BY MRS. POSTANS.

The Parisian Dandy? Even so. The Boulevards have their vanities as well as Regent-street, and although where dress, manners, and affectations of various kinds, seem to make up the sum, end, and purpose of life with the many, it may appear difficult to particularize any class, as most devoted to dress and frivolity,, yet, as I said at the commencement, Paris has its beau par excellence, a being half butterfly, half man, who is as distinctly to be noted among his fellows, as are the grisette, and femme à  la mode, in the ranks of the gentler sex.

The French have adopted from our language, amongst others, the two words ” fashionable,” and ” daundee,” (as they pronounce it,) both which may be perpetually heard during an afternoon’s stroll upon the Boulevard Italien, from the lips of every third or fourth lounger on the promenade, formed in front of Tortoni’s Cafe.

The Parisian dandy passes his life between the opera, the asphalte of the boulevards, and the Bois de Boulogne ; caprice is his deity, and a fashion of six weeks’ standing disgusts him with the world.

The English dandy seeks only to render himself remarkable from his costume, and is often little more than a lay figure for the display of his tailor’s absurdities ; but the Parisian dandy “seeks to win a double object,, to render himself remarkable by his dress, as well as his dress remarkable by himself; and this is effected by a combination of eccentric tastes, habits of thought and manner, and power of giving importance to trifles, to be found only in the human decorations of the French capital.
The Parisian dandy of to-day, as we see him lounging on a chair at Tortoni’s, has an aspect, striking, remarkable, we may add grotesque. His long flowing hair, and beard à  la Vandyke, his wide flat-brimmed hat, and large bowed cravat, give to his head an air almost of the antique ; but this again is contradicted by a surcoat, or paletot, of the most singular form, lemon kid gloves, an amber-headed cane, and the little bunch of violets, that purchased for a sous, of the pretty Norman peasant with the gay kerchiefed head-dress at the corner, he now bears daintily between his fingers.

Fashion and rank are of two very different classes in Paris, as in London, and the dandy may be found of both. Frequently, however, the dandy of fashion speculates on his chances from the dandy of rank, and takes place accordingly ; is a count without aristocracy, a landed inheritor without money, a spurred cavalier without even a donkey in his stable, and a man of society who has never yet found an entrée into an hotel of St. Germain. The supporter of the dandy of fashion is the aspirant of dandyism aristocratic, who lavishes his wealth, and often the honour of his family name, on the million elegancies of life, which are deemed so much necessities in Paris that imitations are to be found of them in every rank.

The Parisian dandy, effeminate in appearance, and devoted to frivolity, affects a love of all manly exercises, with an attachment to dogs and horses, races and hunting parties. These he discusses, while attired in a blue cashmere dressing gown, lined with orange silk, a Persian cap surmounting his perfumed locks, a cigar peeping from his moustache, and a cup of coffee by his side. The last picture of Alfred de Dreux is on the wall, and on the table a very odd collection, composed of the Charivari, and a bunch of violets ; boxing gloves, and bonbons; Bürgmuller’s last waltz, and George Sand’s new novel; with an essay on government, by the Abbé Lamennais, and a design for the embroidering of a cashmere waistcoat, by our dandy himself.

If, however, the Parisian dandy is gifted with a high forehead, a soft expression of eye, and a well-toned voice, he frequently adds the affectation of literature to the rest, imagines that he possesses the soul of a poet, and endeavours to gain an introduction to the winter soirées of Monsieur Lamartine, who, by the way, is the idol of the Parisians for his talents, and might be justly so, if his private worth were weighed as well, or as fairly, as his poetic genius; but France does not adjust the balance as nicely as she might do in these cases. The literary dandy dislikes publication, he prefers reading his romances to private friends, where in a well lighted salon, on a Persian carpet, and with eau sucré by his side, he may charm elderly gentlemen by his epigrams, and young ladies by sentimental monodies, only fit for Père la Chaise. This is not, however, in consequence of his believing the enfans of his brain to be inferior in strength or beauty to those of Balzac or Dumas; but because he dreads that the delicate rose tints of his imagery should be breathed on by plebeian lips. To this description of dandy, Victor Hugo, great in his ideal horrors, becomes an idol. He imitates his sublimity in puerile efforts that become ridiculous, and exhausts himself in a passion of tears and pathos. All that is true to nature, and simple in detail, the literary dandy looks on with a sneer of superb disdain ; for while a Frenchman fancies the coarseness of nature is beneath a mind capable of entertaining the ideal, the fact of the case is, that she, in her purity and truth, is so eminently above a frivolous, vain, and sensualized being, that he can no more hope to reach or understand her excellence, than he could to trammel the free air that blows around the rustic’s brow. Thus when the dandy of to-day sneers at authors who formed the taste of old France, it is possible he cannot understand them ; nor can I see how he should, looking at them, as he does, through the smoked glass of the vices and follies that now surround him.

