Even so profound a philosopher and student of human nature—the two are seldom found in conjunction, which accounts for the inefficacy of most philosophy—as Professor Teufelsdröckh of Weissnichtwo has defined a dandy as “a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of clothes wisely and well: so that others dress to live, he lives to dress.”
Which proves that though undoubtedly German philosophers know most things in Heaven and on Earth they do not know all, though they themselves would never make this admission. Teufelsdröckh’s definition of a dandy is preposterously incomplete, showing that he did not possess insight into the heart and soul of dandyism. He perceived the clothes, but not the man.
The proper wearing of proper clothes is but part of the whole duty of a dandy-man. A complete dandy is dandified in all his modes of life; his sense of honour and his conceptions of morality are dandified; he is an epicure in all the arts of fine living, in all forms of fashionable and expensive amusement, in all luxurious accomplishments. He must be endowed with wit, or at least gifted with a tongue of sprightliness sufficient to pass muster as witty. He must be perfect in the amiable art of polite conversation and expert in the language of love. He must own “the courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword”; he must be “the glass of fashion and the mould of form, the observed of all observers.”
How far did D’Orsay fulfil these requirements? It is the aim of the following pages to answer that question.
D’Orsay
I
JOCUND YOUTH
It is the habit of historians to pay little heed to the childhood and the training of the kings, conquerors, statesmen and the other big folk whose achievements they record and whose characters they seldom fathom or portray. But perhaps they are right just as perhaps sometimes they are accurate. It is easier to judge correctly and with understanding the boy and what really were the influences that affected his development, when we know the performances of his maturity, than it is to trace in the child the father of the man. By what the man was we may know what the boy had been. Which brings us to this point, that we need not very deeply regret that the records of D’Orsay’s early years are but scanty. Such as they are they suffice to give us all that we require—a fugitive glimpse here and there of a childhood as great in promise as the manhood was in performance.
Gédéon Gaspard Alfred de Grimaud, Count d’Orsay and du Saint-Empire, Prince of Dandies, was born upon the 4th of September, in the year 1801. Whether or not he came into the world under the influence of a lucky star we can find no record; upon that point each of us may draw his own conclusion in accordance with his judgment of D’Orsay’s career and character.