Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVI, July 1852, Vol. VVarious
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVI, July 1852, Vol. V
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
All the mirrors in the house are brought into action now: many of them
after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces, simpering faces,
youthful faces, faces of threescore-and-ten that will not submit to be
old; the entire collection of faces that have come to pass a January
week or two at Chesney Wold, and which the fashionable intelligence, a
mighty hunter before the Lord, hunts with a keen scent, from their
breaking cover at the Court of St. James's to their being run down to
Death. The place in Lincolnshire is all alive. By day guns and voices
are heard ringing in the woods, horsemen and carriages enliven the
park-roads, servants and hangers-on pervade the Village and the
Dedlock Arms. Seen by night, from distant openings in the trees, the
row of windows in the long drawing-room, where my Lady's picture hangs
over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of jewels set in a black
frame. On Sunday, the chill little church is almost warmed by so much
gallant company, and the general flavor of the Dedlock dust is
quenched in delicate perfumes.
The brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it, no
contracted amount of education, sense, courage, honor, beauty, and
virtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it, in despite of
its immense advantages. What can it be?
Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth now (more's the pity!) to
set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel
neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There
are no caricatures, now, of effeminite Exquisites so arrayed, swooning
in opera boxes with excess of delight, and being revived by other
dainty creatures, poking long-necked scent-bottles at their noses.
There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into his
buckskins, or who goes to see all the Executions, or who is troubled
with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But is there
Dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle notwithstanding,
Dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got below the surface
and is doing less harmless things than jack-toweling itself and
stopping its own digestion, to which no rational person need
particularly object!
Why, yes. It can not be disguised. There _are_ at Chesney Wold this
January week, some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who
have set up a Dandyism--in Religion, for instance. Who, in mere
lackadaisical want of an emotion, have agreed upon a little dandy talk
about the Vulgar wanting faith in things in general; meaning, in the
things that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low fellow
should unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling, after finding it
out! Who would make the Vulgar very picturesque and faithful, by
putting back the hands upon the Clock of Time, and canceling a few
hundred years of history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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