Sometimes the Parisian dandy, indifferent to Jules Janin, and all the critics of all the journals, unhesitatingly commits his literary labours to the suffrage of society, and society is very lenient. Men smile, and call him a “bon enfant;” and pretty women, in consideration of his charming moustache, and delicious “bonnet grec,” from beneath which the ideas have flowed, (if there are any,) immediately deposit their five franc pieces at the nearest library, and seizing on the straw-coloured volume that promises so much, devote themselves wholly to it, for the sake of its delightful author.

The extent of the reading public is enormous in France; every body reads, and thus books of all classes have a ready sale. The chestnut roaster at the corner of the Rue du Bar lays down a new romance to offer you his attention; the boy waiting to change the horses of the omnibus, does so with a five franc volume on his lap. The street shoe-cleaner has a copy of Beranger’s Songs, and ’tis hard but the very gamin buys an entr’acte as he whistles past the Vaudeville ; every body reads,, men, women, children, grisettes and statesmen, duchesses and charbonniers, ’tis all the same, books form the salt to their daily bread.

It is questionable whether the literary dandy gains much by his pen, probably not; perhaps the brilliancy of his style, and the flowers of his rhetoric, do little more than provide varnish for his boots, and violets for his table; but this is not the point, he burns a genius, and believes his works immortal; he imagines his tomb heaped with laurel wreaths, and fair girls in pink bonnets and cashmere shawls sprinkling rosebuds around the poet’s grave ! It may be that his funds forbid all thoughts of a cutlette at the Cafe de Paris, or a quiet supper at the Rocher de Cancale ; no matter, he smokes his cigar at four sous, sips his eau sucre, and is supremely blest.

The Parisian dandy does not confine his caprices to the effects of his costume, nor to the strange combinations of his taste, in manners, habits, or equipages ; he loves to carry them even into his apartment in the Rue Rivoli, or the Rue de la Paix, and there surround himself with all times, all styles.

If wealthy, his ante-room is perhaps hung with the armour of the middle ages, his salon is decorated with pictures by the ancient masters, and his furniture is of the time of Louis Quatorze. Bronze lamps, as if from Herculaneum or Pompeii, light his bed-chamber, and tapestry of the early Flemish looms covers his sofa and fauteuil. Occasionally, styles are mixed, and the rooms appear like the museum of a virtuoso, but in other cases a fixed epoch seems to create an atmosphere around, and the dandy who wears his beard a la Vandyke adopts the same style in the decorations of his apartment. Until attired for public life, the dandy who possesses these tastes usually selects some corresponding costume for his morning dress; and if the roofs of some of the most fashionable boudoirs of Paris were unroofed about mid-day, they would rather present the idea of the inmates being prepared for a fancy ball, than for the usual occupations of their morning hours.

