How very delightful Grego's drawings are! For all their mad perspective
and crude colour, they have indeed the sentiment of style, and they
reveal, with surer delicacy than does any other record, the spirit of
Mr. Brummell's day. Grego guides me, as Virgil Dante, through all
the mysteries of that other world. He shows me those stiff-necked,
over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, drinking Burgundy in the Café des
Milles Colonnes or riding through the village of Newmarket upon their
fat cobs or gambling at Crockford's. Grego's Green Room of the Opera
House always delights me. The formal way in which Mdlle. Mercandotti is
standing upon one leg for the pleasure of Lord Fife and Mr. Ball Hughes;
the grave regard directed by Lord Petersham towards that pretty little
maid-a-mischief who is risking her rouge beneath the chandelier; the
unbridled decorum of Mdlle. Hullin and the decorous debauchery of Prince
Esterhazy in the distance, make altogether a quite enchanting picture.
But, of the whole series, the most illuminative picture is certainly the
Ball at Almack's. In the foreground stand two little figures, beneath
whom, on the nether margin, are inscribed those splendid words, Beau
Brummell in Deep Conversation with the Duchess of Rutland. The Duchess
is a girl in pink, with a great wedge-comb erect among her ringlets, the
Beau très dégagé, his head averse, his chin most supercilious upon his
stock, one foot advanced, the gloved fingers of one hand caught lightly
in his waistcoat; in fact, the very deuce of a pose.
In this, as in all known images of the Beau, we are struck by the utter
simplicity of his attire. The 'countless rings' affected by D'Orsay, the
many little golden chains, 'every one of them slighter than a cobweb,'
that Disraeli loved to insinuate from one pocket to another of his vest,
would have seemed vulgar to Mr. Brummell. For is it not to his fine
scorn of accessories that we may trace that first aim of modern
dandyism, the production of the supreme effect through means the
least extravagant? In certain congruities of dark cloth, in the rigid
perfection of his linen, in the symmetry of his glove with his hand, lay
the secret of Mr. Brummell's miracles. He was ever most economical, most
scrupulous of means. Treatment was everything with him. Even foolish
Grace and foolish Philip Wharton, in their book about the beaux and
wits of this period, speak of his dressing-room as 'a studio in which
he daily composed that elaborate portrait of himself which was to be
exhibited for a few hours in the clubrooms of the town.' Mr. Brummell
was, indeed, in the utmost sense of the word, an artist. No poet nor
cook nor sculptor, ever bore that title more worthily than he.
And really, outside his art, Mr. Brummell had a personality of almost
Balzacian insignificance. There have been dandies, like D'Orsay, who
were nearly painters; painters, like Mr. Whistler, who wished to be
dandies; dandies, like Disraeli, who afterwards followed some less
arduous calling. I fancy Mr. Brummell was a dandy, nothing but a dandy,
from his cradle to that fearful day when he lost his figure and had to
flee the country, even to that distant day when he died, a broken exile,
in the arms of two religieuses. At Eton, no boy was so successful as
he in avoiding that strict alternative of study and athletics which
we force upon our youth. He once terrified a master, named Parker,
by asserting that he thought cricket 'foolish.' Another time, after
listening to a reprimand from the headmaster, he twitted that learned
man with the asymmetry of his neckcloth. Even in Oriel he could see
little charm, and was glad to leave it, at the end of his first year,
for a commission in the Tenth Hussars. Crack though the regiment
was--indeed, all the commissions were granted by the Regent
himself--young Mr. Brummell could not bear to see all his
brother-officers in clothes exactly like his own; was quite as deeply
annoyed as would be some god, suddenly entering a restaurant of many
mirrors. One day, he rode upon parade in a pale blue tunic, with
silver epaulettes. The Colonel, apologising for the narrow system which
compelled him to so painful a duty, asked him to leave the parade. The
Beau saluted, trotted back to quarters and, that afternoon, sent in his
papers. Henceforth he lived freely as a fop, in his maturity, should.
His début in the town was brilliant and delightful. Tales of his
elegance had won for him there a precedent fame. He was reputed rich.
