestry. Every man of fashion is as much bound to ridicule and neglect the external glory of the past century, as of the past year. Like a young eagle just out of the nest and fresh on the wing, he owns no parentage, acknowledges no kindred, the beauty of his plumage and bravery of his strength is his own, his present fancy his only guide. There is something in this fact awfully depressing. Eminent as you may be, the idol of the day, the unapproachable director of change, your time will surely come when you will be treated as an outcast, a nothing, yes: last out your time, let tailors and friseurs do their office , hold the reins until the palsied, withering hand reluctantly dismisses them, be a man of fashion until three score and ten if you please, yet the next generation will hold you in contempt as relatively barbarous; you will, if remembered at all, be the hissing and the scorn of your successors. Nay, not only those who succeed you in empire, but the nation at large, positively the mob, will cast their scurril gibes upon you as a bygone dandy, a model of depraved taste, a sample of the past, an antique!

How must it move to melancholy, when a man of fashion, in all the pride and conscious dignity of being the very dictator, the Caesar of the empire of taste, attends our national theatres! when he witnesses the dress and manners of the past age brought upon the stage for comic effect, and looked upon, even by the galleries, with as much levity as a mountebank’s party-colored coat, regarded as the wanton mimicry of caricature. There is enough, one would think, in such a moral spectacle to moderate the most unassuaged passion for fashionable fame. Ah! look upon that beau of a century past. Look at his powdered and essenced wig, his fringed neck-cloth, his lace, his ruffles, and embroidered satin, his polished cane! Was ever such a man the envy of admiring crowds, the very apex, the top stone of fashionable life? Impossible. His first entrance is now greeted with a derisive smile, even from the present race of men of fashion, the inheritors of his glory. Heavens! who can believe him ever to have been a fashionable man, a man holding the same relative chieftainship as Brummell once held, and as H— now holds? Is it true that he was all this? Yes: then ye Brummells, ye H—-s, ye P—-s, look upon him as the prototype of what you will one day become. Draw, for once, some moral from the scene. Consider that “the fashion of this world passeth away.” Yes: you, at no distant day, perhaps, will certainly become what he is now, the subject of ribald jests, of profane scorn; yea, of mob contempt and jocularity!

Surely a very little share of philosophical reflection should serve to repress the vain glory of modern fashion. The representation of antiquated finery would cease to move us to smiles of contempt, if we did but pause to consider. But who would ever laugh if they did consider? Hobbes tells us that laughter is produced in all cases by the idea of our own present superiority being forced upon our attention. It is, for this reason, that refined wit, yielding a very different kind of mental emotion, is not productive of much laughter. The laugh of a man of fashion, however, is originated precisely by this despicable vanity, this presumptuous self-conceit. He hears of the manners of the past, he witnesses the just delineation of other times, or of other countries; his soul, trammelled by habit, takes in only one mean view of the whole, he contrasts his own assumed superiority, and glee and merriment are the sentiments of his mind. He decides that every circumstance which differs from himself and his own practices, as it yields no agreeable association to his mind, must be immeasurably inferior, must of necessity be gross and unideal. All the while the truth existing that there is no kind of inherent superiority of one form of dress, one style of furniture, one system of external manners, over another. The dress and manners of the court and drawing room of St. James’s, can boast no degree of deration or natural refinement over those of the court of the King of Lectakoo! Every custom or external decoration of life, in one climate or the other, which has no immediate connection with morals, is in every sense on a natural, an indisputable equality.

It is in the highest degree curious to observe the operation of this overweening conceit in fashion, in a national point of view. A traveller like Sir John Carr, or any other dunce, who fails to g-et a living by honest industry, puts up a couple of shirts in a bag, and sets sail on a journey of observation. In the true spirit of cockney wunder, he notes down as marvels, that in the first country the men kiss each other’s cheeks; in a second, the form of salutation is a gentle or brisk rubbing of noses according to the ardor of congratulation; in a third, that hospitality is shown by washing the feet of the guest; in another, that train oil and blubber ointments exhibit tokens of the most exalted and cordial respect. And so of dress and decoration. Some carry rings in their noses, others in their ears; some wear untanned skins, others no skins but their own; some wear breeches of a peculiar cut, some none at all. The whole nation is filled with laughter and derision at these accounts. They look round on each other with smiles, and with hearts swelling with gratitude, thank God that their lots have been cast in a happy land, where no such barbarous and unnatural habits obtain, where men reserve the kisses for their female friends, and where good kerseymeres may often be obtained, upon credit!

