FASHION.
Fashion is a tyranny founded only on assumption. The principle upon
which its influence rests, is one deeply based in the human heart, and
one which has long been observed and long practised upon in every
department of life. In the literary, the religious, and the political
world, it has been an assured and very profitable conclusion, that the
public,
“Like women, born to be controlled,
Stoops to the forward and the bold.”
“Qui sibi fidit, dux regit examen,” is a maxim of universal truth.
Pococurante, in Candide, was admired for despising Homer and Michel
Angelo; he would have gained little distinction by praising them. The
judicious application of this rule to society, is the origin of
fashion. In despair of attaining greatness of quality, it founds its
distinction only on peculiarity.
We have spoken elsewhere of those complex and very rare
accomplishments, whose union is requisite to constitute a gentleman. We
know of but one quality which is demanded for a man of
fashion,—impudence. An impudence (self-confidence “the wise it call”)
as impenetrable as the gates of Pandemonium—a coolness and
imperturbability of self-admiration, which the boaster in Spencer
might envy—a contempt of every decency, as such, and an utter
imperviousness to ridicule,—these are the amiable and dignified
qualities which serve to rear an empire over the weakness and cowardice
of men.
To define the character of that which is changing even while we survey
it, is a task of no small difficulty. We imagine that there is only one
means by which it may be always described, viz., that it consists in an
entire avoidance of all that is natural and rational. Its essence is
affectation; effeminacy takes the place of manliness; drawling
stupidity, of wit; stiffness and hauteur, of ease and civility; and
self-illustration, of a decent and respectful regard to others.
A man of fashion must never allow himself to be pleased. Nothing is
more decidedly _de mauvais ton_ than any expression of delight. He must
never laugh, nor, unless his penetration is very great, must he even
smile; for he might by ignorance smile at the wrong place or time. All
real emotion is to be avoided; all sympathy with the great or the
beautiful is to be shunned; yet the liveliest feeling may be exhibited
upon the death of a poodle-dog.
At the house of an acquaintance, he must never praise, nor even look,
at the pictures, the carpets, the curtains, or the ottomans, because if
he did, it might be supposed that he was not accustomed to such things.
About two years ago, it began to be considered improper to pay
compliments to women, because if they are not paid gracefully they are
awkward, and to pay them gracefully is difficult. At the present time
it is considered dangerous to a man’s pretensions to fashion, in
England, to speak to women at all. Women are voted bores, and are to be
treated with refined rudeness.
There is no possible system of manners that will serve to exhibit at
once the uncivility and the high refinement which should characterize
the man of fashion. He must therefore have no manners at all. He must
behave with tame and passive insolence, never breaking into active
effrontery excepting towards unprotected women and clergymen. Persons
of no importance he does not see, and is not conscious of their
existence; those who have the same standing, he treats with easy scorn,
and he acknowledges the distinction of superiors only by patronizing
and protecting them. A man of fashion does not despise wealth; he
cannot but think _that_ valuable which procures to others the honour of
paying for his suppers.
Fashion is so completely distinguished from good breeding, that it is
even opposed to it. It is in fact a system of refined vulgarity. What,
for example can be more vulgar than incessantly _talking_ about forms
and customs? About silver forks and French soup? A gentleman follows
these conventional habits; but he follows them as matters of course. He
looks upon them as the ordinary and essential customs of refined
society. French forks are to him things as indispensable as a
table-cloth; and he thinks it as unnecessary to insist upon the one as
upon the other. If he sees a person who eats with his knife, he
concludes that that person is ignorant of the usages of the world, but
he does not shriek and faint away like a Bond-street dandy. If he dines
at a table where there are no silver forks, he eats his dinner in
perfect propriety with steel, and exhibits, neither by manner nor by
speech, that he perceives any error. To be sure, he forms his own
opinion about the rank of his entertainer, but he leaves it to such
new-made gentry as Mr. Theodore Hook, in his vulgar fashionable novels,
to harangue about such delinquencies. The vulgarity of insisting upon
these matters is scarcely less offensive than the vulgarity of
neglecting them. Lady Frances Pelham is but one remove better than a
Brancton.
A man of fashion never goes to the theatre; he is waiting for the
opera.
He, of course, goes out of town in the summer; or, if he cannot afford
to do so, he merely closes his window-shutters, and appears to be gone.
Fashion makes all great things little, and all little things great.
