'Pride and Prejudice' and the dandy

How ironic that Lydia in Pride and Prejudice declares: “Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare. She is almost three and twenty! Lord, how ashamed I should be of not being married before three and twenty!” If Harris Bigg-Wither ever read her novels, he would have been quite struck by these words. Miss Austen had never written so honestly! Or ironically…

That isn't Harris Bigg-Wither. But if he had been anything like Mr. Darcy, he would have looked like this. It's a Portrait of Beau Brummel, the most fashionable man of the age, a caricature by Robert Dighton in 1805. Love the hair. It was the time of the dandy - yet another variant in a long line of cynical and pompous male narcissism - To live and die before a mirror (to quote Baudelaire). No wonder women found it difficult to find a husband.

Before the dandy, there was the macaroni: British men who dressed, spoke and behaved in an androgynous and pretentious way, presumably after "doing" the Grand Tour to Italy and eating macaroni.