The duty of a traveller is to see and relate things- as they exist, his deductions and reasonings are no better than other people’s, no better because he is a traveller. It is very right that we should know about this rubbing of noses and knocking of foreheads, but desperately foolish that we should swell with pride at our own fancied superiority; let our own most approved fashions be honestly related in black and white, and we should be ready to swear they were the manners of a newly-discovered island, and appeal to the Committee of the Missionary Society. “The chief inhabitants sometimes assemble in considerable numbers in a large building erected for that purpose, the sides of which are divided by small compartments, which are allotted according to the power and rank of the visitors and chiefs. A portion of the floor, which is partitioned from the rest, is occupied by a number of performers of a kind of noisy and discordant music. This music consists of the simultaneous exertions of many instruments. The greatest number of these instruments consists of small boxes of wood, over which the intestines of some animal are tightly strained. These are held in the left hand; the right holds a wooden stick, by which a number of hairs from the tail of a horse are extended. These sticks are then scraped sharply on the strings, which produces a squeaking and vibratory sound. There are also some kinds of wooden tubes or whistles which accompany the former, and altogether produce sounds which are unlike any thing in nature, are hideous beyond description, and must be heard to be adequately conceived. Then some natives who are bred up from infancy to the art, and receive a stipulated hire, come forward on an elevated floor, and recite amatory verses in long drawn sounds alternately high and low, accompanied with the most grotesque inflexions and shakings of the voice. We were overcome with laughter, but the natives seemed to listen with great composure, and very frequently shewed their approbation by a loud clapping of hands and exclamations of approval. Many of the females wore birds’ feathers in their head dresses, which waving as they moved their heads, had a pleasing effect. They also had the lower extremity of their ears perforated, in which was suspended a white and glittering species of glass.

The manners and habits or the private associations of the natives are absurd to the last degree. We were invited to what we were told was an assembly of men of influence with their families. The company did not assemble until near midnight. The only amusement at all general, was a most extraordinary and solemn kind of dancing. A number of performers on the same kind of wooden boxes as we have just described, were present. They began their squeaking noises, and suddenly every male advanced, leading the female of his choice by the hand unto the middle of the floor. They formed into small companies, independent of each other standing in squares, those in the parties facing each other; at a given signal many began to hop on each leg alternately in a prescribed direction, so that the whole party seemed to be actively engaged, the instruments playing loudly the whole time. Their mode of dancing seemed to us chiefly to consist in certain vibratory motions of the feet and legs, and altogether had to us a very grave and formal appearance. During the intervals of the music, conversation ensued, and we were told that these were the chosen opportunities in which affairs of love frequently had their origin, and which often led to the marriage of the younger natives. We had reason to believe the ties of wedlock are not very rigidly observed among them. The same occupation was repeated without intermission or variety, until the conclusion of the entertainment.”

Where can these ridiculous customs prevail, in Nootka Sound? No, it is an autograph account by one of the late unhappy Sandwich savages, who were crammed by kindness to suffocation and death, giving a description of the Italian Opera and of Lady G–’s quadrille party: show me any thing in Captains Parry or Lyon more unnatural than this, with less moral meaning or intelligence, and our theory falls to the ground. Now what in the popular acceptation of the term is the proper province of fashion? It seems to rule especially in dress, equipage, furniture, diversions, compliments, the modification of language and colloquial idioms. These, though not all, are the most important of its agents, its channels of operation and influence. Well, then, with regard to dress: turn to Lord Kames, and you will find some very good reasons for putting on covering to the body, and some still better for putting it off. His lordship, after reflection and observation, decides for nudity as being more favorable to morals; but, like poor Smart in Bedlam, who remarked that he and the world differed in opinion, he thought the world mad, and they believed him to be so, and the majority had prevailed,, the world and Lord Kames have disagreed, and people have, for some reasons best known to themselves, put on clothes of various forms, figures, and materials. In what, then, is one form of dress to be preferred to another? Convenience and adaptation for use! Surely no man of fashion will admit this test. By what influence on the mind does a certain form grow to be agreeable, and overcome all the force of long continued custom? Fashion breaks through the most inveterate ties of habit, as well as of pig-tails.

First of all we hear people talk about dignity of dress, the flowing robe, the majesty of drapery and fur, the toga of the ancients! just as though there existed in nature some power in yards of cloth and velvet irresistibly to bring to our minds notions of greatness and wisdom. We look at a piece of statuary, and remark on the surpassing beauty and simplicity of the robe, and contrast it with the meanness of our square-tailed coats and starched neck-cloths; and yet if any one actually appeared abroad in such a remnant, he would have a commission of lunacy, the quickest of all chancery processes, after him in a trice. We never see a bag wig without thinking of the drawing room of King George. We then go into our courts of law, and see our judges with loads of powdered horse-hair on their heads and shoulders, and pronounce for the natural dignity of wigs. Why even Mr. — passes with the great and little vulgar for a wise man, merely on the authority of his well-ordered peruke, his lime and horse-hair. His barber is his best friend, let him hang up his wig on its peg, and then, If loose folds of cloth so forcibly convey notions of dignity; if Mr. Fuller’s object of derision, the Speaker’s wig, is essential wisdom, there are less robes worn than there ought to be; and Alderman Wood and Lord Calthorpe had better bargain forthwith in Lincoln’s Inn for cast-off wit and authority.