This taste for odd, curious, and useless things, is common to all classes of the Parisian people, as well as to its dandies, although not exercised to the same degree. A poor workman, from his two francs a day, will hoard perhaps three a week, and these he spends, not in a useful bit of furniture, or an added comfort, but in a cast from the Milo Venus, a print of Victor Adam’s, or an electrotype bronze.
The dandy superlative occasionally undertakes the training of a dandy inferior, but the latter must be rich, and grateful for assistance. Occasionally, about the lower end of the Rue Vivienne, hovering as it were between Galignani’s and the Palais Royal, may be seen an elegant looking man, with a pleasing handsome countenance, spotless boots, stainless gloves, and an air altogether distinguished. This gentleman has a handsome apartment in the best part of Paris, a tiger of undoubted abilites, and never dines without his pineapple and iced champagne. Is he a marquis ? by no means. A government employé? certainly not. The secret is this. He is a dandy superlative, and on his favour depend the fortunes of half the shopkeepers in Paris. His gloves, his canes, his boots, his waistcoats, are a perpetual advertisement. The dandy aristocratic, whose wealth is superior to his taste, becomes his pupil, and the man of fashion instructs him in the recherché elegancies of the table, the style of his equipages, and the colour of his horses. He orders his wines, his dressing gowns, his cigars, and his jewellery; and, seated in an opera box, guides his casting vote in favour of the last basso or the new danseuse. Thus the dandy superlative renders his exquisite tastes a marketable commodity, and lives well on his nominal inheritance.

The Parisian dandy sometimes affects the interests of a sportsman, not so much for the honest love of sport, but because it is well favoured by the princes of the blood. He occasionally joins the Paris Jockey Club, and cultivates, as he says, an amateur taste for whist, plum pudding, and ” bifsteak a l’Anglaise ;” although, in fact, the first and last have long been naturalized as foreigners in France. The dandy here talks of horses and dogs, as gracefully as he conversed the evening before with Madame la Comtesse, on poetry and perfumes; for zealous in nothing, he has the air of an enthusiast in all.

The true dandy is careless of expense, indifferent to his means, extravagant in his luxuries ; but his imitator examines tradesmen’s bills, talks of what he does not possess, and looks often at the total of his cash book. He dines, not at the Cafe de Paris, nor at the Rocher de Cancale, nor at Verrey’s, but at a two franc restaurant’s in an unfrequented neighbourhood, and then he lounges on a chair at Tortoni’s, smoking his cigar even to its conclusion. He talks of society he never mixes in, relates personal anecdotes of friends he knows only by name, and passes every leisure moment in his apartment on the fifth floor, in arranging and renewing, by every possible aid, his somewhat faded and threadbare attire. Miserable man ! whom vanity thus cheats out of the few comforts that fortune would allow him; who talks of balls and dinners, when famine hovers near him, of equipages and horses while ready to drop from fatigue, and of the heat of the opera, and the glare of a bal masque, while remembering that his desolate chamber cannot boast of either fire or candle! And yet so will men live, cheating themselves of comforts, as well as deceiving others; disquieting themselves for a vain shadow.

At forty, be he false or true, the Parisian dandy commences his old age: and instead of his yearly accounts being filled with charges for champagne, articles of luxury, and bouquets of rare exotics, a considerable sum, here and there, appears in favour of Desirabode, the Parisian Cartwright, and other artistes enjoying a high character for repairing time’s destroying influences. Supported by the high art of the capital, greater perhaps in artifice than any in the world (whether applied to eye-brows or to manners), the dandy of forty strolls forth on the asphalte of the Boulevards, still proud of the enamel of his teeth, the delicacy of his complexion, and the graceful wave of his abundant tresses.

The Parisian ex-dandies forming a society among themselves, the vanity of their contemporaries suffices to cherish their own satisfactions, and thus for some ten years longer, the Parisian refuses to admit the idea that he has become ridiculous. Then, as an ex-dandy decided, he occasionally marries a young and pretty girl of low estate, and retires to a country house of the smallest habitable size, with a weedy garden, and a grassgrown wall, which he dignifies with the title of chateau and there plays whist with the retired banker and negotiant, his neighbour, or piquet, with his father-in-law the grocer, on the occasion of his annual visit.

The Provincial dandy commonly employs a Parisian tailor, but sometimes contents himself with native habiliments, constructed from a collection of the coloured engravings to be seen in considerable numbers at the corner opposite the Bourse. Every body knows the shop, and has passed it fifty times, or not been able to pass it at all, which amounts to the same thing, and must have seen the figures I allude to, in La Sylphide or Le Follet; and if a Parisian dandy happened to have been looking into the window at the same time, the stranger may have observed how curiously unlike are the real and the ideal, the imagined fashions of the designers, and the absolute costume of the beau.

