Category: Personae

Beau Brummell From “Wits and Beaux of Society” By Grace and Philip Wharton, 1861 It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things high […]

Robert de Montesquiou: The Magnificent Dandy From “Elegant Wits And Grand Horizontals” By Cornelia Otis Skinner, 1962 In a charming book of memoirs Elisabeth de […]

The Beau of Our Times From Apparel Arts, Spring 1933 Article unsigned “If there were no God,” said Voltaire some little time before he embraced […]

Book Review of “The Life of George Brummell, Esq.” By Captain Jesse Littell’s Living Age, 1844 Article unsigned Why on earth was such a subject […]

From “New Notes On Edgar Poe,” 1857 By Charles Baudelaire Decadent literature! Empty words which we often hear fall, with thes onority of a deep […]

In 1900 Fernand Khnopff had a house built according to his plans — a house with false windows. Silence and solitude were central themes in the […]

Cold, elegant and aloof, Boris Lermontov is the “attractive brute” at the center of “The Red Shoes,” the 1948 cinematic masterpiece by Powell & Pressburger. […]

If it weren’t for Barbey d’Aurevilly, you probably wouldn’t be reading this. What do we mean? That if he hadn’t been born this week in […]

The Amateur of Fashion By SC Hall The St. James’s Magazine, 1862 Towards the conclusion of the first decade of the present century, a young […]

All dandies have their rituals. On a typical morning in the years just after the Second World War, Osbert Lancaster would rise about nine to […]

It’s not often one happens upon a gem in the papers, especially one with something poignant and propitious to say about the body dandiacal. Well, […]

Since 1863, a certain type of young man — talented perhaps, but not creative; spiritual and philosophic, yet with expensive tastes; dismissive of commercial success, […]

Oscar Wilde was controversial almost from the start. The languid pose he struck during his days at Magdelen College, Oxford in the 1870s would become […]

In the spring of 1934, a gentleman with a neatly trimmed mustache casts an eye in the direction of the door to an office waiting […]

From “Essai de psychologie contemporaine: Charles Baudelaire” by Paul Bourget La Nouvelle Revue 13, 1881 If a special nuance in the meaning of love and […]

Beau Brummell From Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1844 Article unsigned Minor edits by Moonstone Research and Publications Image: Richard Mansfield as Beau Brummell, 1907 All things […]

Brummelliana By William Hazlitt, 1828 Image: Detail from 1924 movie poster We look upon Beau Brummell as the greatest of small wits. Indeed, he may […]

  Beau Brummell From “Eccentric Personages,” 1864 By W. Russell It is a solemn truth that every death-bed is the final scene of a great […]

Beau Brummell From “Miscellaneou Works Vol 1: Habits And Men” By John Doran, 1857 The Distinction of Nash was his impertinence; the characteristic of Orlando […]

Tom Wolfe has been gone long enough to warrant a documentary. “Radical Wolfe” debuted last week. Below, the trailer; above, portrait by Everett Raymond Kinstler.

Romeo Coates By Max Beerbohm, 1896 Even now Bath glories in his legend, not idly, for he was the most fantastic animal that ever stepped upon […]