ON THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE EMPIRE OF FASHION. IF the Reform Bill should do no other good for England, it is still worth its cost-of a Whig cabinet-if it be only for having given the coupde-grace to that most empty and impudent of all abstractions, "The Fashionable World." Not the newspaper so called,-for reform has made the fortune of that, by forcing into its service, for want of something worse to do, that attenuated tail of the Quarterly Review, which the rattrap of the Whigs was too clumsily constructed to cut off without mangling the whole body, which was not its cue. No; like a good crop of crime to the Old Bailey barristers, the advent of the Whigs to power, on the wings of reform, has been a decided godsend to the trading advocates of unhanged abuses. Accordingly, the "Morning Post" flourishes. But the triumphal pillar to which it has hitherto acted as a buttress bends and totters to its fall. The Corinthian column of "polished society," which a select band of its own builders and supporters have been for some time past amusing themselves and others by unconsciously undermining, on pretence of examining the stability of its foundation, and exhibiting to the admiring world the nature of its materials, and the manner in which the precious superstructure is put together, has at last received its deathblow, and totters from its topmost stone even to its base. We repeat, the Reform Bill would be worth another three years of Whig rule, if only for having completed the extinction of the most insolent and ridiculous, at the same time that it was the most detestable and mischievous assumption that ever outraged common sense and insulted human nature,-an assumption of infinite general superiority, founded on an express and almost avowed and boasted natural inferiority in every individual case. For what is "Fashion" but an affair of weak nerves, wasted sensibilities, and intellectual wants of every kind and degree; an empty head, a callous heart, and a broken constitution? People of fashion" become so, not because of what they can do, but of what they cannot do -not for what they know, but for what they are ignorant of not in virtue of their moral, intellectual, and physical endowments, but the degree of deficiency that they can boast in all these. Who ever heard of a woman of fashion" wearing the hue of health upon her cheeks? Why, it would be the death of her pretensions, if it were supposed that she could walk across her husband's park. In short, no person can aspire to that "bad eminence," who is not in a condition to "die of a rose, in aromatic pain ;" especially since the scent of that flower has been voted a vulgarism! And only conceive the idea of a man of fashion" being capable, if called upon to do so, of earning his own living! Brummell has (in the absence of a worthy rival) retained his supremacy even in exile, because he had the wit to live upon the charity of his friends, | till they could contrive to shift the burden from their own shoulders to those of the public, by providing for him that refuge for decayed and destitute dandies-a foreign consulship. In fact, the beauty of all pretensions to what is understood by Fashion," in its moral, personal, and intellectual sense, is, that there is nothing else in the world so essentially vulgar, and that whatever is true of " The Vulgar" par excellence, is especially true of "The Fashionable." It may be worth while to give a few illustrations of this proposition, before proceeding to the chief object of this paper, which is, to furnish a brief history of the Decline and Fall of the Empire of Fashion,-a history that will be found not a little curious and instructive, if it be only in consideration of the strangely discrepant sources which have united together to accomplish the good work. We set out, then, by laying down the dicta, that Fashion and Vulgarity are convertible terms; and that whatever is essentially true of the latter, will, à fortiori, be true of the former; that, in fact, Fashion is merely a refinement on Vulgarity, and that they differ only as the demirep of St. James's Square differs from the female denizen of Fitzroy Street. Let us see in what Vulgarity consists, and in what it does not consist. Vulgarity does not consist in any one or more distinct qualities or deficiencies, but in an unnatural union of qualities and deficiencies, that are inconsistent with, and contradictory of, each other. It is not vulgar to be ignorant; but it is vulgar to be ignorant, and at the same time to despise the ignorant for being so. It is not vulgar to be coarse and awkward; but it is vulgar to be coarse and awkward, and affect to be all that is delicate, graceful, and refined. It is not vulgar to be ill-dressed; but it is vulgar to be illdressed, and to pique oneself on being welldressed. It is not vulgar to have been born and bred in the city; but it is vulgar in one so born and bred, to feel a contempt for those who are in the same predicament, or for those whot are not in the same