Dandy in Distress

The Exquisite, Alias Dandy in Distress, is so buttoned up and laced in that he can't pick up his fallen kerchief! This image illustrates a letter from a correspondent (beneath the image) who has concerns about modern fashions... Via the Lewis Walpole Library.

“A Correspondent furnishes us with the following Picture of an Exquisite alias a Dandy in distress, 

“Walking in one of the squares last week [,] it was my fate to follow an Exquisite stock'd and stay'd laced and bound collar'd and pilloried in all the fashion, so slender, so straight and so stiff that a man of ordinary strength might have used it as a walking stick, This thing flourishing a very nice perfumed handkerchief happened to let it drop; the question was how to get it up again; stoop it could not, and I confess I enjoyed its distress; for tho' for any other female I would have raised the handkerchief with alacrity, I wish'd to see how this creature would help itself, then thus it was : having eyed the handkerchief askance, something like a magpie peeping into a marrow-bone, it gently straddled outs its legs, and lowering the body between them it brought the right hand in contact with the object sought. What shall we say to the association of ideas, when I assure you, that looking on this unmanly figure, brought into my mind the knights of old, who when once unhorsed, could never from the weight and stiffness of their armour hope to mount again”. 

N.B. it is found remarkably convenient in such a case for the Exquisite to carry a cane or stick with a hook at the end, as he may fish up any thing he unfortunately drops without breaking his back or exciting the pity or visibility of the Spectators. - The Publisher respectfully solicits a continuance of the ingenious communications of his friends, to which he will pay the most particular attention.”

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