Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 38

CHAPTER 4

‘DIAMOND RINGS ON OUR FINGERS’

Wainewright recalled in one of his own essays for the London Magazine that his illness had prevented “steady pursuit”, or work, as we know it, and “varied amusements” had been deemed essential to his cure, so it seems he spent some two years doing not very much other than painting 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,

THE FATAL CUP

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