There were three dandies in this Gore House circle of strangely different temperaments and abilities. Dickens, a thorough Englishman in almost every habit and instinct, who dressed violently rather than well, sported somewhat fantastic costumes simply because it was the fashion so to do among the young men with whom his growing fame had brought him into contact. In the inner meaning of the word Dickens was no dandy, but simply a dressy man; his was not the dandiacal temper. Of this, indeed, there was far more in the Oriental Disraeli, though he, like his Vivian Grey, used high dressing as a pose. Whatever he undertook he loved to do well, and in his youth even to do to extremes. The effeminate dandy pose was excellently acted in the following which he tells of himself, writing from Malta to his father in 1830:—
“Affectation tells here even better than wit. Yesterday, at the racket court, sitting in the gallery among strangers, the ball entered, and lightly struck me and fell at my feet. I picked it up, and observing a young rifleman excessively stiff, I humbly requested him to forward its passage into the court, as I really had never thrown a ball in my life. This incident has been the general subject of conversation at all the messes to-day!”
And this from Gibraltar:—
“Tell my mother that as it is the fashion among the dandies of this place—that is, the officers, for there are no others—not to wear waistcoats in the morning, her new studs come into fine play and maintain my reputation of being a great judge of costume, to the admiration and envy of many subalterns. I have also the fame of being the first who ever passed the Straits with two canes, a morning and an evening cane. I change my cane as the gun fires, and hope to carry them both on to Cairo. It is wonderful the effect these magical wands produce. I owe to them even more attention than to being the supposed author of—what is it?—I forget!”
Disraeli in his dress had a touch of the fantastic, as thus, when he appeared at a dinner party attired in a coat of black velvet lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold stripe down the seam, a scarlet waistcoat, lace ruffles down to the fingers’ tips, white gloves with rings worn outside them and his hair in long, black ringlets.
Dickens was only a clothes-deep dandy; Disraeli was a true dandy as far as he went, but he did not go all the way. He trifled with politics, he did not realise that to be a perfect, complete dandy, calls for the devotion of a lifetime. D’Orsay made no such mistake; he was a dandy through and through and all the way; a dandy in love affairs, in his toilet, in his clothes, in his sport, and in all the arts of life from cookery down to sculpture. Thus it must be with every great man; he aims at one target, pulls his bow with all his strength, and shoots only at that one mark. D’Orsay had but one aim, to lead a life of dandified pleasure.
XIX
NAP
Charles Sumner writes in March 1840: “Lady Blessington is as pleasant and time-defying as ever, surrounded till one or two of the morning with her brilliant circle.… Prince Napoleon is always there, and of course D’Orsay.”