Perhaps we may be expected to say something of the dress of men of
fashion, as it is peculiar, and not less characteristic than their
manner. Their clothes, like their lives, are usually of a neutral tint;
staring colours they studiously eschew, and are never seen with
elaborate gradations of under waistcoats. They would as soon appear out
of doors _in cuerpo_, as in blue coats with gilt buttons, or braided
military frocks, or any dress smacking of the professional. When they
indulge in fancy colours and patterns, you will not fail to remark that
these are not worn, although imitated by others. The moment a dressy man
of fashion finds that any thing he has patronized gets abroad, he drops
the neckcloth or vest, or whatever it may be, and condemns the tailor as
an "unsafe" fellow. But it is not often that even the most dressy of our
men of fashion originate any thing _outré_, or likely to attract
attention; of late years their style has been plain, almost to
scrupulosity.
Notwithstanding that the man of fashion is plainly dressed, no more than
ordinary penetration is required to see that he is excellently well
dressed. His coat is plain, to be sure, much plainer than the coat of a
Jew-clothesman, having neither silk linings, nor embroidered
pocket-holes, nor cut velvet buttons, nor fur collar; but see how it
fits him--not like cast iron, nor like a wet sack, but as if he had been
born in it.
There is a harmony, a propriety in the coat of a man of fashion, an
unstudied ease, a graceful symmetry, a delicacy of expression, that has
always filled us with the profoundest admiration of the genius of the
artist; indeed, no ready money could purchase coats that we have
seen--coats that a real love of the subject, and working upon long
credit, for a high connexion, could alone have given to the
world--coats, not the dull conceptions of a geometric cutter,
spiritlessly outlined upon the shop-board by the crayon of a mercenary
foreman, but the fortunate creation of superior intelligence, boldly
executed in the happy moments of a generous enthusiasm!
Vain, very vain is it for the pretender to fashion to go swelling into
the _atelier_ of a first-rate coat architect, with his ready money in
his hand, to order such a coat! _Order_ such a coat, forsooth! order a
Raphael, a Michael Angelo, an epic poem. Such a coat--we say it with the
generous indignation of a free Briton--is one of the exclusive
privileges reserved, by unjust laws, to a selfish aristocracy!
The aristocratic trouser-cutter, too, deserves our unlimited
approbation. Nothing more distinguishes the nineteenth century, in which
those who can manage it have the happiness to live, than the precision
we have attained in trouser-cutting. While yet the barbarism of the age,
or poverty of customers, _vested_ the office of trouser-cutter and coat
architect in the same functionary, coats were without _soul_, and
"inexpressibles" inexpressibly bad, or, as Coleridge would have said,
"ridiculous exceedingly." In our day, on the contrary, we have attained
to such a pitch of excellence, that the trouser-cutter who fails to give
expression to his works, is hunted into the provinces, and condemned for
life to manufacture nether garments for clergymen and country gentlemen.
The results of the minute division of labour, to which so much of the
excellence of all that is excellent in London is mainly owing, is in
nothing more apparent than in that department of the fine arts which
people devoid of taste call fashionable tailoring. We have at the West
End fashionable _artistes_ in riding coats, in dress coats, in
cut-aways; one is superlative in a Taglioni, another devotes the powers
of his mind exclusively to the construction of a Chesterfield, a third
gives the best years of his life to the symmetrical beauty of a
barrel-trouser; from the united exertions of these, and a thousand other
men of taste and genius, is your indisputably-dressed man of fashion
turned out upon the town. Then there are constructors of Horse Guards'
and of Foot Guards' jacket, full and undress; the man who contrives
these would expire if desired to turn his attention to the coat of a
marching regiment; a hussar-pelisse-maker despises the hard, heavy style
of the cutters for the Royal Artillery, and so on. Volumes would not
shut if we were to fill them with the infinite variety of these
disguisers of that nakedness which formerly was our shame, but which
latterly, it would seem, has become our pride. With the exception of one
gentleman citywards, who has achieved an immortality in the article of
box-coats, every contriver of men of fashion, we mean in the tailoring,
which is the principal department, reside in the parish of St James's,
within easy reach of their distinguished patrons. These gentlemen have a
high and self-respecting idea of the nobleness and utility of their
vocation. A friend of ours, of whom we know no harm save that he pays
his tailors' bills, being one day afflicted with this unusual form of
insanity, desired the artist to deduct some odd shillings from his bill;
in a word, to make it pounds--"Excuse me, sir," said Snip, "but pray,
let _us_ not talk of pounds--pounds for tradesmen, if you please; but
artists, sir, _artists_ are always remunerated with guineas!"
