a delicate gloss upon them the evanescent gloss that passes away with the first freshness of the coat, as the bloom does from the peach. A friend meets you; he salutes you cordially, but looks puzzled for a moment at the change in your appearance. I have it, says Jones. « Hobson my boy, I congratulate you, a new coat, and very neat cut puce-coloured frock, brown silk lining, brass buttons, and velvet collar-quite novel, and quiet and genteel at the same time. » You say, Pooh, Jones! do you think so, though? and at the same time turn round, just to give him a view of the back, in which there is not a single wrinkle. You find suddenly that you must buy a new stock; that your old Berlin gloves will never do; and that a pair of three-and-six-penny Kids are absolutely necessary. You find your boots are cruelly thick, and fancy that the attention of the world is accurately divided between the new frock-coat and the patch on your great toe. It is very odd that that patch did not annoy you yesterday in the least degree that you looked with a good-natured grin at the old sausage-fingered Berlin gloves, bulging out at the end and concaved like spoons. But there is a change in the man, without any doubt. Notice Sir P. O'D; those who know that celebrated military man by sight are aware of one peculiarity in his appearance, his hat is never brushed. I met him one day with the beaver brushed quite primly; and looking hard at the baronet to ascertain the cause of this phenomenon, saw that he had a new coat. Even his great spirit was obliged to yield to the power of the coat He made a genteel effort he awoke up from his habitual Diogenic carelessness; and I have no doubt that had Alexander, before he visited the cynic, ordered some one to fling a new robe into his barrel, I have no doubt but that he would have found the fellow prating and boasting with all the airs of a man of fashion, and talking of tilburies, opera-girls, and the last ball at Devonshire house, as if the brute had been used for all his life to no other company. Fie upon the swaggering, vulgar bully! I have always wondered how the prince of Macedon, a gentleman by birth, with an excellent tutor to educate him, could have been imposed upon by the grovelling, - obscene, envious tub-man, and could have uttered the speech we know of. It was a humbug, depend upon it, attributed to his majesty by some maladroit bon-mot-maker of the court, and passed subsequently for genuine Alexandrine. It is hardly necessary for the moralist too earnestly to point out to persons moving in a modest station of life the necessity of not having coats of too fashionable and rakish a cut. Coats have been, and will be, in the course of this disquisition, frequently compared to the flowers of the field: like them they bloom for a season, like them they grow seedy and they fade. Can you afford always to renew your coat when this fatal hour arrives? Is your coat like the French monarchy, and does it never die? Have, then, clothes of the newest fashion, and pass on to the next article in the Magazine unless, always, you prefer the style of this one. But while a shabby coat, worn in a manly way, is a bearable, nay, sometimes a pleasing object, reminding one of a good man struggling with the storms of fate, whom Mr.Joseph Addison has represented in his tragedy of Cato-while a man of certain character may look august and gentlemanlike in a coat of a certain cut-it is quite impossible for a person who sports an ultra-fashionable costume, to wear it with decency beyond a half year, say. My coats always last me two years, and any man who knows me knows how I look; but I defy Count d'Orsay thus publicly to wear a suit for seven hundred and thirty days consecutively, and look respectable at the end of that time. In like manner, I would defy, without any disrespect, the Marchioness of X-, or her Grace the Duchess of Z -, to sport a white satin gown constantly for six months, and look decent. There is propriety in dress. Ah, my poor Noll Goldsmith, in your famous plum-coloured velvet! I can see thee strutting down Fleet-street, and stout old Sam rolling behind, as Maister Boswell pours some Caledonian jokes into his ear, and grins at the poor vain poet. In what a pretty condition will Goldy's puce-coloured velvet be, about two months hence, when it is covered with dust and grease, and he comes in his slatternly finery to borrow a guinea of his friend! A friend of the writer's once made him a present of two very handsome gold pins; and what did the author of this notice do? Why, with his usual sagacity, he instantly sold the pins for five-and-twenty shillings, the cost of the gold, knowing full well that he could not afford to live up to such fancy articles. If you sport handsome gold pins, you must have everything about you to match. Nor do I, in the least, agree with my friend Bosk, who has a large amethyst brooch, and fancies that because he sticks it in his shirt, his atrocious shabby stock and surtout may pass muster. No, no! let us be all peacock, if you please; but one peacock's feather in your tail is a very absurd ornament, and of course all moderate men will avoid it. I remember when I travelled with Captain Cook in the South Sea Islands, to have seen Quashamboo with nothing on him but a remarkably fine cocked-hat; his queen sported a red coat, and one of the princesses went frisking about in a pair of leather-breeches, much