There is an affectation among the vulgar clever, of wearing the moustache, which they clip and cut à la Vandyk: this is useful, as affording a ready means of distinguishing between a man of talent and an ass—the former, trusting to his head, goes clean shaved, and looks like an Englishman: the latter, whose strength lies altogether in his hair, exhausts the power of Macassar in endeavouring to make himself as like an ourang-outang as possible.
Another thing must be observed by all who would successfully ape the gentleman: never to smoke cigars in the street in mid-day. No better sign can you have than this of a fellow reckless of decency and behaviour: a gentleman smokes, if he smokes at all, where he offends not the olfactories of the passers-by. Nothing, he is aware, approaches more nearly the most offensive personal insult, than to compel ladies and gentlemen to inhale, after you, the ejected fragrance of your penny Cuba or your three-halfpenny mild Havannah.
In the cities of Germany, where the population almost to a man inhale the fumes of tobacco, street smoking is very properly prohibited; for however agreeable may be the sedative influence of the Virginian weed when inspired from your own manufactory, nothing assuredly is more disgusting than inhalation of tobacco smoke at second-hand.
Your undoubted man of fashion, like other animals, has his peculiar habitat: you never see him promenading in Regent Street between the hours of three and five in the afternoon, nor by any chance does he venture into the Quadrant: east of Temple Bar he is never seen except on business, and then, never on foot: if he lounges any where, it is in Bond Street, or about the clubs of St James's.
OF PRETENDERS TO FASHION.
"Their conversation was altogether made up of Shakspeare, taste, high life and the musical glasses."—Vicar of Wakefield.
We will venture to assert, that in the course of these essays on the aristocracies of London life, we have never attempted to induce any of our readers to believe that there was any cause for him to regret, whatever condition of life it had pleased Providence to place him in, or to suppose, for one moment, that reputable men, though in widely different circumstances, are not equally reputable. We have studiously avoided portraying fashionable life according to the vulgar notions, whether depreciatory or panegyrical. We have shown that that class is not to be taken and treated of as an integral quantity, but to be analyzed as a component body, wherein is much sterling ore and no little dross. We have shown by sufficient examples, that whatever in our eyes makes the world of fashion really respectable, is solely owing to the real worth of its respectable members; and on the contrary, whatever contempt we fling upon the fashionable world, is the result of the misconduct of individuals of that order, prominently contemptible.
Of the former, the example is of infinite value to society, in refining its tone, and giving to social life an unembarrassed ease, which, if not true politeness, is its true substitute; and, of the latter, the mischief done to society is enhanced by the multitude of low people ready to imitate their vices, inanities, and follies.
Pretenders to fashion, who hang upon the outskirts of fashionable society, and whose lives are a perpetual but unavailing struggle to jump above their proper position, are horrid nuisances; and they abound, unfortunately, in London.
In a republic, where practical equality is understood and acted upon, this pretension would be intolerable; in an aristocratic state of society, with social gradations pointedly defined and universally recognized, it is merely ridiculous to the lookers-on; to the pretenders, it is a source of much and deserved misery and isolation.