Quel tuono decisivo,
Quell' insolenza amabile,
Che con egual franchezza
Con un' occhiata rapida
O tutto loda, o sprezza.[26]
There is however no country in which there are so many varieties of the animal as in England, none where he flourishes so successfully, makes such heroic endeavours for notoriety, and enjoys so wide a sphere of it.
The highest order is that of those who have invented for themselves the happy title of Fashionables. These gentlemen stand highest in the scale of folly, and lowest in that of intellect, of any in the country, inasmuch as the rivalry between them is which shall excel his competitors in frivolity. There was a man in England half a century ago well known for this singular kind of insanity, that he believed his soul had been annihilated within him, while he was yet living. What this poor maniac conceived to have been done by his soul, these gentlemen have successfully accomplished for themselves with their intellect. Their souls might be lodged in a nutshell without incommoding the maggot who previously tenanted it; and if the whole stock of their ideas were transferred to the maggot, they would not be sufficient to confuse his own. It is impossible to describe them, because no idea can be formed of infinite littleness: you might as reasonably attempt to dissect a bubble, or to bottle moonshine, as to investigate their characters: they prove satisfactorily the existence of a vacuum: the sum total of their being is composed of negative quantities.
One degree above or below these are the fops who appear in a tangible shape; they who prescribe fashions to the tailor, that the tailor may prescribe them to the town; who decide upon the length of a neck-handkerchief, and regulate the number of buttons at the knees of their breeches. One person has attained the very summit of ambition by excelling all others in the jet varnish of his boots. Infinite are the exertions which have been made to equal him,—the secret of projection could not be more eagerly desired than the receipt of his blacking; and there is one competitor whose boots are allowed to approach very near to the same point of perfection;—still they only approach it. This meritorious rival loses the race of fame by half a neck, and in such contests it is aut Cæsar, aut nihil. To have the best blacked boots in the world, is a worthy object of successful emulation,—but to have only the second-best, is to be Pompey in the Pharsalia of Fashion.
During one period of the French Revolution the Brutus head-dress was the mode, though Brutus was at the same time considered as the Judas Iscariot of political religion, being indeed at this day to an orthodox Anti-Jacobin what Omar is to the Persians; that is, something a great deal worse than the Devil. "I suppose, sir," said a London hair-dresser to a gentleman from the country,—"I suppose, sir, you would like to be dressed in the Brutus style." "What style is that?" was the question in reply. "All over frizzley, sir, like the Negers,—They be Brutes you know." If Apollo be the model of the day, these gentlemen wear stays; if Hercules, the tailor supplies breasts of buckram, broad shoulders, and brawny arms. At present, as the soldiers from Egypt have brought home with them broken limbs and ophthalmia, they carry an arm in a sling, or walk the streets with a green shade over the eyes. Every thing now must be Egyptian: the ladies wear crocodile ornaments, and you sit upon a sphinx in a room hung round with mummies, and with the long black lean-armed long-nosed hieroglyphical men, who are enough to make the children afraid to go to bed. The very shopboards must be metamorphosed into the mode, and painted in Egyptian letters, which, as the Egyptians had no letters, you will doubtless conceive must be curious. They are simply the common characters, deprived of all beauty and all proportion by having all the strokes of equal thickness, so that those which should be thin look as if they had the elephantiasis.
Men are tempted to make themselves notorious in England by the ease with which they succeed. The newspapers, in the dearth of matter for filling their daily columns, are glad to insert any thing,—when one lady comes to town, when another leaves it, when a third expects her accouchement; the grand dinner of one gentleman, and the grand supper of another are announced before they take place; the particulars are given after the action, a list of the company inserted, the parties who danced together exhibited like the characters of a drama in an English bill of the play, and the public are informed what dances were called for, and by whom. There is something so peculiarly elegant and appropriate in the names of the fashionable dances, that it is proper to give you a specimen. Moll in the Wad is one;—you must excuse me for not translating this, for really I do not understand it. Drops of Brandy, another; and two which are at present in high vogue are, The Devil among the Tailors, and Go to the Devil and shake yourself. At these balls, the floors are chalked in colours in carpet patterns, a hint taken from the lame beggars who write their petitions upon the flag-stones in the street. This is so excellently done, that one should think it would be painful to trample on and destroy any thing so beautiful, even though only made to be destroyed. These things indicate the same sort of want of feeling as the ice-palaces of Russia, and the statue of snow made by Michel Angelo at Pietro de Medici's command. We are surrounded in this world with what is perishable, that we may be taught to set our hearts and hopes upon the immutable and everlasting;—it is ill done, then, to make perishableness the food of pride.