Dandies By Holbrook Jackson, 1914

In the history of dandyism, four works hold pride of place. They are, in chronological order, Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Du dandysme et de George Brummell, Baudelaire’s The Dandy, Max Beerbohm’s Dandies and Dandies, and the definitive modern study, namely Ellen Moers’ The Dandy: From Brummell to Beerbohm. Not that I care much for Barbey and Baudelaire. While they are lauded for giving the notion of the dandy intellectual gravitas, to me they strip the dandy of his spontaneity and vitality and theorize him into a pale grayness. As the Russian novelist Nikolai Leskov observed, “One should be French, because only the people of that nation manage to explain to others things that they themselves don’t understand.” The French, ils sont incorrigibles. All that, however, is by the way.

Almost a year ago I came across an essay on dandies that is worthy to take its place on the bookshelf beside the four canonized works. Remarkably, no one seems to have ever mentioned it anywhere although it has been hiding in plain sight for over a century. It is insightful, delightful, and brief. It is the pearl atop the dandy’s Fabergé-enameled walking stick. This opalescent gem is Dandies by Holbrook Jackson, an English critic, writer, publisher, and bibliophile remembered, if at all, for The Eighteen Nineties: A Review of Art and Ideas at the Close of the Nineteenth Century. [It’s either that or Opening Speech at an Exhibition of Percy Smith’s Typographical Work.]

The very first sentence perfectly encapsulates the dandy:

A dandy is an artist whose media are himself and his own personal appearance. The art of the dandy is the art of putting forward the best personal appearance, of expressing oneself in one’s clothes, in one’s manners, in one’s talk. The effect is a “creature of infinite splendor.” He is, indeed, Utopia become man: his is a man in excelsis, man glorified and peacocked into something as beautiful as a seashell, as light, as delicate, and as sufficient as a feather.

That certainly describes me to a tittle. Jackson goes on to dismiss such epigones as fashionistos, fops, cads, rakes, and women, although he somewhat equivocates on this last point; explains why, alas, the dandy is not universally loved; and wraps up the essay admiring the stubborn elegance of the threadbare dandy. Enjoy. — NICK WILLARD

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Dandies
By Holbrook Jackson
From Southward Ho! And Other Essays (1914)

A DANDY is an artist whose media are himself and his own personal appearance. The use of such materials has laid him open to the contempt of sedate and uniform ages, but his claims to existence are as justifiable as those of any other artist. There seems to be some irritability in those who dislike him because he shamelessly exploits himself in his art, but surely he shares the distinction with all artists. Every artist expresses himself in his art, so does the Dandy, but he admits it. Perhaps the opponents of dandyism feel, unconsciously, that a man is too insignificant and ephemeral a material for the purposes of art, and they may be right, but I very much doubt it. We are here only for a very brief while, to be sure, but is that any reason why we should not act our little parts during the small period we are upon the stage as splendidly as possible? It is the tragedy and not the fault of dandyism that it is brief, but the dandy shares the brevity of his art with the actor, the singer, the musical performer, the dancer, and the orator.

The art of the Dandy is the art of putting forward the best personal appearance, of expressing oneself in one’s clothes, in one’s manners, in one’s talk; it is, in short, the faculty of being able to become, in the phrase used by Mr. Arthur Symons to describe Oscar Wilde, an artist in attitudes. Clothes are only the outer envelope of dandyism; the real Dandy begins within, his dandyism is the result of an attitude of mind, of a conviction that he is, as the poets have often hinted, a creature of infinite splendour with a desire to act accordingly. Dandyism, like town planning, is an eminently social art, and should be honoured and revered as such. Your true Dandy looks upon his personality as a movement in the pageant of life, to be planned and arranged as carefully as a city in Utopia. He is, indeed, Utopia become man: his is a man in excelsis, man glorified and peacocked into something as beautiful as a seashell, as light, as delicate, and as sufficient as a feather. Which all amounts to one thing, and that one thing is that the Dandy above all men is the one most proud of being man.

He must not, however, be confused with the mere creature of fashion; such poor fellows are not Dandies at all. The Dandy proper is beyond fashion: but in a fashionable throng he never looks out of place; that is because he is the individualist and not the anarchist of dress. Slaves of fashion are but parrots, they dress by rote. Women have been the greatest offenders, but who ever heard of a woman dandy? The very thought is ridiculous. Women are far too earnest, far too rational, to break the laws imposed by custom. I say ” are,” but should, remembering the militant feminism of today, say have been, for women are changing; and, now I come to think of it, I have noticed a certain new and individual quality about the gowns of those women who form the vanguard of the revolt. Is this the beginning of female dandyism?

