PUNCH,
OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 1.

SEPTEMBER 5, 1841.

THE GENTLEMAN’S OWN BOOK.

Our consideration must now be given to those essentials in the construction of a true gentleman—the cut, ornaments, and pathology of his dress.

THE CUT

is to the garment what the royal head and arms are to the coin—the insignia that give it currency. No matter what the material, gold or copper, Saxony or sackcloth, the die imparts a value to the one, and the shears to the other.

Ancient Greece still lives in its marble demi-gods; the vivifying chisel of Phidias was thought worthy to typify the sublimity of Jupiter; the master-hand of Canova wrought the Parian block into the semblance of the sea-born goddess, giving to insensate stone the warmth and etheriality of the Paphian paragon; and Stultz, with his grace-bestowing shears, has fashioned West of England broad-cloths, and fancy goods, into all the nobility and gentility of the “Blue Book,” the “Court Guide,” the “Army, Navy, and Law Lists, for 1841.”

Wondrous and kindred arts! The sculptor wrests the rugged block from the rocky ribs of his mother earth;—the tailor clips the implicated “long hogs”¹1. The first growth of wool. from the prolific backs of the living mutton;—the toothless saw, plied by an unweayring hand, prepares the stubborn mass for the chisel’s tracery;—the loom, animated by steam (that gigantic child of Wallsend and water), twists and twines the unctuous and pliant fleece into the silky Saxony.

The sculptor, seated in his studio, throws loose the reins of his imagination, and, conjuring up some perfect ideality, seeks to impress the beautiful illusion on the rude and undigested mass before him. The tailor spreads out, upon his ample board, the happy broadcloth; his eyes scan the “measured proportions of his client,” and, with mystic power, guides the obedient pipe-clay into the graceful diagram of a perfect gentleman. The sculptor, with all the patient perseverance of genius, conscious of the greatness of its object, chips, and chips, and chips, from day to day; and as the stone quickens at each touch, he glows with all the pride of the creative Prometheus, mingled with the gentler ecstacies of paternal love. The tailor, with fresh-ground shears, and perfect faith in the gentility and solvency of his “client,” snips, and snips, and snips, until the “superfine” grows, with each abscission, into the first style of elegance and fashion, and the excited schneider feels himself “every inch a king,” his shop a herald’s college, and every brown paper pattern garnishing its walls, an escutcheon of gentility.

But to dismount from our Pegasus, or, in other words, to cut the poetry, and come to the practice of our subject, it is necessary that a perfect gentleman should be cut up very high, or cut down very low—i.e., up to the marquis or down to the jarvey. Any intermediate style is perfectly inadmissible; for who above the grade of an attorney would wear a coat with pockets inserted in the tails, like salt-boxes; or any but an incipient Esculapius indulge in trousers that evinced a morbid ambition to become knee-breeches, and were only restrained in their aspirations by a pair of most strenuous straps. We will now proceed to details.

The dressing-gown should be cut only—for the arm holes; but be careful that the quantity of material be very ample—say four times as much as is positively necessary, for nothing is so characteristic of a perfect gentleman as his improvidence. This garment must be constructed without buttons or button-holes, and confined at the waist with cable-like bell-ropes and tassels. This elegant déshabille had its origin (like the Corinthian capital from the Acanthus) in accident. A set of massive window-curtains having been carelessly thrown over a lay figure, or tailor’s torso, in Nugee’s studio, in St. James’s-street, suggested to the luxuriant mind of the Adonisian D’Orsay, this beautiful combination of costume and upholstery. The eighteen-shilling chintz great-coats, so ostentatiously put forward by nefarious tradesmen as dressing-gowns, and which resemble pattern-cards of the vegetable kingdom, are unworthy the notice of all gentlemen—of course excepting those who are so by act of Parliament. Although it is generally imagined that the coat is the principal article of dress, we attach far greater importance to the trousers, the cut of which should, in the first place, be regulated by nature’s cut of the leg. A gentleman who labours under either a convex or a concave leg, cannot be too particular in the arrangement of the strap-draught. By this we mean that a concave leg must have the pull on the convex side, and vice versa, the garment being made full, the effects of bad nursing are, by these means, effectually “repealed.”²2. Baylis. This will be better understood if the reader will describe a parallelogram, and draw therein the arc of a circle equal to that described by his leg, whether knock-kneed or bandy.

If the leg be perfectly straight, then the principal peculiarity of cut to be attended to, is the external assurance that the trousers cannot be removed from the body without the assistance of a valet.

The other considerations should be their applicability to the promenade or the equestriade. We are indebted to our friend Beau Reynolds for this original idea and it is upon the plan formerly adopted by him that we now proceed to advise as to the maintenance of the distinctions.

Let your schneider baste the trousers together, and when you have put them on, let them be braced to their natural tension; the schneider should then, with a small pair of scissors, cut out all the wrinkles which offend the eye. The garment, being removed from your person, is again taken to the tailor’s laboratory, and the embrasures carefully and artistically fine-drawn. The process for walking or riding trousers only varies in these particulars—for the one you should stand upright, for the other you should straddle the back of a chair. Trousers cut on these principles entail only two inconveniences, to which every one with the true feelings of a gentleman would willingly submit. You must never attempt to sit down in your walking trousers, or venture to assume an upright position in your equestrians, for compound fractures in the region of the os sacrum, or dislocations about the genu patellæ are certain to be the results of such rashness, and then

“THE PEACE OF THE VALET IS FLED.”

SONGS FOR THE SENTIMENTAL. — NO. 6.