The Works of Max Beerbohm Max Beerbohm (ebook reader android .txt) đ
- Author: Max Beerbohm
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It is not hard to see how, in the effort to give Mr. Brummell his due place in history, Monsieur DâAurevilly came to grief. It is but strange that he should have fallen into a rather obvious trap. Surely he should have perceived that, so long as Civilisation compels her children to wear clothes, the thoughtless multitude will never acknowledge dandyism to be an art. If considerations of modesty or hygiene compelled everyone to stain canvas or chip marble every morning, painting and sculpture would in like manner be despised. Now, as these considerations do compel everyone to envelop himself in things made of cloth and linen, this common duty is confounded with that fair procedure, elaborate of many thoughts, in whose accord the fop accomplishes his toilet, each morning afresh, Aurora speeding on to gild his mirror. Not until nudity be popular will the art of costume be really acknowledged. Nor even then will it be approved. Communities are ever jealous (quite naturally) of the artist who works for his own pleasure, not for theirsâ âmore jealous by far of him whose energy is spent only upon the glorification of himself alone. Carlyle speaks of dandyism as a survival of âthe primeval superstition, self-worship.â âLa vanitĂ©,â are almost the first words of Monsieur DâAurevilly, âcâest un sentiment contre lequel tout le monde est impitoyable.â Few remember that the dandyâs vanity is far different from the crude conceit of the merely handsome man. Dandyism is, after all, one of the decorative arts. A fine ground to work upon is its first postulate. And the dandy cares for his physical endowments only in so far as they are susceptible of fine results. They are just so much to him as to the decorative artist is inilluminate parchment, the form of a white vase or the surface of a wall where frescoes shall be.
Consider the words of Count DâOrsay, spoken on the eve of some duel, âWe are not fairly matched. If I were to wound him in the face it would not matter; but if he were to wound me, ce serait vraiment dommage!â There we have a pure example of a dandyâs peculiar vanityâ ââIt would be a real pity!â They say that DâOrsay killed his manâ âno matter whomâ âin this duel. He never should have gone out. Beau Brummell never risked his dandyhood in these mean encounters. But DâOrsay was a wayward, excessive creature, too fond of life and other follies to achieve real greatness. The power of his predecessor, the Father of Modern Costume, is over us yet. All that is left of DâOrsayâs art is a waistcoat and a handful of ringsâ âvain relics of no more value for us than the fiddle of Paganini or the mask of Menischus! I think that in Caroloâs painting of him, we can see the strength, that was the weakness, of le jeune Cupidon. His fingers are closed upon his cane as upon a sword. There is mockery in the inconstant eyes. And the lips, so used to close upon the wine-cup, in laughter so often parted, they do not seem immobile, even now. Sad that one so prodigally endowed as he was, with the three essentials of a dandyâ âphysical distinction, a sense of beauty and wealth or, if you prefer the term, creditâ âshould not have done greater things. Much of his costume was merely showy or eccentric, without the rotund unity of the perfect fopâs. It had been well had he lacked that dash and spontaneous gallantry that make him cut, it may be, a more attractive figure than Beau Brummell. The youth of St. Jamesâs gave him a wonderful welcome. The flight of Mr. Brummell had left them as sheep without a shepherd. They had even cried out against the inscrutable decrees of fashion and curtailed the height of their stocks. And (lo!) here, ambling down the Mall with tasselled cane, laughing in the window at Whiteâs or in Fopâs Alley posturing, here, with the devil in his eyes and all the graces at his elbow, was DâOrsay, the prince paramount who should dominate London and should guard life from monotony by the daring of his whims. He accepted so many engagements that he often dressed very quickly both in the morning and at nightfall. His brilliant genius would sometimes enable him to appear faultless, but at other times not even his fine figure could quite dispel the shadow of a toilet too hastily conceived. Before long he took that fatal step, his marriage with Lady Harriet Gardiner.
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