Le V. is a great artist, and his supremacy is in the
tact with which he suits his toilet to his temperament. But the
marvellous affinity of a dandy's mood to his daily toilet is not
merely that it finds therein its perfect echo nor that it may even be,
in reflex, thereby accentuated or made less poignant. For some years I
had felt convinced that in a perfect dandy this affinity must reach a
point, when the costume itself, planned with the finest sensibility,
would change with the emotional changes of its wearer, automatically.
But I felt that here was one of those boundaries, where the fields of
art align with the fields of science, and I hardly dared to venture
further. Moreover, the theory was not easy to verify. I knew that,
except in some great emotional crisis, the costume could not palpably
change its aspect. Here was an impasse; for the perfect dandy--the
Brummell, the Mr. Le V.--cannot afford to indulge in any great emotion
outside his art; like Balzac, he has not time. The gods were good to
me, however. One morning near the end of last July, they decreed that
I should pass through Half Moon Street and meet there a friend who
should ask me to go with him to his club and watch for the results of
the racing at Goodwood.
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