CHAPTER X
THE DANDIACAL BODY
First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scientific
strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is 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 as others dress to live, he lives to dress.
The all-importance of Clothes, which a German Professor of unequalled
learning and acumen, writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has
sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy without effort, like an
instinct of genius; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What
Teufelsdröckh would call a 'Divine Idea of Cloth' is born with him;
and this, like other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or
wring his heart asunder with unutterable throes.
But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes his
Idea an Action; shows himself in peculiar guise to mankind; walks
forth, a witness and living Martyr to the eternal worth of Clothes. We
called him a Poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin
whereon he writes, with cunning Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his
mistress' eyebrow? Say, rather, an Epos, and _Clotha Virumque cano_,
to the whole world, in Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read.
Nay, if you grant, what seems to be admissible, that the Dandy has a
Thinking-principle in him, and some notions of Time and Space, is
there not in this Life-devotedness to Cloth, in this so willing
sacrifice of the Immortal to the Perishable, something (though in
reverse order) of that blending and identification of Eternity with
Time, which, as we have seen, constitutes the Prophetic character?
And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even
Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may
say, that you would recognise his existence; would admit him to be a
living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that
will reflect rays of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond what the
niggardly Law has already secured him) he solicits not; simply the
glance of your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or altogether
miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May
we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, which refuses even this
poor boon; which will waste its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and
Siamese Twins; and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a
live Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed
contempt! Him no Zoologist classes among the Mammalia, no Anatomist
dissects with care: when did we see any injected Preparation of the
Dandy in our Museums; any specimen of him preserved in spirits? Lord
Herringbone may dress himself in a snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown
shirt and shoes: it skills not; the undiscerning public, occupied with
grosser wants, passes by regardless on the other side.
The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, properly
speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep: for here arises the
Clothes-Philosophy to resuscitate, strangely enough, both the one and
the other! Should sound views of this Science come to prevail, the
essential nature of the British Dandy, and the mystic significance
that lies in him, cannot always remain hidden under laughable and
lamentable hallucination.
― Hurting 2, Tuesday, 5 June 2007 05:00 (eighteen years ago)