This amusing fact, however, is an advantage to the Provincial dandy. For by it he may continually enjoy the reputation of a man of fashion. This year, his costume differs not much from the Parisian attire of the past. And if he anticipates the coming time, his hat, but for its narrow brim, his paletot, but for its cape and collar, would not render him ludicrous, even in the Rue Vivienne itself.

The dandy of the provinces is quite as well aware of the value of ” vernis,” and straw coloured kid gloves, as the Parisian. But he does not economise time, by reading a journal in the shop of the varnisher, while his feet act as lasts for his drying boots, as the Parisian may be seen doing in the Passage Panorama, by any one passing by; neither does the Provincial close his hand, when conscious of the dark-stained tips that might afford condemning proof of the date of his last visit to his glover’s; neither knows he aught of the restorative process at three sous the pair, nor of the ” peau de mouton” at half the usual price, for he is an unsophisticated, simple-minded being, when compared with the Parisian, and is easily to be deluded by appearances; this is the result of his provincial training, yet he finds peace in a happy unconsciousness of inferiority.

Perhaps the beau of the provinces may be aware of the fact that the costumes of Paris regularly change every six weeks, or he may not. But if he does, he shows his philosophy by not heeding such inconstancies ; and as we look for greater wisdom in the retirement of country life than in the glare of the capital, I am not sure that the Provincial dandy may not be most respectable in his paletot of last year’s date, his questionable gloves, and his square toed boots, because all are consistent with his means, his position, his education, his knowledge, and in such consistency respectability is found.

The Provincial beau, like the Parisian, possesses his theatre, his Cafe de Paris, and his sporting club;, it is true that he does not possess the power from his box ” d’avant-scene,” of reducing the premiere danseuse to despair, by turning away his lorgnons, or uttering a half expressed bah! for Monsieur le Directeur does not heed him ; yet the Provincial meets at his theatre the young demoiselles fresh from the neighbouring Pension; and so discussing Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary for the entr’acte, he economises at once his memory, his candle, and his influence.

The dandy of the province, however, has his season of gaiety and enjoyment, which neither the thirty leagues distance from the capital, nor even a suspected deficiency in his tournure, could destroy. This is the carnival, when the grisettes’ balls are announced, as they are in Paris, and the whole town seems papered with yellow bills. None then more gay than our dandy, none more conscious of his superiority, of his taste in costume, and of his favour with the fair danseuses.

The Parisian beau depends more upon the irresistible effect of his general style, than upon the flowers of conversation ; but the Provincial is sentimental, and the grisettes and couturieres of the neighbourhood regard both his verses and his waltzing as inimitable.

The Provincial beau, like the Parisian, is fond of horses, and on a Sunday may be seen well mounted, and followed by a spruce-looking tiger; but the same effect is not sustained during the week, as it happens that the tiger may have to play many parts, as gardener, labourer, valet, or even repairer general, of the family chateau.

The dandy of the provinces also lounges in a dressing gown and tasselled cap during the morning hours, but he usually selects the straight avenue, between the oddly clipped trees in front of his house, as the scene for his cigar-smoking indulgences, in preference to an ill-furnished apartment, decorated with a narrow bed, a tall escritoire, two hard, straight, cotton velvet covered chairs, and a print of Napoleon; and his dressing gown, instead of being made of rich brocade, lined with the softest satin, is composed of thick flannel, bordered by a twist of a contrasting colour, and girded with a cord that would not disgrace the flagellatory intentions of a penitent Capuchin; but then, the neighbours declare that it is ” charmante, delicieuse,” and what greater end can be desired for any article of costume in the world, than to gratify oneself, and delight the world?