predicament. There is noghing essentially vulgar even in vice and proflit acy, though there is something a thousand imes worse; but it is vulgar to affect horror, or even to feel it, at all vice and profligacy, but that which is practised after your particular fashion. In short, the essence of Vulgarity consists in fancying that everything is vulgar, but that which is trimmed, trained, and attired after some conventional standard, that has no foundation in anything but the accidental habits and associations of the set to which you belong, or aim at belonging to. What is properly understood by the Cockney, is the most vulgar creature in the world, and the next in the scale of Vulgarity is the fashionable "Exclusive." Now let us see how these definitions apply to dows, while the maid-servants and footmen at the the denizens of the Fashionable World." It is the very essence of fashion to have no fixed principles, or criterion of taste or judgment, in regard to morals, manners, acquirements, dress, personal appearance, mode of life, &c., but to follow in all these any "leader" who has the courage or the cunning to go first. And it is precisely so with the vulgar of every class. The only reason with each, why any given thing should be thought, said, or done, is, that certain persons think, say, and do it ;-the natural consequence is, that what is the idol of to-day is the scorn or the jest of to-morrow, what is the virtue of one is the guilt and shame of another. When the Duchess d'Angouleme returned to France in 1814, and reentered, after twenty years of exile, the spot where her father and mother and half her fa mily had been butchered, the Parisians, from the Peeresses of the Faubourg St. Germain, to the Poissardes of the Boulevard Poissonnière, could see nothing worthy of notice about her but the smallness of her bonnet-large ones being then the fashion. If she were to return there to-morrow, they would see nothing worthy of notice about her, but the largeness of her bonnet-small ones being now the fashion. The reason is, that the Parisians are all "people of fashion." If a London" woman of fashion," on visiting Covent Garden Theatre to see Fanny Kemble in the "Hunchback," happens to come into contact, as she ascends the steps of the portico, with another female of a less "un-certain description" than herself, she is shocked beyond measure at the immodesty of her attire. It is an outrage on public decency-an insult to the sex -the Parliament should put a stop to it. She sees the play-goes home-and is un-dressed, for Lady A.'s" At Home," or the Duchess of B.'s ball, where she makes her appearance, halfnaked, just as her husband gets home to bed; and waltzes with the first man who asks her, till, overcome with heat and vertigo, she is obliged to cling to him and an Ottoman for support; where, after a little " innocent" small-talk, she recovers sufficiently to repeat the process with the next claimant of her person. To what does all this lead in the way of morals and manners? Doubtless to the most open and scandalous profligacy. Yes; but that is not the gist of the argument. It leads not merely to profligacy, but to a species and degree of profligacy that sounds the very lowest depths of vulgarity—such depths as the annals of the saloons never yet reached. It leads to the daily occurrence of such cases among women, as that of Lady E, the daughters of the Countess of O—, Lady L, the Marchioness of A-, &c. &c.; and, among men, of the Hon. Mr. A- the Earl of Captain G, &c. &c. [At the time that Lady Ewas making daily visits to the lodgings of Prince S -, in Harley Street, and dressing and undressing herself at his drawing-room win opposite houses were openly looking on,* she was the pet, the glory, the idol of "the fashionable world."] What we are pointing attention to is, not the vice of these things, but their vulgarity, not to be paralleled even in the Police Reports of High Street Poplar, or Union Hall. Brummel was decidedly a vulgar-minded man, Nobody could doubt it who looked in his face. But he was, for years, the high-priest and oracle of the fashionable world" "A decent priest, where monkeys are the Gods!" Do you ask the secret of his supremacy? It is this: he was the most impudent and gratuitous assumer among a class whose sole secret is their impudent and gratuitous assumption; the superiority assumed being itself a pure assumption, namely, "the fashion." Lord Byron was, in many respects, a vulgar man; because he desired, above all things else, to be thought a "man of fashion ;" and yet, at the same time, sought to gain the suffrages of those who were something better, by pretending to scorn that on which he secretly prided himself. The only spirited and creditable thing the "world of fashion" has done in the present day, was that of kicking Lord Byron out of its confines. But it was done in a spirit of folly, not of that cunning which it sometimes exhibits in similar cases. Indeed it appears to have grown daft of late, as it feels its latter end approach: for it has