It was known that the Regent desired his acquaintance. And thus, Fortune
speeding the wheels of his cabriolet and Fashion running to meet him
with smiles and roses in St. James's, he might well, had he been worldly
or a weakling, have yielded his soul to the polite follies. But he
passed them by. Once he was settled in his suite, he never really
strayed from his toilet-table, save for a few brief hours. Thrice every
day of the year did he dress, and three hours were the average of his
every toilet, and other hours were spent in council with the cutter of
his coats or with the custodian of his wardrobe. A single, devoted life!
To White's, to routs, to races, he went, it is true, not reluctantly. He
was known to have played battledore and shuttlecock in a moonlit garden
with Mr. Previté and some other gentlemen. His elopement with a young
Countess from a ball at Lady Jersey's was quite notorious. It was even
whispered that he once, in the company of some friends, made as though
he would wrench the knocker off the door of some shop. But these things
he did, not, most certainly, for any exuberant love of life. Rather did
he regard them as healthful exercise of the body and a charm against
that dreaded corpulency which, in the end, caused his downfall. Some
recreation from his work even the most strenuous artist must have; and
Mr. Brummell naturally sought his in that exalted sphere whose modish
elegance accorded best with his temperament, the sphere of le plus beau
monde. General Bucknall used to growl, from the window of the Guards'
Club, that such a fellow was only fit to associate with tailors. But
that was an old soldier's fallacy. The proper associates of an artist
are they who practise his own art rather than they who--however
honourably--do but cater for its practice. For the rest, I am sure that
Mr. Brummell was no lackey, as they have suggested. He wished merely to
be seen by those who were best qualified to appreciate the splendour of
his achievements. Shall not the painter show his work in galleries, the
poet flit down Paternoster Row? Of rank, for its own sake, Mr. Brummell
had no love. He patronised all his patrons. Even to the Regent his
attitude was always that of a master in an art to one who is sincerely
willing and anxious to learn from him.
Indeed, English society is always ruled by a dandy, and the more
absolutely ruled the greater that dandy be. For dandyism, the perfect
flower of outward elegance, is the ideal it is always striving to
realise in its own rather incoherent way. But there is no reason why
dandyism should be confused, as it has been by nearly all writers, with
mere social life. Its contact with social life is, indeed, but one of
the accidents of an art. Its influence, like the scent of a flower, is
diffused unconsciously. It has its own aims and laws, and knows none
other. And the only person who ever fully acknowledged this truth
in aesthetics is, of all persons most unlikely, the author of Sartor
Resartus. That any one who dressed so very badly as did Thomas Carlyle
should have tried to construct a philosophy of clothes has always seemed
to me one of the most pathetic things in literature. He in the Temple
of Vestments! Why sought he to intrude, another Clodius, upon those
mysteries and light his pipe from those ardent censers? What were his
hobnails that they should mar the pavement of that delicate Temple? Yet,
for that he betrayed one secret rightly heard there, will I pardon his
sacrilege. 'A dandy,' he cried through the mask of Teufelsdröck, 'is a
clothes-wearing man, a man whose trade, office, and existence consists
in the wearing of clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse,
and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of
clothes wisely and well.' Those are true words. They are, perhaps, the
only true words in Sartor Resartus. And I speak with some authority.
For I found the key to that empty book, long ago, in the lock of the
author's empty wardrobe. His hat, that is still preserved in Chelsea,
formed an important clue.
But (behold!) as we repeat the true words of Teufelsdröck, there comes
Monsieur Barbey D'Aurevilly, that gentle moqueur, drawling, with a wave
of his hand, 'Les esprits qui ne voient pas les choses que par leur plus
petit côté, ont imaginé que le Dandysme était surtout l'art de la mise,
une heureuse et audacieuse dictature en fait de toilette et d'élégance
extérieure. Très-certainement c'est cela aussi, mais c'est bien
d'avantage. Le Dandysme est toute une manière d'être et l'on n'est
pas que par la côté matériellement visible. C'est une manière d'être
entièrement composée de nuances, comme il arrive toujours dans les
sociétés très-vieilles et très-civilisées.' It is a pleasure to argue
with so suave a subtlist, and we say to him that this comprehensive
definition does not please us. We say we think he errs.
