Robert Southey

The Coxcomb.—Fashionables.—Fops—Egyptian Fashions.—Dances.—Visiting.—Walkers.—The Fancy.—Agriculturists.—The Fat Ox.—The Royal Institution.—Metaphysics.

Whether the Coxcomb be an animal confined to Europe I know not, but in every country in Christendom he is to be found with the same generic character.

There is however no country in which there are so many varieties of the animal as in England, none where he flourishes so successfully, makes such heroic endeavours for notoriety, and enjoys so wide a sphere of it.

The highest order is that of those who have invented for themselves the happy title of Fashionables. These gentlemen stand highest in the scale of folly, and lowest in that of intellect, of any in the country, inasmuch as the rivalry between them is which shall excel his competitors in frivolity. There was a man in England half a century ago well known for this singular kind of insanity, that he believed his soul had been annihilated within him, while he was yet living. What this poor maniac conceived to have been done by his soul, these gentlemen have successfully accomplished for themselves with their intellect. Their souls might be lodged in a nutshell without incommoding the maggot who previously tenanted it; and if the whole stock of their ideas were transferred to the maggot, they would not be sufficient to confuse his own. It is impossible to describe them, because no idea can be formed of infinite littleness: you might as reasonably attempt to dissect a bubble, or to bottle moonshine, as to investigate their characters: they prove satisfactorily the existence of a vacuum: the sum total of their being is composed of negative quantities.

One degree above or below these are the fops who appear in a tangible shape; they who prescribe fashions to the tailor, that the tailor may prescribe them to the town; who decide upon the length of a neck-handkerchief, and regulate the number of buttons at the knees of their breeches. One person has attained the very summit of ambition by excelling all others in the jet varnish of his boots. Infinite are the exertions which have been made to equal him,—the secret of projection could not be more eagerly desired than the receipt of his blacking; and there is one competitor whose boots are allowed to approach very near to the same point of perfection;—still they only approach it. This meritorious rival loses the race of fame by half a neck, and in such contests it is aut CÆsar, aut nihil. To have the best blacked boots in the world, is a worthy object of successful emulation,—but to have only the second-best, is to be Pompey in the Pharsalia of Fashion.

During one period of the French Revolution the Brutus head-dress was the mode, though Brutus was at the same time considered as the Judas Iscariot of political religion, being indeed at this day to an orthodox Anti-Jacobin what Omar is to the Persians; that is, something a great deal worse than the Devil. "I suppose, sir," said a London hair-dresser to a gentleman from the country,—"I suppose, sir, you would like to be dressed in the Brutus style." "What style is that?" was the question in reply. "All over frizzley, sir, like the Negers,—They be Brutes you know." If Apollo be the model of the day, these gentlemen wear stays; if Hercules, the tailor supplies breasts of buckram, broad shoulders, and brawny arms. At present, as the soldiers from Egypt have brought home with them broken limbs and ophthalmia, they carry an arm in a sling, or walk the streets with a green shade over the eyes. Every thing now must be Egyptian: the ladies wear crocodile ornaments, and you sit upon a sphinx in a room hung round with mummies, and with the long black lean-armed long-nosed hieroglyphical men, who are enough to make the children afraid to go to bed. The very shopboards must be metamorphosed into the mode, and painted in Egyptian letters, which, as the Egyptians had no letters, you will doubtless conceive must be curious. They are simply the common characters, deprived of all beauty and all proportion by having all the strokes of equal thickness, so that those which should be thin look as if they had the elephantiasis.