It is commonly said, that it requires more wit to perform the part of
the fool in a farce than that of the master. Without intending any
offence to the fool by the comparison, we may remark, that qualities of
an elevated character are required for the support of the _role_ of a
man of fashion in the solemn farce of life. He must have invention, to
vary his absurdities when they cease to be striking; he must have wit
enough to obtain the reputation of a great deal more; and he must
possess tact to know when and where to crouch, and where and when to
insult.
Brummel, whose career is one of the most extraordinary on record, must
have exercised, during the period of his social reign, many qualities
of conduct which rank among the highest endowments of our race. For an
obscure individual, without fortune or rank, to have conceived the idea
of placing himself at the head of society in a country the most
thoroughly aristocratic in Europe, relying too upon no other weapon
than well-directed insolence; for the same individual to have triumphed
splendidly over the highest and the mightiest—to have maintained a
contest with royalty itself, and to have come off victorious even in
that struggle—for such an one no ordinary faculties must have been
demanded. Of the sayings of Brummel which have been preserved, it is
difficult to distinguish whether they contain real wit, or are only so
sublimely and so absurdly impudent that they look like witty.
We add here a few anecdotes of Brummel, which will serve to show,
better than any precepts, the style of conduct which a man of fashion
may pursue.
When Brummel was at the height of his power, he was once, in the
company of some gentlemen, speaking of the Prince of Wales as a very
good sort of man, who behaved himself very decently, _considering
circumstances_; some one present offered a wager that he would not dare
to give a direction to this very good sort of man. Brummel looked
astonished at the remark, and declined accepting a wager upon such
point. They happened to be dining with the regent the next day, and
after being pretty well fortified. with wine, Brummel interrupted a
remark of the prince’s, by exclaiming very mildly and naturally,
“Wales, ring the bell!” His royal highness immediately obeyed the
command, and when the servant entered, said to him, with the utmost
coolness and firmness, “Show Mr. Brummel to his carriage.” The dandy
was not in the least dejected by his expulsion; but meeting the prince
regent, walking with a gentleman, the next day in the street, he did
not bow to him, but stopping the other, drew him aside and said, in a
loud whisper, “Who is that FAT FRIEND of ours?” It must be remembered
that the object of this sarcasm was at that time exceedingly annoyed by
his increasing corpulency; so manifestly so, that Sheridan remarked,
that “though the regent professed himself a Whig, he believed that in
his heart he was no friend to _new measures._”
Shortly after this occurrence at Carlton-House, Brummel remarked to one
of his friends, that “he had half a mind to cut the young one, and
bring old George into fashion.”
In describing a short visit which he had paid to a nobleman in the
country, he said, that he had only carried with him a night-cap and a
silver basin to spit in, “Because, you know, it is utterly impossible
to spit in clay.”
Brummel was once present at a party to which he had not been invited.
After he had been some time in the room, the gentleman of the house,
willing to mortify him, went up to him and said that he believed that
there must be some mistake, as he did not recollect having had the
honour of sending him an invitation. “What is the name?” said the other
very drawlingly, at the same time affecting to feel in his waistcoat
pocket for a card. “Johnson,” replied the gentleman. “Jauhnson?” said
Brummel, “oh! I remember now that the name was Thaunson (Thompson); and
Jauhnson and Thaunson, Thaunson and Jauhnson, you know, are so much the
same kind of thing.”
Brummel was once asked how much a year he thought would be required to
keep a single man in clothes. “Why, with tolerable economy,” said he,
“I think it might be done for £800.”
He once went down to a gentleman’s house in the country, without having
been asked to do so. He was given to understand, the next morning, that
his absence would be more agreeable, and he took his departure. Some
one having heard of his discomfiture, asked him how he liked the
accommodations there. He replied coolly, that “it was a very decent
house to spend a single night in.”