recently committed a similar act of suicidal weakness, in the case of a very different man from Byron, and one not much inferior to him in his strong points, and with few, if any, of his weak ones. His chief weakness-that of a similar desire with Byron to be deemed a denizen of "the fashionable world"-that world has effectually cured him of, by refusing to patronize his pretensions to it. The doors of Lansdowne House have been shut upon Mr. Bulwer; and the consequence has been a most happy one for the good cause. He has evidently "an oath in heaven" against the whole set and system of the upper ranks of society: witness his "Godolphin,' his "England and the English," and the ultraradical turn which his politics have lately taken. And his restless, profound, and sensitive spirit will never know peace till his purpose is accomplished; nor then either, perchance,—for a first E See the evidence before the House of Lords in Lord -'s Divorce Bill. It is worth remark, that this opinion was first promulgated in the Court Journal; a pretty place for such an avowal! It is equally curious, that when the actual projector of that feasible speculation first set it on foot, he could not, among all his "fashionable" connexions, find anybody fit to conduct it but a pawnbroker's son! or cater for it but a physician's daughter! He had the wit to know, that had he confided its management to the hands of one of his "fashionable" writers, it would have become a bye-word of vulgarity and bad grammar in a month, and would have ruined him in libels, and itself in scandal, in the course of half-a-year; for there is no scandal-monger like your "man of fashion;" his own wife's or sister's reputation is not safe in his hands! love is not got rid of by being turned into hatred. It should be observed, however, that Bulwer has too just a notion of the value of his own powers and reputation to pit them openly against so paltry an adversary as "the World of Fashion," as such. So he merges the less in the greater, and hopes to kill the two birds with one stone; to bring down the "soaring eagle" of the aristocracy, and the "mousing hawk" of the May-fair coteries, with one and the same cast of his sling. Moreover, being an ambitious man, he would fain have to say, with the conqueror of the Volscians, "Alone I did it!" But this latter may not be, except in the sense in which every man who has voted at a contested election that was carried by one, may take the credit of the triumph to himself. In fact, an evil system, which has gained the degree of ascendency lately exercised by that of which we are treating was never yet overthrown, without aid from within itself. It is in the very nature of evils, that they work their own cure; as the opposite is the Godlike distinction in favour of good over evil. Actual health is the surest earnest of its continuance; whereas sickness is essentially self-destructive, and the sharper the shorter its duration. But let us pursue a little farther one indivi dual example of the vulgarities of the genteel.* Would you have a specimen of vulgar conversation ? Do not listen for it in the back-slums of St. Giles's, but in the boudoirs of St James's; for, as we have said before, mere coarseness is not vulgarity: the vulgar (in talk) is that which assumes to be "fine" in face of its absolute and essential want of all intellectual refinement. Do you desire to see examples of the various types of vulgarity in personal appearance? For a personification of the gross animal propensities of our nature, look at the Earl of S. For the "compliment extern" of Cockney priggishness and petty intellectual pretension, look at that rising hope of Toryism, Lord S For the symbols of innate and intuitive meanness, and mental littleness, look at the Marquis of S—. If you want to know how a man looks who is likely to prostitute his name and rank for a settlement of ten thousand a-year, get a sight of the Duke of. If you seek some one to sit for a model of mental emptiness and imbecility, beg that favour of the Marquis of D Not to multiply instances, but accomplish a climax at once, look at the most celebrated "leader" of the Fashionable World for the last twenty years. His dress is more vulgarly outré than that of the most ambitious of Sewell and Cross's shopmen on a fine Sunday,—his equipage looks like one of the cast-off "properties" of a Christmas pantomime, -his postillion (for he eschews coachmen as "vulgar errors") wears a sky-blue satin vest, with crimson-velvet sleeves; and his Countess, (for he is a Peer of the Realm) who sits beside him within, it is * * "Fears of the brave and follies of the wise." -* But it is time to proceed with our promised history of the circumstances which have undermined the empire of fashion, and with it the very foundations of the aristocracy, of which, though not necessarily the offspring, it was the natural and chosen ally. At the period when Mr. Ward published his "Man of Refinement," "the Fashionable World” was apparently in a sufficiently flourishing state to