I love how the Interweb can lead one places exotic in the most unexpected fashion. Having watched Carry On Screaming last night, I found myself reading up about Joan Sims, so oft the screeching harridan, and then Hattie Jacques, rotund comedienne, and one time wife of John leMesurier.
It was because Mr and Mrs leMesurier, as they were then, both appeared in the short film The Pleasure Garden (1958), that I stumbled upon the subject of this post, The Dandy’s Perambulations, via the excellent strange flowers blog.
Sadly neither the post itself, nor the linked facsimile of the original book in which these charming images appear credit the artist responsible for the prints. Looking across the ‘net, it seems it might have been one of the Cruikshanks, with Robert the front runner.
As strange as it may seem to those who know me, and despite my tendency to go everywhere, including work, in my workshop jeans, I consider myself something of a dandy. Not so much in the ‘Task of dressing alamode/According to the present code’, so much as in the inferred decadence of dressing as I please. Which, at home, might mean not at all.
After their peregrinations leave them discombobulated, the dandy and his chum return to safer territory, ‘Where they could walk, and be admir’d/Without their being so bruis’d and tir’d.’ Vain, pathetic, preening? But aren’t we all, to some degree, even if only in the privacy of our own minds?
I love this little book, and most especially the terrific illustrations. Whilst lampooning the vanity of the dandy, it also touches quite sweetly on common foibles, and the vintage patina it has now acquired helps portray something wonderful that transcends the specifics of the time it was made, nearly two whole centuries past.
Here’s the post where I learned about this delightful book:
https://strangeflowers.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/unknown-the-dandys-perambulations/
And here’s the link to a complete facsimile:
http://www.archive.org/stream/dandysperambulat00cruiiala