Читать книгу: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 328, February, 1843», страница 13

THE PHILOSOPHY OF DRESS

Perhaps we may be expected to say something of the dress of men of fashion, as it is peculiar, and not less characteristic than their manner. Their clothes, like their lives, are usually of a neutral tint; staring colours they studiously eschew, and are never seen with elaborate gradations of under waistcoats. They would as soon appear out of doors in cuerpo, as in blue coats with gilt buttons, or braided military frocks, or any dress smacking of the professional. When they indulge in fancy colours and patterns, you will not fail to remark that these are not worn, although imitated by others. The moment a dressy man of fashion finds that any thing he has patronized gets abroad, he drops the neckcloth or vest, or whatever it may be, and condemns the tailor as an "unsafe" fellow. But it is not often that even the most dressy of our men of fashion originate any thing outré, or likely to attract attention; of late years their style has been plain, almost to scrupulosity.

Notwithstanding that the man of fashion is plainly dressed, no more than ordinary penetration is required to see that he is excellently well dressed. His coat is plain, to be sure, much plainer than the coat of a Jew-clothesman, having neither silk linings, nor embroidered pocket-holes, nor cut velvet buttons, nor fur collar; but see how it fits him—not like cast iron, nor like a wet sack, but as if he had been born in it.

There is a harmony, a propriety in the coat of a man of fashion, an unstudied ease, a graceful symmetry, a delicacy of expression, that has always filled us with the profoundest admiration of the genius of the artist; indeed, no ready money could purchase coats that we have seen—coats that a real love of the subject, and working upon long credit, for a high connexion, could alone have given to the world—coats, not the dull conceptions of a geometric cutter, spiritlessly outlined upon the shop-board by the crayon of a mercenary foreman, but the fortunate creation of superior intelligence, boldly executed in the happy moments of a generous enthusiasm!

Vain, very vain is it for the pretender to fashion to go swelling into the atelier of a first-rate coat architect, with his ready money in his hand, to order such a coat! Order such a coat, forsooth! order a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, an epic poem. Such a coat—we say it with the generous indignation of a free Briton—is one of the exclusive privileges reserved, by unjust laws, to a selfish aristocracy!

The aristocratic trouser-cutter, too, deserves our unlimited approbation. Nothing more distinguishes the nineteenth century, in which those who can manage it have the happiness to live, than the precision we have attained in trouser-cutting. While yet the barbarism of the age, or poverty of customers, vested the office of trouser-cutter and coat architect in the same functionary, coats were without soul, and "inexpressibles" inexpressibly bad, or, as Coleridge would have said, "ridiculous exceedingly." In our day, on the contrary, we have attained to such a pitch of excellence, that the trouser-cutter who fails to give expression to his works, is hunted into the provinces, and condemned for life to manufacture nether garments for clergymen and country gentlemen.

The results of the minute division of labour, to which so much of the excellence of all that is excellent in London is mainly owing, is in nothing more apparent than in that department of the fine arts which people devoid of taste call fashionable tailoring. We have at the West End fashionable artistes in riding coats, in dress coats, in cut-aways; one is superlative in a Taglioni, another devotes the powers of his mind exclusively to the construction of a Chesterfield, a third gives the best years of his life to the symmetrical beauty of a barrel-trouser; from the united exertions of these, and a thousand other men of taste and genius, is your indisputably-dressed man of fashion turned out upon the town. Then there are constructors of Horse Guards' and of Foot Guards' jacket, full and undress; the man who contrives these would expire if desired to turn his attention to the coat of a marching regiment; a hussar-pelisse-maker despises the hard, heavy style of the cutters for the Royal Artillery, and so on. Volumes would not shut if we were to fill them with the infinite variety of these disguisers of that nakedness which formerly was our shame, but which latterly, it would seem, has become our pride. With the exception of one gentleman citywards, who has achieved an immortality in the article of box-coats, every contriver of men of fashion, we mean in the tailoring, which is the principal department, reside in the parish of St James's, within easy reach of their distinguished patrons. These gentlemen have a high and self-respecting idea of the nobleness and utility of their vocation. A friend of ours, of whom we know no harm save that he pays his tailors' bills, being one day afflicted with this unusual form of insanity, desired the artist to deduct some odd shillings from his bill; in a word, to make it pounds—"Excuse me, sir," said Snip, "but pray, let us not talk of pounds—pounds for tradesmen, if you please; but artists, sir, artists are always remunerated with guineas!"