Not that Monsieur's analysis of the dandiacal mind is worthless by any
means. Nor, when he declares that George Brummell was the supreme king
of the dandies and fut le dandysme même, can I but piously lay one
hand upon the brim of my hat, the other upon my heart. But it is as an
artist, and for his supremacy in the art of costume, and for all he did
to gain the recognition of costume as in itself an art, and for that
superb taste and subtle simplicity of mode whereby he was able to expel,
at length, the Byzantine spirit of exuberance which had possessed St.
James's and wherefore he is justly called the Father of Modern Costume,
that I do most deeply revere him. It is not a little strange that
Monsieur D'Aurevilly, the biographer who, in many ways, does seem most
perfectly to have understood Mr. Brummell, should belittle to a mere
phase that which was indeed the very core of his existence. To analyse
the temperament of a great artist and then to declare that his art was
but a part--a little part--of his temperament, is a foolish proceeding.
It is as though a man should say that he finds, on analysis, that
gunpowder is composed of potassium chloride (let me say), nitrate
and power of explosion. Dandyism is ever the outcome of a carefully
cultivated temperament, not part of the temperament itself. That manière
d'être, entièrement composée de nuances, was not more, as the writer
seems to have supposed, than attributory to Mr. Brummell's art. Nor is
it even peculiar to dandies. All delicate spirits, to whatever art they
turn, even if they turn to no art, assume an oblique attitude towards
life. Of all dandies, Mr. Brummell did most steadfastly maintain this
attitude. Like the single-minded artist that he was, he turned full and
square towards his art and looked life straight in the face out of the
corners of his eyes.
It is not hard to see how, in the effort to give Mr. Brummell his due
place in history, Monsieur D'Aurevilly came to grief. It is but strange
that he should have fallen into a rather obvious trap. Surely he should
have perceived that, so long as Civilisation compels her children to
wear clothes, the thoughtless multitude will never acknowledge dandyism
to be an art. If considerations of modesty or hygiene compelled every
one to stain canvas or chip marble every morning, painting and sculpture
would in like manner be despised. Now, as these considerations do compel
every one to envelop himself in things made of cloth and linen, this
common duty is confounded with that fair procedure, elaborate of many
thoughts, in whose accord the fop accomplishes his toilet, each morning
afresh, Aurora speeding on to gild his mirror. Not until nudity be
popular will the art of costume be really acknowledged. Nor even then
will it be approved. Communities are ever jealous (quite naturally) of
the artist who works for his own pleasure, not for theirs--more jealous
by far of him whose energy is spent only upon the glorification of
himself alone. Carlyle speaks of dandyism as a survival of 'the primeval
superstition, self-worship.' 'La vanité,' are almost the first words of
Monsieur D'Aurevilly, 'c'est un sentiment contre lequel tout le monde
est impitoyable.' Few remember that the dandy's vanity is far different
from the crude conceit of the merely handsome man. Dandyism is, after
all, one of the decorative arts. A fine ground to work upon is its first
postulate. And the dandy cares for his physical endowments only in so
far as they are susceptible of fine results. They are just so much to
him as to the decorative artist is inilluminate parchment, the form of a
white vase or the surface of a wall where frescoes shall be.
Consider the words of Count D'Orsay, spoken on the eve of some duel, 'We
are not fairly matched. If I were to wound him in the face it would not
matter; but if he were to wound me, ce serait vraiment dommage!' There
we have a pure example of a dandy's peculiar vanity--'It would be a real
pity!' They say that D'Orsay killed his man--no matter whom--in this
duel. He never should have gone out. Beau Brummell never risked his
dandyhood in these mean encounters. But D'Orsay was a wayward, excessive
creature, too fond of life and other follies to achieve real greatness.