To return to the outward and visible man of fashion, from whose
peculiarities our dissertation upon the sublime and beautiful in
tailoring has too long detained us. The same subdued expression of
elegance and ease that pervades the leading articles of his attire,
extends, without exception, to all the accessories; or if he is
deficient in aught, the accessorial _toggery_, such as hats, boots,
_choker_, gloves, are always carefully attended to; for it is in this
department that so distinguished a member of the detective police as
ourselves is always enabled to arrest disguised snobbery. You will never
see a man of fashion affect a Paget hat, for example, or a D'Orsayan
beaver: the former has a ridiculous exuberance of crown, the latter a by
no means allowable latitude of brim--besides, borrowing the fashion of a
hat, is with him what plagiarizing the interior furniture of the head is
with others. He considers stealing the idea of a hat low and vulgar, and
leaves the unworthy theft to be perpetrated by pretenders to fashion:
content with a hat that becomes him, he is careful never to be before or
behind the prevailing hat-intelligence of the time. Three hats your man
of fashion sedulously escheweth--a new hat, a shocking bad hat, and a
gossamer. As the song says, "when into a shop he goes" he never "buys a
four-and-nine," neither buyeth he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any of
the hats indebted for their glossy texture to the entrails of the silk
worm; he sporteth nothing below a two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and
putteth it not on his head until his valet, exposing it to a shower of
rain, has "taken the shine out of it."
In boots he is even more scrupulously attentive to what Philosopher
Square so appropriately called the fitness of things: his boots are
never square-toed, or round-toed, like the boots of people who think
their toes are in fashion. You see that they fit him, that they are of
the best material and make, and suitable to the season: you never see
him sport the Sunday patent-leathers of the "snob," who on week-a-days
proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny high-lows: you never see him shambling
along in boots a world too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled victim to
the malevolence of Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot has always been
attended to; he has worn well-fitting boots every day of his life, and
he walks as if he knew not whether he had boots on or not. As for
stocks, saving that he be a military man, he wears them not; they want
that easy negligence, attainable only by the graceful folds of a well
tied _choker_. You never see a man of fashion with his neck in the
pillory, and you hardly ever encounter a Cockney whose cervical
investment does not convey at once the idea of that obsolete punishment.
A gentleman never considers that his neck was given him to show off a
cataract of black satin upon, or as a post whereon to display
gold-threaded fabrics, of all the colours of the rainbow: sooner than
wear such things, he would willingly resign his neck to the embraces of
a halter. His study is to select a modest, unassuming _choker, fine_ if
you please, but without pretension as to pattern, and in colour
harmonizing with his residual _toggery_: this he ties with an easy,
unembarrassed air, so that he can conveniently look about him. Oxford
men, we have observed, tie chokers better than any others; but we do not
know whether there are exhibitions or scholarships for the encouragement
of this laudable faculty. At Cambridge (except Trinity) there is a
laxity in chokers, for which it is difficult to account, except upon the
principle that men there attend too closely to the mathematics; these,
as every body knows, are in their essence inimical to the higher
departments of the fine arts. There is no reason, however, why in this
important branch of learning, which, as we may say, comes home to the
bosom of every man, one Alma Mater should surpass another; since at both
the intellects of men are almost exclusively occupied for years in tying
their abominable white chokers, so as to look as like tavern waiters as
possible.
Another thing: if a gentleman sticks a pin in his choker, you may be
sure it has not a head as big as a potatoe, and is not a sort of Siamese
Twin pin, connected by a bit of chain, or an imitation precious stone,
or Mosaic gold concern. If he wears studs, they are plain, and have cost
not less at the least than five guineas the set. Neither does he ever
make a High Sheriff of himself, with chains dangling over the front of
his waistcoat, or little pistols, seals, or trinketry appearing below
his waistband, as much as to say, "_if you only knew what a watch I have
inside_!" Nor does he sport trumpery rings upon raw-boned fingers; if he
wears rings, you may depend upon it that they are of value, that they
are sparingly distributed, and that his hand is not a paw.