To return to the outward and visible man of fashion, from whose peculiarities our dissertation upon the sublime and beautiful in tailoring has too long detained us. The same subdued expression of elegance and ease that pervades the leading articles of his attire, extends, without exception, to all the accessories; or if he is deficient in aught, the accessorial toggery, such as hats, boots, choker, gloves, are always carefully attended to; for it is in this department that so distinguished a member of the detective police as ourselves is always enabled to arrest disguised snobbery. You will never see a man of fashion affect a Paget hat, for example, or a D'Orsayan beaver: the former has a ridiculous exuberance of crown, the latter a by no means allowable latitude of brim—besides, borrowing the fashion of a hat, is with him what plagiarizing the interior furniture of the head is with others. He considers stealing the idea of a hat low and vulgar, and leaves the unworthy theft to be perpetrated by pretenders to fashion: content with a hat that becomes him, he is careful never to be before or behind the prevailing hat-intelligence of the time. Three hats your man of fashion sedulously escheweth—a new hat, a shocking bad hat, and a gossamer. As the song says, "when into a shop he goes" he never "buys a four-and-nine," neither buyeth he a Paris hat, a ventilator, or any of the hats indebted for their glossy texture to the entrails of the silk worm; he sporteth nothing below a two-and-thirty shilling beaver, and putteth it not on his head until his valet, exposing it to a shower of rain, has "taken the shine out of it."

In boots he is even more scrupulously attentive to what Philosopher Square so appropriately called the fitness of things: his boots are never square-toed, or round-toed, like the boots of people who think their toes are in fashion. You see that they fit him, that they are of the best material and make, and suitable to the season: you never see him sport the Sunday patent-leathers of the "snob," who on week-a-days proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny high-lows: you never see him shambling along in boots a world too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled victim to the malevolence of Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot has always been attended to; he has worn well-fitting boots every day of his life, and he walks as if he knew not whether he had boots on or not. As for stocks, saving that he be a military man, he wears them not; they want that easy negligence, attainable only by the graceful folds of a well tied choker. You never see a man of fashion with his neck in the pillory, and you hardly ever encounter a Cockney whose cervical investment does not convey at once the idea of that obsolete punishment. A gentleman never considers that his neck was given him to show off a cataract of black satin upon, or as a post whereon to display gold-threaded fabrics, of all the colours of the rainbow: sooner than wear such things, he would willingly resign his neck to the embraces of a halter. His study is to select a modest, unassuming choker, fine if you please, but without pretension as to pattern, and in colour harmonizing with his residual toggery: this he ties with an easy, unembarrassed air, so that he can conveniently look about him. Oxford men, we have observed, tie chokers better than any others; but we do not know whether there are exhibitions or scholarships for the encouragement of this laudable faculty. At Cambridge (except Trinity) there is a laxity in chokers, for which it is difficult to account, except upon the principle that men there attend too closely to the mathematics; these, as every body knows, are in their essence inimical to the higher departments of the fine arts. There is no reason, however, why in this important branch of learning, which, as we may say, comes home to the bosom of every man, one Alma Mater should surpass another; since at both the intellects of men are almost exclusively occupied for years in tying their abominable white chokers, so as to look as like tavern waiters as possible.

Another thing: if a gentleman sticks a pin in his choker, you may be sure it has not a head as big as a potatoe, and is not a sort of Siamese Twin pin, connected by a bit of chain, or an imitation precious stone, or Mosaic gold concern. If he wears studs, they are plain, and have cost not less at the least than five guineas the set. Neither does he ever make a High Sheriff of himself, with chains dangling over the front of his waistcoat, or little pistols, seals, or trinketry appearing below his waistband, as much as to say, "if you only knew what a watch I have inside!" Nor does he sport trumpery rings upon raw-boned fingers; if he wears rings, you may depend upon it that they are of value, that they are sparingly distributed, and that his hand is not a paw.