The Provincial dandy, possessing leisure, is apt to devote a portion of it to philosophy and discussion. Unbelief he is apt to believe is a sign of enlightenment, and he sneers at the credulity of the poor pastor, and his ignorant belief in what the vain sceptic considers to be but “a cunningly devised fable.” With this bent of mind, the dandy readily becomes the disciple of every new system transmitted to him from the great natural religion manufactories of Paris, which reach him a little worn, like the other fashions of the times; however, he takes them all, abandons his early favourite, Voltaire, for St. Simon, St. Simon for Madame de Gamond, and Madame for any fresh madness, whose results may reach him in the form of octavo volumes, from the pens of all the male and female ” rationalists” of the most incredulous capital in the world, as so La Jeune France prides herself in being. Her only belief being, that pleasure is the universal good, and evil, the absence of fetes, theatres, bal masques, and the carnival.

There is one point of marked difference between the condition of the Provincial and the Parisian dandy. In Paris, debts are evidences of style and fashion, in the provinces they are infamous, and every one talks of them. The dandy of Paris also enjoys a second youth, by the assistances of the tailor, the hairdresser, and the dentist, the Provincial beau is an ex-dandy at thirty. Then it is that he feels anxious for a social position, becomes tired of a life of uselessness, and is awakened to a sense of the realities about him. He then listens to paternal remonstrance, determines on a line of study, or becomes a merchant: perhaps he marries, and with a handsome fortune, and an ugly wife, becomes a respectable member of society; but, alas! the rose tint of life is brushed away for ever, and ” the butterfly has become a chrysalis !”

As no animal in the world, however inferior, is without its use, so the Parisian dandy, even by his vanities and affectations, produces good. His artificial wants and ever-changing tastes stimulate ingenuity, and increase trade; his love of luxury induces the practice of art, and repays its exercise; so that from the tailor’s designer, who every week presents him with fresh patterns for the embroidery of his cashmere waistcoats, to the artist who makes copies for him of Vernet’s battle scenes at Versailles,, all branches of art and trade are indebted to the dandy, as well as the poor little violet gatherer, who depends upon him for her daily gâteau.

The universal fancy and demand that obtains in France for trifling articles of taste, for bijouterie, books, prints, casts, and flowers, is one of the great reasons why so little absolute poverty exists there. The merest dauber who can put a horse on canvass is sure to sell it; the man under the arch on the Quai de Voltaire, with all his portfolios, full of artists’ studies, at one sous each, is never without his cutlet, his tumbler of red wine, and his café au lait; and the lad who day by day stands beside his copies from the antique, at the corner of the Rue Helder, is quite sure of a ride in the roundabout, and a chance in the lottery, at the next fête at St. Cloud. It is rare to see a beggar in the streets of Paris, but by no means rare to see the poorest classes among the working people in the cheerful enjoyment of luxuries and amusements that would appear far out of the reach of the artizan and labourer of other countries ; but we could yet wish, that the French could keep both the demand and the supply to their own side of the Channel, and that people who consider French dishes, French fashions, and French manufactures, as necessary to them as their daily bread, should go to Paris and seek them there.

We would like to see more of our own countrymen enjoying their cutlet and glass of ale, more of our own boys and women, with faces alive to pleasurable influences, instead of their coming upon us, as they now do, pinched with famine, and dulled by utter hopelessness. England has her dandies as well as France. “Why cannot they employ Manchester designers for their cashmeres, as well as those of Lyons ? English blocked beaver for their hats, as well as Paris velvet ? London sewn kid gloves, as well as those of the Rue Rivoli ?

Why must an English belle wear a dress of French silk, and a Parisian cashmere, while the famished weaver of Paisley or Spitalfields points to his gaunt wife, and hungry little ones, crying aloud for bread? Why does an English matron refuse to wear any but a French head-dress, or a Paris bonnet, while the young milliner of her own land is dropping by fever and consumption, from her cold, lone garret, to her early grave ?

Why does the admired beauty of our ball room find that she can dance only in a shoe exported from the magazines of the Rue de la Paix, while the stout journeyman of England, denied the work that would support his family, begs in the street, or pines in the workhouse ? And yet, all this is so. With superior materials, and abundant originality, taste, and ingenuity, were they but fostered by encouragement, the manufactures of England are despised, and her workmen left to starve. The brilliant shops which attract the eye, in all the great thoroughfares of London, owe their display to Parisian taste; while day by day, hundreds of men and women, English manufacturers and their wives, drag their weary and emaciated limbs along the splendid pavement that fronts these shops, craving from the chance charity of the passer-by the morsel otherwise denied them. Alas, alas! gaunt spectres, your misery is but hourly on the increase, until the sons and daughters of England can be made to feel and to sympathise in your woes ;, when crying ” hold, enough !” to foreign produce, they shall no longer despise the rich silk, or the beautifully designed cashmere, which gives life and bread to their starving countrymen.