We have mentioned that this dreaded arbiter of modes had threatened
that he would put the prince regent out of fashion. Alas! for the peace
of the British monarch, this was not an idle boast. His dangerous rival
resolved in the unfathomable recesses of a mind capacious of such
things, to commence and to carry on a war whose terror and grandeur
should astound society, to administer to audacious royalty a lesson
which should never be forgotten, and finally to retire, when retire he
must, with mementos of his tremendous power around him, and with the
mightiest of the earth at his feet. Inventive and deliberate were the
counsels which he meditated; sublime and resolute was the conduct he
adopted. He decided, with an originality of genius to which the
conqueror of Marengo might have vailed, that the _neck_ of the foe was
the point at which the first fatal shaft of his excommunicating ire
should be hurled. With rapid and decisive energy he concentrated all
his powers for instantaneous action. He retired for a day to the
seclusion of solitude, to summon and to spur the energies of the most
self-reliant mind in Europe, as the lion draws back to gather courage
for the leap. As, like the lion, he drew back; so, like the lion, did
he spring forward upon his prey. At a ball given by the Duchess of
Devonshire, when the whole assembly were conversing upon his supposed
disgrace, and insulting by their malevolence one whom they had
disgusted by their adulation, Brummel suddenly stood in the midst of
them. Could it be indeed Brummel? Could it be mortal who thus appeared
with such an encincture of radiant glory about his neck? Every eye was
upon him, fixed in stupid admiration; every tongue, as it slowly
recovered from its speechless paralysis, faltered forth “what a
cravat!” What a cravat indeed! Hundreds that had, a moment before,
exulted in unwonted freedom, bowed before it with the homage of servile
adoration. What a cravat! There it stood; there was no doubting its
entity, no believing it an illusion. There it stood, smooth and stiff,
yet light and almost transparent; delicate as the music of Ariel, yet
firm as the spirit of Regulus; bending with the grace of Apollo’s
locks, yet erect with the majesty of the Olympian Jove: without a
wrinkle, without an indentation. What a cravat! The regent “saw and
shook;” and uttering a faint gurgle from beneath the wadded bag which
surrounded his royal thorax, he was heard to whisper with dismay, “D—n
him! what a cravat!” The triumph was complete.
It is stated, upon what authority we know not, that his royal highness,
after passing a sleepless night in vain conjectures, despatched at an
early hour, one of his privy-counsellors to Brummel, offering _carte
blanche_ if he would disclose the secret of that mysterious cravat. But
the “_atrox animus Catonis_” disdained the bribe. He preferred being
supplicated, to being bought, by kings. “Go,” said he to the messenger,
with the spirit of Marius mantling in his veins, “Go, and tell _you_r
master that you have seen _his_ master.”
For the truth of another anecdote, connected with this cravat, we have
indisputable evidence. A young nobleman of distinguished talents and
high pretensions as to fortune and rank, saw this fatal band, and eager
to advance himself in the rolls of fashion, retired to his chamber to
endeavour to penetrate the method of its construction. He tried every
sort of known, and many sorts of unknown stiffeners to accomplish the
end—paper and pasteboard, and wadding, shavings, and shingles, and
planks,—all were vainly experienced. Gargantua could not have exhibited
a greater invention of expedients than he did; but vainly. After a
fortnight of the closest application, ardour of study and anxiety of
mind combined, brought him to the brink of the grave. His mother having
ascertained the origin of his complaint, waited upon Brummel, who was
the only living man that could remove it. She implored him, by every
human motive, to say but one word, to save the life of her son and
prevent her own misery. But the tyrant was immoveable, and the young
man expired a victim of his sternness.
When, at length, yielding to that strong necessity which no man can
control, Brummel was obliged, like Napoleon, to abdicate, the mystery
of that mighty cravat was unfolded. There was found, after his
departure to Calais, written on sheet of paper upon his table, the
following epigram of scorn: “STARCH IS THE MAN.” The cravat of Brummel
was merely—starched! Henceforth starch was introduced into every cravat
in Europe.
Brummel still lives, an obscure consul in a petty European town.
Physically there is something to command our admiration in the history
of a man who thus lays at his mercy all ranks of men,—the lofty and the
low, the great, the powerful and the vain: but morally and seriously,
no character is more despicable than that of the mere man of fashion,
Seeking nothing but notoriety, his path to that end is over the ruins
of all that is worthy in our nature. He knows virtue only to despise
it; he makes himself acquainted with human feelings only to outrage
them. He commences his career beyond the limits of decency, and ends it
far in the regions of infamy. Feared by all and respected by none,
hated by his worshippers and despised by himself, he rules,—an object
of pity and contempt: and when his power is past, his existence is
forgotten; he lives on in an, oblivion which is to him worse than
death, and the stings of memory goad him to the grave.
The devotee of fashion is a trifler unworthy of his race; the _mere_
gentleman is a character which may in time become somewhat tiresome;
there is a just mean between the two, where a better conduct than
either is to be found. It is that of a man who, yielding to others,
still maintains his self-respect, and whose concessions to folly are
controlled by good sense; who remembers the value of trifles without
forgetting the importance of duties, and resolves so to regulate his
conduct that neither others may be offended by his stiffness, nor
himself have to regret his levity.
Live therefore among men—to conclude our homily after the manner of
Quarles—live therefore among men, like them, yet not disliking thyself;
and let the hues of fashion be reflected from thee, but let them not
enter and colour thee within.