The Works of Max Beerbohm | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Tom Weiss ([email protected]) with thanks to G. Banks for proofreading.

I have transliterated the Greek passages. Here are some approximate translations (with thanks to a nameless Radlettite and www.perseus.tufts.edu): --philomathestatoi ton neaniskon: some of the youths most eager for knowledge --Ne^pios: childish --hexeis apodeiktikai: things that can be proven (Aristotle, Nic. Ethics) --eido^lon amauron: shadowy phantom (phrase used by Homer in The Odyssey to describe the specter Athena sends to comfort Penelope) --all' aiei: but always --tina pho^ta megan kai kalon edegmen: I received some great and beautiful light

The Works of Max Beerbohm
by Max Beerbohm

With a Bibliography by John Lane

`Amid all he has here already achieved, full, we may think, of the quiet assurance of what is to come, his attitude is still that of the scholar; he seems still to be saying, before all things, from first to last, "I am utterly purposed that I will not offend."'
CONTENTS Dandies and Dandies A Good Prince 1880 King George the Fourth The Pervasion of Rouge Poor Romeo! Diminuendo Bibliography
Dandies and Dandies
How very delightful Grego's drawings are! For all their mad perspective and crude colour, they have indeed the sentiment of style, and they reveal, with surer delicacy than does any other record, the spirit of Mr. Brummell's day. Grego guides me, as Virgil Dante, through all the mysteries of that other world. He shows me those stiff-necked, over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, drinking Burgundy in the Cafe' des Milles Colonnes or riding through the village of Newmarket upon their fat cobs or gambling at Crockford's. Grego's Green Room of the Opera House always delights me. The formal way in which Mdlle. Mercandotti is standing upon one leg for the pleasure of Lord Fife and Mr. Ball Hughes; the grave regard directed by Lord Petersham towards that pretty little maid-a-mischief who is risking her rouge beneath the chandelier; the unbridled decorum of Mdlle. Hullin and the decorous debauchery of Prince Esterhazy in the distance, make altogether a quite enchanting picture. But, of the whole series, the most illuminative picture is certainly the Ball at Almack's. In the foreground stand two little figures, beneath whom, on the nether margin, are inscribed those splendid words, Beau Brummell in Deep Conversation with the Duchess of Rutland. The Duchess is a girl in pink, with a great wedge-comb erect among her ringlets, the Beau tre`s de'gage', his head averse, his chin most supercilious upon his stock, one foot advanced, the gloved fingers of one hand caught lightly in his waistcoat; in fact, the very deuce of a pose.
In this, as in all known images of the Beau, we are struck by the utter simplicity of his attire. The `countless rings' affected by D'Orsay, the many little golden chains, `every one of them slighter than a cobweb,' that Disraeli loved to insinuate from one pocket to another of his vest, would have seemed vulgar to Mr. Brummell. For is it not to his fine scorn of accessories that we may trace that first aim of modern dandyism, the production of the supreme effect through means the least extravagant? In certain congruities of dark cloth, in the rigid perfection of his linen, in the symmetry of his glove with his hand, lay the secret of Mr. Brummell's miracles.