The power of his predecessor, the Father of Modern Costume, is over us
yet. All that is left of D'Orsay's art is a waistcoat and a handful of
rings--vain relics of no more value for us than the fiddle of Paganini
or the mask of Menischus! I think that in Carolo's painting of him, we
can see the strength, that was the weakness, of le jeune Cupidon. His
fingers are closed upon his cane as upon a sword. There is mockery in
the inconstant eyes. And the lips, so used to close upon the wine-cup,
in laughter so often parted, they do not seem immobile, even now. Sad
that one so prodigally endowed as he was, with the three essentials of
a dandy--physical distinction, a sense of beauty and wealth or, if you
prefer the term, credit--should not have done greater things. Much of
his costume was merely showy or eccentric, without the rotund unity
of the perfect fop's. It had been well had he lacked that dash and
spontaneous gallantry that make him cut, it may be, a more attractive
figure than Beau Brummell. The youth of St. James's gave him a wonderful
welcome. The flight of Mr. Brummell had left them as sheep without a
shepherd. They had even cried out against the inscrutable decrees
of fashion and curtailed the height of their stocks. And (lo!) here,
ambling down the Mall with tasselled cane, laughing in the window at
White's or in Fop's Alley posturing, here, with the devil in his eyes
and all the graces at his elbow, was D'Orsay, the prince paramount who
should dominate London and should guard life from monotony by the daring
of his whims. He accepted so many engagements that he often dressed very
quickly both in the morning and at nightfall. His brilliant genius would
sometimes enable him to appear faultless, but at other times not even
his fine figure could quite dispel the shadow of a toilet too hastily
conceived. Before long he took that fatal step, his marriage with Lady
Harriet Gardiner. The marriage, as we all know, was not a happy one,
though the wedding was very pretty. It ruined the life of Lady Harriet
and of her mother, the Blessington. It won the poor Count further still
further from his art and sent him spinning here, there, and everywhere.
He was continually at Cleveden, or Belvoir, or Welbeck, laughing gaily
as he brought down our English partridges, or at Crockford's, smiling
as he swept up our English guineas from the board. Holker declares
that, excepting Mr. Turner, he was the finest equestrian in London and
describes how the mob would gather every morning round his door to see
him descend, insolent from his toilet, and mount and ride away. Indeed,
he surpassed us all in all the exercises of the body. He even essayed
preëminence in the arts (as if his own art were insufficient to his
vitality!) and was for ever penning impenuous verses for circulation
among his friends. There was no great harm in this, perhaps. Even the
handwriting of Mr. Brummell was not unknown in the albums. But D'Orsay's
painting of portraits is inexcusable. The aesthetic vision of a
dandy should be bounded by his own mirror. A few crayon sketches of
himself--dilectissimae imagines--are as much as he should ever do. That
D'Orsay's portraits, even his much-approved portrait of the Duke of
Wellington, are quite amateurish, is no excuse. It is the process
of painting which is repellent; to force from little tubes of lead a
glutinous flamboyance and to defile, with the hair of a camel therein
steeped, taut canvas, is hardly the diversion for a gentleman; and to
have done all this for a man who was admittedly a field-marshal....
I have often thought that this selfish concentration, which is a part
of dandyism, is also a symbol of that einsamkeit felt in greater or less
degree by the practitioners of every art. But, curiously enough, the
very unity of his mind with the ground he works on exposes the dandy to
the influence of the world. In one way dandyism is the least selfish
of all the arts. Musicians are seen and, except for a price, not heard.
Only for a price may you read what poets have written. All painters
are not so generous as Mr. Watts. But the dandy presents himself to the
nation whenever he sallies from his front door. Princes and peasants
alike may gaze upon his masterpieces. Now, any art which is pursued
directly under the eye of the public is always far more amenable
to fashion than is an art with which the public is but vicariously
concerned. Those standards to which artists have gradually accustomed it
the public will not see lightly set at naught. Very rigid, for example,
are the traditions of the theatre. If my brother were to declaim his
lines at the Haymarket in the florotund manner of Macready, what a row
there would be in the gallery! It is only by the impalpable process of
evolution that change comes to the theatre. Likewise in the sphere
of costume no swift rebellion can succeed, as was exemplified by the
Prince's effort to revive knee-breeches. Had his Royal Highness elected,
in his wisdom, to wear tight trousers strapped under his boots,
'smalls' might, in their turn, have reappeared, and at length--who
knows?--knee-breeches. It is only by the trifling addition or
elimination, modification or extension, made by this or that dandy and
copied by the rest, that the mode proceeds. The young dandy will find
certain laws to which he must conform. If he outrage them he will be
hooted by the urchins of the street, not unjustly, for he will have
outraged the slowly constructed laws of artists who have preceded him.
