There is not, perhaps, in the whole catalogue of cant words which have either been adopted into, or made up expressly under peculiar circumstances for, the English language, one so frequently used, and so little understood, as the word Dandy. It is in every body’s mouth; but what does it mean ? it is the definition of an object, which none of the people who talk about it can positively define ; simply, because every individual who attempts to do so, erects in his or her own mind a standard of dandyism, precisely in relation to the sphere in which he or she respectively and individually moves.

There is no better mode of illustrating this position, and exhibiting the difficulty of coming to any thing like a fixed point of dandyism, than by quoting a portion of the prologue written by the elder Colman to Garrick’s two-act comedy of ” Bon Ton.” The various and varying opinions as to what Bon Ton really is, or rather was, described in the following lines, will serve admirably well to regulate the very vague and numerous popular ideas of what a ” dandy ” is in the present day.

The lines to which we beg attention are these:

” Fashion in ev’ry thing hears sov’reign sway,
And words and periwigs have had their day ;
Each have their purlieus too, are modest each,
In stated districts ; wigs as well as speech.
The Tyburn scratch, thick club, and Temple tie,
The parson’s feather-top, frizz’d broad and high,
The coachman’s cauliflower, tiers on tiers,
Differ not more from bags and brigadiers
Than great St. George’s, or St. James’s styles,
From the broad dialect of broad St. Giles.

” What is bon ton ?, ‘ Oh! dim it,’ cries a buck,
Half drunk, ‘ ask me, my dear, and you’re in luck:
Bon ton‘s to swear, break windows, beat the watch,
Kick up a row, drink healths, and roar a catch.
Keep it up, keep it up, let us take our swing,
Bon ton is life, my boys, bon ton‘s ‘ the thing.”

‘ Ah! I loves life, and all the joys it yields,’
Says Madame Fussok, fresh from Spitalfields ;
‘ Bone tone‘s the space ‘twixt Saturday and Monday,
And riding in a one-horse chay on Sunday ;
In drinking tea on summer afternoons
At Bagnigge Wells, with china and gilt spoons ;
‘Tis laying by our stuffs, red cloaks, and pattens,
To dance comtillions, dress’d in silks and satins.’

” ‘ Vulgar!’ cries Miss, ‘ observe in higher life,
The feather’d spinster, and three-feather’d wife ;
The club’s bon ton, bon ton‘s a constant trade
Of rout, festino, ball, and masquerade ;
‘Tis plays and puppet-shows., ‘Tis something new;
‘Tis losing thousands every night at loo.
Nature it thwarts ; it contradicts all reason ;
‘Tis stiff French stays, and fruit when out of season;
A rose, when half a guinea is the price,
A set of bays scarce bigger than six mice ;
To visit friends you never wish to see ;
Marriage ‘twixt those who never can agree ;
Old dowagers, dress’d, painted, patched, and curl’d,,
This is bon ton, and this, We call ‘ the World !’ ”

It is impossible, as we have already said, better or more forcibly to exemplify the different views taken of the same subject in different classes of society, than Colman the elder has done in this jeu d’esprit. Nor is the extract valueless on its own account, as exhibiting what really were the notions of bon ton in the best circles in the year 1775, when Garrick wrote the comedy, and Colman furnished the prologue.

But, putting the variety of opinions of the people of 1775 as to bon ton in juxtaposition with the opinions of the people of the present age as to dandyism, affords us the opportunity of pointing to the mistakes which so generally occur as to the genus Dandy.

Taking the subject from the base, beginning at the beginning, let us merely recall the reader’s attention to that best of all possible songs that ever was primarily written, and subsequently improved in an eminent degree by a modern Mantuan bard, ” The Dog’s-meat Man.”

