First impressions of Robert de Saint-Loup From “Within a Budding Grove” By Marcel Proust, 1919 One afternoon of scorching heat I was in the dining-room […]
Wit & Wisdom
“Style is the dress of thought.” — Lord Chesterfield “A dandy does nothing. Can you imagine a dandy addressing the common herd except to make […]
Blasé In The Face of Death
In literature, dandyish characters occasionally find cause to duel. Sword in hand, Mikhail Lermontov’s dandyish Byronic hero Pechorin fights a duel on a cliff’s […]
Beerbohm’s “Dandies & Dandies,” 1896
Dandies and Dandies By Max Beerbohm, 1896 Image: detail of a portrait by William Rothenstein, via Merton College How very delightful Grego’s drawings are! For […]
The Philosophy Of Style
In 1988 I graduated high school and took off on my first solo road trip, and the adventure onto which I embarked was a quest […]
Symphony In Spite
Being accosted by a fellow American in London put Gilded Age painter and dandy James Abbot McNeill Whistler into a caustic funk. When the uppity […]
The Eccentric Mr. Brummell
Beau Brummell From “Eccentric Personages,” 1864 By W. Russell It is a solemn truth that every death-bed is the final scene of a great tragedy, […]
The Vice Of High Civilization
Beau Brummell From “Wits and Beaux of Society” By Grace and Philip Wharton, 1861 It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high […]
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 […]
The Golden Age Of The Dandy
The Golden Age of the Dandy By John Peale Bishop Vanity Fair, September 1920 The first dandy was, I suppose, the son of a Macaroni […]
Last Of The Dandies, 1862
From Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 1862 Article unsigned MR. THACKERAY tells us that having, as he supposed, created his famous Captain Costigan out of innumerable […]
Overrated Hero
Book Review of “The Life of George Brummell, Esq.” By Captain Jesse Littell’s Living Age, 1844 Article unsigned Why on earth was such a subject […]
Born A Dandy
From “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table,” 1858 By Oliver Wendell Holmes Image: Sir Philip Sassoon by John Singer Sargent Dandies are not good for much, […]
King Of Fashion
Beau Brummell From “Miscellaneou Works Vol 1: Habits And Men” By John Doran, 1857 The Distinction of Nash was his impertinence; the characteristic of Orlando […]
On Dress And Deportment
On Dress and Deportment From “Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow,” 1886 By Jerome K. Jerome They say — people who ought to be ashamed […]
Blackwood’s On Brummell
Beau Brummell From Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1844 Article unsigned Minor edits by Moonstone Research and Publications Image: Richard Mansfield as Beau Brummell, 1907 All things […]
Dapper Fellows
In the spring of 1934, a gentleman with a neatly trimmed mustache casts an eye in the direction of the door to an office waiting […]
Hazlitt’s Brummelliana
Brummelliana By William Hazlitt, 1828 Image: Detail from 1924 movie poster We look upon Beau Brummell as the greatest of small wits. Indeed, he may […]
Beaux Regard
Habits — good, bad and in between — start early. The other day, as I sat in my easy chair reading Christopher Hibbert’s new biography “Disraeli, […]
The Very Model Of A Modern Major Minor
All dandies have their rituals. On a typical morning in the years just after the Second World War, Osbert Lancaster would rise about nine to […]
The Dandies, 1861
The Dandies From Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature Science and Arts, 1861 By Anonymous While George III was king, a great number of remarkable events […]