Who is a dandy george walden

Community Reviews. Showing Rating details. All Languages. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Who's A Dandy? Alexandros rated it it was amazing Sep 14, Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it really liked it Feb 26, Oscar rated it really liked it Sep 05, Mark Bold rated it liked it Nov 01, Seth rated it really liked it Nov 12, Joe Evans rated it liked it Nov 13, Melanie rated it it was amazing Nov 13, Mark rated it really liked it Oct 05, Keith rated it liked it Aug 27, Ashley Yakeley rated it really liked it Mar 29, Sean rated it it was amazing Oct 30, Andrew Thickett rated it really liked it Aug 20, Anita marked it as to-read Mar 03, Alex Sarll added it Jul 24, Rose marked it as to-read Dec 08, Christine marked it as to-read Jul 20, Ian "Marvin" Graye added it Aug 18, Kris marked it as to-read Aug 22, Lyudmila marked it as to-read Dec 04, Leslie Inglis marked it as to-read Jan 29, Natali marked it as to-read May 27, Gozal marked it as to-read Jun 25, Morgan marked it as to-read Aug 11, Robin marked it as to-read Sep 07, No sooner does an author touch the subject of the Beau's invention of starched neckties, whose height and stiffness "created a sensation equal to Waterloo", than his hand grows light and sentences of the most nimble and economic elegance curl and drop from his pen.

It is as if the Beau's rules about dress - that supremacy lies in the finest cloth and cut, in the flawless perfection of the finished look, in understatement "If John Bull turns round to look at you then you are not well dressed" - were transposed to literary style. Brummell's first biographer, Captain Jesse, failed to reach the required level of sublimity in addressing his subject, and he besmirches the Beau with his lumpen and long-winded prose Thomas Carlyle later did the same, calling the dandy nothing but a clothes-wearing man.

But then came Jules Barbey-d'Aurevilly with his exquisitely tailored essay, "On Dandyism and George Brummell" - finely translated in this book by George Walden - and the dandy was once more untouchable. Dandyism is the last spark of heroism amidst decadence: "Dandyism is a sunset. Baudelaire followed, heralding the dandy as the dangerous product of a society in transition, the figure who, with one flick of his little finger, dispenses with the dry dust of aristocracy and establishes his own peculiar laws of precedence.

Virginia Woolf's essay on Brummell is the finest she ever wrote. All this eloquence for a man who placed himself above society by spending most of the day dressing and the rest of it being dressed, who was left by his titled friends to die in a madhouse in Caen because eventually, when the clothes fell away, George Bryan Brummell was no more than a bourgeois upstart. Please enter your name. The E-mail message field is required.

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Dandies -- England. Dandies -- England -- Biography.