Sir,

Ten years ago I quitted dear little Ireland, of which, I must premise, I am a native. At that time, if we had a mind to let you know that any thing was excellent in its kind, we told you it was the dandy. The term, however, was more particularly applied to our sex: an honest fellow, whose heart and purse were open to distress, who never shirked a friend in the day of adversity, nor humbled himself to an insolent upstart; who did not want spirit to take his own part, his friend’s, or his mistress’s, was, especially if he knew how to give a proper circulation to the bottle after dinner, a complete Dandy. I must observe, however, that we only used the word when we wanted to pronounce a panegyric; it was not a term intended to designate any class of men, but applied indiscriminately to all honest, worthy fellows.

After ten years spent abroad, I arrived a short time ago in London. A friend of mine asked me to dinner, and in his note of invitation apologized for having nobody to meet me but a couple of Dandies. “Sure,” says I to myself, “its joking he must be, for what better company could a man have?” and I went to his apartments, anticipating the most social meal I had had for some time.

You may judge of my disappointment, sir, when, instead of the honest, hearty fellows I expected to meet, I was introduced to a couple of things, whose appearance exhibited the most absurd and disgusting mixture of the sexes I ever saw in my life. One of them, a tall stout fellow of six feet, whom nature seemed to have intended for a chairman, had evidently penciled his eyebrows; he was rouged, too, to a nicety. The contrast between his feminine blush and his enormous whiskers was almost too much for my gravity. But even this animal offended my sight less than the other, who was a little shrivelled fellow, with a phiz which it would be a downright libel on an ourang-outang’s to compare to it. Picture it to yourself, Mr. Adviser, such a creature dressed in the utmost extreme of the Dandy mode: what little blood he had was forced into his face by a neck-cloth, or rather an enormous roll of muslin, tied so tight that it nearly strangled him. His stiff long stays, too, were laced with such torturing tightness, that he could hardly breathe.

While I sat gazing upon him in silent astonishment, he lisped out a complaint of the heat of the room, in a manner so disgustingly affected, that wishing to mortify him, I asked my friend, who is a bachelor, and in lodgings, whether he could get a smelling-bottle from his landlady, I was going to add, for the use of Mr. Marmoset, but the puppy hastily interrupted me by saying he had one at my service.

“At my service?” cried I, “a smelling-bottle at the service of an Irishman! Why, zounds, sir, what do you mean ?”, “Nothing at all, sir,” stammered the poor pusillanimous animal, in a tone so full of terror, that contempt got the better: of indignation, and I thought it was not worth my while to throw away my time in caning the fellow; but I soon found that he had not been making a joke of me, for he actually took out a smelling-bottle, and talked of his lassitude, his low spirits, his nervous affections, and a long et-cetera of imaginary disorders, which a virgin of fifty-five would hardly have believed herself troubled with. Nevertheless, in spite of his nerves and his long stays, he eat voraciously, and found fault with almost every thing at table, under pretence of informing my friend how each dish might he improved. I asked him whether he had not studied under a French cook; and he was stupid enough to take me seriously, and replied, that he had taken a few lessons in Paris from a professor of considerable science, and that, for the time, he was thought to have made wonderful progress.

Such, Mr. Adviser, is the only one of the Dandy genus whom I have ever had an opportunity of observing minutely, for the other scarcely spoke at all. I am told that Mr. Marmoset is not a whit more ridiculous than the rest of his tribe, and that these animals are now very common.

I was boasting the other night, that the Irish soil was as free from creatures of this description as from all noxious reptiles; but, to my astonishment, an English gentleman, who has lately returned from Dublin, asserted, that Dandyism had made some progress there. As the man is worth powder and ball, I intimated to him my wish to convince him of his error by exchanging shots with him the next morning. You must admit, that nothing could be more civil and reasonable than this proposal on my part: nevertheless, he has refused to accede to it, and it is on this point that I want your advice. My gentleman insists that I shall go and take a survey of our metropolis as it now is, and that if I do not find any symptoms of Dandyism, he will beg my pardon; but if I do, I must acknowledge myself in the wrong. Now the fact is, that I never was in the wrong, at least I never would acknowledge myself so in my life, and I should be more loth to do it upon this occasion than on any Other; far, after all, I think a man should be as blind to the faults of his country as to those of his wife, and if he sees them ever so plainly, he should not perceive them at all. Besides, if there really should be any truth in the assertion, I must be in purgatory while I was ascertaining the fact, for I could no more refrain from knocking an Irish Dandy down, than I could from taking a parting bottle with my friend, or making love to every pretty woman I meet; and you must allow, that it would not be very agreeable, after an absence of ten years, to go home only to quarrel. If the man was not so plaguy unreasonable, the matter might soon, be settled to both our satisfactions; for I am so good a marksman, that I could disable him in a trice, without hurting him at all: but as it is, I do not know how to manage. If you would favour me with a meeting, we might perhaps be able to arrange the matter over a bottle of claret, and you would eternally oblige your obedient servant,

O’SHAMROCK.

Mr. O’Shamrock is heartily welcome to my advice, though I cannot have the pleasure of giving it personally. I counsel him to return immediately to the Emerald Isle, for I am convinced that he need not be at all afraid of compromising the honour of his country by investigating the matter. An Irishman may be a coxcomb, but he can never be a Dandy ; his native abhorrence of restraint is too great, his sense of the ridiculous is too keen, and his devotion to the fair sex too ardent, to permit him to sink into the non-descript character which Mr. O’Shamrock describes ; a character which, after all, is not so common here as the light writers of the day would make us believe, and which is only to be found among the half-souled and half-witted.

From: Repository of arts, literature, fashions &c. Vol. 7, No. 39. March 1, 1819.