Men are tempted to make themselves notorious in England by the ease with which they succeed. The newspapers, in the dearth of matter for filling their daily columns, are glad to insert any thing,—when one lady comes to town, when another leaves it, when a third expects her accouchement; the grand dinner of one gentleman, and the grand supper of another are announced before they take place; the particulars are given after the action, a list of the company inserted, the parties who danced together exhibited like the characters of a drama in an English bill of the play, and the public are informed what dances were called for, and by whom. There is something so peculiarly elegant and appropriate in the names of the fashionable dances, that it is proper to give you a specimen. Moll in the Wad is one;—you must excuse me for not translating this, for really I do not understand it. Drops of Brandy, another; and two which are at present in high vogue are, The Devil among the Tailors, and Go to the Devil and shake yourself. At these balls, the floors are chalked in colours in carpet patterns, a hint taken from the lame beggars who write their petitions upon the flag-stones in the street. This is so excellently done, that one should think it would be painful to trample on and destroy any thing so beautiful, even though only made to be destroyed. These things indicate the same sort of want of feeling as the ice-palaces of Russia, and the statue of snow made by Michel Angelo at Pietro de Medici's command. We are surrounded in this world with what is perishable, that we may be taught to set our hearts and hopes upon the immutable and everlasting;—it is ill done, then, to make perishableness the food of pride.

The system of visiting in high life is brought to perfection in this country. Were a lady to call in person upon all the numerous acquaintance whom she wishes sometimes to crowd together at her Grand Parties, her whole time would be too little to go from door to door. This, therefore, being confessedly impossible, the card-currency of etiquette was issued, and the name dropt by a servant, allowed to have the same saving virtue of civility as the real presence. But the servants began to find this a hard duty, and found out that they were working like postmen without any necessity for so doing; so they agreed at last to meet at certain pot-houses, and exchange cards, or leave them there as at a post-office, where each in turn calls to deposit all with which he is charged, and to receive all which are designed for him.

I have spoken elsewhere of the Turf, a road to fame always, and oftentimes to ruin; but for this so large a fortune is required, that the famous must always be few. A man, however, of moderate, or of no fortune, may acquire great glory by riding a score of horses almost or quite to death, for the sake of showing in how short a time he can go fifty leagues. Others, with a nobler ambition, delight in displaying their own speed. I know not whether Christoval de Mesa would have said of this sort of walking or of running, as he did of the game of pelota:

I know not whether he would have said this of their exercise; but this I know, that some of the English gentlemen would make the best running footmen in the world.

Another school—to borrow a term from the Philosophers—is that of the Amateurs of Boxing, who call themselves the Fancy. They attend the academies of the two great professors Jackson and Mendoza, the Aristotle and Plato of pugilism,—bring up youths of promise from the country to be trained, and match them according to their wind, science, and bottom. But I am writing to the uninitiated,—bottom means courage, that sort of it which will endure a great deal. Too much vivacity is rather against a man; if he indulges in any flourishes or needless gesticulations he wastes his wind, and though he may be admitted to be a pleasant fighter, this is considered as a disadvantage. When the champion comes off victor, after suffering much in the contest, he is said to be much punished. There is something to be attended to besides science, which is the body: it is expedient to swallow raw eggs for the wind, and to feed upon beef as nearly raw as possible: they who do this, and practise with weights in their hands, are said to cultivate the muscles. Upon the brutality of this amusement I have already said something, nor is it needful to comment upon what is so apparent;—but it is just that I should now state what may truly be said in its defence. It is alleged, that in consequence of this custom, no people decide their quarrels with so little injury to each other as the English. The Dutch slice each other with their snickersnees; we know how deadly the knife is employed in our country;—the American twists the hair of his enemy round his thumb, and scoops out an eye with his finger;—but in England a boxing-match settles all disputes among the lower classes, and when it is over they shake hands, and are friends. Another equally beneficial effect is the security afforded to the weaker by the laws of honour, which forbid all undue advantages; the man who should aim a blow below the waist, who should kick his antagonist, strike him when he is down, or attempt to injure him after he had yielded, would be sure to experience the resentment of the mob, who, on such occasions, always assemble to see what they call fair play, which they enforce as rigidly as the Knights of the Round Table did the laws of chivalry.

