Tooting Broadway dude

Three years ago my son gave me a denim jacket carrying the Caterpillar label. He’d got it from someone sharing the same student lodgings, who had submitted a number of original designs to Caterpillar. They made a few prototypes and mine is one, perhaps the only one of its exact style in existence. I’ve worn it daily on my wanderings, despite its being a trifle long in the arms and body. No one has ever said it looks good but I’ve imagined it resembled my namesake’s, as portrayed in The Artist on his Way to Work. My first encounter with his art was a little reproduction of this painting in The Modern Encyclopaedia for Children selected to illustrate an article on printing, showing the four colour separations. You can’t ever go and see the original.  It was destroyed in WWII. Also, a blue jacket plays a major role in Self-portrait with Easel (scroll down, click to enlarge).

The main specialness of mine, though, was its being an unforeseen gift, to cover my back in the time of need.

I don’t take an inordinate interest in clothes. I rarely buy my own, yet cling to the ones I have, long after the woman in my life has threatened to throw them away. My “Vincent” jacket remains under such threat, reprieved only for lack of a suitable replacement. A chance arose last week, when we went to visit Karleen’s Mom in Mitcham. Mom is the ideal guide to economical shopping in South London, having lived there since 1960 when she arrived from Jamaica. She said she knew just the place, so the three of us took a bus-ride to Tooting, then made straight for Smith Bros, department store since Victorian times. We found the exact thing, in the classic “trucker” style, absurdly cheap. K wanted one just the same, but couldn’t find the right fit, so Mom took us to I&A Fashions, whose sign, offering “babywear, children’s wear, ladies’ casual and nursery goods, school uniform, evening wear” seemed overblown for such a tiny shopfront. Step inside, though, and you find “caverns measureless to man”, at least this man, for having acquired my new jacket

I took no further interest in shopping. Opposite Tooting Broadway Station, with its great bronze statue of King Edward VII, I found solace more to my taste, a tavern not a cavern, a real London pub, which kept me occupied till K appeared in her new jacket – shapely, but cut in lightweight denim, in feminine homage to the “trucker” idiom; yet less than half the price of mine (£7.99, to be exact).

It wasn’t the pub , the pint of Pedigree, or even the new jacket, which gave me such a surge of affection for London, though they helped. Mostly it was the street, opening its arms and winning me over. In the Mitcham Road, I’m one piece of a grand kaleidoscope of colours, shapes, ages and types. It’s a joy to see and be seen, greet and be greeted. In many faces you can see that life is hard and lonely: immigrants exiled from who knows where; old men exiled from their youth, when Tooting was a different place. The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. Here in the present, I’m a dude amongst dudes, albeit a bleached and weathered one, for these qualities of the new denim are echoed in my pale skin and grey hair. It’s as if I don’t remember I’m white till I look in the mirror. You don’t have to be black to be a dude—but it does seem to help.

Only a few days after discovering that a contemplative nun lurks deep within me, I discover a dandy too! I read somewhere that dandyism is a spiritual thing: perhaps it was à propos the poet Baudelaire. At any rate I feel it so, for it means that you cultivate your presence to please others as well as yourself; to let others look at you and see the magnificence of God’s creation. Yes, it sounds shocking and even blasphemous, but it doesn’t depend on spending lots of money on clothes, or having a nice-looking body to hang them on. It’s a consciousness thing, and this is what makes black people more dudish than whites. I’ve described one in the post “Laughing Water” who was brain-damaged, deformed and incapable of functional movement. I’m not saying everyone can be a dude: it’s a vocation, like the calling to be a nun.

Dandyism implies the chaste enjoyment of your own body, both seeing and being seen; to be caressed by the aethers; to express discreet appreciation of others’ efforts in looking beautiful. In my imagination (and who knows? perhaps reality too) we recognize one another with subtle glances.

The thing about finding these things in yourself—nun, dude or other personalities still to be discovered—is that they can be enjoyed for an afternoon, without lifetime commitment. The memory can be cherished just the same. Perhaps not even a memory, but an aspiration. The sweetness of these things cannot be taken away.

A dandy doesn’t have to follow fashion. But dandyism as divine worship is always in fashion, a Yoga as challenging as any other. Its goal is delight in being who you are, the entire look and feel of your person; and to cultivate a similar appreciation for others. I’m ready to learn.