D'Orsay; or, The Complete Dandy - W. Teignmouth Shore

Count Alfred d'Orsay (1801-1852) was a prominent figure in the fashionable circles of 19th century society: a Victorian dandy characterized by a life of Napoleonic adventures, romance, art, and hobnobbing with famous and important people such as Byron, Disraeli, and Bulwer-Lytton. He was immortalized in the 20th century as the basis for the profile of The New Yorker magazine's cartoon mascot.

Shore's biography of d'Orsay (1911) is as flamboyant as its subject. Urging that "the future happiness of our race depends upon its dandyism," it aspires to show not just "what dandies have done," but "what they have been": probing into the very "heart and soul of dandyism" and what it represents--for fashion, art, society, morality, and history--by likewise immortalizing the literary profile of one of its foremost representatives.

Recommended selections:

• Introduction ("Dandiacal")
• Chapters 12-30 ("Handsome Is" to "What Was He?")

D'Orsay; or, The Complete Dandy:

• Google books
• Gutenberg

Extracts:

• "But where are the...Count d’Orsays, which, from all my reading, I had been in the habit of associating with England? Not the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen." (Redburn, 28)
• "Sad sight! at which any one but a barber or a Tartar would have wept! Beards three years old; goatees that would have graced a Chamois of the Alps; imperials that Count D’Orsay would have envied; and love-curls and man-of-war ringlets that would have measured, inch for inch, with the longest tresses of The Fair One with the Golden Locks—all went by the board!" (White-Jacket, 85)
• "So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true—not true, or undeveloped." (Moby-Dick, 96)

This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.