A man of fashion never wears Woodstock gloves, or gloves with double
stitches, or eighteen-penny imitation French kids: his gloves, like
himself and every thing about him, are the real thing. Dressy young men
of fashion sport primrose kids in the forenoon; and, although they take
care to avoid the appearance of snobbery by never wearing the same pair
a second day, yet, after all, primrose kids in the forenoon are not the
thing, not in keeping, not quiet enough: we therefore denounce primrose
kids, and desire to see no more of them.
If you are unfortunate enough to be acquainted with a snob, you need not
put yourself to the unnecessary expense of purchasing an almanac for the
ensuing year: your friend the snob will answer that useful purpose
completely to your satisfaction. For example, on Thursdays and Sundays
he shaves and puts on a clean shirt, which he exhibits as freely as
possible in honour of the event: Mondays and Fridays you will know by
the vegetating bristles of his chin, and the disappearance of the shirt
cuffs and collar. These are replaced on Tuesdays and Saturdays by
supplementary collar and cuffs, which, being white and starched, form a
pleasing contrast with that portion of the original _chemise_, vainly
attempted to be concealed behind the folds of a three-and-six-penny
stock. Wednesdays and Fridays you cannot mistake; your friend is then at
the dirtiest, and his beard at the longest, anticipating the half-weekly
wash and shave: on quarter-day, when he gets his salary, he goes to a
sixpenny barber and has his hair cut.
A gentleman, on the contrary, in addition to his other noble
inutilities, is useless as an almanac. He is never half shaven nor half
shorn: you never can tell when he has had his hair cut, nor has he his
clean-shirt days, and his days of foul linen. He is not merely outwardly
_propre_, but asperges his cuticle daily with "oriental scrupulosity:"
he is always and ever, in person, manner, dress, and deportment, the
same, and has never been other than he now appears.
You will say, perhaps, this is all very fine; but give me the money the
man of fashion has got, and I will be as much a man of fashion as he: I
will wear my clothes with the same ease, and be as free, unembarrassed,
_degagé_, as the veriest Bond Street lounger of them all. Friend, thou
mayest say so, or even think so, but I defy thee: snobbery, like murder,
will out; and, if you do not happen to be a gentleman born, we tell you
plainly you will never, by dint of expense in dress, succeed in "topping
the part."
We have been for many years deeply engaged in a philosophical enquiry
into the origin of the peculiar attributes characteristic of the man of
fashion. A work of such importance, however, we cannot think of giving
to the world, except in the appropriate envelope of a ponderous quarto:
just now, by way of whetting the appetite of expectation, we shall
merely observe, that, after much pondering, we have at last discovered
the secret of his wearing his garments "with a difference," or, more
properly, with an indifference, unattainable by others of the human
species. You will conjecture, haply, that it is because he and his
father before him have been from childhood accustomed to pay attention
to dress, and that habit has given them that air which the occasional
dresser can never hope to attain: or that, having the best _artistes_,
seconded by that beautiful division of labour of which we have spoken
heretofore, he can attain an evenness of costume, an undeviating
propriety of toggery--not at all: the whole secret consists in _never
paying, nor intending to pay, his tailor_!
Poor devils, who, under the Mosaic dispensation, contract for three
suits a-year, the old ones to be returned, and again made new; or those
who, struck with more than money madness, go to a tailor, cash in hand,
for the purpose of making an investment, are always accustomed to
consider a coat as a representative of so much money, transferred only
from the pocket to the back. Accordingly, they are continually labouring
under the depression of spirits arising from a sense of the possible
depreciation of such a valuable property. Visions of showers of rain,
and March dust, perpetually haunt their morbid imaginations. Greasy
collars, chalky seams, threadbare cuffs, (three warnings that the time
must come when that tunic, for which five pounds ten have been lost to
them and their heirs for ever, will be worth no more than a couple of
shillings to an old-clothesman in Holywell Street,) fill them, as they
walk along the Strand, with apprehensions of anticipated expenditure.
They walk circumspectly, lest a baker, sweep, or hodman, stumbling
against the coat, may deprive its wearer of what to him represents so
much ready money. These real and imaginary evils altogether prohibit the
proprietor of a paid-up coat wearing it with any degree of graceful
indifference.
But when a family of fashion, for generations, have not only never
thought of paying a tailor, but have considered taking up bills, which
the too confiding snip has discounted for them, as decidedly smacking of
the punctilious vulgarity of the tradesman; thus drawing down upon
themselves the vengeance of that most intolerant sect of Protestants,
the Notaries Public; when a young man of fashion, taught from earliest
infancy to regard tailors as a Chancellor of the Exchequer regards the
people at large, that is to say, as a class of animals created to be
victimized in every possible way, it is astonishing what a subtle grace
and indescribable expression are conveyed to coats which are sent home
to you for nothing, or, what amounts to exactly the same thing, which
you have not the most remote idea of paying for, _in secula seculorum_.