Let him reflect that fashion is no bondage imposed by alien hands, but
the last wisdom of his own kind, and that true dandyism is the result of
an artistic temperament working upon a fine body within the wide limits
of fashion. Through this habit of conformity, which it inculcates, the
army has given us nearly all our finest dandies, from Alcibiades to
Colonel Br*b*z*n de nos jours. Even Mr. Brummell, though he defied his
Colonel, must have owed some of his success to the military spirit. Any
parent intending his son to be a dandy will do well to send him first
into the army, there to learn humility, as did his archetype, Apollo, in
the house of Admetus. A sojourn at one of the Public Schools is also to
be commended. The University it were well to avoid.
Of course, the dandy, like any other artist, has moments when his own
period, palling, inclines him to antique modes. A fellow-student once
told me that, after a long vacation spent in touch with modern life, he
had hammered at the little gate of Merton and felt of a sudden his hat
assume plumes and an expansive curl, the impress of a ruff about his
neck, the dangle of a cloak and a sword. I, too, have my Eliza-bethan,
my Caroline moments. I have gone to bed Georgian and awoken Early
Victorian. Even savagery has charmed me. And at such times I have often
wished I could find in my wardrobe suitable costumes. But these modish
regrets are sterile, after all, and comprimend. What boots it to defy
the conventions of our time? The dandy is the 'child of his age,'
and his best work must be produced in accord with the age's natural
influence. The true dandy must always love contemporary costume. In this
age, as in all precedent ages, it is only the tasteless who cavil, being
impotent to win from it fair results. How futile their voices are!
The costume of the nineteenth century, as shadowed for us first by
Mr. Brummell, so quiet, so reasonable, and, I say emphatically, so
beautiful; free from folly or affectation, yet susceptible to exquisite
ordering; plastic, austere, economical, may not be ignored. I spoke of
the doom of swift rebellions, but I doubt even if any soever gradual
evolution will lead us astray from the general precepts of Mr.
Brummell's code. At every step in the progress of democracy those
precepts will be strengthened. Every day their fashion is more secure,
corroborate. They are acknowledged by the world. The barbarous costumes
that in bygone days were designed by class-hatred, or hatred of race,
are dying, very surely dying. The costermonger with his pearl-emblazoned
coat has been driven even from that Variety Stage, whereon he sought
a desperate sanctuary. The clinquant corslet of the Swiss girl just
survives at bals costumés. I am told that the kilt is now confined
entirely to certain of the soldiery and to a small cult of Scotch
Archaïcists. I have seen men flock from the boulevards of one capital
and from the avenues of another to be clad in Conduit Street. Even
into Oxford, that curious little city, where nothing is ever born nor
anything ever quite dies, the force of the movement has penetrated,
insomuch that tasselled cap and gown of degree are rarely seen in the
streets or colleges. In a place which was until recent times scarcely
less remote, Japan, the white and scarlet gardens are trod by men who
are shod in boots like our own, who walk--rather strangely still--in
close-cut cloth of little colour, and stop each other from time to time,
laughing to show how that they too can furl an umbrella after the manner
of real Europeans.
It is very nice, this universal acquiescence in the dress we have
designed, but, if we reflect, not wonderful. There are three apparent
reasons, and one of them is aesthetic. So to clothe the body that its
fineness be revealed and its meanness veiled has been the aesthetic aim
of all costume, but before our time the mean had never been struck. The
ancient Romans went too far. Muffled in the ponderous folds of a toga,
Adonis might pass for Punchinello, Punchinello for Adonis. The ancient
Britons, on the other hand, did not go far enough. And so it had been in
all ages down to that bright morning when Mr. Brummell, at his mirror,
conceived the notion of trousers and simple coats. Clad according to his
convention, the limbs of the weakling escape contempt, and the athlete
is unobtrusive, and all is well. But there is also a social reason for
the triumph of our costume--the reason of economy. That austerity, which
has rejected from its toilet silk and velvet and all but a few jewels,
has made more ample the wardrobes of Dives, and sent forth Irus nicely
dressed among his fellows. And lastly there is a reason of psychology,
most potent of all, perhaps. Is not the costume of today, with its
subtlety and sombre restraint, its quiet congruities of black and white
and grey, supremely apt a medium for the expression of modern emotion
and modern thought? That aptness, even alone, would explain its
triumph. Let us be glad that we have so easy, yet so delicate, a mode of
expression.