A man of fashion never wears Woodstock gloves, or gloves with double stitches, or eighteen-penny imitation French kids: his gloves, like himself and every thing about him, are the real thing. Dressy young men of fashion sport primrose kids in the forenoon; and, although they take care to avoid the appearance of snobbery by never wearing the same pair a second day, yet, after all, primrose kids in the forenoon are not the thing, not in keeping, not quiet enough: we therefore denounce primrose kids, and desire to see no more of them.

If you are unfortunate enough to be acquainted with a snob, you need not put yourself to the unnecessary expense of purchasing an almanac for the ensuing year: your friend the snob will answer that useful purpose completely to your satisfaction. For example, on Thursdays and Sundays he shaves and puts on a clean shirt, which he exhibits as freely as possible in honour of the event: Mondays and Fridays you will know by the vegetating bristles of his chin, and the disappearance of the shirt cuffs and collar. These are replaced on Tuesdays and Saturdays by supplementary collar and cuffs, which, being white and starched, form a pleasing contrast with that portion of the original chemise, vainly attempted to be concealed behind the folds of a three-and-six-penny stock. Wednesdays and Fridays you cannot mistake; your friend is then at the dirtiest, and his beard at the longest, anticipating the half-weekly wash and shave: on quarter-day, when he gets his salary, he goes to a sixpenny barber and has his hair cut.

A gentleman, on the contrary, in addition to his other noble inutilities, is useless as an almanac. He is never half shaven nor half shorn: you never can tell when he has had his hair cut, nor has he his clean-shirt days, and his days of foul linen. He is not merely outwardly propre, but asperges his cuticle daily with "oriental scrupulosity:" he is always and ever, in person, manner, dress, and deportment, the same, and has never been other than he now appears.

You will say, perhaps, this is all very fine; but give me the money the man of fashion has got, and I will be as much a man of fashion as he: I will wear my clothes with the same ease, and be as free, unembarrassed, degagé, as the veriest Bond Street lounger of them all. Friend, thou mayest say so, or even think so, but I defy thee: snobbery, like murder, will out; and, if you do not happen to be a gentleman born, we tell you plainly you will never, by dint of expense in dress, succeed in "topping the part."

We have been for many years deeply engaged in a philosophical enquiry into the origin of the peculiar attributes characteristic of the man of fashion. A work of such importance, however, we cannot think of giving to the world, except in the appropriate envelope of a ponderous quarto: just now, by way of whetting the appetite of expectation, we shall merely observe, that, after much pondering, we have at last discovered the secret of his wearing his garments "with a difference," or, more properly, with an indifference, unattainable by others of the human species. You will conjecture, haply, that it is because he and his father before him have been from childhood accustomed to pay attention to dress, and that habit has given them that air which the occasional dresser can never hope to attain: or that, having the best artistes, seconded by that beautiful division of labour of which we have spoken heretofore, he can attain an evenness of costume, an undeviating propriety of toggery—not at all: the whole secret consists in never paying, nor intending to pay, his tailor!

Poor devils, who, under the Mosaic dispensation, contract for three suits a-year, the old ones to be returned, and again made new; or those who, struck with more than money madness, go to a tailor, cash in hand, for the purpose of making an investment, are always accustomed to consider a coat as a representative of so much money, transferred only from the pocket to the back. Accordingly, they are continually labouring under the depression of spirits arising from a sense of the possible depreciation of such a valuable property. Visions of showers of rain, and March dust, perpetually haunt their morbid imaginations. Greasy collars, chalky seams, threadbare cuffs, (three warnings that the time must come when that tunic, for which five pounds ten have been lost to them and their heirs for ever, will be worth no more than a couple of shillings to an old-clothesman in Holywell Street,) fill them, as they walk along the Strand, with apprehensions of anticipated expenditure. They walk circumspectly, lest a baker, sweep, or hodman, stumbling against the coat, may deprive its wearer of what to him represents so much ready money. These real and imaginary evils altogether prohibit the proprietor of a paid-up coat wearing it with any degree of graceful indifference.

