THE BEAUX OF THE OLDEN TIME.
“Le Beau ne plaît qu’un jour, si le Beau n’est utile.”—St. Lambert.
Dress, like all other things, has been amply used and abused in all ages; but there is this to be said for man, that he is the only animal born without being provided with a necessary costume. This shows that he is a migratory animal; and if he be not naturally covered so as to suit all climates and himself, he has reason given him to meet all exigencies, and it is only a pity that he exhibits so little taste in the application of it. His storehouse, or rough wardrobe, is in the vegetable and animal kingdom; and plants die that man may live, and animals are skinned that the lord of creation may be covered.
The passion for fine dressing commenced undoubtedly with the ladies. When the Tyrian Alcides was one night loitering by the sea-side, his arm encircling one of those nymphs whom demigods and boatswains’ mates find in every port, and their eyes, when not looking into each other, were fixed on the shadowy splendour of the western star, his dog, a lank and hungry hound, came upon a shell, which he immediately began crunching. Thereupon there issued a liquid from the expiring fish within, so exquisite in colour that it attracted the eyes of the lady, who immediately declared that never again should she know peace of mind until she had a dress of that self-same hue. She bade the hero never to appear in her presence again until the garment was procured; and poor Hercules, who appears to have had as much perplexity about ladies’ petticoats as lions’ hides, was sadly puzzled before he and an eminent firm succeeded in procuring a dye which produced a garment of the hue required, and would have made the fortune of the discoverers, had they not been accustomed to the same sort of extravagances which make bankrupts of London tradesmen. In spite of this, the Tyrian purple long held on Fashion’s throne an undisputed sway; and no beau of old appeared in the world without a mantle of this colour hanging from his ivory shoulders. Agesilaus was one of this fashion-determining class; but unlike modern followers of the philosophy of the mode, he turned his ideas of dress to good account. For instance, when he was combating in Pontus against the barbarians, as the finely-clad and tender-hearted gentlemen there were called by their enemies, Agesilaus saw that they were most superbly attired, but that they also were very delicate of body. He accordingly gave orders that all the captains should be brought in naked, and be sold by the public crier; but that their garments should be sold separately. And this he did that the allies might know that they had to fight for rich spoils with a poor enemy, and so might rush to the attack with greater ardour. He had the picking of the spoil for his own wardrobe.
Alexander and his friends were probably the best-dressed men of all the Greeks at any period. Of one of these friends, Agnon, it is said he wore gold nails in both his slippers and sandals,—a piece of pride which was like that of the English farmer during the late war, who went to a market-dinner in a coat garnished with gold buttons. The vanity of the farmer was wounded at finding that they attracted no notice; and he clumsily tried to feed his pride and win observation by remarking, that “it certainly weer very warm work to wear goold buttons in the dog-days!”
Alexander of course slept on a couch of gold. Great Ammon’s son deserved no less a bed; but I can hardly credit the assertion that the sovereign’s tent contained a hundred such beds, and that the tent itself was supported by fifty columns of gold. The beds however may not have been for one individual’s use, and the tent was as vast as a barracks: the couches may therefore have been for the general officers. Five hundred Persians kept guard therein. These were the Melophores, the “apple-bearers,” who carried a golden apple on the points of their lances, and who were the admiration of all the maid-servants of the district, attired as the Melophores were in uniforms of purple and yellow. These were surpassed by the thousand archers, in their mantles of flame-colour, violet, or celestial blue. These were irresistible; the ladies at least said so, if the enemy did not; but even they achieved fewer conquests (I allude less to the field than the bower) than the five hundred Macedonian Argyraspides, the corps of “silver bucklers,” behind whose shields however beat hearts more easily reached by the feathered shafts of Dan Cupido than by the javelins of the foe.
