The Zeitgeist
ORIEL HAS produced few truly great men (yes I know there was Sir Walter Raleigh, Cecil Rhodes and some intellectually sub-normal rowers), but I think the time has come to commemorate perhaps their greatest, Beau Brummell. It was perhaps a sign of Brumell’s single mindedness that he spent his entire time at Oxford mastering how to cut people, and left Oriel solely because he preferred military tailoring. The Army proved equally unattractive, quitting because he was to be posted to Manchester.
Brummell’s true genius was for dandyism. It must be remembered that dandyism was no mere fashion but a committed way of life, indeed one of the great villains of dandyism was ‘Prince’ Boothby who shot himself and left a note saying: “I tire of all this buttoning and unbuttoning.” The true dandy is someone who attires himself in a way that appears both elegant yet effortless.
Except for Wilde, wit and repartee are not the characteristics of a Brummell: the only famous quote attributed to him was when he met the Prince Regent incognito and asked, “Alvanley, who’s your fat friend?” The gentleman-dandy would pay gaming debts instantly, but tradesman would have to wait, with one Vintner who asked for payment at the Beau’s club being rebuffed thus: “I acknowledge you in Brooks and you dare ask for payment.
Yet it is the clothes that make the true Dandy and in this respect, Brummell was a true genius. He not only invented the tie but his understated clothes in either black or sometimes grey lead to the morning and three-piece suits. He even started a fashion among young Bucks of having distressed clothes; tailors pared down elbows and knnes so that they became shiny and almost translucently thin.
The tragedy of Brummell, and certainly many other dandys, was that their achievements are so transient. Yet although Oriel does not remember him, he obviously remembered his student days, as it was his belief “whether summer or winter, always to have the morning wellaired before he got up”.
18th May 2006