So far from caring whether it rains or snows, or whether the dust flies,
when you have got on one of these eleemosynary coats, you are rather
pleased than otherwise. There is a luxury in the idea that on the morrow
you will start fresh game, and victimize your tailor for another. The
innate cruelty of the human animal is gratified, and the idea of a
tailor's suffering is never conceived by a customer without involuntary
cachinnation. Not only is he denied the attribute of integral
manhood--which even a man-milliner by courtesy enjoys--but that
principle which induces a few men of enthusiastic temperament to pay
debts, is always held a fault when applied to the bills of tailors. And,
what is a curious and instructive fact in the natural history of London
fashionable tailors, and altogether unnoticed by the Rev. Leonard
Jenyns, in his _Manual of British Vertebrate Animals_, if you go to one
of these gentlemen, requesting him to "execute," and professing your
readiness to pay his bill on demand or delivery, he will be sure to give
your order to the most scurvy botch in his establishment, put in the
worst materials, and treat you altogether as a person utterly
unacquainted with the usages of polite society. But if, on the contrary,
you are recommended to him by Lord Fly-by-night, of Denman Priory--if
you give a thundering order, and, instead of offering to pay for it,
pull out a parcel of bill-stamps, and _promise_ fifty per cent for a few
hundreds down, you will be surprised to observe what delight will
express itself in the radiant countenance of your victim: visions of
cent per cent, ghosts of post-obits, dreams of bonds with penalties, and
all those various shapes in which security delights to involve the
extravagant, rise flatteringly before the inward eye of the man of
shreds and patches. By these transactions with the great, he becomes
more and more a man, less and less a tailor; instead of cutting patterns
and taking measures, he flings the tailoring to his foreman, becoming
first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer to peers of
the realm.
With a few more of the less important distinctive peculiarities of the
gentleman of fashion, we may dismiss this portion of our subject. A
gentleman never affects military air or costume if he is not a military
man, and even then avoids professional rigidity and swagger as much as
possible; he never sports spurs or a riding-whip, except when he is upon
horseback, contrary to the rule observed by his antagonist the snob, who
always sports spurs and riding-whip, but who never mounts higher than a
threepenny stride on a Hampstead donkey. Nor does a gentleman ever wear
a _moustache_, unless he belongs to one of the regiments of hussars, or
the household cavalry, who alone are ordered to display that ornamental
exuberance. Foreigners, military or non-military, are recognized as
wearing hair on the upper lip with propriety, as is the custom of their
country. But no gentleman here thinks of such a thing, any more than he
would think of sporting the uniform of the Tenth Hussars.
There is an affectation among the vulgar clever, of wearing the
_moustache_, which they clip and cut _à la Vandyk_: this is useful, as
affording a ready means of distinguishing between a man of talent and an
ass--the former, trusting to his head, goes clean shaved, and looks like
an Englishman: the latter, whose strength lies altogether in his hair,
exhausts the power of Macassar in endeavouring to make himself as like
an ourang-outang as possible.
Another thing must be observed by all who would successfully ape the
gentleman: never to smoke cigars in the street in mid-day. No better
sign can you have than this of a fellow reckless of decency and
behaviour: a gentleman smokes, if he smokes at all, where he offends not
the olfactories of the passers-by. Nothing, he is aware, approaches more
nearly the most offensive personal insult, than to compel ladies and
gentlemen to inhale, after you, the ejected fragrance of your penny Cuba
or your three-halfpenny mild Havannah.
In the cities of Germany, where the population almost to a man inhale
the fumes of tobacco, street smoking is very properly prohibited; for
however agreeable may be the sedative influence of the Virginian weed
when inspired from your own manufactory, nothing assuredly is more
disgusting than inhalation of tobacco smoke at second-hand.
Your undoubted man of fashion, like other animals, has his peculiar
_habitat_: you never see him promenading in Regent Street between the
hours of three and five in the afternoon, nor by any chance does he
venture into the Quadrant: east of Temple Bar he is never seen except on
business, and then, never on foot: if he lounges any where, it is in
Bond Street, or about the clubs of St James's.