SITUATION—BOUNDARIES—CLIMATE—SEASONS.

Though I do not undertake to write a geographical account of the Fashionable World, yet I should think myself highly culpable were I to pass over this interesting part of the subject wholly in silence. My readers must be at the same time cautioned, not to form their expectations of the geography of Fashion from that of other countries. The fact is, that the whole community which sustains this appellation, extensive as it is, can scarcely be treated as having any peculiar or exclusive locality. The individuals who compose it, are not, it is true, absolute wanderers, like the tribes of Arabia; nor yet are they regular settlers, like the convicts at Botany Bay: but moveable and migratory to a certain degree, and to a certain degree stationary and permanent, they live among the inhabitants of the parent country; neither absolutely mixing with them, nor yet actually separated from them.

This paradoxical state of the people renders it not a little difficult to reduce their territory within the rules of geographical description. They have, it is true, their degrees and their circles; but these terms are used by people of Fashion in a sense so different from that which geographers have assigned them, that they afford no sort of assistance to the topographical enquirer. It is, I presume, on this account, that in all the improvements which have been made upon the globe, nothing has been done towards settling the meridian of Fashion; and though the Laplanders, the Hottentots, and the Esquimaux, have places assigned them, no more notice is taken of the people of Fashion, than if they either did not exist, or were not worthy of being mentioned.

The only expedient, therefore, to which a writer can resort, in this dearth of geographical materials, is that of designating the territory of Fashion by the ordinary names of the several places through which it passes. And this is, in fact, strictly conformable to that usage which prevails in the language and communication of the people themselves: for London, Tunbridge, Bath, Weymouth, &c. are, in their mouths, names for little else than the lands and societies of Fashion which they respectively contain.

Now, the portion of each place to which Fashion lays claim, is neither definite as to its dimensions, nor fixed as to its locality. In London, a small proportion of the whole is Fashionable; in Bath, the proportion is greater; and in some watering-places of the latest creation, Fashion puts in her demand for nearly the whole. The locality of its domains is also contingent and mutable. Various circumstances concur in determining, when a portion of ground shall become Fashionable, and when it shall cease to be such. The only rule of any steadiness with which I am acquainted, and which chiefly relates to the metropolis, is that which prescribes a western latitude: [5] if this be excepted, (which indeed admits of no relaxation,) events of very little moment decide all the rest. If, for example, a Duchess, or the wife of some bourgeois-gentilhomme, who has purchased the privileges of the order, should open a suite of rooms for elegant society in any new quarter, the soil is considered to receive a sort of consecration by such a circumstance; and an indefinite portion of the vicinity is added to the territory of Fashion. If, on the other hand, a shop be opened, a sign hung out, or any symptom of business be shewn, in a quarter that has hitherto been a stranger to every sound but the rattling of carriages, the thunder of knockers, and the vociferation of coachmen and servants, it is ten to one but the privileges of Fashion are withdrawn from that place; and the whole range of buildings is gradually given up to those, who are either needy enough to keep shops, or vulgar enough to endure them. Now, it happens as a consequence from this adoption of new soil and disfranchisement of old, that the territory of Fashion is extremely irregular and interrupted. A traveller, determined to pursue its windings, would soon be involved in a most mysterious labyrinth; his track would be crossed by portions of country which throw him repeatedly out of his beat: insomuch that his progress would resemble that of a naturalist, who, in tracing the course of a mineral through the bowels of the earth, encounters various breaks and intersections, and often finds the corresponding parts of the same stratum unaccountably separated from each other.

