It is true that if you choose to analyze and hunt down every feeling with the greatest subtlety, you may discover a sort of selfishness at the very bottom of everything; but in all other nations a noble shame throws a veil over it; as there are instincts very natural and innocent, which are yet concealed even by the most uncivilized.
Here, however, people are so little ashamed of the most ‘crasse’ self-love, that an Englishman of rank once instructed me that a good ‘fox-hunter’ must let nothing stop him, or distract his attention when following the fox; and if his own father should be thrown in leaping a ditch, and lie there, should, he said, ‘if he couldn’t help it,’ leap his horse over him, and trouble himself no more about him till the end of the chase.[92]
With all this, our pattern ‘dandy’ has not the least independence, even in his bad qualities: he is the trembling slave of fashion, even in the extremest trifles; and the obsequious, servile satellite of the fortunate individuals who are higher than himself. Were virtue and modesty suddenly to become the fashion, nobody would be more exemplary,—difficult as would be the task to accomplish.
Destitute of all originality, and without a thought he can properly call his own, he may be compared to a clay figure, which, for a while, deceives one with all the properties of a human being, but returns into its native mud as soon as you discover that it has not a soul.
Whoever reads the best of the recent English novels—those by the author of Pelham—may be able to abstract from them a tolerably just idea of English fashionable society; provided (N.B.) he does not forget to deduct qualities which national self-love has claimed, though quite erroneously:—namely, grace for its ‘roués,’—seductive manners and amusing conversation for its ‘dandies.’ I mixed for a while with those who dwell on the very pinnacle of this fool’s world of fashion; with those who inhabit its middle regions, and with those who have pitched their tents at its foot, whence they turn longing, lingering looks at the unattainable summit; but rarely did I ever find a vestige of that attractive art of social life, that perfect equipoise of all the social talents, which diffuses a feeling of complacency over all within its sphere;—as far removed from stiffness and prudery as from rudeness and license, which speaks with equal charm to the heart and the head, and continually excites, while it never wearies; an art of which the French so long remained the sole masters and models.
Instead of this, I saw in the fashionable world only too frequently, and with few exceptions, a profound vulgarity of thought; an immorality little veiled or adorned; the most undisguised arrogance; and the coarsest neglect of all kindly feelings and attentions haughtily assumed, for the sake of shining in a false and despicable ‘refinement,’ even more inane and intolerable to a healthy mind, than the awkward and ludicrous stiffness of the most declared Nobodies. It has been said that vice and poverty are the most revolting combination:—since I have been in England, vice and boorish rudeness seem to me to form a still more disgusting union. * * *
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Passing over some of the most remarkable English rulers of fashion, I must mention one foreign potentate, who has placed herself on the same throne with the highest.
The haughty and masculine spirit of this lady, which, when she chooses, she knows how to conceal under the most engaging affability, combined with all the diplomatic craftiness of her station, have enabled her to set her foot on the neck of English supremacy; but she has not been able to give to the court that surrounds her and bows blindly to all her decrees, either her wit and tact, or her high-born air, or that repulsive politeness to all, which is the ‘ne plus ultra’ of the manner which it is the main object of an Exclusive’s life to attain. The distance in these respects between her and her associates in sovereignty is almost burlesque; yet they rule side by side in Olympus. But even the immortal gods have to encounter opposition; and thus we find a gigantic antagonist in the monarch of the nether world. * * *
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