preclude the fear of a little gentle satire, gently applied, inflicting upon it any serious or lasting wound for, had it not seemed so, of a surety, the no less aristocratic than amiable author of Tremaine and De Vere would have thrust his pen into the fire, and even the hand that guided it, rather than they should have been the guilty instruments in such an office. must therefore beg his friends to be patient under the honour we are about to inflict upon him, in declaring that he has been prime agent in bringing on the happy consummation that we are now celebrating, somewhat by anticipation it is true, but not less confidently than if it were a thing past instead of to come. We Let not Mr. Ward take this unwelcome honour too much to heart. We are far from accusing him of wilfully tripping up the heels of that unspiritual goddess," at whose altars he has so often, and so amiably condescended to serve. Nor do we even believe that there was the smallest spice of malice mixed up with that amiable satire, (the only satire that ever deserved that epithet,) so daintily strewed over the fashionable portion of the "Man of Refinement." In fact, he has nothing whatever to do, directly, with the predicament in which the Fashionable World is now placed. But, we must still insist, that, collaterally, he has had considerably more to do with the catastrophe than Tenterden steeple had to do with the Goodwin Sands. We trust the admirers of Mr. Ward will not suspect us of wishing to confound him with the "Fashionable Novelists" of the day, or his works with the "Matildas" and "Almacks" of the Colburn press; or even with its "Granbys" and "Sydenhams," which are several grades above those contemptible abortions. His "Tremaine" and "De Vere" deserve the name of philosophical novels, in the very best sense of that phrase. They evince talents, if not of the most lofty, of the most rare and refined description. But we cannot relieve them from the paternity, nevertheless. They must be content to stand in that relation to after events, in which the condition of society at the time they were produced, and the subsequent changes which have been wrought in it, have contributed to place them. The mob of "Matildas," "Almacks," "Granbys," " Exclusives," "Sydenhams," "Herbert Lacys," and the rest, crowded on the heels of Tremaine," and disputed with him the honour of being foremost in the noble art of turning our friends and relations, (not to mention ourselves,) into objects of mingled scorn and hatred. And most justly did they wrest the palm of supremacy from his hands; for the author of "Tremaine" is evidently a man incapable of feel ing that petty and vulgar impulse of mingled vanity and malice, which could alone have furnished the moral motive for the works in question. Such works as "Matilda" and the like, are written from the beggarly ambition of showing to all the world that the writer of them is fully conscious of the contemptible part which he himself is called upon to act in the drama of human life; as if such a knowledge lifted him above that part, instead of sinking him lower into the dirt of it! It is precisely on a par with that vulgarism appertaining to all actors, of openly despising their adopted profession. now, not an empty and conceited few, but a great and a mighty multitude; not a Party, but a PEOPLE; and they read not as before, to amuse themselves, for they have something else to do, but to "mark, learn, and inwardly digest" the purport and bearing of what they read, (whether the writers intend them to do so or not,) and to think, and resolve, and act accordingly. And they have done so with a vengeance in the case of the "Fashionable Novels." As the world did with the "Confessions" of Rousseau, they have taken the writers at their words,-judgment is recorded, and anathema has already gone forth against them. It must not, however, be supposed, that such miserable trumpery as "people of fashion" were capable of telling about themselves, put into the still more trumpery form and language in which they were able to clothe it, could so speedily have produced the result at which we are looking. The Mulgraves and Masseys, "Almacks"-makers, and the rest, might have drolled and drivelled forth their sickening imbecility for half a century to come, if they had been able to keep the field of "fashionable" literature as much to themselves as they do that of fashionable pretensions in other respects. And this they might very well have done, but for the unlucky fact of their having, about ten years ago, admitted a lady into their circle, who has ever since been "takin' notes," which, with a tact and sagacity perhaps never before combined in a female head, she, at the period in question, set about to turn to the double account of filling her purse, and fostering her love of mischief, at one and the same time. Of course we use the word "mischief," in its amiable and French sense, (méchanceté,) not its hard and Eng There was, however, another motive to the production of the "Fashionable Novels," which