“To speak now of a Beau or a Buck or a Blood, an Incroyable or a Dandy, is to evoke a smile. The man who first used starch for a neckcloth is dismissed with a sneer, while the man who invented the patent machine for taking out potato eyes is hailed as a benefactor of his country. Let who will erect statues to the useful citizens who create useless appliances, who discover a later and dryer form of breakfast food, who add fifty-seven new varieties of pickles to the already superfluous fifty-seven. I shall save my pennies to buy a hand-carved snuff-box and, having bought it, remember between sneezes the men who regarded living as an art; possibly, since life seemed to them useless, as a fine art”
Not that there is any relation to this article, but you might get a kick out of reading about the history of Brooks Brothers
An article about Beau Brummell can be read HERE
