The French novelist Stendhal, born in 1783, exhibited his dandyism well before the subsequent fashion for all things English. Rooted in Romantic idealism, his dandyism was flamboyant where Brummell’s was ascetic.
Stendhal, whose real name was Marie-Henri Beyle, went to Italy in 1800 with a commission to serve in the dragoons. He stayed in Milan, and his life soon revolved around music, architecture and women. He had numerous passing affairs before diving into a serious infatuation. The object of his attentions was a teenage girl named Adèle Rebuffel. In a fit of pique, Stendhal fought a duel with her fiancé and came away with the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth and a flesh wound to his foot. He decided that if he couldn’t have Adèle he would settle for the next best thing –her mother. His affair with her mother continued until Stendhal caught a nasty venereal infection from a prostitute.
He resigned his commission in 1802 and lived on an allowance from his father. He hired English and Italian tutors, wrote to his sister demanding large quantities of gloves, went frequently to the theatre and took acting lessons. He tried to persuade his father to lend him money for a business venture with an old school friend, but his père refused to cough up the cash. Stendhal’s school chum reluctantly gave him a job as a secretary.
Stendhal was soon bored by all things secretarial, so his brother found him an administrative post in Brunswick. He was more bored there than he had been anywhere else. He returned to Paris, determined to behave with dandified affluence. He bought a cabriolet for the equivalent of his annual income, kept horses and servants, and owned eighteen waistcoats. Bored again, he left Paris and went on a grand tour of Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples. When he returned he secured an appointment as a courier to Napoleon in Russia, but once again he suffered terribly from ennui and so returned to Paris. By 1814, his debts amounted to 37,000 francs, of which 2,000 were to his tailor.
He wrote novels in an attempt to relieve his financial troubles, but without much success. He was plagued by misfortune. The sole manuscript copy of De l’amour was lost in the post for eighteen months. When it was published in 1822 it sold only seventeen copies. After contemplating suicide, Stendhal resigned himself to work and got a job as a diplomat, certain that posterity would discover his genius.
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