The next persons to be noticed are those who seek notoriety by more respectable means; but, following wise pursuits foolishly, live in a sort of intellectual limbo between the worlds of Wisdom and Folly. The fashionable agriculturists are of this class: men who assume, as the creed of their philosophical belief, a foolish saying of some not very wise author, "That he who makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, is the greatest benefactor to his species." With these persons, the noblest employment of human intellect is to improve the size of turnips and cabbages, and for this they lay aside all other studies. "When my friends come to see me in the summer," said one of these gentlemen, "I like to hear them complain that they have not been able to sleep in their beds for heat, because then I know things are growing out of doors." Quicquid amat valde amat, may truly be said of the Englishman; his pursuit always becomes his passion; and, if great follies are oftentimes committed in consequence of this ardour, it must not be forgotten that it leads also to great actions, and to important public benefits.

Of this class the breeders are the most remarkable, and least useful. Their object is to improve the cattle of the country, for which purpose they negotiate with the utmost anxiety the amours of their cows and sheep. Such objects, exclusively pursued, tend little to improve either the intellect or the manners:—these people will apply to a favourite pig, or a Herefordshire bull, the same epithets of praise and exclamations of delight, which a sculptor would bestow upon the Venus de Medici, or the Apollo Belvidere. This passion is carried to an incredible degree of folly: the great object of ambition is to make the animal as fat as possible, by which means it is diseased and miserable while it lives, and of no use to any but the tallow-chandler when dead. At this very time there is a man in London belonging to a fat ox, who has received more money for having fattened this ox than Newton obtained for all his discoveries, or Shakspeare for all his works. Crowds go to see the monster, which is a shapeless mass of living fat. A picture has been painted both of man and beast, a print engraved from it in order that the one may be immortalized as the fattest ox that ever was seen, and the other, as the man that fed him to that size; and two thousand persons have subscribed for this at a guinea each. A fat pig has been set up against him, which, I know not why, does not seem to take. The pig is acknowledged to be a pig of great merit, but he is in a manner neglected, and his man complains of the want of taste in the public.

To end the list of fashions, what think you of philosophy in fashion? You must know that though the wise men of old could find out no royal road to the mathematics, in England they have been more ingenious, and have made many short cuts to philosophy for the accommodation of ladies and gentlemen. The arts and sciences are now taught in lectures to fashionable audiences of both sexes; and there is a Royal Institution for this purpose, where some of the most scientific men in the kingdom are thus unworthily employed. I went there one morning with J. and his wife,—whom you are not to suspect of going for any other purpose than to see the place. Part of the men were taking snuff to keep their eyes open, others more honestly asleep, while the ladies were all upon the watch, and some score of them had their tablet and pencils, busily noting down what they heard, as topics for the next conversation party. "Oh!" said J. when he came out, in a tone which made it half groan half interjection, "the days of tapestry hangings and worked chair-bottoms were better days than these!—I will go and buy for Harriet the Whole Duty of Woman, containing the complete Art of Cookery."

But even oxygen and hydrogen are not subjects sufficiently elevated for all. Mind and matter, free will and necessity, are also fashionable topics of conversation; and you shall hear the origin of ideas explained, the nature of volition elucidated, and the extent of space and the duration of time discussed over a tea-table with admirable volubility. Nay, it is well if one of these orators does not triumphantly show you that there is nothing but misery in the world, prove that you must either limit the power of God or the goodness, and then modestly leave you to determine which. Another effect this of the general passion for distinction: the easiest way of obtaining access into literary society, and getting that kind of notoriety, is by professing to be a metaphysician, because of such metaphysics a man may get as much in half an hour as in his whole life.

At present the English philosophers and politicians, both male and female, are in a state of great alarm. It has been discovered that the world is over-peopled, and that it always must be so, from an error in the constitution of nature; that the law which says "Increase and multiply," was given without sufficient consideration; in short, that He who made the world does not know how to manage it properly, and therefore there are serious thoughts of requesting the English Parliament to take the business out of his hands.