The Works of Max Beerbohm | Page 5

art to one who is sincerely willing and anxious to learn from him.
Indeed, English society is always ruled by a dandy, and the more absolutely ruled the greater that dandy be. For dandyism, the perfect flower of outward elegance, is the ideal it is always striving to realise in its own rather incoherent way. But there is no reason why dandyism should be confused, as it has been by nearly all writers, with mere social life. Its contact with social life is, indeed, but one of the accidents of an art. Its influence, like the scent of a flower, is diffused unconsciously. It has its own aims and laws, and knows none other. And the only person who ever fully acknowledged this truth in aesthetics is, of all persons most unlikely, the author of Sartor Resartus. That any one who dressed so very badly as did Thomas Carlyle should have tried to construct a philosophy of clothes has always seemed to me one of the most pathetic things in literature. He in the Temple of Vestments! Why sought he to intrude, another Clodius, upon those mysteries and light his pipe from those ardent censers? What were his hobnails that they should mar the pavement of that delicate Temple? Yet, for that he betrayed one secret rightly heard there, will I pardon his sacrilege. `A dandy,' he cried through the mask of Teufelsdro"ck, `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.' Those are true words. They are, perhaps, the only true words in Sartor Resartus. And I speak with some authority. For I found the key to that empty book, long ago, in the lock of the author's empty wardrobe. His hat, that is still preserved in Chelsea, formed an important clue.
But (behold!) as we repeat the true words of Teufelsdro"ck, there comes Monsieur Barbey D'Aurevilly, that gentle moqueur, drawling, with a wave of his hand, `Les esprits qui ne voient pas les choses que par leur plus petit co^te', ont imagine' que le Dandysme e'tait surtout l'art de la mise, une heureuse et audacieuse dictature en fait de toilette et d'e'le'gance exte'rieure. Tre`s-certainement c'est cela aussi, mais c'est bien davantage. Le Dandysme est toute une manie`re d'e^tre et l'on n'est pas que par la co^te' mate'riellement visible. C'est une manie`re d'e^tre entie`rement compose'e de nuances, comme il arrive toujours dans les socie'te's tre`s-vieilles et tre`s- civilise'es.' It is a pleasure to argue with so suave a subtlist, and we say to him that this comprehensive definition does not please us. We say we think he errs.
Not that Monsieur's analysis of the dandiacal mind is worthless by any means. Nor, when he declares that George Brummell was the supreme king of the dandies and fut le dandysme me^me, can I but piously lay one hand upon the brim of my hat, the other upon my heart. But it is as an artist, and for his supremacy in the art of costume, and for all he did to gain the recognition of costume as in itself an art, and for that superb taste and subtle simplicity of mode whereby he was able to expel, at length, the Byzantine spirit of exuberance which had possessed St. James's and wherefore he is justly called the Father of Modern Costume, that I do most deeply revere him. It is not a little strange that Monsieur D'Aurevilly, the biographer who, in many ways, does seem most perfectly to have understood Mr. Brummell, should belittle to a mere phase that which was indeed the very core of his existence. To analyse the temperament of a great artist and then to declare that his art was but a part--a little part--of his temperament, is a foolish proceeding. It is as though a man should say that he finds, on analysis, that gunpowder is composed of potassium chloride (let me say), nitrate and power of explosion. Dandyism is ever the outcome of a carefully cultivated temperament, not part of the temperament itself. That manie`re d'e^tre, entie`rement compose'e de nuances, was not more, as the writer seems to have supposed, than attributory to Mr. Brummell's art. Nor is it even peculiar to dandies. All delicate spirits, to whatever art they turn, even if they turn to no art, assume an oblique attitude towards life. Of all dandies, Mr. Brummell did most steadfastly maintain this attitude. Like the single- minded artist that he was, he turned full and square towards his art and looked life straight in the face out of the corners of his eyes.
It is not hard to see how, in the effort to give Mr. Brummell