CHAPTER XIII. SARTORIAL MEN. I HAVE Sometimes wondered whether men or women were more vain in matters of dress. At certain periods of life it is quite common to see a young fellow strutting along the street as proud as any peacock. Theodore Hook met such a one in the Strand, and stopping him, asked with an impressive air, "Excuse me, sir, but are you any one in particular?" Such a question has often crossed my mind when I have sauntered along some fashionable lounge. The unexceptionable attire, from the crown of the hat to the sole of the patentleather boots, the band-box associations which clung round the whole get-up, the enormous outlay of starch suggested-these things would be startling if they were not ridiculous. What would some men be without their tailors? What indeed! They remind me of Thackeray's graphic picture of George IV.: "I look through all his life and recognize but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket-handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth, and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more underwaistcoats, and then nothing.”* What an ironical picture this of a king! It is a disgrace to our humanity that it should ever be an accurate delineation of a man or of a woman. Underneath that finely fitting coat—nothing! Underneath that fashionable bonnet and well-arranged hair— nothing! If you want the morality and philosophy of clothes set before you in truly dramatic, picturesque, and pungent style, read Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." Man is a clothes-wearing animal, and this being the case, it is as well that he should pay some little attention to his outermost cuticle. Dress is a passport through society. It is the first thing that makes an impression on outsiders; and the procuring of it cannot be therefore relegated to the easy method of writing an order on a halfpenny postcard. Some ladies and gentlemen are abominably dressed; a few are utterly negligent. The * Thackeray's "Four Georges," pp. 169, 170. |