Dust: A Novel

The time at which this story begins was a time of many beginnings and many endings. The Eighteenth Century had expired the better part of a score of years before, and everything was in confusion. Youth—tumultuous, hearty, reckless, showy, slangy, insolent, kindly, savage—was the genius of the hour. The Iron Duke had thrashed the Corsican Ogre, England was the Queen of nations, and Englishmen thought so much of themselves and of one another that society, for all its caste, became well-nigh republican. Gentlemen were bruisers and bruisers were gentlemen. At Ranelagh and Vauxhall fine ladies rubbed shoulders with actresses, magistrates foregathered with jockeys and sharpers, and the guardians of public order had more to fear from young bloods and sprigs of nobility than from professional thieves and blacklegs. Costumes were grotesque and irrational, but were worn with a dash and effrontery that made them becoming. There were cocked hats and steeple-crowned hats; yards of neck-cloth and mountains of coat-collar; green coats and blue coats, claret coats and white coats; four or five great coats, one on top of another; small clothes and tight breeches, corduroys, hessians and pumps.