Brian Rea’s fears, part of Murals exhibit at the Joan Miró Foundation.
Gerald Murphy and his wife, Sara, dressed as dandy vehicles and photographed by Man Ray at the Comte Étienne de Beaumont Automotive Ball in 1924.
An additional detail about the Murphys: they were distressed to serve as the aesthetic (or, lifestyle perhaps) models for Nick and Nicole Diver in Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. (The Divers’ damned-ness, however, belongs solely to the Fitzgeralds.)
Q. What is the most wonderful invention of modern times?
A. The starched neckcloth.
Q. Who invented the starched neckcloth?
A. Brummell.
Q. Give the particulars of this invention.
A. When Brummell fell into disgrace, he devised the starched neckcloth with the design of putting the Prince’s neck out of fashion, and of bringing his Royal Highness’ muslin, his bow, and wadding into contempt. When he first appeared in this stiffened cravat, tradition says that the sensation in St. James’s Street was prodigious; dandies were struck dumb with envy, and washerwomen miscarried. No one could conceive how the effect was produced—tin, card, a thousand contrivances were attempted, and innumerable men cut their throats in vain experiments; the secret, in fact, puzzled and baffled everyone, and the poor dandy L … d died raving mad of it; his mother, his sister, and all his relations waited on Brummell, and on their knees implored him to save their kinsman’s life by the explanation of the mystery; but the beau was obdurate, and L. miserably perished. When B. fled from England, he left his secret a legacy to his country; he wrote on a sheet of paper, on his dressing table, the emphatic words, “Starch is the man.”
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“These ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies remind us of those which doctor Franz Kuhn attributes to a certain Chinese encyclopædia entitled ‘Celestial Empire of Benevolent Knowledge’. In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.” — Excerpt, The Analytical Language of John Wilkins, Borges