All things Fine and DANDY

  Take a deep breath, dear reader. This rant simmered under four monarchs prior to print in 1866 : "How unspeakably odious - with a few brilliant exceptions, such as Alvanley and others - were the  dandies of forty years ago. They were a motley crew, with nothing remarkable about them but their insolence. They were generally not high-born, nor rich, nor very good-looking, nor clever, nor agreeable; and why they arrogated to themselves the right of setting up their own fancied superiority on a self-raised pedestal, and despising their betters, Heaven only knows. They were generally middle-aged, some even elderly men, had large appetites and weak digestions, gambled freely - and had no luck. They hated everybody, and abused everybody, and would sit together in White's bay window, or the  pit  boxes at the Opera, weaving tremendous crammers. (1) They swore a good deal, never laughed, had their own particular slang, looked hazy after dinner, and had most of them been pat...

  Who could ask for a more ornate frame... for a portrait of purest vanity? Envisage, if you will, a gaggle of grown men, sat snarking at almost anyone who dared pass before their gaze. A fashion jury of Regency London who would gather in the bow window of White's Club . The most tailored of the Haut Ton - a clique whose bizarre authority led even the Duke of Wellington to harbour "a high opinion of that mysterious and terrible tribunal." (1)   So what severity of focus could have scorched those strolling, or scurrying, along fashionable St. James's street? Well, there may have been a bemused observer among those pitiless governors of Regency style. And this eventually led to Beau Brummell (and cohorts) becoming victims of an epic-length satire! The work of an equally observant wit, Henry Luttrell, whom Byron described as "the best sayer of good things, and the most epigrammatic conversationist I ever met". Luttrell's poetic volume 'Advice to Julia...