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Passage Illustrated: La Fleur's elegant second-hand suit

He had bought a bright, clean, good scarlet coat, and a pair of breeches of the same. — They were not a crown worse, he said, for the wearing. — I wish’d him hang’d for telling me. — They look’d so fresh, that though I knew the thing could not be done, yet I would rather have imposed upon my fancy with thinking I had bought them new for the fellow, than that they had come out of the Rue de Friperie.

This is a nicety which makes not the heart sore at Paris.

He had purchased, moreover, a handsome blue satin waistcoat, fancifully enough embroidered: — this was indeed something the worse for the service it had done, but ’twas clean scour’d; — the gold had been touch’d up, and upon the whole was rather showy than otherwise; — and as the blue was not violent, it suited with the coat and breeches very well: he had squeez’d out of the money, moreover, a new bag and a solitaire; and had insisted with the fripier upon a gold pair of garters to his breeches knees. — He had purchased muslin ruffles, bien brodées, with four livres of his own money; —and a pair of white silk stockings for five more; — and to top all, nature had given him a handsome figure, without costing him a sous.

He entered the room thus set off, with his hair dressed in the first style, and with a handsome bouquet in his breast. — In a word, there was that look of festivity in everything about him, which at once put me in mind it was Sunday; — and, by combining both together, it instantly struck me, that the favour he wish’d to ask of me the night before, was to spend the day as every body in Paris spent it besides. I had scarce made the conjecture, when La Fleur, with infinite humility, but with a look of trust, as if I should not refuse him, begg’d I would grant him the day, pour faire le galant vis-à-vis de sa maîtresse.

Commentary

Polonius: Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
— Hamlet, I, iii, 71-76.

In a society with good used-clothing shops, what is the apparent difference between man and master? Sterne's Yorick gives a detailed analysis of his valet/postillion's recently purchased silk suit and its accompaniments: but for the slightly worn vest, the young servant could easily be mistaken for a young aristocrat, although perhaps he is a little too flashy to be the genuine article. The illustrator accentuates La Fleur's attractive figure and casual pose, so that the youth can make the most of his new wardrobe acquired at the Rue de Friperie, the quality of whose wares seem a far cry from those of the second-hand clothing emporia in London's Monmouth Street in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz (September 24, 1836), when the advent of dry-cleaning meant that the first-owners could hang onto their expensive suits much longer. (Jolly Belin had opened the first commercial "dry laundry," employing turpentine in the cleaning process, in Paris in 1825.) In fact, as Sterne demonstrates here, in the late eighteenth century the availability of high quality second-clothing was a socially destabilizing factor in assessing people's social standing by their clothing as the apparent Marquis could in fact be a mere valet. Already the sagacious Alexander Pope had queried the basis for judging the worth of a gentleman by mere externals:

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella. — An Essay on Man, "Epistle II," lines 11-12.

Bibliography

Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Illustrated with one hundred engravings on wood, by Bastin and G. Nichols, from original designs by Jacque and Fussell. London: Joseph Thomas, 1841.

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Last modified 17 September 2018