Miseries Of A Dandy
by
That poverty is at times very unhandy–yea, humiliating, we can bear witness; but that any persons should make their poverty an everlasting subject of shame and annoyance to themselves, is the most contemptible nonsense we know of. During our junior days, while officiating as “shop boy,” behind a counter in a southern city, we used to derive some fun from the man[oe]uvres of a dandy-jack of a fellow in the same establishment. He was of the bullet-headed, pimpled and stubby-haired genus, but dressed up to the nines; and had as much pride as two half-Spanish counts or a peacock in a barnyard.
Charley was mostly engaged in the ware rooms, laboratory, etc., up stairs. He would arrive about 7 A. M., arrayed in the costume of the latest style, as he flaunted down Chestnut Street–by the way, it was a long, idle tramp, out of his road to do so,–his hair all frizzled up, hat shining and bright as a May morn, his dickey so stiff he could hardly expectorate over his goatee, while his “stunnin'” scarf and dashing pin stuck out to the admiration of Charley’s extensive eyes, and the astonishment of half the clerks and all the shop boys along the line of our Beau Brummell’s promenade!
It was very natural to conceive that Charley was impressed with the idea, that he was the envy of half the men, and the beau ideal of all the women he met! But your real dandy is no particular lover of women; he very naturally so loves himself that he lavishes all his fond affection upon his own person. So it was with our beau –he wouldn’t have risked dirtying his hands, soiling his “patent leathers,” or disarranging his scarf the thirteenth of an inch, to save a lady from a mad bull, or being run down by a wheelbarrow! Charley, to be sure, would walk with them, talk with them, beau them to the theatre, concert or ball room, provided always–they were dressed all but to within half an inch of their lives! The man who introduced a new and stunnin‘ hat, scarf, or coat, Charley would swear friendship to, on sight! A shabby, genteel person was his abomination; a patch or darn, utterly horrifying! He lived, moved, breathed–ideally, his ideality based, of course, upon ridiculous superfluities of life–leather and prunella, entirely. Charley looked upon “a dirty day” as upon a villanously-dressed person, while a bright, shining morn–giving him amplitude to make a “grand dash,” won from him the same encomiums to the producer that he would bestow on the getter-up of an elegant pair of cassimeres–commendable works of an artist! The genus dandy, whether of savage or civilized life, is a felicitous subject for peculiar, speculative, comparative analogy or analysis; we shall pursue the shadow no farther, but come to the substance.
After arriving at the establishment, Charley would strip off his “top hamper,” placing his finery in a closet with the care and diligence of a maiden of thirty, and upwards. Then, donning a rude pair of over-alls and coat, he condescended to go to work. Now, in the said establishment, our beau had few friends; the men, girls, and boys were “down” upon him; the men, because of his dandyism; the females hated him, because Charley stuck his long nose up at “shop girls,” and wouldn’t no more notice them in the streets, than if they were chimney sweepers or decayed esculents! We boys didn’t like him no how, generally, though it was policy for him to treat us tolerably decent, because his pride made it imperiously necessary that some of the “little breeches” should do small chores, errands, bringing water from the street, carrying down to the shop goods, etc., which might otherwise devolve upon himself. But men, girls and boys were always scheming and practising jokes and tricks upon the beau. The boys would all rush off to dinner–first having so dirtied the water, hid the towels and soap, that poor Charley would necessarily be obliged to go down into the public street and bring up a bucket of the clean element to wash his begrimed face and hands. And mark the difficulties and diplomacy of such an arrangement. Charley would slip down into the lower entry, peep out to see if any body was looking,–if a genteel person was visible, the beau held back with his bucket; after various reconnaissances, the coast would appear clear, and the beau would dash out to the pump, agitate “the iron-tailed cow” with the force and speed of an infantile earthquake–snatch up the bucket, and with one dart hit the doorway, and glide up stairs, thanking his stars that nobody “seen him do it!”