It would be only fatiguing the reader to say more upon the topographical part of my subject. It is obvious, from what has been stated, that the regions of Fashion, considered as a whole, are rather numerous than compact: and, indeed, such difference of opinion subsists among the people themselves upon the territories which are entitled to that name, that no correct judgment can be pronounced upon a question of so great controversy. Thus much, however, may be affirmed, that there is scarcely a market-town in the kingdom, in which some portion of land is not invested with Fashionable privileges; and designated by such terms, as mark the wish of the inhabitants, to have it considered as forming part and parcel of the demesnes of Fashion.The Climate of Fashion is almost entirely factitious and artificial; and consequently differs in many material respects from the natural temperature of those several places over which its jurisdiction extends. Though changes from heat to cold, and vice versa, are very common among these people, yet heat may be said to be the prevailing character of the climate. They appear to me to have but two Seasons in the year; these they call, in conformity to ordinary language, rather than to just calculation, Winter and Summer. Of Summer little is known: for it seems to be a rule among this people, to disband and disperse at the approach of it; and not to rally or re-unite, till the Winter has fairly commenced. Though, therefore, they exist somehow or somewhere, [10] during the Summer months; they wish it to be considered, that they do not exist under their Fashionable character. They wash themselves in the sea, drink laxative waters, lose a little money at billiards, or catch a few colds at public rooms; but all these things they do as individuals, and wholly out of their corporate capacity as members of the community of Fashion. So that in their mode of disposing of the Summer, they invert the standing rule of most other animals; they choose the fair season for their torpid state, and shew no signs of life but during the Winter. It is not easy to say exactly when the Winter begins in the Fashionable World; an inhabitant of Bath would have one mode of reckoning, and an inhabitant of London another. To do justice to the subject, the commencement of Winter ought to be regulated by the former of these places, and the close of it by the latter. Supposing, therefore, that it begins some time in November, there can be no difficulty in settling its duration; for the 4th of June [12] is, by a tacit yet binding ordinance, considered as a limit, which a Fashionable Winter can seldom, if ever, exceed.

There are many circumstances in which the Climate of Fashion stands peculiarly distinguished from every other. It has already been intimated that heat is its prevailing characteristic: it is, moreover, not a little remarkable, that this heat is at its highest point in the Winter season; and that the inhabitants often perspire more freely when the snow is upon the ground, than they do in the dog-days. The truth is, that, as was before said, the Climate is wholly created by artificial circumstances, and the natural temperature of the air is completely done away. The sort of communication which these people keep up with each other, is considered to require a species of apparatus which fills their atmosphere with an immoderate degree of phlogiston. Besides this, they are notoriously fond of assembling in insufferable crowds; and travellers have assured us, that they have often witnessed from ten to twelve hundred persons suffocating each other, within a space which would scarcely have afforded convenient accommodation for a dozen families. And this may enable us in some measure to account for the little benefit which modish invalids are said to derive from their frequent removals to the healthiest spots in the universe. The original object of such a prescription was doubtless to change the air; and certainly no expedient could have been better imagined for bracing a constitution relaxed by too intense application to the business of a Fashionable life. But the usages of the order render a change of air, to any salutary purpose, utterly impracticable: for the weakest members of the community consider themselves bound to kindle a flame wherever they go; and thus they breathe the same phlogisticated air all over the world.

They profess to adopt the ordinary divisions of time; and they talk like other people of Day and Night: but their mode of computing each is so vague and unnatural, that inhabitants of the same meridian with themselves scarcely understand what they mean by the terms. A great part of this difficulty may possibly arise from the very small portion of solar light with which they are visited. For certain it is, that no people upon earth have less benefit from the light of the sun than the people of Fashion; so that if it were not for torches, candles, and lamps, they would scarcely ever see each other’s faces.

With regard to the constitutions of these people, I have been inclined to think them naturally robust, from observing the astonishing heat and fatigue which they are accustomed to endure. And in this respect the women have appeared to evince an uncommon degree of hardiness: for, besides that they wear on every occasion a lighter species of clothing than the men, I have been confidently told that many among them will appear, in the severest part of the season, with dresses of such transparency and scantiness, as convince every beholder that they who wear them are utter strangers to the weaknesses of the sex. There is, however, some room for doubting, whether the air which this people breathe, and the usages which prevail among them, are favorable to the constitution. Their patience of fatigue has been thought to be wholly the result of habit, and their hardiness has been conjectured to be little more than an air of extravagance and bravado. The frequent transitions which they make from heat to cold, and back again from cold to heat; perhaps half-a-dozen times in as many hours; must very materially diminish the physical strength of their bodies. Certain it is, that their natural countenances do not betray the usual symptoms of health; and it is, I believe, admitted, that instances of extraordinary longevity are not very common among them.