was more sordid and vulgar still. We mean the money that was to be got by writing them. Lord Byron had brought authorship into fashion, and made a fortune by it, but without bringing into fashion the intellectual " appliances and means" of following it. People of fashion might make books if they pleased, but they could not make publishers buy, or the public read them; and to write a book without a publisher or readers, is like being "At Home" to empty rooms. In this crisis of affairs, Mr. Ward made it appear that "Fashion" was a sauce, by the aid of which, even reason and religion might be made palata- | ble. And, moreover, his publisher had the cunning to discover that it was the sauce alone, not the meat, that sold the dish. And thenceforth his course became simple, and the success of it eminent. "Colburn's genuine sauce-piquant of Fashion," became the condiment, without which nothing would go down, and with which "you might eat your own grandmother." There was no lack of under cooks, when the chef was prepared to offer carte blanche to those of the "two thousand" regular-bred ones, who were willinglish one; in which latter we do not believe it (for every one was able) to supply the desiderated sauce. And in twelve months time from the publication of "Tremaine," the whole World of Fashion was invited weekly to a filthy feast, at which nothing was served up but the mangleding a verdict of felo de se against the Fashioncharacters and reputations of their own friends and relations; and when they had done, the orts were distributed to the rest of the " reading public." And here was the melancholy error into which the Fashionable World fell. Could they have kept their precious knowledge of themselves to themselves, they might still have retained the privilege of purveying it, and there would have been no harm (or good) done. But the "reading public" are no longer what they were when Mr. Coleridge invented the phrase. They were then a petty and pragmatical party, who read only when and because they had nothing else to do, and who studiously forgot what they read one day, in order that they might be the better prepared for what they were to read the next-who " read the more because they read in vain." They are, A competent authority, the author of Vivian Grey, rates the Fashionable World, or rather "The World," as he more emphatically and comprehensively calls it, at the above-named number of members. to be at all applicable to the accomplished and popular lady we have taken the liberty of alluding to above. We repeat, justice will not allow of our find able world, and of ordering it to be divested of Christian burial accordingly. If it has tumbled over head and ears into the standing pool of its own paltry vices and prurient corruptions, it is because it was led thither unwittingly by the Will-o'-the-wisp of its own folly and vanity. And if it is perishing in the mire, it is because another hand than its own has given it the coup-degrace, without which it might have kept its head above the surface for a few years longer. It was not the vulgar "finery" of the "Matildas," nor the naïve, truth-telling and empty imbecility of the "Almacks," nor the would-be satire of the "Sydenhams," nor even the clever caricatures of the famous "Exclusives," (of which latter a bit of pleasant history by and by:)— it was not by these, and countless others such as these, that the Fashionable World met its doom. These Lilliputian attacks covered it with innumerable skin-deep wounds, but they did not touch or even approach any vital part. They aimed at that alone of which their shallow aimers were cognisant-the "compliment ex- talent who has attempted the task is one whose tern." No; the wounds which dealt discomfiture sole art consists in turning everything into misand downfal to the empire of the "two thou-chief or ridicule, from a pure love of the sport, sand" were aimed, we grieve to say it, by no other and without the least "malice" in the world. hands than those of the pet and spoiled child of The amusing editor of the John Bull will murthat ill-fated fraternity. It is the brilliant and der you an honourable man's character, or blast entertaining pictures which Mrs. Gore has flung you a virtuous woman's reputation, and all off in such gay profusion, from her graceful and the while "mean no harm." "He does but facile pen, during the last five or six years, added jest-poison in jest. There's no offence i' the to those no less piquant sketches which have world!" It is mere fun! To-day he shall conserved as a running commentary on them, in the coct you a lie that shall set a whole town topages of the "fashionable" weekly paper before gether by the ears. What fun! To-morrow he alluded to, * and the bitter and biting satire in shall invent you a calumny that shall carry diswhich all these were steeped, even to saturation, may into a whole family, and leave it there when (for the spirit of satire is the spring and staple of the cause has been removed. What excellent Mrs. Gore's genius ;) it is