and socialising.
There was never a better time in the 19th century to be a man-about-town than the age of the Regency dandy. According to Captain Gronow, that keen observer of the fashionable of the age, the dandy’s dress in 1815 consisted of a blue coat with brass buttons, leather breeches and a huge white starched cravat, which forced the chin back at an almost impossible angle. Those with disappointing calves used padded inserts to enhance their showiness.
There is mention in one of Wainewright’s essays of his wearing a blue coat and of wearing spurs on his heels during his society outings, a reference to his (failed) military career, of which he sometimes hinted of having been in a much more fashionable regiment than the infantry. Thomas Talfourd, Charles Lamb’s biographer, who knew him and had dined at Linden House, described him as having a sort of “undress military air”.
He was 5ft 6ins tall (1m 70cms), with a long nose and blue eyes, according to his application for a French passport in 1831. His hair was black, long, thick and curled and parted in the middle,
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according to his own description. He was said to stoop slightly and have a habit of lisping.
In the same description he talked of his “one large white hand decorated with regal rings”. They are mentioned again in one of his essays:
diamond rings on our fingers, the antique cameos in our breast-pins, our cambric pocket-handkerchief breathing forth attargul, our pale lemon-coloured kid gloves.
John Clare, known as the Peasant Poet, whom Wainewright admired, was invited to dinner in February 1822 and wrote of him as “a very comical sort of chap. He is about 27 and wears a quizzing glass and makes an excuse for the ornament by complaining of bad eyes”. Thomas Hood, another poet who was present, referred to Wainewright being “exquisitely scented and lisping”. In the 1896 life of de Quincy by David Masson, Wainewright is referred to as “a shabby-genteel and bejewelled effeminate, whose department was the Fine Arts.”
After his transportation to Van Diemen’s Land, many of those who had enjoyed his hospitality were unsparing about his dandyism. He was, wrote the poet Barry Cornwall, “absolutely a fop, finikin in dress, with mincing steps and tremulous words, with his hair curled and full of unguents and his cheeks painted like those of a frivolous demi-rep”, defined at that time as ‘a woman of uncertain virtue’. Talfourd said his conversation was that of “smart, lively, clever, heartless, voluptuous coxcomb”.
“He is ubiquitous” wrote Walter Thornbury. “Go to the Park and you observe him in his phaeton,
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leaning forward with his cream-coloured gloves and his large turned-down wristbands conspicuous over the splashboard. Go to old Lady Fitzrattle’s ball the same evening and you will see the fascinating creature with the belle of the evening, gracefully revolving in the waltz”. Hardly a contemporary description, it was written more than 20 years after his death.
Wainewright was a dandy, but not like the rather dim Regency buffs whose horizons were bounded by Grosvenor Square and St James’ and who spent vast amounts on gambling and on amusing themselves at Almanack’s Assembly Rooms, a marriage mart for the aristocracy.
His was an artistic dandyism, a posturing to draw attention to himself and his talents rather than to impress other followers of fashion. As Baudelaire, himself a dandy, wrote: “Dandyism is not an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these are no more than a symbol of the aristocratic superiority of the mind.”
Wainewright had no doubt about the latter as far as he was concerned. He knew Latin and Greek, French and German, had an encyclopaedic knowledge of art and a keen eye as an artistic and literary critic.
It was the height of Romanticism in art and literature, the era of Turner, Constable and Fuseli, of Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and others. Their emphasis on the beauties of nature and the importance of emotion and the self, rather than dictates of reason and order promoted by the 18th century Enlightenment, was a cause that Wainewright enthusiastically embraced, as
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he did their espousal of the irrational, mystical and supernatural.
As well as some minor writings, he seems to have become involved in producing the catalogue for the Royal Academy exhibitions, which would have brought him into contact with the London artists of the day. One of their social gatherings which he attended was at the premises of Paul Colnaghi, print-seller to the Prince Regent, who was in business with his sons Dominic and Martin. They held court monthly in their large room at Cockspur Street. Artists and politicians attended too, and the atmosphere was said to like that of a gentleman’s club.
Many Regency artists, including Turner and Fuseli produced, for private viewing, portfolios of erotic drawings. Wainewright did the same. One of his that still exists is this sepia line and wash version of Lady passing two lovers on a bank embracing.
British Museum
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There was an unsubstantiated tale, put forward by Barry Cornwall, that Wainewright had acquired expensive prints which contained Colnaghi’s pricing on their cardboard mounts, then substituted much cheaper prints and sold them on for great profit. The Colnaghi archive, which is held at Waddesdon Manor, the home of the Rothschilds, is, alas, incomplete, and contains no record of Wainewright’s dealings.
John Scott, the writer and critic who had revived the London Magazine in 1820, had married Colnaghi’s daughter Caroline in 1807. The London rapidly gained ascendancy in the literary world by publishing the works of Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Carlyle and John Clare among others. Notable contributions were Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater and William Hazlitt’s essay in 1822 on the Elgin Marbles.
It is probably through the Colnaghi connection that Wainewright was commissioned to write for the London, as Scott had noted his artistic enthusiasm. He recalled in one of the essays:
It struck me as something ridiculous that I, who had never authorized a line, save in Orderly and Guard reports (and letters for money of course) should be considered competent to appear in a new double-good Magazine!
I actually laughed outright to the consternation of my cat and dog, who wondered, I believe, what a plague ailed me.
Contributors to magazines in the 19th century usually adopted noms-de-plume. Wainewright used a telling one, Janus Weathercock, the two-faced
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Roman god, and one who could be blown in any direction. The other name he used, purporting to be a Dutchman, was Cornelius Van Vinkbooms, a surname probably appropriated from David Vinckbooms (sic), one of the painters of the Dutch Golden Age, who was greatly influenced by Breughel the Elder.
In the three years from February 1820 Wainewright contributed some