The purple-robed guard of Alexander was his chosen troop, his cent-garde, charged with watching over his personal safety, and seeing that he got safely to bed when his divinity was exceedingly drunk. They were terrible coxcombs, were these guards, and would condescend to the folly of flinging eggs at the passers-by, as though they knew no better than military gentlemen returning from Epsom, or a wrathful curate of the district of St. Barnabas pelting an anti-puseyite. These men cared little whether Alexander were a god or not, but they had a firmly fixed idea that their tailor had a family claim upon Olympus.
But what were these to Alcisthenes the Sybarite, who has been immortalized by Aristotle? This rather fast individual had a coat of such magnificent material,—the coat worn by Prince Esterhazy, and which that magnate never put on without losing I really do not know how many hundred pounds’ worth of pearls and diamonds, was, in comparison, a coat for the Sybarite’s valet,—Alcisthenes had a habit, I say, of such richness, that, on the day of the festival of Juno, it was exposed on Mount Lacinium, to the veneration of the crowds who annually repaired thither from all parts of Italy. It became the most attractive feature of the festival; and the shrines were passed by, that the pilgrims might fall into ecstasy in presence of Alcisthenes’ coat. It subsequently fell into the hands of old Dionysius,—a Jew in his way, as we all know,—and he sold it for one hundred and twenty talents to the Carthaginians: it was the highest price ever realized for such a garment.
But it was not the only coat exalted, like the serpent of old, to win insane worship from imbecile idolators. Gibbon smiles with warrantable contempt upon the Roman priests who, behind the altar, were preparing miracles wherewith to astound the people. A deeper contempt attaches to the several priests who compelled two poor honest tailors, or weavers rather, to produce the duplicate coats, without a seam, each warranted to have been worn by the Great Victim ere He passed to Calvary, and before each of which, as the only one genuine, thousands, ay millions, have flung themselves down in speechless ecstasy.
There is the one Holy Coat at Treves, and the one Holy Coat at Moscow; and the priests at either place will tell you that there were never two. The Empress Helena discovered that of Treves, says the legend. A Shah of Persia made a present of the Moscow garment to the Czar. Its genuineness was warranted by a Russian archbishop, who declared that, in a church in Georgia, a golden box placed upon a column had long contained this coat, and that it was doubtless the seamless coat of our Lord. A Muscovite monk standing by clinched the lie, by adding, that when the soldiers cast lots for the possession of the coat, it fell to one who lived in Georgia, and that this was the identical garment. Really, when we think seriously of these things, we must not be too hard upon those who reverenced the coat of the Sybarite.
To return to Alexander: he was the despair of all men who, desirous of following the fashion as he gave it, lacked means to realize the desire. He was to his generals, what very rich Hussar colonels are to the younger and poorer officers; or what Count D’Orsay used to be to the counter-dandies of the Metropolis.
Ephippus lived in the time of Commodus; and in allusion to that Emperor, who used to dress himself as Hercules, and go out daily in his car with the hero’s club, like a gold-headed cane, between his legs, he says:—“Is it extraordinary that in our days Commodus does this, when Alexander, a pupil of Aristotle, did worse in the olden time?”
Certainly, in the article of dress, the son of Philip was as different from the simplicity of his father, as the Prince Regent from George III. Not only did he wear the lion’s skin, and call himself Hercules, but, in private intercourse with his friends, he put on the winged cap and the ankle-pinions of Mercury. If I may say so without profanity, I would remark, that if Prince Albert were to walk through Kensington Gardens attired like David, with a sling and a stone in his hand to fling at the first fat gentleman he might encounter, he would not be committing a more unseemly act than Alexander was doing when he decked himself out to look like Mercury.
But when this wretched madman, the Macedonian I mean, rode out in his chariot, and forgetful of his wry neck—for he had a wry neck, and limped to boot,—and despite his very red nose and his blood-shot eyes, dressed like Diana, the goddess of Chastity, a Persian purple robe about him, and over his naked shoulder a bow and a quiver,—he must have looked as ridiculous in the eyes of the beholders, as if the late Sir William Curtis, who was so solemnly ridiculous in kilts, had exhibited himself daily in front of the Mansion-house in the dress and attitude of the Magdalene of Correggio.
