Dandyism

“ I have often thought that this selfish concentration, which is a part of dandyism, is also a symbol of that einsamkeit felt in greater or less degree by the practitioners of every art. But, curiously enough, the very unity of his mind with the ground he works on exposes the dandy to the influence of the world. In one way dandyism is the least selfish of all the arts. Musicians are seen and, except for a price, not heard. Only for a price may you read what poets have written. All painters are not so generous as Mr. ”

“ Dandies vary in kind as well as in degree, there being some who play at dandyism in the days of their youth, such for example as Disraeli; others who are pinchbeck dandies, falling into the slough of overdressing, such for example as Charles Dickens, who was a mere colourist in garments. There are the born dandies, Brummel, D’Orsay, George Bernard Shaw for examples, the last of whom was born at least 200 years behind his time; he would have been delightful at the Court of Charles the Merry. It is not necessary to be in the fashion to achieve the dignity of dandyism ”

“ His is no manly walk, but an idle, effeminate saunter—a detail which is not brought out in the English Version. [113] He is a dandy and sadly empty-headed. Now all young men, good and bad alike, pass through a period of dandyism, and it has its uses; but the better the stuff of which the man is made, the more quickly he gets over the crisis, and returns to his senses. ”

“ They invent or keep in circulation those conversational blank checks or counters just spoken of, which intellectual capitalists may sometimes find it worth their while to borrow of them. They are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of dress, which, but for them, would deteriorate, and become, what some old fools would have it, a matter of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I like dandies well enough,--on one condition.
What is that, Sir?--said the divinity-student. That they have pluck. I find that lies at the bottom of all true dandyism. ”

“ Yet the mind of the complete dandy is well worth plumbing. Those who know him not will perchance advance the theory that a man possessed of a mind cannot be a dandy; as a matter of fact the reverse is the truth; he must possess mind, but not a heart.
Even so profound a philosopher and student of human nature—the two are seldom found in conjunction, which accounts for the inefficacy of most philosophy—as Professor Teufelsdröckh of Weissnichtwo has defined a dandy as “a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. ”

“ The moment he discovered we were not the only people on the cliffs Dandy raced off to meet her. He is always my harbinger, carrying messages of welcome to friends and enemies alike. I cannot cure him of it. Times out of number he has tried to force me to associate with men whom I detest, and he says such things to women about me as makes me feel absolutely ill at ease. By jumping from one to the other of us, he endeavors to set up a current of mutual adoration which, while at times it may not be distasteful to me, is very embarrassing to the few ladies of my acquaintance. ”

“ In many respects the dandy is a limited person both for good and evil; certain social solecisms are, of course, impossible to him, but he generally is lacking in imagination. The Duke, for instance, is less sympathetic than Wiggins, but he is harder on himself also.”
“Can a woman be a dandy?” inquired the minister in a tone of grave interest.
Mary laughed. “Every woman of the world is more or less a dandy, but she takes the position less seriously than does a man. If in some directions our sense of proportion is undeveloped, it has arrived at perfection in matters of clothes.” ”

“ Master Dandy!”—he had fallen upon his knees, at the feet of the other man, and was clasping his dress, in the agony of his appeal—“I knew you when you were a bright faced lad, laughing in the sunshine, and with no stain of blood upon you. Master Dandy——”
“Stain of blood!” cried Philip, recoiling. “What are you talking of? What madness possesses you?”
“No madness, Master Dandy—would to Heaven it might be!” cried the other. “It isn’t for me to see into a gentleman’s heart, or to know what temptations he may have, above such as I am. ”

“ Dandy pricks up his ears and wants to neigh, but Ray grips his nostrils like a vice, and Dandy desists. At rapid lope, within twenty yards, a party of half a dozen warriors go bounding past on their way down the valley, and no sooner have they crossed the gulley than he rises and rapidly pushes on up the dry sandy bed. Thank heaven! there are no stones. A minute more and he is crawling again, for the hoof-beats no longer drown the faint sound of Dandy's movements. A few seconds more and right in front of him, not a stone's throw away, he hears the deep tones of Indian voices in conversation. ”

“ So every friend he meets is hailed with a great gusto; even the working busmen in their shabby driving clothes are not beneath his notice, and he would be{131} proud to clasp the hand of a coloured scavenger provided there was the remotest chance of finding such a person with a few Jamaican pennies. Your true Dandy is never exclusive; he is an adventurer pure and simple; and he dresses in the highest height of fashion, partly from great vanity and partly because he will not advertise his poverty. ”

“ But Dandy only half raised his head and rejected the cake languidly—he was very comfortable there in the warm firelight, and the place made him feel as if he were back in his own old kitchen, but he was too tired to be hungry.
'He won't hardly look at it,' said the housemaid compassionately. 'I don't think he can be well.'
'Well!' said Jem. 'He's well enough; that's all his contrariness, that is. The fact is, he thinks hisself a deal too good for the likes of us, he do—thinks he ought to be kep' on chickin in a droring-room!' he sneered, wasting his satire on the unconscious Dandy. ”

“ But slim and taper is the waist,
the neat and pretty leg,
Of my pretty little Tippet
is the Dandy—O. Each part, &c.
Little Tippet of the south,
if she gives me but a smile
Chears the cockles of my skipping
heart like brandy—O!
Each part, each limb, each look,
would any one beguile,
But take her altogether,
she's the Dandy—O.
Chor. Each part, each limb, each look,
would any one beguile,
But take her altogether
she’s the Dandy--O.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ But the Andes themselves would have offered no insurmountable obstacles to Dandy, who bounded from precipice to precipice; and the lovers and the headman could once more clearly distinguish each other by the first beams of the rising sun. The headman roared, and threatened, and brandished a monstrous sabre; Dandy tore up the ground as he ran, neighed louder than thunder, and gained upon the fugitives every moment. Despair left the princess no choice, and she violently dashed her phial upon the ground. ”