these, and these alone, fun! He is the Falstaff of the Fashionable World. which have given the mortal wound to that at "Let's rob the Exchequer, Hal," he exclaims to once monstrous and ridiculous system of so- one of his cronies; and he goes and does it ac ciety with which they exclusively concern them- cordingly. But do you think he has any bad selves} motive? Oh dear no! It is merely a joke. How can it be otherwise; for is he not the idol and mouth-piece of the Church and the Tories? That famous "fashionable" of the last century, Captain Macheath, exclaims to his friends when they come to condole with him in the condemned cell, "That Jenny Diver should have 'peached, I own, surprises me." As none but a Jenny Diver could have brought to the foot of the fatal tree the gallant culprit just alluded to, so it was reserved for the most favoured protegée of the "Fashionable World" to betray that distinguished delinquent into the hands of its enemies; an incident which gives a touch of pathos to the tragi-comedy of the "Downfal of the Two Thousand," that it would otherwise have wanted. "That Jenny Diver should have 'peached," we own, seriously affects us,- -so much so that we are tempted to bring our history to a more abrupt conclusion than its materials might warrant. We must not do so, however, without throwing a brief glance at one or two more of the incidents and agents connected with the subject of our record. It is impossible to conceive anything more ludicrously unlucky than the Fashionable World has been in the choice of its historians. As we have seen above, the only person who is thoroughly qualified for the task, both by talent and cir. cumstances, is so essentially embued with the love of satire, and so habituated to its exercise, that (with all her respect for the Aristocracy) she could not describe the King's Coronation without making you mistake it for the Lord Mayor's Show. The only other person of real That a moral physician like this should try his hand upon the mental diseases of the Fashionable World, was as natural as it was unlucky for the patient. He is the St. John Long of the Faculty. The counter-irritation of comicality is his only nostrum; and he rubs his besotted patients into their shrouds, with a full persuasion that his cabbage-leaf is a cure for all the ills in the world. Look at some of the individual pictures of fashionable life in his entertaining novels. They are the very essence of truth and vulgarity. Here is a specimen of the most recent, from his new work, just published: Lord Snowdon, pride itself personified, broke a shaft of his cabriolet, on a wet day, upon Barnes Common; an omnibus rattled up, and his servant, no house being near, persuaded his lofty master to get in." The Marquis stepped in, and the conductor gave the word all right;" but this was done so soon after the admission of his Lordship into the vehicle, and he was so long picking out a clean place to sit down upon, that the jerk of the hearse threw his Lordship forward into the lap of the fattest woman that ever was seen out of a caravan at a fair, who, unfortunately, was carrying a jar of pickled onions on her knee, which was upset by the Marquis's tumble, and, in its fall, saturated the front of his Lordship's waistcoat and stock with its fragrant juice. The Marquis made a thousand well-bred apologies, and was got upon his legs by the exertions of the fat woman; whose struggles to rescue herself from the imposing weight of nobility, materially assisted the efforts of a good-natured dirty little man in the corner, and a thin spare woman, who was carrying a bantam-cock and three hens in a basket to London, having upon her other This is another curious fact in the little history we are tracing; and it exactly corresponds with that insane passion for self-exposure which we have shown to be so characteristic a feature in the class we are treating of. The Court Journal owed the whole of that success which it obtained before it sunk into its present nonentity, to a series of Fashionable Sketches, (attributed to Mrs. Gore,) every one of which could have no possible result, nor is it conceivable that they could have had any other motive, than that of turning into ridicule and contempt the order and system of society, to which alone the Journal itself appealed, and from which it received its patronage and support. It is true the "fashionable" sketches continue to appear as usual, while the vehicle that bears them has sunk into a byeword of vulgarity and contempt. But this proves nothing against the argument, that they alone gave vogue to the Journal; for at the time they gave it that vogue, it was "got up" with a tact and judgment that prevented any but a select few from discovering the difference between the real Simon Pure and the false one ;-whereas, at present, Mrs. Gore (if it be she-of which we speak from report merely) cuts the same kind of figure among her obligato associates in the Court Journal as the lady Millamant would have done at a "genteel" party in St. Mary Ахе. |