But the truth is, that the dignity which is vulgarly attached to these external distinctions, rests precisely on the same foundation that we say that Captain R— in or out of regimentals is the best dressed man in the world. Who intends to say it is the inherent nature of his morning frock, or the collar of his dress coat, that gives us the notion of a well-informed, active, and most agreeable companion? Let him wear seal-skin breeches and a ring in his nose for one month, and every body who approached him would go away satisfied that nothing in life was half so charming as felt smalls and nose tunnelling. The course of fashion, under all circumstances and situations, is this, In all gradations of society, from the barbarous to what is called the most refined, there are qualities which must be admired, independent of any external decoration or appearance whatever. Thus, in savage life the most dexterous and adventurous hunter, or he of the most inflexible courage, is so distinguished by these qualities, that he has only to assume certain forms of dress and manners to lead the fashion without appeal. Does he at first, in the wantonness of caprice, puncture his skin with coloring matter? Tattooing then naturally becomes the external symbol of his admired qualities, and hosts of aspiring savages endeavour to gain some share of this exclusive applause by so palpable an imitation: in short, any second-rate man in New Zealand would be supposed to be a wretched dastard, a white-livered pagan, who did not fall in with this assumed distinction. And so operates in rude life all the original, and, as it seems to us, petty distinctions of exterior refinement and manners. They have their great exemplars, their Wellingtons and Brummells, as well as we.

The foundation of fashion may be summed up in one word, association. So long as any peculiar ideas are connected with external decorations, those forms will be agreeable or the reverse. Any man who has ever heard Lord Eldon deliver a judgment, heard his wisdom, knowledge, law, and learning, must be a knave if he would not give five guineas for the wig from under which it all proceeded; though, as a matter of merchandize, this would be a bad bargain, Lord Eldon is not wasteful in wigs. Who could ever survey it as it hung without feeling emotions of intellectual pleasure by the principle of association? It ought, like the relics of devotees, to inspire every lawyer with reverence, and every suitor with ideas of the necessity of chancery reform. A curious specimen of capillary attraction. As a contrast to this, what notions would the wig of the Att, y Gen, l convey?, Weariness of spirit and dog latin!

Nothing is more untrue, or ill-founded, than the belief that the changes of fashion are wrought by men, who have nothing but their eccentricity or quality to boast of. Your real man of fashion is nine times out of ten a man who is deserving to lead, who in his own mind and person is capable of associating agreeable ideas with any peculiar and personal distinction. He is not learned, nor a statesman, nor a poet, nor a mathematician, but he sums up all the really inviting qualities of all these in one common centre. In all the engagements of life, he carries by his wit and elegance that influence which none but himself can at all aspire to. A man of fashion is in fact a companion for all, he can be delightful to the parson or player, to wisdom and levity, to men and maids, and this it is by which he justly commands influence and admiration. Does such a man begin wearing a coat of peculiar and unheard-of shape or texture? Every one who sees him, finds him just as engaging in these, as in those which he has dismissed. They are identified with his wit and address. He is smiled at, at first, for the harsh contrast, and in a week’s time the town has imitated him. The original peculiarity ceases to have the original associations, and he is at liberty to invent a fresh distinction for himself, this is the main principle of the workings of fashion: the glory of wealth, and the badges of office, often lead to imitation, but these seem greatly apart from the personal distinctions which are more closely referred to. Every body knows that Brummell had neither house nor land, was neither an M. P. nor of the Privy Council, and yet he invented and carried the starched neck-cloth, although in direct opposition to the Heir-Apparent to the throne!

These influences of association are peculiarly seen in the history of female fashions in Europe. At one time mountains of false and filthy hair, pomatum, and mal-odor. One year hoops and lateral extent; another the opposite extreme, waists and no waists. The only fashion which keeps its place as it deserves to keep it, is the exposure of the white shoulder. Once get that covered by fashion, and who would care a pin’s point for public amusements. What would the Opera boxes be without these jewels, without the flashing radiance of these snow drifts? The European female dress is more unnatural than any that was ever framed by the imagination of maids, wives, or widows. Look at the history of waists, very well discoursed upon in a late number. If one were to look at a tightly laced waist for the first time, if he were a lover of abstract grace and nature, it would inevitably throw him into epilepsy. We do hate them in fact, but the other attractions of their mistresses cause us to forget our first horror; nay, it may teach us to look on them with complacency. Nothing on earth can so completely put the power of association in fashion beyond dispute, as to remember the compression, stricture and obstruction, the violation of nature in some parts of female habiliments, which passes without causing murder and rebellion. Physicians generally have a hobby, some give prominence to one source of malady, and some to another, and a very useful plan it is. A very excellent man in London, Dr. P— is inclined to trace almost the whole of female complaints to the ligatures of their dress. This idea is always uppermost in his mind. The other day being at a concert, and observing a bustle on the further side of the room, he asked the reason, and was told it was a lady fainting: he immediately jumped on his chair, and in the voice of a boatswain called out loud enough to be heard by five hundred people, “For God’s sake loosen the stays; d, n the stay laces!” We approve of the spirit, though not the form, of Dr. P, ‘s sentiment. ***

Quoted from: The Inspector, Literary Magazine and Review. London, 1827.