Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, September 5, 1841 — John Shaqi
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, September 5, 1841Various
General
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, September 5, 1841
Various
English wit and humor -- Periodicals
But to dismount from our Pegasus, or, in other words, to cut the poetry,
and come to the practice of our subject, it is necessary that a perfect
gentleman should be cut _up_ very high, or cut _down_ very low--_i.e._, up
to the marquis or down to the jarvey. Any intermediate style is perfectly
inadmissible; for who above the grade of an attorney would wear a coat
with pockets inserted in the tails, like salt-boxes; or any but an
incipient Esculapius indulge in trousers that evinced a morbid ambition to
become knee-breeches, and were only restrained in their aspirations by a
pair of most strenuous straps. We will now proceed to details.
_The dressing-gown_ should be cut only--for the arm holes; but be careful
that the quantity of material be very ample--say four times as much as is
positively necessary, for nothing is so characteristic of a perfect
gentleman as his improvidence. This garment must be constructed without
buttons or button-holes, and confined at the waist with cable-like
bell-ropes and tassels. This elegant _deshabille_ had its origin (like the
Corinthian capital from the Acanthus) in accident. A set of massive
window-curtains having been carelessly thrown over a lay figure, or
tailor's _torso_, in Nugee's _studio_, in St. James's-street, suggested to
the luxuriant mind of the Adonisian D'Orsay, this beautiful combination of
costume and upholstery. The eighteen-shilling chintz great-coats, so
ostentatiously put forward by nefarious tradesmen as dressing-gowns, and
which resemble pattern-cards of the vegetable kingdom, are unworthy the
notice of all gentlemen--of course excepting those who are so by act of
Parliament. Although it is generally imagined that the coat is the
principal article of dress, _we_ attach far greater importance to the
trousers, the cut of which should, in the first place, be regulated by
nature's cut of the leg. A gentleman who labours under either a convex or
a concave leg, cannot be too particular in the arrangement of the
strap-draught. By this we mean that a concave leg must have the pull on
the convex side, and _vice versa_, the garment being made full, the
effects of bad nursing are, by these means, effectually "repealed."[2]
This will be better understood if the reader will describe a
parallelogram, and draw therein the arc of a circle equal to that
described by his leg, whether knock-kneed or bandy.
[2] Baylis.
If the leg be perfectly straight, then the principal peculiarity of cut to
be attended to, is the external assurance that the trousers cannot be
removed from the body without the assistance of a valet.
The other considerations should be their applicability to the promenade or
the equestriade. We are indebted to our friend Beau Reynolds for this
original idea and it is upon the plan formerly adopted by him that we now
proceed to advise as to the maintenance of the distinctions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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