Another and a no less famous Beau steps to salute us from the pages of
the Whartons. Beau Nash is an old friend of ours in fiction, an old
friend in the drama. Our dear old Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel about
him yesterday; to-day he figures in the pages of one of the most
attractive of Mr. Lewis Wingfield's attractive stories. He found his
way on to the stage under the care of Douglas Jerrold whose comedy of
manners was acted at the Haymarket in the midsummer of 1834. There is a
charm about these Beaux, these odd blossoms of last century
civilisation, the Brummells and the Nashes and the Fieldings, so "high
fantastical" in their bearing, such living examples of the eternal
verities contained in the clothes' philosophy of Herr Diogenes
Teufelsdroeckh of Weissnichtwo. Their wigs were more important than their
wit; the pattern of their waistcoats more important than the composition
of their hearts; all morals, all philosophy are absorbed for them in the
engrossing question of the fit of their breeches. D'Artois is of their
kin, French d'Artois who helped to ruin the Old Order and failed to
re-create it as Charles the Tenth, d'Artois whom Mercier describes as
being poured into his faultlessly fitting breeches by the careful and
united efforts of no less than four valets de chambre.
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