In more modern days, we have had the gods and goddesses assumed by mortal men; but then it has been to amuse, and not to awe the multitude. They were often introduced in the mediæval shows when Burgundy exulted in her Dukes. I may cite, as an instance, the solemnity of the first entry into Lille of Charles the Bold, in his character of Duke of Burgundy. The delicate citizens got up a “mystery” whereby to do honour to the refined prince, which excited great amusement. It was “The Judgement of Paris.” To represent Venus, a tall and enormous woman had been selected, who weighed some twenty stone; Juno was as tall as Venus, but she was withered and lean; Minerva bore a hump both before and behind; while all three goddesses were naked, only wearing rich crowns upon their heads. Charles the Bold must have been as much pleased with pastime like this, as Dr. Pusey would doubtless be were he, in company with Father Newman, to take advantage of an order for two, and go and see Mr. Paul Bedford in the part of Norma.
Mark Antony was, despite his habit of getting drunk by daylight, so careful a dresser that he may be ranked among the beaux. Indeed he was specially fantastic in some of his fashions; and, by way of proof that he was the very “first fine gentleman” of his day, it is only necessary to cite what Textor says of him in the preface to the ‘Cornucopia,’ namely, “M. Antonius, Triumvir, corporis excrementa non nisi vasis aureis excipiebat.”
The Scandinavian beaux were as fantastically nice in some of their fashions. Rough as they were, there were many who wasted some amount of thought on the adornment of their persons. Such an individual was the pride of his relatives, and by these he was called, not the flower, but the leek of the family: he generally smelt a good deal stronger. Of such a dandy, his kindred were as proud as the “blood” of Caffarelli was of that smartly-dressed singer. But Caffarelli was a vocal beau who sang to some tune. He lived in a palace of his own building. Over the gate was this inscription:—“Amphion Thebas, ego domum;” and he purchased for his nephew and heir the Dukedom of Sante Dorato. That was a well-dressed uncle, of whom his nephew might well be—what he was not, of course—gratefully proud. Scandinavia reminds me of the great Gustavus Adolphus. He was not indeed himself a beau, but he was the first who made modern soldiers such. It was a consequence of his insisting on the necessity of the men being well clothed, and kept clean and warm. Except among Pompey’s cohort, this was not the custom of the ancients, with whom prevailed the maxim, “horridum militem esse decet.” So too thought Tilly, whose doctrine on the matter was comprised in the phrase, “A ragged soldier and a bright musket.” Some of Gustavus’s officers became the tightest-laced “exquisites” of suffering humanity, and reduced their outward surface to such a degree, that, had they lived in remoter times, they might have passed for those unhappy persons who had entered the temple of Jupiter in Arcadia, despite prohibition. The well-known consequence of such an act was, that the offender became for ever shadowless.
There is a race of men, not at all thin, and as rich dressers as Gustavus’s captains; I mean the Cardinals. There is a reason for their wearing red garments. Persons of early Church days used to draw Christian zodiacs and solar systems. In the former, the saints took the place of the old signs. In the latter, the planets were allotted to different religions. The sun belongs to Christianity; ergo, Sunday is the sabbath. Rome is the solar, and therefore the holy city; and accordingly the Cardinals wear red, because it is the colour of the sun.
To revert once more to the pupil of Aristotle, there remains but to be said that it was only on state occasions that he appeared in the mantle, sandals, and horns of Ammon. His ordinary dress was a chlamys of purple, a striped tunic (white on a coloured ground), and a wide-flapped hat or cap, with the royal diadem girt around it. He was in fact King of Fashion as well as King of Men; and, like Count D’Orsay, he not only patronized tailors, but, unlike the Count, paid their bills. The two men, in all other respects, were very different; and it cannot be said of them, as of Mr. Hunt’s ‘Light of the World,’ and his fast man in the ‘Awakened Conscience,’ that they are one and the same person in two costumes.
