But for my consciousness of power as a coxcomb of genius, I should probably have attempted some other means of obtaining renown: for I saw clearly that the Kingdom of Dandyism was in its Lower Empire. As coming events cast their shadows before them, one felt already, even in the early part of the reign of George IV. a weary chill of mind and body, foreshowing the age of utilitarianism. The ornamental was about to pass away, — the graceful to evaporate. — As the decay of all religions is perceptible in their recourse to the accessories of materialism, — as Polytheism, when it found itself derided, besought aid from the chisel of Phidias, and Catholicism, when bereft of its divine influence, strove to renovate its altars by the pencil of Raphael,— so Dandyism, at its last gasp, called in the aid of Lawrence !—
Ten years later, and I should have been born too late for my vocation. — I can fairly say that I sunned myself in the latest rays of the declining star of Coxcombry ! —

(…)

The creation of Dandyism — (pshaw not, ye critics! nor exclaim ” hold, enough !”—for the thing is obsolete, “et il n’y a rien de nouveau que ce qui est oublié!”); the creation, I say of Dandyism afforded the first indication to the public, that, in spite of Stultz and Truefitt, the portraits of Sir Thomas and the certificates of Sir Henry, — the Prince was growing old ! — Had we written the word then, it must have been thus —, or, at worst, o—d; for no one presumed to approach more definitely that fatal hint. If, when Louis the Fourteenth attained his seventieth year, his courtiers defined soixante et dix ans as l’age de tout le monde, no one at Carlton House now presumed to be less than five-and-forty.

Nature, however, was no courtier. Nature began to hint that liqueurs were a less safe beverage than sherry, — that jollity was a plebeian effervescence, — wit a more princely thing than humour, — superciliousness than noise. — And, lo! dandyism “rose like an exhalation,” — stole in on tiptoe ; — and the vulgar began to record the prowesses of George Brummell, as they now enlarge upon the feats of Mehemet Ali.

It is all stupid and silly enough in the retrospection; and Brummell is, at present, only known to history as an adventurer who, having given the law to princes, eventually received it from a Juge de paix, and died a lunatic in a public hospital; just as, fifteen years ago, Napoleon was an adventurer who, having given the law to emperors, eventually received it from Sir Hudson Lowe, and died of the worries at St. Helena!

But the re-action has commenced. Napoleon is beginning to receive ample justice at the hands of a new generation; and our grandnephews will behold in George Brummell a great reformer, — a man who dared to be cleanly in the dirtiest of times, — a man who compelled gentlemen to quit the coach-box and assume a place in their own carriage, — a man who induced the ingenuous youth of Britain to prove their valour otherwise than by threshing superannuated watchmen, — a man, in short, who will survive for posterity as Charlemagne of the great empire of Clubs.

It would never surprise me to find the ashes of the great ex-dandy fetched home from Caen, as those of Napoleon have been from St. Helena, to be interred at the foot of the Duke of York’s column; on the identical spot where he initiated the Prince into the mysteries of Roman punch; the Sully of that modern Henri whose good-nature probably wished that all his subjects might have ” un turbot au pot.” No doubt that, like the great man of antiquity, George Brummell often threatened his ungrateful country that it “should not even possess his bones!” But flesh and blood are more susceptible in their generation, than the disembodied and enlightened ghost.

From: Catherine Gore: Cecil, or the Adventures of a Coxcomb. Vol. 1, 1841.