Dandy
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- This article refers to the persons. For other uses, see Dandy (disambiguation).
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and the cultivation of leisurely hobbies. Some dandies, especially in Britain in the late 18th and 19th century, often strove to affect aristocratic values even though many came from common backgrounds—thus a dandy could be considered a kind of snob.
The practice of dandyism first appeared in the revolutionary 1790s, both in London and Paris. The dandy cultivated a skeptical reserve, to such extremes that the novelist George Meredith, no dandy himself, once defined cynicism as "intellectual dandyism." Some took a more benign view. For example, Thomas Carlyle in his Sartor Resartus, wrote that a dandy was no more than "a clothes-wearing man". Others such as Charles Baudelaire held that the dandy's mere existence was a reproach to the responsible citizen of the middle class.
One of the great dandies of literature is the Scarlet Pimpernel.
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Etymology
The word dandy made its first appearance in a Scottish border ballad about 1780, but probably not with its more recent meaning. It was perhaps a shortened form of jack-a-dandy, (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911) and it became a vogue word during the Napoleonic Wars. In the slang of the time, a dandy was differentiated from a fop in that the dandy's dress was more refined and sober.
In the 21st century the word "dandy" has become a jocular adjective meaning "fine" or "great," and is often used sarcastically. However, sometimes a well-dressed and self-absorbed man is still referred to as a dandy - often with a connotation of homosexuality.
Beau Brummell and early British dandyism
The very model of the dandy in British society was George Bryan "Beau" Brummell (1778-1840), an associate of the Prince Regent: Unpowdered, unperfumed, immaculately bathed and shaved, in a plain dark blue coat, perfectly brushed, of perfect fit, showing a lot of perfectly starched linens, freshly laundered, with an elaborately-tied cravat, from the mid-1790s Brummell became an early version of the celebrity, famous chiefly for being a laconic wit and a clothes-horse.
By the time Pitt taxed powder in 1795, Brummell had already abandoned a wig and cut his hair in a Roman fashion, "à la Brutus". Brummell led the move from breeches to snugly-tailored dark "pantaloons," which led directly to the trousers that have been mainstay of men's wear in the Western world for two centuries. Brummell inherited a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, which he spent mostly on costume, gaming and high living, until he suffered the stereotypical fate of the dandy, and fled from his creditors to France, and ultimately died in a Caen lunatic asylum
People of more notable accomplishments than Brummell adopted the pose as well; George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron occasionally dressed the part, helping to reintroduce the frilly, lace-cuffed and collared "poet shirt." He also had his portrait painted in Albanian costume. Image:Maxbeerbohm2.jpeg
Another prominent dandy of the period was Alfred Guillaume Gabriel d'Orsay, the Count d'Orsay, who had been a friend of Byron and moved in the highest London circles.
Dandyism in France
During his heyday, Brummell's dicta on fashion and etiquette reigned supreme. His habits of dress and fashion were much imitated, especially in France, where in a curious development they became especially the rage in bohemian quarters. Here dandies were sometimes celebrated in revolutionary terms as self-created men who consciously designed their own personalities and broke radically with the traditions of the past. By their elaborate dress and idle, decadent lifestyles, French bohemian dandies sought to convey their contempt for and superiority to bourgeois society. This fancy-dress bohemianism became a major influence on the Symbolist movement in French literature during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Baudelaire was deeply interested in the dandyism trend, and wrote memorably that an aspiring dandy must have "no profession other than elegance. . . no other status but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons. . . . The dandy must aspire to be sublime without interruption; he must live and sleep before a mirror." Other French intellectuals also became interested in the dandies they saw strolling the streets of Paris. Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote an essay on The Anatomy of Dandyism, which was devoted in large measure to examining the career of Beau Brummell.
Later Dandyism
The gilded 1890s provided many suitably sheltered settings for dandyism. The poets Algernon Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, the American artist James McNeill Whistler, Joris-Karl Huysmans and Max Beerbohm were dandies of the period, as was Robert de Montesquiou, who inspired Marcel Proust's Baron de Charlus. In Italy Gabriele d'Annunzio and Carlo Bugatti exemplified the artistic bohemian dandyism of the fin de siecle.
The 20th century had less patience with dandyism: the Prince of Wales, briefly Edward VIII was something of a dandy, and it did not help his public appeal. Nevertheless George Walden, in his essay Who's a Dandy?, points to Noel Coward, Andy Warhol and Quentin Crisp as examples of dandies of the modern era.
In the late 90's to the present in Japan, the dandy has become a fashion subculture (see, Dandy (fashion)). Another of the fashions in Japan that takes inspiration from western fashions of days past.
Female Dandies
The female equivalents of dandies could be found in the demimonde, in figures such as the extravagant courtesan Cora Pearl. The marchesa Luisa Casati followed a dandy's career in Venice after World War I. The diva might also be considered a female dandy.
Quotations
"A Dandy is a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well: so that the others dress to live, he lives to dress...And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognise his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light..."
- The Dandiacal Body from Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle
See also
Further reading
Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules. Of Dandyism and of George Brummell. Translated by Douglas Ainslie. New York: PAJ Publications, 1988.
Carlyle, Thomas. Sartor Resartus. In A Carlyle Reader: Selections from the Writings of Thomas Carlyle. Edited by G.B. Tennyson. London: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Jesse, Captain William. The Life of Beau Brummell. London: The Navarre Society Limited, 1927.
Lytton, Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton. Pelham or the Adventures of a Gentleman. Edited by Jerome J. McGann. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972.
Moers, Ellen. The Dandy: Brummell to Beerbohm. London: Secker and Warburg, 1960.
Murray, Venetia. An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England. New York: Viking, 1998.
Nicolay, Claire. Origins and Reception of Regency Dandyism: Brummell to Baudelaire. Ph.D. diss., Loyola U of Chicago, 1998.
Wharton, Grace and Philip. Wits and Beaux of Society. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1861.