The English dandy and coquette, the man of wealth and the dilettanti, have quite taste enough to foster taste in those who are required to minister industry and skill to their gratification, but they will not. The drawing room of an English lady displays scarcely less fancy for the trivial, the elegant, and the useless, than the boudoir of the ” Parisienne,” but the decorations of the last are native, of the first, foreign, a wide difference as far as the condition of those around her is concerned. And so it is in all things. The dandy of Paris and the dandy of England alike have their tables crowded with collections of choice prints, of beautiful lithographs ;, but while a few rare copies of Cooper and Landseer are to be seen in Paris, at shops such as Giraux’s, most frequented by the English, who in England, if they purchase at all, ever think of any thing but French lithographs, wherewith to fill their portfolios and adorn their tables ?

Every thing is the same, our very dinner table responds to the universal cry for continental luxuries. Who now, that pretends to give a dinner at all, even in the smaller streets running out of Bedford Square, but would feel, that although they cannot entertain a French cook at a hundred guineas a year, yet that they must abandon all ideas of gentility, unless their veal is piqued, and their apple tart faced by a ” Faisan aux Truffles” from Fortnum and Mason’s ? Who would dream of ” double Gloucester,” or even ” Stilton,” when “Gruyere” and “Parmesan” are for sale in the Haymarket ? And who would give port and sherry, the good old honest wines of our forefathers, when cheap claret and questionable hock are in the market?

And what is the reason of all this ? Are foreign, but particularly French, goods, better than the English ? Certainly not,, your shoes from the Rue de la Paix wear out, and are out of shape, in half the time that the English are. The French silks fade sooner than the Spitalfields, the Lyons cashmeres will not outlast a Paisley; the dresses made for a six weeks’ fashion fall to pieces before their time, and where then, one may ask, of one who knows France well, is the superiority of their goods ? Nowhere, dear reader, but in name, and the fashion of a name; and for this, we English, we who pride ourselves more than any nation of the world upon our patriotism, are content that our manufacturers and working classes should starve, should beg, should go from their homes and families to workhouses, should live in misery, and die of famine, that we, the better classes, the called of God as their protectors, should deck us with French fashions, and humble our land to the supremacy of Parisian taste !

Had we any self-esteem left among us, or were there any general knowledge of how the case stands, one would think that this of itself were a cure for the great evil; the French believe us to be their absolute serfs in all matters of taste ; the very shopkeepers remind their English customer, that his country is indebted to Paris for her patterns and designs, and that, were this good withdrawn, they would fall back to what they were in matters of costume, i. e., little better than a set of painted islanders ; while, if it be desired to throw a Parisian article out of vogue, it is enough to say, ” Oh ! this is a favourite with the English.” Surely, knowing these things as facts, our self-esteem should be enough to save our starving brethren, beings “bound to the same grave,” as Mr. Dickens
says in his right wholesome Carol, but whom fashion, and the will of their fellow men, hurry there before their time ; and though we see the dandy and the coquette of Paris full of vain thoughts, and artificial wants, yet these very follies benefit their country ; and even folly assumes the air of virtue, when she speaks mercy to the suffering, and feeds the hungry with bread.

I begun this paper in trifling, I have ended it in earnest; will it be the less acceptable? I trust not, for I have spoken the truth according to my experiences ; and as we all know in life, how seriousness, and even deeper good than that, sometimes follows mirth and laughter, sending us reflecting homeward,, so I hope that my light-hearted “Grisette,” my fascinating ” Coquette,” and my “Parisian Beau,” will not be liked the less for their suggesting, as they have done, a word of wisdom in due season.

From: The Illuminated magazine. Vol. II. (1844)