“ Dandy ambles lightly along, eager for fun and little appreciating the danger. Ray bends down on his neck, intent with eye and ear. He feels that he has got well out east of the Indian picket unchallenged, when suddenly voices and hoofs come bounding up the valley from below. He must cross their front, reach the ravine before them, and strike the prairie beyond. "Go, Dandy!" he mutters with gentle pressure of leg, and the sorrel bounds lightly away, circling southwestward under the guiding rein. ”

“ Indeed, nothing less than this had happened—my electrician and his nursery maid had superinduced a mood, a growing, convincing belief that it was not worth while going on. I said aloud that there is nothing more lonely in this world than a lonely man. I made the remark to Dandy. I dared not tell it solely to myself, it would have been too real.
"There's nothing more lonely, Dandy," said I, "in this world than a lonely man."
Dandy stretched out a paw for my hand. He kept beating the air until he got it. ”

“ Ogledon took her up quickly. “Lying tongues, Mrs. Dolman? And what, pray, are they daring to say about our dear Dandy?”
“It seems, sir, that there has been a body found—of a young girl who belonged to these parts—in a wood near by; and, because Master Dandy has been seen talking to her once or twice— (as young men will, and always have done, since the good Lord made young men and women!) —they must needs go whispering about that Master Dandy made away with her.” ”

“ Much of the new poetry moved, like that of France, among the conventionalities and artificialities of an unreal world of romance, but it was of wider range, of fuller tone, of far greater emotional intensity, and, at its best, was the fabric, not of elegant ingenuity, but of creative human passion,—in Dante, indeed, a wonderful visionary structure in which love and hate, and pity and terror, and the forms and countenances of men were more vivid and real than in the world of real men and real passions. ”

“ Do you keep a silent tongue to every one.”
“You need not fear that I shall speak, Master Dandy,” replied the lad. “And it may not be so bad, after all; you may yet find a way of getting out of it, Master Dandy.”
“A way of getting out of it!” muttered Philip to himself, as he watched the retreating figure of his servant. “There seems but small chance of that. Robbery was bad enough; but this is another matter. She’s dead, and cannot speak; even if she were alive, she must point to me as Dandy Chater. ”

“ Next to the man to whom she had given her love and her very soul she admired and looked up to the remarkable and noble adventurer, the high-born and exquisite dandy, who with grime-covered face, and strong limbs encased in filthy clothes, was playing the most glorious part ever enacted upon the stage. ”

“ But your real dandy is not an ordinary man and must not be judged by common standards. He stands outside and above the ordinary rules of life and conduct; he has not any conscience, and questions of morality do not affect him. All that is for us to do in viewing such a one as [313] D’Orsay is to weigh his physical and mental gifts, and to examine the uses to which he put them, to look to the opportunities which were given to him and the advantage which he took of them. ”

“ Dandy asked suspiciously.
"To shake, of course. Because it is the hand of a hero. My good fellow, the man who conquers fear as you did is a hero. I never saw a braver thing done, and I've seen some plucky things in my time."
"If you hadn't been here," Dandy began, "I should 'a' 'ooked it straight."
"I say you are a hero," Burton persisted.
Dandy graciously allowed it to pass. Way up the Valley of Sweet Waters they are still inclined to make much of Dandy, but he resolutely declines to be lionised. ”

“ In the library John Legg sprang up and bolted the door against the uproar, and then sat down by his trembling wife.
In the drawing-room all was excitement and expectation.
“It’s him!” exclaimed old Dandy, with his few spikes of white hair rising on end around his bald crown. “It’s him! Straight from the pit of fire and brimstone, and possessed of the devil and all his demons!” ”

“ For four weeks I had avoided hearing of the old queen's reception in Dublin, and it was not in my mind to listen to it then. So I held Dandy severely by the collar and he passed us by. It was not the sort of treatment Dandy appreciated. He has a passionate curiosity about human beings. Never a man can pass along a lonely road but what he must go and speak to him. ”

“ Dandy, my beloved, I shall be able to take you with me.' And she caught up the rough-haired terrier and hugged him, kissing his dear old head. 'Dandy is mine; they can't take him from me, can they? But do you think the swans belong to them or to us? I suppose it would be impossible to take them with us if we go to live in London. They couldn't live in a backyard.'
'But, dearest Emily, who are "they"? You don't know that he is married—literary men don't often marry. ”

“ I may not be a philosopher, but at least I manage to live alone, which cannot be done with such romantic fancies as lead to starvation or any such tricks as that. Indeed, I learn much from Dandy, whose deepest passion never diminishes his excitement when it comes to the moment for Moxon to throw his two biscuits on to the tesselated pavement in the hall. It is he who likes them thrown. ”

“ Their existence is a continued career of sin and woe. Body and soul, mind and heart, are given up to earth, to sense, to corruption. They emerge for a brief season into the light of day, run their swift and fiery career of sin, and then disappear. Dante, in that wonderful Vision which embodies so much of true ethics and theology, represents the wrathful and gloomy class as sinking down under the miry waters and continuing to breathe in a convulsive, suffocating manner, sending up bubbles to the surface, that mark the place where they are drawing out their lingering existence. ”

“ It is not by studying out the petty strifes or external relations of his time, that you can become acquainted with the thought of Dante. To him these things were only soil in which to plant himself—figures by which to dramatize and evolve his ideas. Would you learn him, go listen in the forest of human passions to all the terrible voices he heard with a tormented but never-to-be-deafened ear; go down into the hells, where each excess that mars the harmony of nature is punished by the sinner finding no food except from his own harvest ”