Yes! costume, dandiacal or not, is in the highest degree expressive,
nor is there any type it may not express. It enables us to classify any
'professional man' at a glance, be he lawyer, leech or what not. Still
more swift and obvious is its revelation of the work and the soul of
those who dress, whether naturally or for effect, without reference to
convention. The bowler of Mr. Jerome K. Jerome is a perfect preface
to all his works. The silk hat of Mr. Whistler is a real nocturne, his
linen a symphony en blanc majeur. To have seen Mr. Hall Caine is to have
read his soul. His flowing, formless cloak is as one of his own novels,
twenty-five editions latent in the folds of it. Melodrama crouches upon
the brim of his sombrero. His tie is a Publisher's Announcement. His
boots are Copyright. In his hand he holds the staff of The Family
Herald.
But the dandy, in no wise violating the laws of fashion, can make more
subtle symbols of his personality. More subtle these symbols are for
the very reason that they are effected within the restrictions which are
essential to an art. Chastened of all flamboyance, they are from most
men occult, obvious, it may be, only to other artists or even only to
him they symbolise. Nor will the dandy express merely a crude idea of
his personality, as does, for example, Mr. Hall Caine, dressing himself
always and exactly after one pattern. Every day as his mood has changed
since his last toilet, he will vary the colour, texture, form of his
costume. Fashion does not rob him of free will. It leaves him liberty of
all expression. Every day there is not one accessory, from the butterfly
that alights above his shirt front to the jewels planted in his linen,
that will not symbolise the mood that is in him or the occasion of the
coming day.
On this, the psychological side of foppery, I know not one so expert as
him whom, not greatly caring for contemporary names, I will call Mr. Le
V. No hero-worshipper am I, but I cannot write without enthusiasm of
his simple life. He has not spurred his mind to the quest of shadows
nor vexed his soul in the worship of any gods. No woman has wounded
his heart, though he has gazed gallantly into the eyes of many women,
intent, I fancy, upon his own miniature there. Nor is the incomparable
set of his trousers spoilt by the perching of any dear little child upon
his knee. And so, now that he is stricken with seventy years, he knows
none of the bitterness of eld, for his toilet-table is an imperishable
altar, his wardrobe a quiet nursery and very constant harem. Mr. Le V.
has many disciples, young men who look to him for guidance in all that
concerns costume, and each morning come, themselves tentatively clad, to
watch the perfect procedure of his toilet and learn invaluable lessons.
I myself, a lie-a-bed, often steal out, foregoing the best hours of the
day abed, that I may attend that levée. The rooms of the Master are in
St. James's Street, and perhaps it were well that I should give some
little record of them and of the manner of their use. In the first room
the Master sleeps. He is called by one of his valets, at seven o'clock,
to the second room, where he bathes, is shampooed, is manicured and, at
length, is enveloped in a dressing-gown of white wool. In the third
room is his breakfast upon a little table and his letters and some
newspapers. Leisurely he sips his chocolate, leisurely learns all that
need be known. With a cigarette he allows his temper, as informed by
the news and the weather and what not, to develop itself for the day.
At length, his mood suggests, imperceptibly, what colour, what form of
clothes he shall wear. He rings for his valet--'I will wear such and
such a coat, such and such a tie; my trousers shall be of this or that
tone; this or that jewel shall be radiant in the folds of my tie.' It is
generally near noon that he reaches the fourth room, the dressing-room.
