An excerpt from “The Last of the Dandies”
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1862
Article unsigned
“Who is Captain Gronow?”
He is the last of the “Dandies” of the Regency of George IV.;… continue reading...
Of all the modern poets of France who claimed noble birth—and many did so, by inserting de before their last name as a literary and social affectation—only two indisputably had that right: Villiers de L’isle-Adam and Robert de Montesquiou.… continue reading...
A section of “Beau Brummell” from Miscellaneous Works Volume I: Habits and Men by John Doran (1857)
… continue reading...I scorn to crowd among the muddy throng
Of the rank multitude, whose thicken’d breath
(Like to condensed fogs) do choke the beauty
Which else would dwell in every kingdom’s cheek.
We look upon Beau Brummell as the greatest of small wits. Indeed, he may in this respect be considered, as Cowley says of Pindar as “a species alone,” and as forming a class by himself.… continue reading...
“Beau Brummell” from Eccentric Personages by W. Russell (1864)
It is a solemn truth that every death-bed is the final scene of a great tragedy, though the death be a beggar’s, the bed one of straw.… continue reading...
An Excerpt from Pelham: Or the Adventures of a Gentleman by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1828)
1.) Do not require your dress so much to fit, as to adorn you.… continue reading...
It is not until the reign of that frustrated artist and unsurpassed egotist, Nero, that we again recognize the true dandy, so insolent in repose, embodied in the fragmentary figure of Gaius Petronius (Arbiter).… continue reading...
The first literary dandy of whom we still have record was Plato—who was unquestionably the greatest “exquisite” of his day. This will strike most modern readers as astonishing or inconceivable but it is neither for those who know their Greek.… continue reading...
When was man first freed from the drudgery of earning his income? And who was the first to dedicate himself to the art of living well?… continue reading...
