Dandyism is a form of self-worship that dispenses with the need to find happiness from others - especially from women. It is a condition rather than a profession. It is a defence against suffering and a celebration of life. It is not fashion; it is not wealth; it is not learning; it is not beauty. It is a shield and a sword and a crown - all pulled out of the dressing-up box in the attic of the imagination.
Dandies are a brotherhood of higher types, the true princes of the world and the true priests of the world. And so I was happy to receive this little book from a fellow man of the cloth. Like God, dandies want nothing but praise, so I shall try praising it, even if it does frighten me at first.
The Affected Provincial's Companion by Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy is a collection of essays, philosophical diagrams, naughty verse and "miscellaneous diversions for the blissfully idle". The book is not a story, but an album of fragments. Whimsy raises moths, photographs orchids and rides his penny-farthing through the small rural town of New Egypt, New Jersey, in which he lives. I have to say that all this leaves me cold. I am not the type of person who wants to go back to the land. I am the type of person who wants to go back to the bar. In Soho the air smells like vomit, and if you are keen to breathe, the best plan is to open a window and stick your head into a building.
I must also take issue with him on Wilde and Brummell. Neither of these men was a dandy, in my not-very-humble opinion. Brummell, whom he describes as "the progenitor of dandyism", was aspirational, and no real dandy is aspirational. As for Wilde, what a phoney he was. And not even a real phoney! He bred, for a start, and no dandy worth the name breeds. He must defeat the species role of his body at all costs. The only place a dandy would push a pram is into the Thames.
His idea that a woman can be a dandy is preposterous. There are no female dandies for the same reason that there is no female Mozart or Jack the Ripper. The key attribute of dandyism - detachment - cannot come from someone with a womb. Forget it, darling. Women are on this planet only as trumpets of our glory.
But these are quibbles when compared to the two main flaws of the book. The first is that the central question is never undressed. This is, of course, that "Dandyism" completely fails as an idea. How can originality replicate to create a whole movement? How can you dress alike to assert your individuality? How, on the one perfumed hand, can you talk about freedom when you willingly give it up with the other ungloved mitt? How can you be unique and yet part of the gang? There are two universal truths about human beings. One: they are all the same. Two: they all say they are different. Two is of course the result of one. The dandy just happens to be the biggest, the best and most beautiful fraud of them all. His doctrine is a laughable conceit, a delightful illusion.
Camus saw the dandy as a revolutionary. Surely that must be the aim of all true subversion: in the end you must be prepared to subvert yourself. But Whimsy refuses to take off his face and reveal his mask.
Quentin Crisp is one of the greatest dandies ever to have lived - apart from me. He is scattered from above on this book like confetti. And yet Crisp's The Naked Civil Servant had an aching creative heart. It was a book about narcissism and negation. Vitality and vulnerability. Grandiosity and humility. He took us straight up to heaven without losing our breath, and then straight to hell with the same passion. The Affected Provincial's Companion does nothing of the sort. Scratch the surface and you'll find more surface. In this, Whimsy is the opposite of Crisp. Eccentricity is to individuality what "a character" is to a person with character: clownish eccentricity is often a mask for nonentity. Individuality, like character, is earned and involves moral effort.
And there is no moral content to this work. Crisp knew that words that come from the heart enter the heart. But what of Whimsy? Sadly, we can only judge a cover by its book. And words that come from the mannequin don't enter the man.
Sebastian Horsley's "Dandy in the Underworld: an unauthorised autobiography" will be published by Sceptre in 2007
