THE DANDY: HIS PEDIGREE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1660, 29 January 1913, Page 9

THE DANDY: HIS PEDIGREE.

!v: EVOLUTION OF THE "NUT." , It is said that tho "nut" is threatened -with extinction by the reincarnated Victorian <landy with side whiskers.; A- correspondent of tho Manchester' "Guardian" writes that before ho disappears it would bo well to 1 put on record his distinguishing characteristics. The typical "niit" (ho declares) is a callow young man,' with clean-shaven face, who has allowed his hair to grow long in front and has plastered it straight back:from the-forehead. lie wears a turn-down collar, a very lowcut waistcoat, a soft shirt, an exuberant black silk tie, a short jacket with a "rollcollar," well-creased trousers made, always to turn up, "passionate" socks, and; low shoes. In his right hand is a crooked cane, in his left a pair of wash-leather gloves, whilo between his lifti is the inevitable cigarette. Every period has had the equivalent of tho "nut." Twenty years ago ho was .called a "masher" and in America a "dude." The generation before knew hini as a "swell." In tho early Victorian epoch ho Was a "dandy," in tho days of tho Regency a "blood"; in the eighteenth- cenutry a "buck" and a "macaroni." ' The typo may be traced back beyond Elizabethan days. ■ Byron, in "Lovo's Labour's Lost," was a "nut"; so was Piers Gaveston. Probably tho prototype came over with William the Conqueror in tho "latest thing" in chain armour.