For years before this satire appeared Skeffington was a personage in society, and if his plays secured him undying notoriety at the hands of the satirist, his costume was to produce the same result by the attention drawn to it by Gillray, who represented him, in 1799, as “Half Natural,” in a Jean de Bry coat, all sleeves and padding, and in the following year in a second caricature as dancing, below which is the legend: “So Skiffy skipt on, with his wonted grace.” In these days, indeed, his appearance offered a very distinct mark for the caricaturist. Imagine a tall, spare man, with large features, sharp, sallow face, and dark curly hair and whiskers, arrayed in the glory of a dark blue coat with gilt buttons, yellow waistcoat, with cord inexpressibles, large bunches of white ribbons at the knees, and short top-boots! But in latter years Skeffington went even further, for he distinguished himself by wearing a vieux-rose satin suit, and a wig, and rouging his cheeks and blacking his eyebrows and eyelashes, until he looked like a French doll; while the air in his vicinity was made noxious by the strong perfumes with which he drenched himself. Horace Smith summed him up as “an admirable specimen of the florid Gothic,” and Moore lampooned him in Letter VIII. of The Twopenny Post Bag, from “Colonel Th-m-s to Sk-ff-ngt-n, Esq.”:
“Come to our fête, and bring with thee
Thy newest best embroidery,
Come to our fête, and show again
That pea-green coat, thou pink of men,
Which charmed all eyes that last surveyed it;
When Brummell’s self enquired: ‘Who made it?’
Oh! come (if haply ’tis thy week
For looking pale) with paly cheek;
Though more we love thy roseate days,