The uninitiate can hardly realise how impressive is the ceremonial there
enacted. As I write, I can see, in memory, the whole scene--the room,
severely simple, with its lemon walls and deep wardrobes of white wood,
the young fops, philomathestatoi ton neaniskon, ranged upon a long
bench, rapt in wonder, and, in the middle, now sitting, now standing,
negligently, before a long mirror, with a valet at either elbow, Mr. Le
V., our cynosure. There is no haste, no faltering, when once the scheme
of the day's toilet has been set. It is a calm toilet. A flower does not
grow more calmly.
Any of us, any day, may see the gracious figure of Mr. Le V., as he
saunters down the slope of St. James's. Long may the sun irradiate the
surface of his tilted hat! It is comfortable to know that, though he
die to-morrow the world will not lack a most elaborate record of his
foppery. All his life he has kept or, rather, the current valets
have kept for him, a Journal de Toilette. Of this there are now fifty
volumes, each covering the space of a year. Yes, fifty springs have
filled his button-hole with their violets; the snow of fifty winters has
been less white than his linen; his boots have outshone fifty sequences
of summer suns, and the colours of all those autumns have faded in the
dry light of his apparel. The first page of each volume of the Journal
de Toilette bears the signature of Mr. Le V. and of his two valets. Of
the other pages each is given up, as in other diaries, to one day of
the year. In ruled spaces are recorded there the cut and texture of the
suit, the colour of the tie, the form of jewellery that was worn on the
day the page records. No detail is omitted and a separate space is set
aside for 'Remarks.' I remember that I once asked Mr. Le V., half
in jest, what he should wear on the Judgment Day. Seriously, and (I
fancied) with a note of pathos in his voice, he said to me, 'Young man,
you ask me to lay bare my soul to you. If I had been a saint I should
certainly wear a light suit, with a white waistcoat and a flower, but I
am no saint, sir, no saint.... I shall probably wear black trousers or
trousers of some very dark blue, and a frock-coat, tightly buttoned.'
Poor old Mr. Le V.! I think he need not fear. If there be a heaven for
the soul, there must be other heavens also, where the intellect and the
body shall be consummate. In both these heavens Mr. Le V. will have his
hierarchy. Of a life like his there can be no conclusion, really. Did
not even Matthew Arnold admit that conduct of a cane is three-fourths of
life?
Certainly Mr. Le V. is a great artist, and his supremacy is in the tact
with which he suits his toilet to his temperament. But the marvellous
affinity of a dandy's mood to his daily toilet is not merely that it
finds therein its perfect echo nor that it may even be, in reflex,
thereby accentuated or made less poignant. For some years I had felt
convinced that in a perfect dandy this affinity must reach a point, when
the costume itself, planned with the finest sensibility, would change
with the emotional changes of its wearer, automatically. But I felt that
here was one of those boundaries, where the fields of art align with the
fields of science, and I hardly dared to venture further. Moreover,
the theory was not easy to verify. I knew that, except in some great
emotional crisis, the costume could not palpably change its aspect.
Here was an impasse; for the perfect dandy--the Brummell, the Mr. Le
V.--cannot afford to indulge in any great emotion outside his art; like
Balzac, he has not time. The gods were good to me, however. One morning
near the end of last July, they decreed that I should pass through Half
Moon Street and meet there a friend who should ask me to go with him to
his club and watch for the results of the racing at Goodwood. This club
includes hardly any member who is not a devotee of the Turf, so that,
when we entered it, the cloak-room displayed long rows of unburdened
pegs--save where one hat shone. None but that illustrious dandy, Lord
X., wears quite so broad a brim as this hat had. I said that Lord X.
must be in the club.
'I conceive he is too nervous to be on the course,' my friend replied.
'They say he has plunged up to the hilt on to-day's running.'
His lordship was indeed there, fingering feverishly the sinuous ribands
of the tape-machine. I sat at a little distance, watching him. Two
results straggled forth within an hour, and, at the second of these,
I saw with wonder Lord X.'s linen actually flush for a moment and then
turn deadly pale. I looked again and saw that his boots had lost their
lustre. Drawing nearer, I found that grey hairs had begun to show
themselves in his raven coat. It was very painful and yet, to me, very
gratifying. In the cloak-room, when I went for my own hat and cane,
there was the hat with the broad brim, and (lo!) over its iron-blue
surface little furrows had been ploughed by Despair.
Rouen, 1896.