The Greeks generally were remarkable for possessing tailors who worked more according to the locality of their birth than to their merits; thus, Xenophon tells us, in his Life of Socrates, that Demeas, being a Collytensean, supported his household by making cassocks; while Menon, whose birthplace is not given, effected the same object by making cloaks. The custom however is more clearly defined when he adds that the Megarensians supported their families by making short jackets. Aristophanes, in his ‘Acharnians,’ alludes to this fashion when he makes the jovial Dicaopolis say, “Certain rascally fellows, base coin, unfranchised, and counterfeit, and alien citizens, were in the habit of informing against the small cloaks of the Megarians.” Between “cloak” and “jacket,” we may conclude that the article was a vest, or an “almaviva,” or mantle, and that it was no more lawful to wear it in Athens when the state was at war with Megara than it was in accordance with our “customs” a century ago to wear garments embroidered with gold-lace from France. This barbarous habit of denouncing the employment of an article, simply because it is the production of, or named from, an enemy, is still prevalent in the dominions of the Czar. If the thing be used, the name must be changed. Were we to follow the same fashion, no Englishman would condescend to put on a pair of “Russia ducks.”
But I have fallen into modern illustrations of the beau. When that superb animal is being treated of by Dryden, the poet names the various characteristics of divers beaux, from whom Sir Fopling Flutter had derived his own united excellences, which made of him the recognized “Man of Mode.” These are among them:—
“His various modes from various fathers follow:
One taught the toss, and one the new French wallow;
His sword-knot, this; his cravat, this design’d;
And this, the yard-long snake he twirls behind.
From one the sacred periwig he gain’d,
Which wind ne’er blew, nor touch of hat profaned.
Another’s diving bow he did adore,
Which, with a bag, casts all the hair before;—
Till he with full decorum brings it back,
And rises with a water-spaniel shake.”
I have elsewhere noticed that for a “beau” to comb his peruke was a matter of serious business; but it was even more. To do so in presence of a “belle” was to behave to her as became the very pink of politeness. “A wit’s wig,” says Wycherly’s ‘Ranger,’ “has the privilege of being uncombed in the very playhouse, or in the presence⸺” “Ay,” interrupts Dapperwit, “but not in the presence of his mistress; ’tis a greater neglect of her than himself. If she has smugg’d herself up for me, let me plume and flounce my peruke a little for her; there’s ne’er a young fellow in town but will do as much for a mere stranger in the playhouse. Pray lend me your comb.” “Well,” says Ranger, “I would not have men of wit and courage make use of every fop’s mean arts to keep or gain a mistress.” Dapperwit. “But don’t you see every day, though a man have ne’er so much wit and courage, his mistress will revolt to those fops who wear and comb perukes well? She comes! she comes! pray, your comb!” and thereupon, snatching Ranger’s comb, he commences drawing it through the wavy honours of his wig, in order to do honour to, and be seen doing it by, his “dear Miss Lucy.” In such wise did Wycherly hold the mirror up to nature, as I find it in his Comedies, published by Richard Bentley, not of New Burlington-street, but by his good ancestor, who, in 1694, tabernacled “at the Post House, in Russell-street, in Covent Garden, near the Piazza’s,” as it is written; and who delighted the then novel-reading world with such delectable novels as ‘Zelinda,’ ‘Count Brion,’ ‘The Happy Slave,’ ‘The Disorders of Love,’ ‘The Pilgrim,’ in two parts, and ‘The Princess of Montferrat.’ And I can only express my admiration at the courage of our great-grandmothers, who learned what was unprofitable and not amusing at so vast an outlay of most patient labour.
To one or two modern “beaux” of great celebrity I will now introduce you. Here is a jaunty, impudent, over-dressed gentleman approaching, who will admirably suit our purpose. Pray allow me:—“Gentle Reader, Beau Fielding.” “Beau Fielding, Gentle Reader.”