In that poem, and poem it strongly claims and richly deserves to be called, the heroine, ill-used, deceived, and deluded as she eventually proves to be, when in the plenitude of her admiration, not only for the mental, but personal qualities of her beloved, she beholds him

” In a jacket and breeches of velveteen,”

is so completely overcome by the effect of his appearance in a garb to the attainment of which she herself had largely contributed, that she exclaims, with all the ” naturalness” of a mind pre-eminently distinguished by ” viridity,”

” My eyes! what a dandy of a dog’s-meat man !”

thereby convincing the auditor or the reasoner upon the matter, that to her, ” a jacket and breeches of velveteen,” were the attributes and essentials of dandyism; in her class, that was the standard, the point, the ultima Thule of tripe-ography.

Go a little higher. Among the dollymops and spider-brushers, a red-fisted, knock-kneed footboy, who curls his hair and frizzles it on the top of his head, and whose cotton stockings are not more than ordinarily splashed in running of errands, is held to be a dandy.

Higher still; in the steward’s or housekeeper’s room, the word scarcely occurs, because the progression of knowledge, and the upward march of intellect proscribes the use of a term, which seldom or never is heard reproachfully up-stairs.

The milliners’ shopboys, with bunches of ringlets under their hats, cocked on one side, dirty paste studs in the daily fronts of their weekly shirts; who, when the shutters are up, strut about with cigars in their mouths in the streets, and frequent what are called the saloons of the playhouses ; are ” regular dandies” in the eyes of their female friends , not in those of their casual associates in the lobby or oyster-shop, who, wretched as is their lot, have sense enough, poor creatures! to despise the ” things” to whom ” their poverty, but not their will,” drives them to be civil and engaging.

Then the city clerks, the juniors of the less prominent public departments, young gentlemen in solicitors’ offices, and medical students (peculiar in their style), are all dandies with the Misses of their own circle, and wear figured stocks, and double pins of mosaic gold, siamesed together by a little chain of some equally equivocal metal. They dance quadrilles fatiguingly, and galope as if they were going to fly out of the windows, amidst the tender glances of their admiring dowdies, who look forward to a three-and sixpenny ball in the very identical rooms, in which the assemblies called ” Almack’s” (for no other reason than that the rooms are the same), by virtue of the potent spells of the ladies-patronesses, become tabooed ground, the moment the banner of aristocracy is hoisted there.

Then there are military dandies, after their fashion, not guardsmen, life-guardsmen, blues, lancers, or any thing of the kind; but minor stars, who establish themselves like the late mischievous Smith of Halifax,

” A captain bold,
Who lived in country quarters.”

and flourish upon the reputation of a pair of French-polished boots in the provinces for six months;, leaving, wherever they go, with the most unqualified satisfaction, imputations of dandyism, cast upon them by the wistful spinsters of all ages, ranged against the walls of the low-ceiling’d drawing-rooms of the rural dowagers, who, in such communities, dispense black tea and buttered toast at seven o’clock in the afternoon, in the sanguine expectation of taking the expense out of the company by dint of a round game played with dingy cards, bearing on their backs certain marks ready for domestic recognition.

Then there are sadly vulgar dandies of a higher class, who entirely overdo the thing, overshoot the mark, and fail in their efforts to be any thing but objects of ridicule and contempt. But they are all called dandies; whereas, in point of fact, the dandy is a man who, dressing exceedingly well, without any thing particularly outré about him, is well informed, perfectly au fait of what is going on, accomplished, unaffected, gay, and agreeable ; whose appointments, whether of person or equipage, are resplendently fresh, and who, with all these attributes of wealth and taste about him, appears unconscious of any particular excellence or peculiarity in any point connected with himself. Moreover, of later years, the cultivation of taste and accomplishments in art and science, heretofore considered either unworthy the care, or beneath the notice, of the graceful and the gay, has been added to the pursuits of men, who are supposed by those who know literally nothing about them, to do nothing but lounge about, ” staring modest women out of countenance” (the universal charge of the oi polloi against dandyism), flirting with other men’s wives all day, talking nonsense all the evening, and gambling all night.

That, to a certain extent, some of these things do happen, perhaps there is no positively denying; but that what may really and truly be called a dandy, resembles, in the slightest degree, the wretched things who get a reputation amongst their own folks for dandyism, is most strenuously and earnestly to be denied.

From: Theodore Edward Hook: Fathers and Sons. Vol. 1. (1842)