Brummell is the reason we're wearing tailored dark suits and slacks today with a tie. He liberated men from knee breeches, powdered wigs and frilly lace adornments. He told us to bathe for crying out loud, and showed us less was more in men's fashion, although it is said he took five hours to dress, and his cravat displayed anything but simplicity.However, it wasn't the look that drew my attention. The film shows -- and I do realize it is a dramatization based on fact, not fact itself -- a man of all style and little substance, character, moral fiber or regard for others beyond how he might use them to advance his positions. Brummell is a gambler, a poser and a debtor. One scene shows him performing a waltz (a scandalous dance in the early 19th Century because it brought ladies' and gentlemen's bodies close together and let them hold each other in places considered taboo) with a married woman in front of her husband with no regard for his feelings. He eludes accountability and responsibility in equal measure. And somehow, through all this, people still admire him.
Brummell is the archetype of dandyism, which emphasizes the look and feel of something refined but only skin-deep. In Texas, they have a saying for that: "All hat, no cowboy." At least one person has suggested I might look good as a dandy or a Beau Brummell type. At first, I was curious. Now I cringe.
What I love about historical re-enacting is that I have the freedom to choose those figures whom I wish to emulate. I have played an English Viscount, a Colonial Patriot, a wily Privateer, a merry Puritan, a Young Confederate, a Highland nobleman and warrior, a Naval Lieutenant, a Missouri boatman, and a Frontier Entrepreneur. But in all of these roles, I strive be a gentleman, first and foremost, beyond the clothing. Although I love dressing up in period attire -- particularly 18th Century fashion -- and dancing and conducting myself in the manner of a historic gentleman, all of it means nothing if I do not carry those manners with me back into the 21st Century and instill them within my heart. It has inspired me in ways others might find peculiar. I am often bowing to ladies upon introduction regardless of whether I am in character as a historic person or not. My work emails are signed with "YHS" -- shorthand for "your humble servant." And most of all, living history helped me get right with GOD. I pray every day that HE will give me wisdom and help me to live right for HIM.
As for our charming Beau, strip away that fancy cravat and tailored suit with the trousers and he is left naked and boorish. What is there in his heart besides a love of self and being famous? He only thinks he's mannered. The Emperor Of Fashion really has no clothes!
Thomas Carlyle wrote:
A Dandy is a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well: so that the others dress to live, he lives to dress ... And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light...That's not the person I am, and I hope this is not how others see me. It's not the person whom I would want to re-enact. History has many other figures of both fine character and clothing. I can do better than Beau.
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