But when a family of fashion, for generations, have not only never thought of paying a tailor, but have considered taking up bills, which the too confiding snip has discounted for them, as decidedly smacking of the punctilious vulgarity of the tradesman; thus drawing down upon themselves the vengeance of that most intolerant sect of Protestants, the Notaries Public; when a young man of fashion, taught from earliest infancy to regard tailors as a Chancellor of the Exchequer regards the people at large, that is to say, as a class of animals created to be victimized in every possible way, it is astonishing what a subtle grace and indescribable expression are conveyed to coats which are sent home to you for nothing, or, what amounts to exactly the same thing, which you have not the most remote idea of paying for, in secula seculorum. So far from caring whether it rains or snows, or whether the dust flies, when you have got on one of these eleemosynary coats, you are rather pleased than otherwise. There is a luxury in the idea that on the morrow you will start fresh game, and victimize your tailor for another. The innate cruelty of the human animal is gratified, and the idea of a tailor's suffering is never conceived by a customer without involuntary cachinnation. Not only is he denied the attribute of integral manhood—which even a man-milliner by courtesy enjoys—but that principle which induces a few men of enthusiastic temperament to pay debts, is always held a fault when applied to the bills of tailors. And, what is a curious and instructive fact in the natural history of London fashionable tailors, and altogether unnoticed by the Rev. Leonard Jenyns, in his Manual of British Vertebrate Animals, if you go to one of these gentlemen, requesting him to "execute," and professing your readiness to pay his bill on demand or delivery, he will be sure to give your order to the most scurvy botch in his establishment, put in the worst materials, and treat you altogether as a person utterly unacquainted with the usages of polite society. But if, on the contrary, you are recommended to him by Lord Fly-by-night, of Denman Priory—if you give a thundering order, and, instead of offering to pay for it, pull out a parcel of bill-stamps, and promise fifty per cent for a few hundreds down, you will be surprised to observe what delight will express itself in the radiant countenance of your victim: visions of cent per cent, ghosts of post-obits, dreams of bonds with penalties, and all those various shapes in which security delights to involve the extravagant, rise flatteringly before the inward eye of the man of shreds and patches. By these transactions with the great, he becomes more and more a man, less and less a tailor; instead of cutting patterns and taking measures, he flings the tailoring to his foreman, becoming first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer to peers of the realm.

With a few more of the less important distinctive peculiarities of the gentleman of fashion, we may dismiss this portion of our subject. A gentleman never affects military air or costume if he is not a military man, and even then avoids professional rigidity and swagger as much as possible; he never sports spurs or a riding-whip, except when he is upon horseback, contrary to the rule observed by his antagonist the snob, who always sports spurs and riding-whip, but who never mounts higher than a threepenny stride on a Hampstead donkey. Nor does a gentleman ever wear a moustache, unless he belongs to one of the regiments of hussars, or the household cavalry, who alone are ordered to display that ornamental exuberance. Foreigners, military or non-military, are recognized as wearing hair on the upper lip with propriety, as is the custom of their country. But no gentleman here thinks of such a thing, any more than he would think of sporting the uniform of the Tenth Hussars.

There is an affectation among the vulgar clever, of wearing the moustache, which they clip and cut à la Vandyk: this is useful, as affording a ready means of distinguishing between a man of talent and an ass—the former, trusting to his head, goes clean shaved, and looks like an Englishman: the latter, whose strength lies altogether in his hair, exhausts the power of Macassar in endeavouring to make himself as like an ourang-outang as possible.

Another thing must be observed by all who would successfully ape the gentleman: never to smoke cigars in the street in mid-day. No better sign can you have than this of a fellow reckless of decency and behaviour: a gentleman smokes, if he smokes at all, where he offends not the olfactories of the passers-by. Nothing, he is aware, approaches more nearly the most offensive personal insult, than to compel ladies and gentlemen to inhale, after you, the ejected fragrance of your penny Cuba or your three-halfpenny mild Havannah.

In the cities of Germany, where the population almost to a man inhale the fumes of tobacco, street smoking is very properly prohibited; for however agreeable may be the sedative influence of the Virginian weed when inspired from your own manufactory, nothing assuredly is more disgusting than inhalation of tobacco smoke at second-hand.

Your undoubted man of fashion, like other animals, has his peculiar habitat: you never see him promenading in Regent Street between the hours of three and five in the afternoon, nor by any chance does he venture into the Quadrant: east of Temple Bar he is never seen except on business, and then, never on foot: if he lounges any where, it is in Bond Street, or about the clubs of St James's.