It has often happened that the fop has been mistaken for the Dandy. One should be careful of such pitfalls. Fops and Dandies are only superficially allied. The Dandy, as I have hinted, begins from within, his external splendour is the consummation of some inward glow, of that intense need of personal expression for the sake of expression, which impels other artists to recreate themselves in music, in painting, in poetry. He dreams only in terms of himself and those things which are most intimately associated with himself. The glory of the fop, if such it be, is extraneous, superimposed. It has been provoked from without, bought at a shop at the dictation of a salesman, it is bespoke dandyism, spurious and insufferable; and I imagine most people who denounce Dandies are really denouncing fops. Anyhow, I will be generous and think so.

At the same time I have a very promising suspicion that there is an honest objection to dandyism among the great majority of people. The Dandy, as you observe, is an individual, and the crowd has resented individuality ever since Dionysos last appeared and before. Perhaps the crowd is right. I leave the question open. The individual may absorb too much of life and his persecution is a kind of supertax on the unearned increment of personality. Be it so or not, I shall not strive to reduce so elegant a theme to economics, only the fact noted above must be remembered in all considerations of the Dandy.

But such persecution as the individual has suffered in the past has, perhaps, not been entirely the expression of resentment against individuality as such. A great deal of it has, I feel sure, been due to the average man’s traditional incapacity to weather variations in his surroundings and his habits. He gets into a groove, as we say, that is the prerogative of the average man, and so long as his grooves are inoffensive no one should gainsay him. The Dandy would never do so; he is not out to teach or even to correct—the simple and effective act of being is all in all to him. He requires his stage and audience, of course, but he asks not the flattery of imitation, but of admiration, and not always that; the quality of what is said affects him very little, enough for him that he is noticed.

Now the man in the groove does not like such an attitude towards life. Life is real, life is earnest, says he, therefore let us get about our business. And so we should, if we feel that way. But what if we don’t? Ay, there’s the rub! For if our souls promote us to attitudinise in rare and distinct apparel, to discourse elegantly of things that hardly matter, surrounded by all the paraphernalia of whim and fancy, who shall say we are not as much in earnest as those who are content to be serious about serious things? So might the Dandy argue, and he would be right.

Such a life, it may be reasoned, is open to grave moral temptations, and the argument could be substantiated by many apt examples. The Dandies of the Restoration, for instance, had not the nicest of moral habits. Sedley, Dorset, Buckingham, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester are shocking even as historical associates. Bath, in the great days of Beau Nash, was not above reproach, as we know. And both Brummell and D’Orsay would be seriously discounted by an ethical society.

But such lapses from the straight paths of moral rectitude are not, after all, the outcome of dandyism. The Dandy has too often been confused with the rake and the cad, and I must admit there have been good reasons for such confusion. But there are rakes and cads who are not Dandies, just as there are Dandies who are not rakes and cads.

Barbey D’Aurevilly, a Dandy himself, as well as a philosopher and historian of Dandies, has thrown the light of his own genius upon the question of dandyism and morals, and, speaking as he does from the inside, as one having authority, we must hear him. “Dandyism,” he says, “while still respecting the conventionalities, plays with them. While admitting their power, it suffers from and revenges itself upon them, and pleads them as an excuse against themselves; dominates and is dominated by them in turn. To play this twofold and changing game requires complete control of all the suppleness which goes to the making of elegance, in the same way as by their union all shades of the prism go to the making of the opal. This Brummell possessed. Heavenborn elegance was his, such as social trammels often spoil, and he was thus able to supply the capricious wants of a society bored and too severely bent under the strict laws of decorum. He proved that truth which matter-of-fact people always forgot, namely, if fancy’s wings are clipped, they will grow half as long again. His was that charming familiarity which touches everything and profanes nothing.”

Let us not then rush into the error which supposes dandyism to be a vicious and an unnecessary thing. Dandyism is an expression of social life; it is social life, in fact, at white heat, the union of all the shades which go to the making of the opal. But although the Dandy of history is generally a person of means and elegance, even though his means have occasional and tiresome aberrations and estrangements, there is no real reason why the Dandy should have either means or be elegant in the luxurious sense. Elegant he will always be in the eternal sense, even though he be threadbare, for his dandyism is from within.

We have all known those tattered beaux on the fringe of comfortable life; real Dandies they, who contrive to be elegant on clothes a decade old, and who dine off a chop and porter with all the distinction of a Brummell at the table of Alvanley’s fat friend, the royal Dandy, George IV. Such Dandies, although unwritten and unsung, are in the great tradition, eternal devotees of the art of attitude and personality.