Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/249

 Feb. 20, 1804.] skirts of Manchester, a boy issued from a factory, and called out insultingly after them, "Halloa, bucks!" adding derisive shouts of "Boots, boots!" in allusion to the fact that the young gentlemen wore Hessian boots, crime that could not be forgiven in the Lancashire of that day, because it expressed the double offence of being aristocratic and being outlandish," As to the term bucks, "the reader," writes De Quincey, "may fail to perceive any atrocious insult. . . . But the reader is wrong. The word dandies, which was what the villain meant, had not then been born, so that he could not have called us by that name, unless through the spirit of prophecy. Buck was the nearest word at hand in his Manchester vocabulary; he gave us all he could, and let us dream the rest." For the punishment inflicted upon "the villain," and the story of the subsequent feud between the young gentlemen and the factory "hands" of the neighbourhood, the curious must be referred to the original author. In a note upon the word dandies, De Quincey says, "This word, however, exists in Jack-a-dandy, a very old English word. But what does that mean?"

Jack-a-dandy is certainly old enough. In "Wit and Drollery," 1682, appears the verse:

And in Mr. Thomas Brown's works (more remarkable for their humour than their delicacy, by the way), in "An Epitaph upon the Charming Peggy," appear the lines :

As a curious instance of the confusion to which slang words and phrases are liable, I may add, by way of note, that in the Glossary of Rhyming Slang—a secret tongue or cant speech in vogue amongst the costormongers, and consisting of the substitution of words and sentences which rhyme for other words intended to be kept secret-attached to the "Slang Dictionary" published by Mr. Hotten in 1859, the words Jack-dandy are understood to signify Brandy,—clearly a departure from the original meaning of the former word.

Captain Grose, the antiquary, published the first edition of his "Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" in 1785. He makes no mention of the word dandy in its modern senso, though he gives dandy grey russet "a dirty brown," and mentions that a cry of "That's the dandy, i.e., the ton, the clever thing," and "That's the barber," were favourite phrases in the mouths of the common people of that day and earlier, "signifying their approbation of any action, measure, or thing," We may trace this phrase in the slang cry of "That's the ticket" of later years. Grose also gives the word Dandy-prat, "an insignificant or triffing fellow." This, Archdeacon Nares tells us in his "Glossary," is "probably from dandle; whether prat is formed from brat may be doubted; but from the same source comes Jack-a-Dandy, and the very modern abbreviation of dandy." In Henry the Seventh's reign a small coin was issued, called a dandy-prat: and in Massinger's play of the "Virgin Martyr" is to be found the line:

{smaller|The smug dandy-prat smells us out whatever we are doing.}

The prefix Jack seems to have a sort of sportive significance, as in Jack Fool, Jack Ketch, Jack Pudding, Jack-a-napes, &c. Webster, in his Dictionary," derives dandy from the French dandin, "a noddy, a ninny." But there would seem to be little connection be- tween the dandy of the Regency period, and such a character as the George Dandin of Molière.

From consideration of the word we will now turn to the thing it was supposed to describe.

Captain Gronow, in the second series of his "Recollections" (1862) writes: "How unspeakably odious—with a few brilliant ex- ceptions, such as Alvanley and others—were the dandies of forty years ago! They were a motley crew, with nothing remarkable about them but their insolence. They were generally not high-born, nor rich, nor very good-looking, nor clever, nor agreeable; and why they arrogated to themselves the right of setting up their own fancied superiority on a self-raised pedestal, and despising their betters, Heaven only knows. They were generally middle-aged, some even elderly men, had large appetites and weak digestions, gambled freely and had no luck. They hated everybody, and abused everybody, and would sit together in White's bay window, or the pit boxes at the opera, weaving 'tremendous crammers.' They swore a good deal, never laughed, had their own particular slang, looked hazy after dinner, and had most of them been patronised at one time or other by Brummell and the Prince Regent." This is not a very favourable account: but it is by "one of themselves." The Captain was of the dandy world forty years ago.

The Prince Regent at the dandy epoch was already an old man, though he did not wish to have it generally known. He had flung away his manhood after his youth. He had neither nerves nor stomach now to play his old part of