to our astonishment. This costume was not much more absurd than poor Goldsmith's, who might be very likely seen drawing forth from the embroidered pocket of his plum-coloured velvet, a pat of butter wrapped in a cabbage-leaf, a pair of farthing-rushlights, an onion or two, and a bit of bacon. I recollect meeting a great, clever, ruffianly boor of a man, who had made acquaintance with a certain set of very questionable aristocracy, and gave himself the airs of a man of fashion. He had a coat made of the very pattern of Lord Toggery's a green frock, a green frock, a green velvet collar, a green lining a plate of spring cabbage is not of a brisker, brighter hue. This man, who had been a shop-keeper's apprentice originally, now declared that every man who was a gentleman wore white kid gloves; and for a certain period sported a fresh pair every day. : One hot, clear, sunshiny July day, walking down the Haymarket at two o'clock, I heard a great yelling and shouting of blackguard boys, and saw that they were hunting some object in their front. The object approached us it was a green object — a green coat, collar, and lining, and a pair of pseudo-white kid gloves, The gloves were dabbled with mud and blood, the man was bleeding at the nose, and slavering at the mouth, and yelling some unintelligible verses of a song, and swaying to and fro across the sunshiny street with the blackguard boys in chase. I turned round the corner of Vigo Lane with the velocity of a cannon-ball, and sprang panting into a baker's shop. It was Mr. Bludyer, our London Diogenes. Have a care, ye gay, dashing Alexanders! how ye influence such men by too much praise, or debauch them by too much influence. How much of that man's extravagance, and absurd aristocratic airs, and subsequent roueries, and cutting of old acquaintance, is to be attributed to his imitation of Lord Toggery's coat. Actors of the lower sort affect very much braiding and fur collars to their frock-coats; and a very curious and instructive sight it is, to behold these personages with pale lean faces, and hats cocked on one side, in a sort of pseudo-military trim. One sees many such sauntering under Drury Lane Colonnade, or about Bow Street, with sickly smiles on their faces. Poor fellows! how much of their character is embroidered in that seedy braiding on their coats! Near five o'clock, in the neighbourhood of Rupert Street and the Haymarket, you may still occasionally see the old shabby, manly, gentlemanly half-pay frock but the braid is now growing scarce in London; and your military man, with reason perhaps, dresses more like a civilian; and understanding life better, and the means of making his half-crown go as far as five shillings in former days, has usually a club to dine at, and leaves Rupert-Street eating-houses to persons of a different grade- to some of those dubious dandies whom one sees swaggering in Regent Street in the afternoon, or to those gay, spruce gentlemen whom you encounter in St. Paul's Churchyard at ten minutes after five on their way westward from the City. Look, at the same hour, at the Temple; and issuing thence and from Essex Street, you behold many scores of neat barristers who are walking to the joint and half-a-pint of Marsala at the Oxford and Cambridge Club. They are generally tall, slim, proper, well-dressed men, but their coats are too prim and professionally cut. Indeed I have generally remarked that their clerks, who leave chambers about the same time, have a far more rakish and fashionable air; and if, my dear Madam, you will condescend to take a beefsteak at the Cock, or at some of the houses round Covent Garden, you will at once allow that this statement is perfectly correct. I have always had rather a contempt for a man, who, on arriving at home, deliberately takes his best coat from his back and adopts an old and shabby one. It is a mean precaution. Unless very low in the world, be above a proceeding so petty. Once I knew a French lady, very smartly dressed in a black velvet pelisse, a person whom I admired very much, -and indeed for the matter of that, she was very fond of me, but that is neither here nor there, I say I knew a French lady of some repute who used to wear a velvet pelisse; and how do you think the back of it was arranged? Why, pelisses are worn, as you know, very full behind; and Madame de Tournuronval had actually a strip of black satin let into the hinder part of her dress, over which the velvet used to close with a spring when she walked or stood, so that the satin was invisible. But when she sat on a chair, especially one of the cane-bottomed species, Euphemia gave a loose to her spring, the velvet divided on each side, and she sat down on the satin. Was it an authorised stratagem of millinery? Is a woman, under any circumstances, permitted to indulge in such a manœuvre? I say, No. A woman with such a gown is a mean deceitful character. Of a woman who has a black satin patch behind her velvet gown, it is right that one should speak ill behind her back; and when I saw Euphemia Tournuronval spread out her wings, non usitatae pennae, but what else to call them?) -- spread out her skirts, and insure them from injury, by means of this dastardly ruse, I quitted the room with disgust, and never was intimate with her as before. A widow I know she was: I am certain she looked sweet upon me; and she said she had a fortune; but I don't believe it. VOL. I. 5 |