Our hero, our Nelson, kept
his nautical dandyism until he was middle-aged. Who ever accused him of
incompetence? Think of his going at Trafalgar into that pouring Inferno
of lead and iron with all his decorations blazing on him! "In honour I
won them and in honour I will wear them," said this unconscionable
dandy; and he did wear them until he had broken our terrible enemy's
power, saved London from sack, and worse, and yielded up his gallant
soul to his Maker. Rather an impressive kind of dandy was that wizened
little animal. "There'll be wigs on the green, boys--the dandies are
coming!" So Marlborough's soldiers used to cry when the regiment of
exquisites charged. At home the fierce Englishmen strutted around in
their merry haunts and showed off their brave finery as though their one
task in life were to wear gaudy garments gracefully; but, when the
trumpet rang for the charge, the silken dandies showed that they had the
stuff of men in them. The philosopher is a trifle too apt to say,
"Anybody who does not choose to do as I like is, on the face of it, an
inferior member of the human race." I utterly refuse to have any such
doctrine thrust down my throat. No sage would venture to declare that
the handsome, gorgeous John Churchill was a fool or a failure.
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