the last lion: winston spencer churchill: visions of glory, 1874–1932

Swinging their elegant, gold-headed canes, gentlemen swaggered when crossing the street, dispensing coins to fawning men who swept the dung from their paths. Cuffs and collars were starched, cravats were affixed with jeweled pins, waistcoats were snowy white, wide tabular trousers swept the ground at the heel but rose in fron t over the instep, black frock coats were somber and exquisitely cut. They wore top hats, indoors and out, except in homes or churches. Gentlemen, no less than ladies, could be identified by their clothing.

Bailey, an American visitor to London in the 1870’s, wrote that he could find ‘traces of nobility’ in an aristocrat’s ‘very step and bearing.’ He asked mischievously: ‘Can you conceive of a bowlegged duke? Or is it possible for you to locate a pimple on the nose of a viscount? And no one, however diseased his imagination, ever pictures a baron with an ulcerated leg, or conceived of such a monstrous impossibility as a cross-eyed duchess.’ This was Yankee wit, but the plain fact was that you could tell. In days it was far easier, and would usually be accomplished by a glance.

“Identifying a stranger’s class has always been a social challenge for Londoners.

The last lion: winston spencer churchill: visions of glory, 1874–1932